{
  "id": "obrajes-de-nueva-espana",
  "type": "entity",
  "name": "The obrajes of New Spain and the law that tried to open their doors",
  "summary": "The cloth workshops of colonial Mexico were the hardest labour regime the viceroyalty tolerated, and the fullest account of what happened inside them is the government's own. This entry reads the law of the Indies that barred Indians from obrajes outright and the viceregal regulation of 1767, reissued in 1781, that instead regulated them - and prints what each one concedes.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "new-spain",
    "mexico",
    "labour",
    "textiles",
    "law",
    "indigenous-rights",
    "slavery",
    "debt",
    "americas",
    "sixteenth-century",
    "eighteenth-century"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "recopilacion-de-leyes-de-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "republica-de-indios"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "protector-de-indios"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "encomienda"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "juzgado-general-de-naturales"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "real-ordenanza-de-intendentes-1786"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "What was an obraje in colonial Mexico?",
    "Did Spanish law allow Indians to work in obrajes?",
    "How were workers held in the obrajes of New Spain?",
    "What did the 1767 regulation of obrajes require?",
    "Were obraje workers paid in cash or in goods?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "The prohibition is flat, and it is in the code itself. Book VI, title XIII of the Recopilacion de leyes de los reynos de las Indias carries as its eighth law \"Que los Indios no sirvan en obrages, ni ingenios de azucar\", attributed to Philip II at Madrid on 23 December 1595, to the ordinance of personal service of Philip III of 1601, and to Charles II and the queen regent. In no province or part of the Indies, it orders, may Indians work in obrajes of cloth, wool, silk or cotton, in sugar mills or trapiches, or in anything similar, even where Spaniards hold them in company with Indians.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "The same law names the substitute in the same breath, and this is the sentence a one-sided account would omit. Owners are told to work such places \"con Negros, u otro genero de servicio, y no con Indios forzados, o voluntarios\" - with Blacks or another kind of service, and not with Indians whether forced or willing - and that no pressure, no persuasion with or without pay, and no intervention or consent of their caciques or authority of a justice makes it lawful. A protection written for one population is here also an instruction to buy another.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "The prohibition has an exception that concedes indigenous ownership. The same law permits that where Indians among themselves have obrajes, without mixture, company or participation of any Spaniard of whatever estate, condition or quality, they may help one another in them.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "The law also forbids sentencing anyone to an obraje. It orders the justices not to condemn to service in obrajes or sugar mills as the penalty for any offence, and to take out and set at liberty those who are in them in that or any other form, commuting the penalty to another; viceroys, presidents and oidores are to execute this irremissibly. Judges who contravene incur suspension from office for two years and 200 ducats the first time, doubled the second; owners who keep Indians incur 200 ducats and one year's exile the first time, doubled the second, and at a third offence may no longer have an obraje or a mill at all.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c5",
      "text": "The neighbouring title fixes how wages are to be paid, and it is specific about the abuse it means to stop. Law seven of the same book and title, of Philip III at Aranjuez on 26 May 1609 and at Madrid on 10 October 1618, orders that Indians working in the vineyards or in any other labour not be paid their day-wage in wine, chicha, honey or yerba del Paraguay; anything so paid is forfeit and the Indian is not to have it charged to his account, and a Spaniard who tries to give it as payment incurs twenty pesos each time, \"porque nuestra voluntad es, que la satisfaccion sea en dinero\".",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c6",
      "text": "Two centuries later the government printed its own admission that none of this had held. Eusebio Bentura Belena, oidor of the audiencia of Mexico, printed in 1787 as document 54 of his compilation a decree of viceroy Martin de Mayorga that reissues in full the bando issued by his predecessor the Marques de Croix on 11 June 1767. The bando opens by stating that the owners of the permitted obrajes of the kingdom do not have the slaves needed to work them and must therefore use Indian servants and other vassals; that these ought to be treated with the liberty prescribed by the royal cedulas of 1609, 1632 and 1639; and that the viceroy is informed the obrajes are not in that liberty and that in them the servants are treated \"con tan excesivo rigor que toca en esclavitud\".",
      "sources": [
        "belena-recopilacion-sumaria-1787-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c7",
      "text": "The first abuse the bando attacks is judicial. It states that despite the royal order forbidding ecclesiastical and secular justices to sell or assign convicts to the service of obrajes, the contravention reaches the point that such judges apply them for very light causes and without any formality, and that parish priests do the same, placing men in the obrajes by their own decision and for the time and the price that seem good to them. It therefore orders that no justice apply convicts to obrajes for any offence, on pain of suspension and six years' disqualification from any office in the administration of justice, and that no owner receive a convict without a written warrant from the superior government, on pain of twenty-five pesos for each one.",
      "sources": [
        "belena-recopilacion-sumaria-1787-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c8",
      "text": "The second is debt, and the regulation describes the mechanism exactly. Servants both Indian and of other classes are admitted, some by the day and others pledging themselves for a time against wages advanced, from which follows their being perpetuated in these workshops. The rules cap the advance: no Indian may be taken on a pledge for more than four months, nor advanced more than two-thirds of what he should earn in that time, the remaining third to be handed to him weekly in cash; no further advance may be made within the four months, in coin or in shop goods, on pain of the owner losing it; and at the end of the term the Indian is to be set at liberty to use it as he chooses.",
      "sources": [
        "belena-recopilacion-sumaria-1787-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c9",
      "text": "The regulation then says what the cap had failed to prevent. Notwithstanding the prohibitions on advancing money, some are found in the obrajes owing forty and fifty pesos, the pledges continuing in such a form that they never see themselves free in their lives, and the owners compel the children of servants to pay what their parents left owing. Since the royal resolutions provide that anything advanced beyond the permitted is deemed given gratuitously and cannot be reclaimed, the viceroy orders that four months after the publication of the order the owner set the servant at liberty without reclaiming anything of what he still owes, on pain of a hundred pesos.",
      "sources": [
        "belena-recopilacion-sumaria-1787-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c10",
      "text": "Wages are ordered into the worker's own hand and out of the company store. The day-wage is to be set as it is customarily paid in the head town of the district, paid each day or at the latest on the Sunday morning after the week ends, into the servant's own hand and in silver, on no pretext in tlacos or shop goods, leaving the labourer free to buy where it suits him. The penalty on owner and steward is twenty-five pesos the first time, fifty the second, and a warning that at a third the obraje will be ordered demolished.",
      "sources": [
        "belena-recopilacion-sumaria-1787-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c11",
      "text": "The clause that gives the whole document its measure is the one about the doors. The principal injuries in the obrajes, the viceroy writes, depend on their being closed, the servants who once enter having no liberty to go out and sleep in their own houses or lodgings; and although the cedulas, ordinances and autos command that Indian servants be neither forced nor shut in, and that the doors stand free, and although different orders have been given to that end by the superior government, \"estoy cierto se mantienen los tales Obrages cerrados, y en ellos los Indios sin libertad\" - the viceroy is certain the workshops are still kept locked. He orders as a final resolution that the doors stand open, with a porter of sober conduct who is not to hinder at the evening bell those who wish to go and sleep at home; two years in a presidio for the steward or porter who contravenes, fifty pesos on the owner, double at a second inspection, and demolition of the obraje at a third, in conformity with the royal cedula of 1632.",
      "sources": [
        "belena-recopilacion-sumaria-1787-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c12",
      "text": "The same clause carries an exclusion that belongs on the record beside it. The porter who is to keep the door and let the willing go home is required to be a person of conduct and judgement \"que no sea Esclavo, Negro ni Mulato\" - not a slave, a Black or a mulatto. The document that opens the door to one group closes the post that guards it to another.",
      "sources": [
        "belena-recopilacion-sumaria-1787-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c13",
      "text": "The rest of the code is a list of the specific cruelties it expects. Servants are to be fed with the food properly dressed, two pounds of bread a day, the customary ration of meat, and on Fridays fish, beans and chile. Task rates must be preceded by weighing and by a price fixed per pound, arroba, vara or piece according to quality, after which the worker is free to take the task or keep the day-wage, and nobody may be forced to take tasks at a price the owner sets. Work begins in daylight, with half an hour for breakfast and two hours at midday to eat and rest, and no work at night. A servant who falls ill and whose fever holds to the third day must be seen by a physician or surgeon and sent to hospital, or given a separate room in the obraje with food and treatment; a steward who turns him into the street with the fever on him is to serve two years in a presidio and the owner who permits it pays a hundred pesos. Neither owner nor steward may impose whipping, shackles or any imprisonment; if they punish on their own authority the servant is free by that fact and the owner pays fifty pesos.",
      "sources": [
        "belena-recopilacion-sumaria-1787-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c14",
      "text": "Women and apprentices get separate clauses, and both cut two ways. Single women are not to be admitted to work unless in the company of their fathers or brothers, nor married women unless the husband works in the obraje; where they are admitted, they are to work in rooms separate from the men, to enter half an hour after the male labourers and leave half an hour before the evening bell so that they reach home in daylight. Young wards are not to be assigned as apprentices by a justice on its own authority under pretext that they wander lost in the villages - the viceroy observes that far from learning a trade they pick up bad habits and most are perpetuated in the workshops - but only with the consent of parents, nearest relative or an appointed guardian, with the trade, the term and the wage stated, and freedom and payment at the end of the term.",
      "sources": [
        "belena-recopilacion-sumaria-1787-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c15",
      "text": "The enforcement machinery is unusually concrete, and it turns bookkeeping into a remedy. Every obraje must keep a book signed on its first leaf by the district judge and his notary and initialled throughout, in which the owner or steward enters each servant with the day, the cause and form of entry, what has been advanced and what is handed over each week; if the account cannot be adjusted from the book for want of clarity, the owner loses whatever the servant owes and the servant is free to leave as and when he wishes. Alcaldes mayores are to visit the obrajes of their district twice a year, with the fines divided between the visiting judge, the denouncer and the royal chamber and an annual account rendered to the superior government. The regulation is to be published by bando in the capitals and a copy fixed in each obraje in the most public place where the servants can read it, the owner forbidden on pain of a hundred pesos to take it down.",
      "sources": [
        "belena-recopilacion-sumaria-1787-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c16",
      "text": "The reissue of 1781 ends by conceding that the regulation had failed where it mattered most. Mayorga adds that in the inspection of obrajes lately carried out by the corregidor of Queretaro the crown attorney has noted that in all those workshops many of these chapters and rules have been contravened for a long time, and orders the text printed again at the cost of the obrajeros themselves, copies sent to that corregidor to publish its observance anew and to be fixed at the principal doors of the obrajes. The order is dated at Mexico on 4 October 1781 and signed by Martin de Mayorga.",
      "sources": [
        "belena-recopilacion-sumaria-1787-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c17",
      "text": "What this entry deliberately does not assert. Both sources are statements of law and of what the government said about compliance; neither is a count. Nothing here establishes how many obrajes existed, how many people worked in them, what share were indigenous, enslaved or free, or whether any obraje was in fact demolished, any steward sent to a presidio or any debt cancelled under these rules. The two sources also stand a century and a half apart and are not independent of each other, the later citing the earlier by year. No account by an obraje worker, no judicial file and no modern quantitative study was reachable from this container.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t2",
        "belena-recopilacion-sumaria-1787-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [],
  "faqs": [],
  "evidence_tier": "primary",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "industry_observation",
    "source_types": [
      "paper"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": false,
  "winning_edge": "The obraje normally appears in English either as a footnote to the encomienda or as a single sentence about brutal textile sweatshops, sourced to secondary summary. This entry puts two printed originals side by side and lets them argue: the law of the Indies that bans Indian labour in obrajes outright and in the same sentence directs owners to enslaved Africans, and the viceregal regulation of 1767 reissued in 1781 which, instead of enforcing the ban, regulates the workshops article by article - and whose own text records that treatment there touched on slavery, that the doors were still locked despite repeated orders, that men were held for debts their children were made to pay, and that a fresh inspection at Queretaro had just found the rules broken throughout. The cost, the motive and the failure are quoted from the government that wrote them.",
  "confidence": 0.85,
  "last_verified": "2026-08-13",
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    "name": "The obrajes of New Spain and the law that tried to open their doors",
    "description": "The cloth workshops of colonial Mexico were the hardest labour regime the viceroyalty tolerated, and the fullest account of what happened inside them is the government's own. This entry reads the law of the Indies that barred Indians from obrajes outright and the viceregal regulation of 1767, reissued in 1781, that instead regulated them - and prints what each one concedes.",
    "url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/obrajes-de-nueva-espana",
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    "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"
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      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Copias á la letra ofrecidas en el primer tomo de la Recopilación sumaria de todos los autos acordados de la Real Audiencia y Sala del Crimen de esta N. E. — Tomo Segundo",
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    "@type": "Article",
    "headline": "The obrajes of New Spain and the law that tried to open their doors"
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