{
  "id": "abogado-y-procurador-de-pobres-de-las-indias",
  "type": "entity",
  "name": "Abogado y Procurador de Pobres of the Audiencias of the Indies",
  "summary": "Every Audiencia of the Indies carried on its salary roll a lawyer and a procurator for the poor, listed in the annual return of ministers the viceroys had to send the king. They were ordered to be at the Saturday jail visit with the prisoners' files in hand, on penalty of two pesos. The same code that created the office ruled that its salary was not to come from the royal treasury but from court fines — and in Mexico, in 1783, the Audiencia was still fining them for not turning up.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "colonial-law",
    "law",
    "colonial-institutions",
    "human-rights",
    "spanish-empire",
    "new-spain",
    "peru"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "visita-de-carcel-en-las-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "indios-presos-por-deudas"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "protector-de-indios"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "recopilacion-de-leyes-de-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "juzgado-general-de-naturales"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "solorzano-politica-indiana"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "republica-de-indios"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "alonso-de-zorita"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "Did the Spanish Empire provide free legal defence to the poor?",
    "What was the abogado de pobres in colonial Spanish America?",
    "Who paid for the defence of poor prisoners in the Indies?",
    "How was the procurador de pobres different from the protector de indios?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "The advocate and procurator of the poor were standing salaried posts of an Audiencia, not an occasional charity. Libro II, título XV, ley clxviij — Philip II at Monzón, 26 October 1585 — orders viceroys and presidents to send the king each year \"relacion clara, expresa y particular\" of the salaries of the Audiencia's ministers and officials, and the list printed there runs through oidores, alcaldes del crímen, fiscales, alguaciles, chapel and jail chaplain, relatores, \"Abogados de pobres, Escribanos de Gobernacion, Cámara, Crímen y Provincia, Procuradores de Pobres\", door-keepers, the multador, and the \"Intérpretes de la lengua de los Indios\", \"y de los salarios que todos tienen, y de que se les pagan.\"",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t1"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "The office was attached to the jail. Libro II, título XXIIII, ley xxvj — Philip II, Ordenanza 208 — is headed \"Que los Abogados de pobres asistan á la visita de Cárcel, y los Procuradores los prevengan con los procesos\", and orders that the advocates of the poor \"estén presentes los Sábados á la visita de presos, y tengan bien vistos los procesos, pena de dos pesos para los Estrados de la Audiencia\", the procurators carrying the concluded files to them \"dos ó tres dias ántes\" on penalty of one peso \"para los pobres de la Cárcel.\"",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t1"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "The crown created the office and then declined to pay for it out of its own money. Ley xxvij of the same título — Madrid, 26 May 1573 — is headed \"Que el salario del Abogado y Procurador de Pobres no se pague de la Real hacienda\" and orders that the salary \"se pague de penas de Cámara y gastos de justicia, y no de nuestra Caxa, ni otra hacienda Real de que no se debe pagar\", with anything already paid otherwise to be returned to the chest of the condemnations. Free defence of the poor was therefore financed by the fines the same courts imposed.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t1"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "The duty owed to poor and Indian litigants was also imposed on the bar at large. Ley xxv — Ordenanza 151 of 1596 — orders that advocates \"no dilaten los pleytos, y procúrenlos abreviar en quanto fuere posible, especialmente los de Indios, á los quales lleven muy moderadas pagas, y les sean verdaderos protectores y defensores de personas y bienes, sin perjuicio de lo proveido en quanto á las protectorías\" — the closing clause keeping the protectoría de indios a separate office from the poor's counsel.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t1"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c5",
      "text": "The same título carries an independence rule for the bar of the Audiencias: ley xxviij — Valladolid, 4 September 1551, and Madrid, 16 August 1563 — forbids any letrado to practise in an Audiencia of the Indies where his father, father-in-law, brother-in-law, brother or son sits as oidor, on penalty of a thousand gold castellanos, and extends the bar to relatives in the same degrees of the president or the fiscal.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t1"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c6",
      "text": "Two centuries later the attendance still had to be compelled. Beleña's abstract of the autos acordados of the Audiencia of Mexico prints, under \"Visitas de Carcel\" and dated 10 November 1783, auto CXXIV: \"Que los Procuradores y Abogados destinados á la defensa de Indios y Pobres asistan precisa é indispensablemente á las Visitas de Carcel, pena de quatro pesos.\" The office was alive and the fine is the measure of how reliably it was served.",
      "sources": [
        "belena-recopilacion-sumaria-1787-autos"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c7",
      "text": "The Mexican wording of 1783 — \"Procuradores y Abogados destinados á la defensa de Indios y Pobres\" — names the two defences as one body of officers, where the Recopilación had kept the protectoría de indios formally distinct from the poor's counsel. The convergence is stated here as what the two printings show, not as a settled account of how the offices were staffed in every district.",
      "sources": [
        "belena-recopilacion-sumaria-1787-autos",
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t1"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.7
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [],
  "faqs": [],
  "evidence_tier": "primary",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "industry_observation",
    "source_types": [
      "industry_observation"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": false,
  "winning_edge": "Ask what public defence of the poor existed before the nineteenth century and English-language sources answer with England and France. The Indies had a salaried advocate and a salaried procurator for the poor in every Audiencia, on the same annual salary return as the judges, with a statutory duty to be at the jail on Saturday with the files read — and this object quotes the law that says so, the law that puts their pay on court fines instead of the treasury, and a Mexico City auto acordado of 1783 fining them four pesos for absence. Achievement, funding trick and failure rate come from three passages of two digitised printings opened page by page.",
  "confidence": 0.85,
  "last_verified": "2026-08-13",
  "canonical_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/abogado-y-procurador-de-pobres-de-las-indias",
  "api_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/api/k/abogado-y-procurador-de-pobres-de-las-indias.json",
  "jsonld": {
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "name": "Abogado y Procurador de Pobres of the Audiencias of the Indies",
    "description": "Every Audiencia of the Indies carried on its salary roll a lawyer and a procurator for the poor, listed in the annual return of ministers the viceroys had to send the king. They were ordered to be at the Saturday jail visit with the prisoners' files in hand, on penalty of two pesos. The same code that created the office ruled that its salary was not to come from the royal treasury but from court fines — and in Mexico, in 1783, the Audiencia was still fining them for not turning up.",
    "url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/abogado-y-procurador-de-pobres-de-las-indias",
    "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html",
    "dateModified": "2026-08-13",
    "citation": [
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Recopilación de leyes de los reynos de las Indias … Quarta impresión — Tomo Primero (Libros I a III)",
        "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=P1xp68LXgw8C&pg=PP9"
      },
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Recopilación sumaria de los autos acordados de la Real Audiencia de esta Nueva España, que desde el año de 1677 hasta el de 1786 han podido recogerse",
        "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=MzFAAAAAcAAJ&pg=RA2-PP1"
      }
    ],
    "@type": "Article",
    "headline": "Abogado y Procurador de Pobres of the Audiencias of the Indies"
  }
}