{
  "id": "avisos-para-los-naturales-1769",
  "type": "entity",
  "name": "Avisos para que los Naturales de estos Reynos sean felices en lo espiritual, y temporal (Mexico, 1769)",
  "summary": "Fourteen instructions the archbishop of Mexico had printed in 1769 for parish priests to read out to their indigenous parishioners: raised and separated beds, a fowl for the sick neighbour, a trade for every man over twenty-five, houses built for rational creatures, quarrels settled without lawyers, a school of Castilian, and a bar on selling their own land because in law they are minors. The same list tells them to speak Castilian to superiors and to marry within their caste.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "colonial-institutions",
    "public-health",
    "education",
    "new-spain",
    "mexico",
    "church",
    "indigenous-peoples",
    "colonial-law",
    "spanish-empire"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "concilio-provincial-mexicano-i-1555"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "concilio-provincial-mexicano-iii-1585"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "pena-montenegro-itinerario-para-parochos-de-indios"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "republica-de-indios"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "catedras-de-lenguas-indigenas"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "spanish-language"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "juzgado-general-de-naturales"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "protector-de-indios"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "hospitals-of-the-indies"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "epidemic-records-of-spanish-america"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "real-ordenanza-de-intendentes-1786"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "real-hospicio-de-pobres-de-mexico"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "What did the Spanish church actually tell indigenous parishioners to do in the eighteenth century?",
    "When did Spanish America switch from evangelising in indigenous languages to teaching Castilian?",
    "Were there public-health instructions for indigenous villages in colonial Mexico?",
    "Could indigenous people in New Spain sell their own land?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "The document is an appendix to a book of church law. Francisco Antonio Lorenzana, archbishop of Mexico, published the acts of the first and second Mexican provincial councils at Mexico City in 1769, and closed the volume with his own \"Avisos para la acertada conducta de un Párroco en la América\". Item VII of that advice to the priest introduces a second, separate list to be passed on: \"Para persuadir á los Naturales lo que les conviene, se les explicarán los siguientes Avisos\", under the head \"AVISOS PARA QUE LOS NATURALES de estos Reynos sean felices en lo espiritual, y temporal\".",
      "sources": [
        "lorenzana-avisos-para-los-naturales-1769"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "The author states the authorship and turns the text on himself. On the closing page he writes \"Estos Avisos, que he formado para Párrocos, é Indios, principalmente procuro aplicármelos, pues aqui es necesario, que nos hagamos Párvulos con los Indios, que piden de justicia el Pan de Doctrina Christiana\"; and he announces that the third Mexican council will be printed in a separate volume. The list is one bishop's prescription, not a synodal decree, and nothing here should be read as a record of what parishes did.",
      "sources": [
        "lorenzana-avisos-para-los-naturales-1769"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "The first item states the linguistic programme at the top of the list. The Naturales are to keep the fear of God and know the Christian doctrine \"no solo en su Idioma, sino principalmente en Castellano\"; educate their children well; respect their superiors; and obey the parish priests and the justices. In a church that had spent two centuries printing grammars and catechisms in Nahuatl, Zapotec, Mixtec and Quechua, the priority of Castilian in item I is the turn, and it is stated without argument.",
      "sources": [
        "lorenzana-avisos-para-los-naturales-1769"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "The second item is a domestic sanitation instruction, and it is surprisingly specific. Householders are to keep their own sleeping mats and those of their children clean \"y en alto, porque contrahen muchas, y muy graves enfermedades, por acostárse en partes húmedas, y en el mismo suelo\"; there is to be separation within the jacal, married couples sleeping apart from their children and men from women, especially past ten years of age; and where the house is small, \"pueden poner una division de cañas, ó de un petate\". The remedy is costed to what a household already has.",
      "sources": [
        "lorenzana-avisos-para-los-naturales-1769"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c5",
      "text": "The third item joins an employment rule to a housing standard and hands the standard to the town. Governors are not to permit any Indian over twenty-five to be without an occupation in the pueblo, whether farmer or day labourer, and newly married men are to build their house with the help of neighbours, \"y assí les costará muy poco\". The houses are to be made \"como para racionales, y no para bestias\", with \"los Ancianos\" of each pueblo appointing the manner and fabric of the Indians' houses, and all are to live in settlement near their church or at least not far from it.",
      "sources": [
        "lorenzana-avisos-para-los-naturales-1769"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c6",
      "text": "The fourth item prescribes a household economy in kind. Every Indian head of family is to have a house and to raise for his own sustenance \"Gallinas, Guajolotes, Cerdos, una Baca, ó Cabras\", and to keep \"una Yegua, ó Mula, para el transporte de lo que necesita\" — the Old World livestock of the Columbian exchange written into a pastoral instruction as the minimum equipment of an indigenous household.",
      "sources": [
        "lorenzana-avisos-para-los-naturales-1769"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c7",
      "text": "The fifth item is double-edged and should be read as such. It urges the Naturales to compose their quarrels amicably rather than litigate, and when recourse to superiors is needed to send \"uno, ó dos de los de mas juicio, é inteligencia de el Pueblo\" instead of many, \"pues lo contrario parece tumulto, y es causa de que los Naturales pierdan su trabajo por muchos dias\"; and to take counsel in the capitals from learned and God-fearing persons before presenting memorials, not from imprudent subjects \"que no son Abogados, ni saben decirles lo que les conviene\". It is at once practical advice about a real cost of litigation and a discouragement of collective petitioning, and the same item warns them never to be led by \"cabezillas, ni Personas de casta infecta\".",
      "sources": [
        "lorenzana-avisos-para-los-naturales-1769"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c8",
      "text": "The seventh item is a mutual-aid duty aimed at a specific failure. When any Indian falls sick the rest are to attend him, whoever has something sending \"alguna Ave, Tortillas, ó Huevos\", and whoever has nothing serving him in what he needs, \"pues es una lástima ver, que se dexan morir unos á otros sin socorro humano, y tal vez sin Sacramentos\". The complaint behind the instruction is that in epidemic conditions the sick were being left alone.",
      "sources": [
        "lorenzana-avisos-para-los-naturales-1769"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c9",
      "text": "The eighth item ties clothing to child mortality. The Naturales are to work and the women to keep their looms to make the clothing that they and their children wear, and never to go naked or dirty, \"porque se pierde el pudor, y la salud, y se mueren muchos niños por falta de aséo, y limpieza\"; with the added judgement that cotton clothing \"no es tan sana como la de lino, ó cañamo\". The hygiene claim is of its period and the textile preference is an opinion, so this is recorded as what the archbishop prescribed rather than as a finding.",
      "sources": [
        "lorenzana-avisos-para-los-naturales-1769"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.8
    },
    {
      "id": "c10",
      "text": "The ninth item asks for a school and gives a reason that is partly emancipatory and partly assimilationist, in one sentence. The pueblos are to keep a \"Escuela de Castellano\" where the boys learn to read and write, \"pues de este modo adelantarán, sabrán cuidar su casa, podrán ser Oficiales de República, y explicarse con sus Superiores, ennobleciendo su Nacion\" — literacy tied explicitly to holding office in the indigenous república — and the same item adds that it is a want of respect to speak in their own language with superiors or in front of them when they can use Castilian, \"aunque sea hablando poco\".",
      "sources": [
        "lorenzana-avisos-para-los-naturales-1769"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c11",
      "text": "The tenth item is the passage that a defensive account would omit, and it belongs on the record. Fathers are to see their children married \"con los puros Indios ó con Españoles, y Castizos, si pudiessen, y no se confundan con tanta variedad de castas, que perturban la paz de sus Pueblos, y tambien es causa de que pierdan sus Privilegios en los Tribunales\". A church that had defended the freedom of indigenous marriage against encomenderos is here advising caste endogamy, and giving as one reason the loss of legal privileges that followed mixed descent.",
      "sources": [
        "lorenzana-avisos-para-los-naturales-1769"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c12",
      "text": "The thirteenth item states the legal disability that underwrote the protection. They are not to sell their real property, \"porque no lo pueden hacer sin la Real Autoridad, y Licencia Judicial, pues són menores, y como á tales les está prohibido por las Leyes Reales el enagenarlos, aunque sea con motivo piadoso\". The same status that shielded indigenous land from alienation, including alienation to the church, defined its holders as perpetual minors, and the text says both things in one clause.",
      "sources": [
        "lorenzana-avisos-para-los-naturales-1769"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c13",
      "text": "The list closes on privilege and loyalty. The Naturales are to understand that the popes have honoured them with many privileges and that \"nuestros Reyes les aman tiernamente, y en sus Leyes han mirado, y miran siempre por su bien\", with Charles III named as favouring them with special expressions, so that they owe him service as the most loyal vassals. It is the standard peroration of an eighteenth-century pastoral, and is quoted here as such rather than as evidence about royal policy.",
      "sources": [
        "lorenzana-avisos-para-los-naturales-1769"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c14",
      "text": "What this document cannot show is the whole of its limit. It is a printed prescription by one archbishop in one year, addressed to priests and read out to parishioners: it is strong evidence of what the church of New Spain thought indigenous life needed in 1769, and, through what it corrects, of the sleeping arrangements, epidemic neglect and litigation costs it saw. It is not evidence that any pueblo built to the standard, kept the school, obeyed the marriage advice or was left in possession of its land.",
      "sources": [
        "lorenzana-avisos-para-los-naturales-1769"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [],
  "faqs": [],
  "evidence_tier": "primary",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "industry_observation",
    "source_types": [
      "paper"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": false,
  "winning_edge": "Lorenzana is known in English almost entirely as the editor of the Mexican councils and the man who suppressed indigenous-language instruction, and the fourteen Avisos he had printed for indigenous parishioners in the same 1769 volume are effectively unread outside Spanish scholarship. This object gives their content from the page scans, item by item and in the original wording: the raised sleeping mats and the cane partition, the fowl and eggs for the sick neighbour, the trade for every man over twenty-five, houses made \"como para racionales, y no para bestias\" to a standard set by the elders of each pueblo, the school of Castilian justified by eligibility for office in the república — and, side by side with those, the instruction to speak Castilian to superiors, the advice to marry within caste to keep their privileges in the tribunals, and the bar on selling their own land because \"són menores\". One printing, both faces, neither omitted.",
  "confidence": 0.85,
  "last_verified": "2026-08-13",
  "canonical_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/avisos-para-los-naturales-1769",
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  "jsonld": {
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "name": "Avisos para que los Naturales de estos Reynos sean felices en lo espiritual, y temporal (Mexico, 1769)",
    "description": "Fourteen instructions the archbishop of Mexico had printed in 1769 for parish priests to read out to their indigenous parishioners: raised and separated beds, a fowl for the sick neighbour, a trade for every man over twenty-five, houses built for rational creatures, quarrels settled without lawyers, a school of Castilian, and a bar on selling their own land because in law they are minors. The same list tells them to speak Castilian to superiors and to marry within their caste.",
    "url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/avisos-para-los-naturales-1769",
    "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html",
    "dateModified": "2026-08-13",
    "citation": [
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Avisos para que los Naturales de estos Reynos sean felices en lo espiritual, y temporal — the fourteen numbered avisos within the Avisos para la acertada conducta de un Párroco en la América",
        "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=sMREAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA392"
      }
    ],
    "@type": "Article",
    "headline": "Avisos para que los Naturales de estos Reynos sean felices en lo espiritual, y temporal (Mexico, 1769)"
  }
}