{
  "id": "mesta-de-la-nueva-espana",
  "type": "entity",
  "name": "The Mesta of New Spain: the stock-raisers' court that wrote the first brand law of the Americas",
  "summary": "Mexico City's cabildo drew up ordinances for the herds around 1540; the crown confirmed them in 1542 and ordered the institution introduced wherever the same reason held. What it produced is a working range code for a hemisphere: elected alcaldes de mesta with a staff of justice, four ten-day round-ups a year at named towns, compulsory membership above three hundred head, strays cried and returned, and a rule that no two owners may use the same brand.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "livestock",
    "colonial-law",
    "legal-history",
    "institutions",
    "new-spain",
    "mexico",
    "americas",
    "agriculture",
    "rangeland",
    "sixteenth-century"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "recopilacion-de-leyes-de-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "criollo-cattle-of-the-americas"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "criollo-pigs-of-the-americas"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "first-colonial-horses-of-the-americas"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "raramuri-criollo-cattle"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "ordenanzas-municipales-de-cortes-1525"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "real-instruccion-de-tierras-1754"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "spanish-mining-law-in-the-american-west"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "What was the Mesta of New Spain?",
    "Where does the law of livestock brands in the Americas come from?",
    "How were stray animals handled in colonial Spanish America?",
    "Did colonial law protect Indian fields from Spanish livestock?",
    "Who were the alcaldes de la mesta?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "The Recopilación de leyes de los reynos de las Indias carries a whole title on the institution — Libro V, Título Quinto, \"DE LOS ALCALDES, Y HERMANOS DE LA MESTA\" — whose first law is dated \"El Emperador D. Cárlos en Valladolid á 4 de Abril de 1542\". It recites that the benefit of having introduced the Mesta \"en estos Reynos de Castilla\" moved the city of Mexico, \"con órden de Don Antonio de Mendoza nuestro Virey\", to make \"algunas ordenanzas para la cria, y aumento de los ganados, remedio, y castigo de los fraudes, y delitos, que con mucha freqüencia se cometian\", which the crown then confirmed.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "The same law orders the institution exported: in the other provinces \"donde no se hubiere introducido, y militaré la misma razon, que en la Nueva España\", the viceroys, presidents, audiencias and governors are to found the Mesta, keeping the ordinances of Mexico. The range code of New Spain is thus made the template for the rest of the Indies by an act of the crown, not by imitation.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "Office was elective and annual. The cabildo of Mexico City names one or two alcaldes de mesta when it elects its ordinary alcaldes; they must be men of good conscience \"que tengan ganado, y sepan de las cosas concernientes á él\", swear in the regimiento, and may not be re-elected the following year \"sino con muy justa causa, y no habiendo otros que buenamente lo puedan ser\".",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "Membership was compulsory above a threshold, and the threshold is printed: everyone holding three hundred or more head of sheep, rams, pigs or goats, or twenty or more cattle or mares, \"sean precisamente Hermanos de la Mesta\", bound to attend the councils in person or send a substitute.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c5",
      "text": "Strays are the heart of the code. Owners must bring to the mesta all animals found mixed with their own — \"todos los ganados son Mesteños, así yeguas, caballos, mulas, vacas, y puercos, como ovejas y carneros\" — for return to their owners on payment of the keep, under a penalty of ten rams for concealment and fourfold restitution of the mesteños held. Animals with no owner at all, the ganado mostrenco, are deposited with solvent persons, cried in the neighbouring cities, and, if no owner appears, sold for the royal Cámara.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c6",
      "text": "The brand rule is stated as a general obligation and not as a privilege: \"Ninguno tenga en su ganado la señal que otro tuviere, y todos las pongan diferentes para que mejor pueda ser conocido el dueño\". Where two owners are found using one mark, the council assigns each a different one. Ear-cropping — the \"señal de tronca\" — is forbidden to stock-raisers outright, \"por la facilidad con que podrian hacer suyos los agenos\", on pain of forfeiting the animals so marked.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c7",
      "text": "Enforcement did not wait on a complainant. The alcaldes are to make each year \"pesquisa general de oficio, aunque no haya acusador, ni denunciador, sobre los hurtos de ganado\" committed in the province, and to punish those found guilty; and the fines set for the Mesta in Castile are, in the Indies, \"de otro tanto mas, y así duplicadas se sentencien, cobren y executen\".",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c8",
      "text": "The code prints the failure of its own officers. A law of Felipe III dated at San Lorenzo, 5 September 1620, records that \"Algunos Jueces de Matanzas y Mestas, proveidos en la Nueva España, en lugar de remediar los excesos que hay, los permiten, y destruyen la Provincia donde son enviados, en que somos deservido, y nuestros vasallos perjudicados\", and orders the viceroy to appoint such judges himself and to make \"demostraciones, y castigos exemplares contra los Jueces culpados\".",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c9",
      "text": "The cost of the herds to indigenous agriculture is on the record in the same volume, in the crown's own words. Libro IIII, Título XII, a law of Carlos V dated Valladolid, 24 March and 2 May 1550, opens: \"Porque las estancias de ganados vacunos, yeguas, puercos, y otros mayores y menores, hacen gran daño en los maizales de los Indios, y especialmemte el que anda apartado y sin guarda\". It forbids granting estancias where damage may follow, requires them to be sited far from the pueblos de indios and their sementeras, obliges owners to post enough herders to prevent damage, and orders that any damage done be made good.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c10",
      "text": "Indian herders are given a specific protection against the risk of the trade: the Indian who guards livestock \"no tenga obligacion á pagar al Ganadero las cabezas perdidas en su tiempo, si por este riesgo no se les diere precio equivalente, señalado por el Gobierno\", assessed according to the danger the shepherds run and the circumstances of each province. A neighbouring law in the same title requires that Indians employed in field and mine labour — \"de mita, repartimiento, ó alquilados\" — be free to sleep in their own houses, and that those without accommodation be housed under a roof by the owner of the hacienda.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c11",
      "text": "The working text behind the title is datable and was printed in Mexico. Beleña's 1787 compilation of the autos acordados of the Audiencia of Mexico prints, under the running rubric \"Ordenanzas de la Mesta\", the \"Ordenanzas de 25 de Enero de 1574\", whose first chapter has the alcaldes elected on New Year's Day in the cabildo of Mexico City \"y de las demas Ciudades de esta Nueva España, Cabezas de Obispados, que para ello tienen facultad\".",
      "sources": [
        "belena-recopilacion-sumaria-1787-autos"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c12",
      "text": "Those ordinances name the ground. Each alcalde holds two councils a year: one in the villa of Toluca and one in the pueblo of Tepeapulco, the other in the pueblo of San Juan and in Alfajayuca, with the mestas cried fifteen days in advance in Mexico City and in Tepeapulco, Cuautitlán and Tula. Each of the four councils lasts ten days, in which the alcaldes do justice to the parties, \"visitar las cercanias y estancias de aquella comarca\", and make the general pesquisa on thefts.",
      "sources": [
        "belena-recopilacion-sumaria-1787-autos"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c13",
      "text": "The ordinances were meant to be read aloud and revised by the people they bound: each alcalde carries an authorised copy, and on the first day of each of the four councils they are read publicly so that the brothers may \"ver y entender si conviene, conforme al tiempo, enmendar ó quitar alguna Ordenanza, ó hacer algunas de nuevo\". The same compilation confirms the doubling of Castilian penalties in New Spain, under the marginal heading \"Que las penas sean dobladas en esta Nueva España\".",
      "sources": [
        "belena-recopilacion-sumaria-1787-autos"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c14",
      "text": "Alongside the mesta ordinances Beleña prints the complementary rule for farmers: those who hold no sitios or estancias may not keep herds beyond what they can hold under guard, on pain of fifty pesos, and the cultivator who suffers damage \"pueda acorralar los bueyes que lo causaren, hasta que se le satisfaga\". The conflict between crops and stock was legislated from both ends, and the remedy given to the injured party was self-help backed by the justices.",
      "sources": [
        "belena-recopilacion-sumaria-1787-autos"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.8
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [],
  "faqs": [],
  "evidence_tier": "primary",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "industry_observation",
    "source_types": [
      "paper"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": true,
  "winning_edge": "Ranching in the Americas is normally traced through romance — the vaquero, the round-up, the brand — and almost never through the text that created the offices doing the work. This object reads the two printings that do: the title of the Recopilación that founds the Mesta of New Spain and orders it copied across the Indies, and Beleña's 1787 Mexican printing of the ordinances of 25 January 1574, which name the towns, the dates and the ten-day sessions. It quotes the brand rule and the ban on ear-cropping in the words that impose them, and it puts three costs beside the achievement, each from the same volumes: the judges of matanzas and mestas who \"destruyen la Provincia donde son enviados\", the estancias that did \"gran daño en los maizales de los Indios\", and an Indian shepherd's liability that had to be legislated away.",
  "confidence": 0.85,
  "last_verified": "2026-08-13",
  "canonical_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/mesta-de-la-nueva-espana",
  "api_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/api/k/mesta-de-la-nueva-espana.json",
  "jsonld": {
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "name": "The Mesta of New Spain: the stock-raisers' court that wrote the first brand law of the Americas",
    "description": "Mexico City's cabildo drew up ordinances for the herds around 1540; the crown confirmed them in 1542 and ordered the institution introduced wherever the same reason held. What it produced is a working range code for a hemisphere: elected alcaldes de mesta with a staff of justice, four ten-day round-ups a year at named towns, compulsory membership above three hundred head, strays cried and returned, and a rule that no two owners may use the same brand.",
    "url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/mesta-de-la-nueva-espana",
    "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": "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": "The Mesta of New Spain: the stock-raisers' court that wrote the first brand law of the Americas"
  }
}