(MEXICAN MANUSCRIPTS) Luis de Velasco 1st Marqués of Salinas

Sale 2546 - Lot 333

Price Realized: $ 500

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900

(MEXICAN MANUSCRIPTS.) Luis de Velasco, 1st Marqués of Salinas. Order curtailing the exploitation of the Natives of Zumpango. Document Signed as Viceroy of New Spain. One page, 12 1/2 x 8 1/2 inches; laid down on paper at an early date, quite worn at edges and folds with only minor loss of text, moderate dampstaining and worming. Np, 27 August 1592

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By the middle of the sixteenth century, reforms had officially liberated the Natives of Mexico from providing service and tribute to conquistadors. Instead, the Spanish crown compelled them to periodically contribute labor to public works and royal interests, a system still prone to abuse and exploitation. The Indians of Zumpango (today in the State of Mexico) were forced to provide workers for school construction in Mexico City, as well as for harvesting crops, and the distribution of bread baked in nearby Tepotzotlán. According to this viceregal order, representatives from Zumpango demonstrated that their overseers had demanded far too many workers given their population of only 1,105 tributaries. They were illegally forced to work on other tasks in an abusive manner: 'much more has been taken and requested of them . . . and on top of that they were compelled and hurried, causing them much ill-treatment and grief.' The sympathetic viceroy ordered that the number of laborers should be more proportionate to their small population. With a typed transcription and English translation.