{
  "id": "indios-presos-por-deudas",
  "type": "entity",
  "name": "Indians imprisoned for debt and the law of service in payment (1567)",
  "summary": "A law of 20 June 1567, printed in the title on jail visits, regulates what happens to an Indian jailed for a debt he cannot pay. He may be handed to his own creditor to work it off — never sold to a third party — at a wage the judge must fix after asking what men of that trade earn, entered by name in the jail-visit book. Drunkenness and concubinage may not be punished with service at all. The law's own recital says why: the practice had already run past every limit.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "colonial-law",
    "law",
    "colonial-institutions",
    "human-rights",
    "labour",
    "spanish-empire",
    "new-spain"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "visita-de-carcel-en-las-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "abogado-y-procurador-de-pobres-de-las-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "recopilacion-de-leyes-de-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "protector-de-indios"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "mita"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "encomienda"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "coartacion"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "republica-de-indios"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "Could Indians be imprisoned for debt in colonial Spanish America?",
    "What was debt peonage under Spanish colonial law?",
    "Did Spanish law limit forced service for debt?",
    "What did the Laws of the Indies say about Indians jailed for drunkenness?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "The law opens by reciting the abuse it exists to correct. Libro VII, título VII, ley xiiij — Philip II at Madrid, 20 June 1567 — begins that from the jail visits made by the oidores \"han resultado inconvenientes en daño y perjuicio de los Indios, dándolos á servicio por deudas civiles á otras personas que á sus acreedores, por mas tiempo que el necesario para pagar las deudas, y depositándolos entretanto que sus causas civiles ó criminales, aunque leves se determinaban.\"",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "The rule set in its place keeps the coercion and forbids its transfer. If an Indian is imprisoned for debt and has nothing to pay with, the oidores are to keep the laws of Castile on the matter and deliver him \"al mismo acreedor, para que le sirva el tiempo, que pareciere necesario á pagar la deuda\"; and if that creditor will not receive him or be served by him in payment, they are to order him released and \"no permitan, que para este efecto se venda á otra persona alguna.\"",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "The wage is not the creditor's to set. Before giving an Indian to service the judges \"tendrán mucha cuenta de saber y entender, que oficio tiene el Indio, y que habilidad y suficiencia\", informing themselves \"de lo que ganan comunmente los Oficiales de aquel oficio\", and on that basis assign the salary he justly ought to have, against which the debt is progressively discharged; and where the debt and the assigned wage are such that a month or other period would cover it, \"no le obliguen á que sirva mas de lo que fuere necesario á la paga de su deuda.\"",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "The law names and blocks the mechanism by which service became permanent. If, during the term, the creditor lends the Indian money \"para efecto de perpetuarle en su servicio, como lo suelen y acostumbran hacer\", then when the original time is served the Indian is to be taken out of his power even though the loan is unpaid; and if the creditor afterwards presses him for the loan and he has nothing to pay with, \"no se lo entreguen para que le sirva en pago de la deuda.\"",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c5",
      "text": "The compulsion is real and the law says so. An Indian who flees before completing the time for which he was given is to be arrested again and returned to the same creditor \"y que le acabe de servir, conforme al asiento primero que con él se hubiere hecho, sin novedad alguna\", and may not be sold or given to another. The protection the law offers is against sale and against extension, not against forced labour itself.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c6",
      "text": "Two whole categories are taken out of service sentences, and the crown derogates its own confirmed ordinances to do it. Indians imprisoned for drunkenness, \"aunque sea por tercera, quarta, y mas veces\", are to be punished as seems best \"y por esta causa en ninguna forma condenarán al Indio á servicio\", the same holding for those imprisoned for concubinage, \"sin embargo de qualesquier ordenanzas, que en estos casos dispongan lo contrario, aunque estén confirmadas por Nos, que si necesario es, quanto á esto las derogamos.\"",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c7",
      "text": "Married men and craftsmen are protected in the same clause: an Indian, \"mayormente casado, ú Oficial\", imprisoned for an offence is to be punished according to his fault \"sin condenarle á servicio, dexándole ganar la vida con su oficio, y vivir con su muger\", unless the crime is grave and of such quality that the judges think it right to resolve otherwise according to law.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c8",
      "text": "Every delivery to service had to be written down, in the register the jail visit itself produced. Where an Indian is given to service in the permitted cases, the law orders \"que en el libro de la visita de la Cárcel se asiente su nombre, y el acreedor á quien se da á servicio, y el tiempo que se mandó que le sirva, y el dia que se le entrega, y el precio que le está señalado por su salario.\"",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c9",
      "text": "The same law pushes Indians' causes through the poor-persons procedure and cuts a step out of it. Judges are to put \"mucha diligencia\" into concluding pending civil and criminal causes with all brevity, \"y acaben como de pobres, y miserables personas\"; and when an oidor visiting the jails sees from the processes the innocence or guilt of the imprisoned Indians, he is to determine their causes \"sin remitirlas al Oidor, que hubiere mandado prender al Indio, pues de hacer lo contrario resulta tanta dilacion en sus negocios.\"",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c10",
      "text": "The costs of imprisonment were separately lifted from Indians. Libro VII, título VI, ley xxj — Philip IV at Madrid, 7 March 1627, and at El Pardo, 26 January 1628 — orders that Indians imprisoned for drunkenness \"no lleven costas, derechos, ni carcelage las Justicias, Alguaciles y Carceleros, ni las paguen por esta, ni otras causas, como está ordenado\" — the closing phrase conceding that it had been ordered before.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c11",
      "text": "Read as a whole the title legalises a form of debt bondage and then spends most of its words confining it: no sale to third parties, no extension by fresh loans, a wage fixed by market inquiry, a written register, and categories of offence exempted outright. That the crown had to derogate ordinances it had itself confirmed, and to repeat the jail-fee prohibitions under Charles V, Philip II and Philip IV, is evidence within the code that the practice outran the law. This reading is an inference from the sequence of the printed laws, not a finding about how often they were obeyed, which these sources cannot show.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.7
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [],
  "faqs": [],
  "evidence_tier": "primary",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "industry_observation",
    "source_types": [
      "industry_observation"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": false,
  "winning_edge": "Debt peonage in Spanish America is normally described from nineteenth- and twentieth-century hacienda records, with the colonial law summarised in a clause. The 1567 law is quoted here from the fourth impression of the Recopilación, opened page by page, and it turns out to contain the whole argument in miniature: the recital of the abuse, the ban on selling the debtor to anyone but his own creditor, the judge's duty to find out what men of that trade earn before setting the wage, the block on loans made \"para perpetuarle en su servicio\", the exemption of drunkenness and concubinage with an express derogation of contrary royal ordinances — and, in the same breath, the order to re-arrest and return the man who runs. Neither the protection nor the coercion can be quoted without the other.",
  "confidence": 0.85,
  "last_verified": "2026-08-13",
  "canonical_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/indios-presos-por-deudas",
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  "jsonld": {
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "name": "Indians imprisoned for debt and the law of service in payment (1567)",
    "description": "A law of 20 June 1567, printed in the title on jail visits, regulates what happens to an Indian jailed for a debt he cannot pay. He may be handed to his own creditor to work it off — never sold to a third party — at a wage the judge must fix after asking what men of that trade earn, entered by name in the jail-visit book. Drunkenness and concubinage may not be punished with service at all. The law's own recital says why: the practice had already run past every limit.",
    "url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/indios-presos-por-deudas",
    "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 Segundo (Libros IIII a VIII)",
        "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=Lt41mzCz8zEC&pg=PP5"
      }
    ],
    "@type": "Article",
    "headline": "Indians imprisoned for debt and the law of service in payment (1567)"
  }
}