{
  "id": "criollos-en-el-derecho-indiano",
  "type": "entity",
  "name": "Criollos in the law of the Indies: the degeneration charge and the answer to it",
  "summary": "Spaniards born in the Americas were said by learned men to degenerate under American skies, and a bishop of Mexico doubted whether they could be ordained at all. The Council of the Indies told him to ordain them. The crown's leading jurist printed the charge, named the friars who pressed it, and answered that no nation exists to which some vice has not been imputed and that criollos may not be weighed all in one balance.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "colonial-law",
    "law",
    "colonial-institutions",
    "americas",
    "spanish-empire",
    "peru",
    "new-spain",
    "seventeenth-century",
    "education",
    "governance"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "solorzano-politica-indiana"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "mestizos-en-el-derecho-indiano"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "recopilacion-de-leyes-de-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "universities-of-lima-and-mexico"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "carlos-de-siguenza-y-gongora"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "sor-juana-ines-de-la-cruz"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "eguiara-bibliotheca-mexicana-1755"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "clavijero-disertaciones-1780"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "misconceptions-spanish-empire"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "Were Spaniards born in America treated as equals of Spaniards from Spain?",
    "What was the theory that Europeans degenerated in the Americas?",
    "Could criollos be ordained as priests in colonial Spanish America?",
    "Who were the criollos in Spanish colonial law?",
    "Did Spanish jurists defend the American-born against charges of inferiority?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "The legal question was put as a question, in the chapter heading of the standard treatise on the government of the Indies. Book II, capítulo XXX of Solórzano Pereira's Política Indiana is titled \"DE LOS CRIOLLOS, MESTIZOS, y Mulatos de las Indias, y sus calidades, y condiciones: y si deben ser tenidos por Españoles?\", and the sumario at its head answers the first part in three words at number 2 — \"Los Criollos son Españoles\".",
      "sources": [
        "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-t1"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "The ground of the answer is the constitutional position of the American provinces, not sentiment about them. Of those born in the Indies of Spanish parents there can be no doubt, Solórzano writes, \"que sean verdaderos Españoles, y como tales hayan de gozar sus derechos, honras, y privilegios, y ser juzgados por ellos\", given that the provinces of the Indies are as an accessory of those of Spain, \"y accessoriamente unidas, è incorporadas en ellas, como expressamente lo tienen declarado muchas Cedulas Reales\"; the doctrine that the thing joined to another takes and follows its qualities is applied to conclude that such children \"vienen à ser, y son Oriundos de España\", following the natural origin of their parents rather than their domicile.",
      "sources": [
        "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-t1"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "The question was live enough to be litigated in Rome. Solórzano reports that in those days the Rota decided a suit of Fray Alonso de Agüero, \"Criollo de Lima\", who had been made prior in Naples of the Augustinian college there, whose foundation requires that the prior be a Spaniard: \"y le querian quitar el Priorato, diciendo, que no lo era\". He cites the declaration in his own favour, and the chapter's sumario prints it as head 4, \"Declaracion de Rota sobre Criollos\".",
      "sources": [
        "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-t1"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "The charge being answered is stated in full, in the words of those who made it. Some, Solórzano writes, will not have criollos share in the rights and estimation of Spaniards, \"tomando por achaque, que degeneran tanto con el Cielo, y temperamento de aquellas Provincias, que pierden, quanto bueno les pudo influir la Sangre de España, y apenas los quieren juzgar dignos del nombre de racionales\" — which he compares to the Jews of Jerusalem and Palestine holding for barbarians those born or living among gentiles. Those who press it hardest, he adds, \"son algunos Religiosos, que passan de España\", who mean by it to exclude criollos altogether from the prelacies and honourable charges of their orders, or to have those filled by alternation under briefs obtained for the purpose.",
      "sources": [
        "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-t1"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c5",
      "text": "The charge reached the sacraments, and was stopped by the Council of the Indies. \"Y llegó esto à tanto\", Solórzano writes, \"que un Obispo de Mexico puso en duda, si los Criollos podrian ser ordenados de Sacerdotes, y parece haver perseverado en ella, hasta que por el Consejo de las Indias se le respondió, y encargó, que los ordenasse, si por lo demás los hallasse idóneos, y suficientes\", as appears from a chapter of a letter found in the first folio of the printed ones. The edition's note dates that capítulo de carta to the year 1561, and the 1736 annotator attaches to the passage the citation of the law of the Recopilación that carries it.",
      "sources": [
        "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-t1"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.8
    },
    {
      "id": "c6",
      "text": "Two of the names behind the charge are given, and one of them is a celebrated missionary authority. Fray Juan de la Puente, Solórzano reports, attributed the evils he ascribes to criollos to the constellation of the land, \"la qual juzga ser mejor para criar yervas, y metales, que hombres de provecho, pues aun degenéran luego, los que proceden de los de España\"; and José de Acosta imputed something of the same, \"diciendo, que maman en la leche los vicios, y lascivia de los Indios, y de las Indias, y que de otra suerte fueran muy aproposito para encargarles la conversion de ellos\". The treatise prints the accusation with its authors before answering it.",
      "sources": [
        "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-t1"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c7",
      "text": "The answer is an argument about evidence rather than about honour. He would not have such learned and prudent men speak so easily \"con tanta generalidad\", Solórzano writes: granted that men's customs commonly answer to the climate and temperament of the regions where they are raised, and that vices appear particularly distributed among some of them — lying among the Cretans, as St Paul said — \"bien se puede negar, que las Americanas tengan tan comun, y absolutamente los muchos, que los imputan\"; the provinces are too many and too various to have all the same constellations, \"ni deben ser medidos por un rasero, ò pesados con una misma balanza, todos los Criollos, que en ellas nacen\". He adds that where the origin of better customs is transplanted into an intemperate region, \"con esta mezcla se mejora mucho\", the good blood tempering what is harmful in sky and soil as water tempers the strength of wine.",
      "sources": [
        "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-t1"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c8",
      "text": "He then puts his own testimony on the record and names a criollo scholar as proof. He can testify of sight and of certain report, he writes, to criollos of his own time and the past who have been distinguished in arms and letters and, more importantly, in solid heroic virtues, of whom he could easily make a copious catalogue. In the Council of the Indies itself, in those days, there was authentic testimony of a Dominican of the province of Mexico, Fray Francisco Naranjo, who among other virtues, letters and good parts \"sabía de memoria las de Santo Thomas\", of which trial was made in the public theatre of the university, the volumes being opened at random in various places and he continuing to the letter what was begun or asked of him. The sumario prints it as head 15, \"Alabanzas de Fr. Francisco Naranjo, Criollo\".",
      "sources": [
        "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-t1"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c9",
      "text": "The conclusion is stated as a rule of justice with a bishop's authority behind it. It is neither just nor convenient, Solórzano writes, that general credit be given to this bad opinion of criollos, against which Fray Juan Zapata, who died bishop of Guatemala, made grave and well-founded complaints, \"diciendo, la siniestra intencion, que han tenido, y tienen los que la esparcen, y que no solo no deben ser excluidos de las Prelacias Regulares, y Seculares, Oficios, y Dignidades, como algunos pretenden; sino en igualdad de meritos han de ser preferidos à los de España\". Since criollos and peninsulars make one body and one kingdom and are vassals of the same king, he adds, \"no se les puede hacer mayor agravio, que intentár excluirles de estos honores\"; and it is ordinary to impute vices rashly to some nations out of hatred or envy, for \"no ay Nacion alguna, à quien se haya dexado de imputar, y oponer algunos vicios, y defectos\".",
      "sources": [
        "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-t1"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c10",
      "text": "What the chapter cannot show is how much of this held in practice, and the chapter itself is the reason for saying so. That a bishop of Mexico had to be instructed to ordain criollos, that a prior in Naples had to defend his priorate in Rome, and that the treatise argues the point at all establish that the exclusion was attempted, not that it was defeated; no count of prelacies, offices or ordinations is given here, and the alternativa — the alternation of regular offices between peninsular and American-born that Solórzano mentions in passing — is named and not described. The author is a crown minister who served as an oidor of Lima and is arguing a position, his witness for criollo learning is one friar remembered for a feat of memory, and the answer he gives to the degeneration theory concedes its premise about climate before disputing its application. What is established is that the charge was in print, that it came in part from Spanish religious seeking to keep the offices of their own orders, and that the crown's most-cited jurist rejected it in the manual its judges used.",
      "sources": [
        "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-t1"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [],
  "faqs": [],
  "evidence_tier": "primary",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "industry_observation",
    "source_types": [
      "paper"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": false,
  "winning_edge": "The degeneration theory is usually told through its eighteenth-century form — Buffon and De Pauw, answered by Clavijero — and English-language accounts of criollo grievance start with the Bourbon reforms. This object shows the quarrel already fought and already answered a century earlier, inside the crown's own law book: the bishop of Mexico who doubted whether criollos could be ordained and the Council of the Indies order that he ordain them, the Rota case of a Lima-born prior in Naples, the naming of Spanish religious as the interested party, Acosta and Juan de la Puente quoted as accusers rather than paraphrased, and the rule that vassals of one king may not be excluded from its honours — with the concession about climate and the thinness of the evidence for criollo excellence left visible rather than trimmed.",
  "confidence": 0.85,
  "last_verified": "2026-08-18",
  "canonical_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/criollos-en-el-derecho-indiano",
  "api_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/api/k/criollos-en-el-derecho-indiano.json",
  "jsonld": {
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "name": "Criollos in the law of the Indies: the degeneration charge and the answer to it",
    "description": "Spaniards born in the Americas were said by learned men to degenerate under American skies, and a bishop of Mexico doubted whether they could be ordained at all. The Council of the Indies told him to ordain them. The crown's leading jurist printed the charge, named the friars who pressed it, and answered that no nation exists to which some vice has not been imputed and that criollos may not be weighed all in one balance.",
    "url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/criollos-en-el-derecho-indiano",
    "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html",
    "dateModified": "2026-08-18",
    "citation": [
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Política Indiana, compuesta por el Doct. D. Juan de Solórzano Pereyra, dividida en seis libros — first of the two tomos (Libros I-III)",
        "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=huEykw_YtzYC&pg=PA56"
      }
    ],
    "@type": "Article",
    "headline": "Criollos in the law of the Indies: the degeneration charge and the answer to it"
  }
}