{
  "id": "penas-de-los-indios-en-la-recopilacion",
  "type": "entity",
  "name": "A separate measure of punishment: how the Laws of the Indies ordered Indian offenders sentenced",
  "summary": "The penal título of the Recopilación doubles Castile's money penalties for the Indies, then forbids levying them on Indians at all. In their place ley x authorises temporal personal service — reciting that Indians have no galleys, no presidios and no exile to Castile — restricted to convents and public offices, never to private persons, and caps their banishment at the provincial capital. Read from the 1791 impression, folios 379-381.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "colonial-law",
    "law-of-the-indies",
    "legislation",
    "legal-history",
    "criminal-law",
    "criminal-justice",
    "indigenous-rights",
    "indigenous-labour",
    "labour",
    "recopilacion",
    "spanish-empire",
    "americas",
    "sixteenth-century",
    "seventeenth-century",
    "women",
    "castes",
    "exile",
    "penal-reform",
    "republica-de-indios"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "recopilacion-de-leyes-de-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "arbitrio-del-juez-en-las-penas-de-las-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "carcelage-y-costas-de-los-presos-en-las-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "libertad-de-los-indios-en-la-recopilacion"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "personas-miserables-in-the-law-of-the-indies"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "protector-de-indios"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "juzgado-general-de-naturales"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "republica-de-indios"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "buen-tratamiento-de-los-indios-en-la-recopilacion"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "indios-presos-por-deudas"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "mestizos-en-el-derecho-indiano"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "new-laws-of-1542"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "Were Indians punished differently from Spaniards under colonial law?",
    "Could an Indian be sentenced to forced labour in the Spanish Indies?",
    "Why did Spanish colonial law exempt Indians from fines?",
    "What was the penalty of the marco in the Spanish Indies?",
    "What is libro VII título VIII of the Recopilación de Leyes de Indias?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "Libro VII título VIII of the Recopilación, \"De los delitos, y penas, y su aplicacion\", opens on folio 379 of the fourth impression of 1791 and had never been opened by this corpus before this reading. Within it, four laws build a distinct penal regime for Indians: ley vj on folio 380, ley viij on the same leaf, and ley x, which begins in the right column of folio 380 and ends in the left column of folio 381. Ley v, immediately before them on folio 379, supplies the rule they depart from.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-1791-libro-vii-titulo-viii-penas-de-indios"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "For everyone else, the code makes money penalties harsher in the Indies than in Spain. Ley v (margin \"El mismo en Barcelona á 14 de Septiembre de 1519. El mismo y el Príncipe Gobernador en Valladolid á 14 de Abril de 1545. D. Cárlos II y la Reyna Gobernadora\") orders that the pena del marco against those living in concubinage, and the other pecuniary penalties imposed by the laws of Castile on other offenders, \"sean, y se entiendan al doblo en los de las Indias\", except where a law of this Recopilación has fixed a certain amount.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-1791-libro-vii-titulo-viii-penas-de-indios"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "One law later the same penalty is withdrawn from Indians entirely, with a stated reason and with restitution. Ley vj, \"Que á los Indios amancebados no se lleve la pena del marco\" (margin \"El Emperador D. Cárlos y la Emperatriz Gobernadora en Madrid á 26 de Junio de 1536\"), records that in some parts of the Indies the pena del marco is being taken from Indians as it is in Castile, states that \"no conviene castigarlos con tanto rigor, ni penas pecuniarias\", orders the justices and charges the ecclesiastical prelates not to impose or execute such penalties, and orders what has been taken \"volver, y restituir\". The same código therefore doubles the fine for a Spaniard and abolishes it for an Indian, on facing leaves.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-1791-libro-vii-titulo-viii-penas-de-indios"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "The reasoning behind the whole regime is printed, which is unusual for this code, and it is practical rather than doctrinal. Ley x recites that Indians cannot be given the standard penalties because \"como para ellos no hay Galeras, ni Fronteras, ni destierro á estos Reynos de Castilla, ni suele ser pena la de azotes, y que las penas pecuniarias les son sumamente gravosas\". Four of the crown's five ordinary punishments are declared unavailable or unsuitable for Indian offenders, and the fifth — the fine — is the one ley vj has already forbidden.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-1791-libro-vii-titulo-viii-penas-de-indios"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c5",
      "text": "What the code puts in their place is labour, and it calls it by its name. Ley x, \"Que los Indios puedan ser condenados á servicio personal de Conventos, y República\" (margin \"El Emperador D. Cárlos y la Princesa Gobernadora en Valladolid á 3 de Junio de 1555. D. Felipe II y la Princesa Gobernadora allí á 23 de Mayo de 1559. D. Felipe III en Madrid á 10 de Octubre de 1618. Ordenanza 54\"), opens by reciting that condemning Indians to the personal service of private persons is prohibited by ley 5, tít. 12, lib. 6 — and then permits personal service anyway, on the ground that \"es beneficio y conveniencia de los Indios, por excusarles otras penas mas gravosas\".",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-1791-libro-vii-titulo-viii-penas-de-indios"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c6",
      "text": "The permission is hedged with five conditions, each of them a restriction a general account of colonial forced labour would not predict. Only viceroys, presidents, audiencias and governors may impose it — \"y no otros Jueces inferiores\", in a parenthesis of the law itself. The service must be \"temporal, y no perpetuo\". It must be \"proporcionado al delito\". The convicts must \"sean bien tratados, ganen dineros, ó aprendan oficios\" — paid, or taught a trade. And they must serve \"en los Conventos, ú otras ocupaciones, ó ministerios de la República, y no á personas particulares\", which keeps the labour out of private hands and is the point at which the recited prohibition of libro VI survives.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-1791-libro-vii-titulo-viii-penas-de-indios"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c7",
      "text": "The law's closing clause limits banishment geographically for Indians alone. Ley x ends: \"Otrosí ordenamos, que habiéndose de imponer á los Indios pena de destierro, no pase del distrito de la Ciudad cabeza de Provincia, á que su Pueblo fuere junto, si no interviniere mucha causa, segun el arbitrio del Juez, y calidad del delito.\" An Indian may not be exiled beyond the province his town belongs to, which keeps the sentence short of the separation from community and land that exile meant; and the exception, \"mucha causa\", is left to the judge.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-1791-libro-vii-titulo-viii-penas-de-indios"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c8",
      "text": "The cost is in the same sentence as the protection, and it is not softened here. What ley x authorises is a court sentencing an indigenous person to unpaid or low-paid labour in an institution of the colonial state or church, for an offence for which \"no hay impuesta pena legal\" — that is, where no statutory penalty exists at all. The humanity of the provision and its coercion are the same provision: the código's stated reason for substituting labour is that the alternatives are worse, not that labour is light, and the wage, the term and the proportion are all left to the sentencing court.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-1791-libro-vii-titulo-viii-penas-de-indios"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c9",
      "text": "The harshest law of the group needs no conviction at all, and it applies to women. Ley viij, \"Que las Justicias apremien á las Indias amancebadas á irse á sus Pueblos á servir\" (margin \"D. Felipe III en Madrid á 10 de Octubre de 1618\"), orders that where there is \"sospecha de que algunas Indias viven amancebadas\", they be compelled by the justices to go to their towns \"ó á servir, señalándoles salario competente\". Suspicion is the trigger, the remedy is removal or service, and the only safeguard printed is that a competent wage be assigned.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-1791-libro-vii-titulo-viii-penas-de-indios"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c10",
      "text": "The código's own control on that stands one law earlier, which is what makes the contrast legible. Ley vij (margin \"D. Felipe II Ordenanza 117. de Audiencias. En Toledo á 25 de Mayo de 1596\") orders that the alguaciles arrest no woman as the concubine of a cleric, friar or married man \"sin preceder informacion por donde conste del delito\". The code knows the difference between suspicion and proof and requires proof before an arrest in ley vij; in ley viij, where the woman is an India, suspicion is enough for compulsion. That the two laws are to be read against each other is this corpus's reading: neither cites the other, they are twenty-two years apart, and the fourth impression prints no gloss.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-1791-libro-vii-titulo-viii-penas-de-indios"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.8
    },
    {
      "id": "c11",
      "text": "Nothing in this corpus shows any of it applied. There is no sentence of personal service imposed under ley x, no record of an Indian paid or taught a trade under its wage clause, no India compelled under ley viij, and no restitution of a pena del marco under ley vj. Twelve laws of the surrounding título and the four laws read here establish what the Council of the Indies ordered; a single audiencia sentence would be worth more than all of them for the question of what was done.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-1791-libro-vii-titulo-viii-penas-de-indios"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [],
  "faqs": [],
  "evidence_tier": "primary",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "industry_observation",
    "source_types": [
      "paper"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": true,
  "winning_edge": "Accounts of indigenous people and colonial criminal justice in English are built from casebooks — the Juzgado General de Indios, the Mexican criminal courts — and ask how indigenous defendants fared. The prior question, what the code told the judge to do with them, is answered from secondary summaries that quote none of the text. This entry prints the four laws from the leaves of the 1791 fourth impression, and the decisive one, ley x, has a printed rationale this corpus has found nowhere else in English: that Indians cannot be sent to the galleys, to the frontier presidios or into exile in Castile, that flogging is not usually their penalty and that fines fall on them \"sumamente gravosas\", so that where no statutory penalty exists they are to be condemned to temporal service instead — and that this service must be temporal and not perpetual, proportioned to the offence, paid or taught as a trade, and performed in convents or public offices and never for private persons. It sets that beside ley v, which doubles Castile's fines for everyone else, and ley vj, which abolishes the same fine for Indians and orders what has been taken restored. And it keeps the price on the record as its own sourced claims: that the substitute penalty is forced labour imposed where no legal penalty exists; that the term, the wage and the proportion are the sentencing court's to fix; that ley viij lets mere suspicion compel an indigenous woman to her town or into service, where ley vij one law earlier requires proof before any woman is arrested; and that no instance of any of it appears in this corpus.",
  "confidence": 0.85,
  "last_verified": "2026-10-06",
  "media": [],
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    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "name": "A separate measure of punishment: how the Laws of the Indies ordered Indian offenders sentenced",
    "description": "The penal título of the Recopilación doubles Castile's money penalties for the Indies, then forbids levying them on Indians at all. In their place ley x authorises temporal personal service — reciting that Indians have no galleys, no presidios and no exile to Castile — restricted to convents and public offices, never to private persons, and caps their banishment at the provincial capital. Read from the 1791 impression, folios 379-381.",
    "url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/penas-de-los-indios-en-la-recopilacion",
    "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html",
    "dateModified": "2026-10-06",
    "citation": [
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Recopilación de leyes de los reynos de las Indias, libro VII título VIII 'De los delitos, y penas, y su aplicacion' — leyes vj to x on the printed folios 380 and 381, with ley v from folio 379 registered for the contrast it makes: ley v 'Que la pena del marco, y otras pecuniarias, impuestas por delitos, sean al doblo, que en estos Reynos de Castilla' (margin 'El mismo en Barcelona á 14 de Septiembre de 1519. El mismo y el Príncipe Gobernador en Valladolid á 14 de Abril de 1545. D. Cárlos II y la Reyna Gobernadora'), whose whole text reads 'MAndamos que la pena del marco contra los amancebados, y las otras pecuniarias, impuestas por leyes de estos Reynos de Castilla á los otros delinqüentes sean, y se entiendan al doblo en los de las Indias, excepto en los casos que por leyes de esta Recopilacion fuere señalada cantidad cierta, en que se guardará lo dispuesto'; ley vj 'Que á los Indios amancebados no se lleve la pena del marco' (margin 'El Emperador D. Cárlos y la Emperatriz Gobernadora en Madrid á 26 de Junio de 1536'), whose whole text reads 'EN algunas partes de las Indias se lleva la pena del marco á los Indios amancebados, como en estos Reynos de Castilla, y no conviene castigarlos con tanto rigor, ni penas pecuniarias: Ordenamos á nuestras Justicias, y encargamos á los Prelados Eclesiásticos, que no les impongan, ni executen tales penas, y las hagan volver, y restituir'; ley vij 'Que no se prenda muger por manceba de Clérigo, Frayle, ó casado sin informacion' (margin 'D. Felipe II Ordenanza 117. de Audiencias. En Toledo á 25 de Mayo de 1596'), whose whole text reads 'LOS Alguaciles no prendan á ninguna muger por manceba de Clérigo, Frayle, ó casado, sin preceder informacion por donde conste del delito'; ley viij 'Que las Justicias apremien á las Indias amancebadas á irse á sus Pueblos á servir' (margin 'D. Felipe III en Madrid á 10 de Octubre de 1618'), whose whole text reads 'ORdenamos que si hubiere sospecha de que algunas Indias viven amancebadas, sean apremiadas por las Justicias á que se vayan á sus Pueblos, ó á servir, señalándoles salario competente'; and ley x 'Que los Indios puedan ser condenados á servicio personal de Conventos, y República' (margin 'El Emperador D. Cárlos y la Princesa Gobernadora en Valladolid á 3 de Junio de 1555. D. Felipe II y la Princesa Gobernadora allí á 23 de Mayo de 1559. D. Felipe III en Madrid á 10 de Octubre de 1618. Ordenanza 54'), whose whole text, running from the right column of folio 380 onto the left column of folio 381, reads 'EStando prohibido por la ley 5. tít. 12. lib. 6. que los Indios sean condenados por sus delitos en servicio personal de personas particulares, se ha reconocido, que es beneficio y conveniencia de los Indios, por excusarles otras penas mas gravosas, y de mayor dificultad en su execucion, y que conviene permitirlo, con algunas circunstancias, y calidades; y habiendo advertido, que como para ellos no hay Galeras, ni Fronteras, ni destierro á estos Reynos de Castilla, ni suele ser pena la de azotes, y que las penas pecuniarias les son sumamente gravosas, ha parecido que en algunos casos, donde no hay impuesta pena legal, convendrá condenarlos á servicio personal: Ordenamos y mandamos, que los Vireyes, Presidentes, Audiencias, y Gobernadores (y no otros Jueces inferiores) los puedan condenar en algun servicio temporal, y no perpetuo, proporcionado al delito, en que sean bien tratados, ganen dineros, ó aprendan oficios, con calidad de que sirvan en los Conventos, ú otras ocupaciones, ó ministerios de la República, y no á personas particulares, como está resuelto. Otrosí ordenamos, que habiéndose de imponer á los Indios pena de destierro, no pase del distrito de la Ciudad cabeza de Provincia, á que su Pueblo fuere junto, si no interviniere mucha causa, segun el arbitrio del Juez, y calidad del delito'",
        "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=Lt41mzCz8zEC&pg=PA380"
      }
    ],
    "@type": "Article",
    "headline": "A separate measure of punishment: how the Laws of the Indies ordered Indian offenders sentenced"
  }
}