{
  "id": "consulados-de-lima-y-mexico",
  "type": "entity",
  "name": "The consulados of Lima and Mexico, merchant courts of the Indies",
  "summary": "Two American cities were given self-governing merchant tribunals whose judges were elected by the merchants themselves under a title of the law of the Indies. This entry reads that title in the 1681 folio and reports what it actually prescribes - the electorate, the ballot, the tie broken by lot, the chest of three keys kept outside the prior's house - and who it shuts out.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "new-spain",
    "peru",
    "mexico",
    "lima",
    "commerce",
    "law",
    "institutions",
    "self-government",
    "americas",
    "seventeenth-century"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "recopilacion-de-leyes-de-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "casa-de-contratacion"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "veitia-norte-de-la-contratacion-1672"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "ordenanzas-de-bilbao-1737"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "reglamento-de-comercio-libre-1778"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "real-tribunal-general-de-mineria"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "What were the consulados of Lima and Mexico?",
    "Who could vote in a consulado election in the Indies?",
    "How were the prior and consuls of a consulado chosen?",
    "Where was the money of the averia kept?",
    "Were lawyers allowed in the consulado electorate?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "The consulados of the Indies have a title of their own in the code. The Recopilacion de leyes de los reynos de las Indias printed at Madrid by Julian de Paredes in 1681 carries in its fourth volume a run of laws under the running head \"De los Consulados de Lima, y Mexico\", each law carrying in its margin the king and the ordinance or council decision it comes from. The laws read here are attributed to Philip II, Philip III and Philip IV, several of them to the ordinances of the consulado of Mexico and of Lima and to council decisions of 1604 and 1605.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1681-t4"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "The electorate is defined by occupation, age, household and marital state. Law five requires that the electors of prior, consuls and diputados, and those who elect the electors, be men of business and merchants, married or widowers, over twenty-five years of age, and keeping a house of their own in the city; and that they not be foreigners of these kingdoms, with the express declaration that those of the crown of Aragon and the kingdom of Navarre are not to be understood as foreigners.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1681-t4"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "Three groups are excluded from the electorate by the same law, and one of them is the legal profession. Notaries, the servants of other persons and letrados are not to have a vote in electing the electors nor to be named to anything. A court of merchants was in this respect deliberately kept out of the hands of lawyers.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1681-t4"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "For Mexico the same law draws a line inside the merchant community itself. Those who keep a public shop of their trades are not to enter the election, nor those who keep a shop of merchandise of Castile or of China and of the goods dealt in and made in New Spain - with the declaration that this is not understood of merchants who have shops and sell in them only the goods that come consigned to them on their own account or on commission, nor of those dealing in the kingdoms and provinces of that consulado's commerce. Retailers are on the far side of the line; wholesale men are on the near side.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1681-t4"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c5",
      "text": "The exclusion of notaries is limited in a way that shows the rule is about occupation and not about status. The same law provides that men who have ceased to use the office of notary and are not actually using it, but are dealing and contracting in commerce, are not covered by the prohibition and are to have active and passive voice, to elect and be elected like the rest in everything touching that corporation.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1681-t4"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c6",
      "text": "The ballot is a two-stage election with a written nomination and a prior oath. Law six orders that the election of electors of prior, consuls and diputados in the consulados of Lima and Mexico proceed as follows: the sitting prior and consuls choose, from among those found in each of the said cities, thirty honoured persons of the merchant commerce to be electors of the offices; each of those who come to the election brings a memorandum or list of the names he nominates as electors; before he hands it in an oath is taken from him that he will choose the persons he understands to be the most fitting; the lists are then counted and those with most votes are named; and the notary of the consulado notifies each of his appointment so that he may attend on the appointed day.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1681-t4"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c7",
      "text": "Attendance is compulsory and the quorum is written into the law. At Mexico the thirty electors are summoned by the porter of the consulado on the following day to the consulado house, with the royal official who is judge of appeals and with the prior and consuls of that year, at two in the afternoon; the election proceeds provided there are not fewer than twenty electors present; and those who fail and are in the city without impediment of illness incur a penalty of twenty pesos of gold of mines, half to the royal chamber and treasury and half to the expenses of the consulado, which the prior and consuls are to enforce with the rigour of prison.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1681-t4"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c8",
      "text": "Ties are resolved by two devices, and the second is a lottery. Where the vote for prior is equal a second round is held, and if at the third round the same equality remains, papers bearing the names of those who had equal votes at the last round are thrown into the chest and one is drawn, and he whose name comes out is held for prior; the electors then proceed in the same form to the election of a consul. In the election of prior and consul at Mexico, where two or three persons have as many votes as each other, the royal official attending the election casts his vote and the one who has it is elected.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1681-t4"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c9",
      "text": "Those elected must clear a higher bar than those who elect them. Law eleven requires that persons chosen for prior, consuls and diputados in the cities of Lima and Mexico not be foreigners of these kingdoms as declared for the electors, that they be married or widowers, over thirty years of age, that they keep a house of their own in the city where they are elected, and that they be honoured men.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1681-t4"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c10",
      "text": "The corporation appoints its own staff, but the viceroy is in the salary loop. Each consulado is licensed to name its own notary where the crown has not provided one, fixing his salary on consultation with the viceroy or whoever holds the government; and the prior and consuls may name an alguacil to execute their orders, a porter to attend the sittings, summon those they order summoned and keep the consulado hall in order and clean, and a receptor under bond. The salaries of these officers are assigned out of the averia they collect, may be increased or reduced, and both the first assignment and any increase must be preceded by consultation of the viceroy; the officers may be removed with cause or without it, and if found culpable may be fined, suspended, deprived and replaced.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1681-t4"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c11",
      "text": "The money is deliberately kept out of the officers' houses. The consulado of Mexico is ordered to have a chest of three keys into which the money of the averia collected is to go, which is not to stand in the house of the prior, nor of the consuls, nor of any other private person, but in the monastery of San Francisco of that city or in the royal houses where the prior and consuls meet, whichever of the two seems better to them; and there is to be a deputy accountant who keeps the account and reckoning of that revenue and of its entry, exit and distribution in the said chest, named by the prior and consuls to the satisfaction of the viceroy, with a moderate salary. The consulado of Lima is told to keep its custom in this.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1681-t4"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c12",
      "text": "One provision sets the American tribunals above the metropolitan one in pay and couples it to a prohibition on fees. The passage read fixes salaries in pesos of eight reales for the time served, and gives those of the consulado of Mexico double what those of Seville enjoy, on the express condition that they take no fees, on pain of returning them fourfold - the fourfold divided between the party from whom they were taken, the royal chamber and the consulado. The head of this law falls on a page that could not be opened in this container, so which officers it covers is not asserted here.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1681-t4"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.75
    },
    {
      "id": "c13",
      "text": "What this entry deliberately does not assert. Everything above is the law as printed in 1681, not a record of practice: nothing here shows how any election actually went, how the averia was actually spent, or how the tribunals actually judged. The pages opened cover the electoral and administrative laws of the title and not its provisions on jurisdiction, procedure or appeal, so no claim is made here about summary commercial justice, about appeals to the audiencia, or about the public works the consulados later financed. The foundation dates of the two corporations, commonly given as 1592 for Mexico and 1613 for Lima, are not stated as facts because the pages carrying them were not among those read.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1681-t4"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [],
  "faqs": [],
  "evidence_tier": "primary",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "industry_observation",
    "source_types": [
      "paper"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": false,
  "winning_edge": "General accounts of the consulados describe them as merchant guilds with commercial jurisdiction and stop there, or reduce them to a monopoly of wholesale traders. This entry reads the title of the 1681 folio itself and reports the machinery those summaries never quote: a two-stage election with sworn written nominations, a quorum of twenty out of thirty electors enforced by fines and the threat of prison, a deadlock resolved by drawing a name from the chest, the averia kept under three keys in a monastery rather than in the prior's house, and an accountant answerable to the viceroy. It also prints the exclusions in the same breath as the franchise - foreigners, notaries in practice, servants, lawyers and, at Mexico, the shopkeepers - so the reader can see exactly how wide this piece of American self-government was and where its edges were drawn.",
  "confidence": 0.8,
  "last_verified": "2026-08-13",
  "canonical_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/consulados-de-lima-y-mexico",
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  "jsonld": {
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "name": "The consulados of Lima and Mexico, merchant courts of the Indies",
    "description": "Two American cities were given self-governing merchant tribunals whose judges were elected by the merchants themselves under a title of the law of the Indies. This entry reads that title in the 1681 folio and reports what it actually prescribes - the electorate, the ballot, the tie broken by lot, the chest of three keys kept outside the prior's house - and who it shuts out.",
    "url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/consulados-de-lima-y-mexico",
    "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, con el Indice general — Tomo Quarto",
        "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=e1MkyoifPkMC&pg=PP5"
      }
    ],
    "@type": "Article",
    "headline": "The consulados of Lima and Mexico, merchant courts of the Indies"
  }
}