{
  "id": "pesquerias-de-perlas-de-las-indias",
  "type": "entity",
  "name": "The pearl fisheries of the Indies: a title of the law written around the diver",
  "summary": "Book IIII, title 25 of the Recopilación de leyes de las Indias governs the Caribbean pearl fishery law by law: free access for Indians in 1578, the death penalty for forcing anyone to dive in 1585, rules against overfishing a bed, a duty to rescue a sinking canoe and to recover a drowned diver. The same title conscripts enslaved Africans in place of the Indians it protects, and orders the pursuit of any canoe whose crew escapes with it.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "law",
    "spanish-empire",
    "americas",
    "caribbean",
    "labour",
    "slavery",
    "fisheries",
    "conservation",
    "occupational-health",
    "venezuela"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "recopilacion-de-leyes-de-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "oviedo-historia-general-y-natural-de-las-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "new-laws-of-1542"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "encomienda"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "instruccion-sobre-el-trato-de-esclavos-1789"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "coartacion"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "huracan-and-the-earliest-hurricane-reports"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "Did Spain regulate pearl diving in the Americas?",
    "Were Indians forbidden to dive for pearls?",
    "What do the Laws of the Indies say about pearl fisheries?",
    "Who dived for pearls at Cubagua?",
    "Were the American oyster beds managed for conservation?",
    "What did the pearl fishery cost the people who worked it?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "The fishery has a title of its own in the code. Libro IIII, título XXV of the Recopilación, \"De la pesquería, y envío de perlas, y Piedras de estimación\", opens at folio 96 of the fourth impression with a law of Charles II ordering that when new oyster beds are discovered the governor of the district go to the nearest site, choose ground abundant in water and firewood, and lay out the rancheria so that \"estén los Españoles, Indios, y Negros bien acomodados, y no divididos á larga distancia, porque en qualquier accidente se puedan socorrer\" - a settlement plan written around the expectation of accidents. The second law, Philip II at Aranjuez on 24 May 1579, orders a strong house built in the rancheria.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "Indians are admitted to the fishery as owners of a right, not as labour. Ley xxx, Philip II at El Pardo on 2 December 1578, orders that where there is a pearl rancheria the Indians are not to be impeded \"que las puedan pescar, como todos los demas nuestros vasallos libremente, y á su voluntad, pagando los quintos y derechos, y ajustándose á lo dispuesto en quanto á los Españoles\" - free fishing at their own will on the same fiscal terms as Spaniards.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "Seven years later the same king closes the fishery to Indian labour and prices coercion at a life. Ley xxxj, Philip II at Barcelona on 2 June 1585, with the marginal note of ordinance 12 of Philip III's servicio personal of 1601: \"Ordenamos que la pesquería de perlas se haga con Negros, y que no se permita hacer con Indios. Y mandamos que si alguno fuere forzado, y contra su voluntad, incurra el que le hubiere forzado, y violentado, en pena de muerte.\" The protection of one group is written in the same sentence as the conscription of another, and both belong on the record.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "The bed itself is protected as a stock. Ley xxxij, ordinance 43, forbids canoe masters to let the divers in their charge open or shuck the young growth, ordering that as soon as it is brought up it be returned unopened to the bed \"porque no se destruya, y quede reservada para quando esté crecida, y aumentada\", at twenty pesos a time; ley xxxiij, ordinance 44, forbids taking more oysters than can be shucked at once, because the ones left open on land rot in the heat.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c5",
      "text": "Two of the rules are recognisably occupational health, and one of them is about air. The reason ley xxxiij gives for the shucking limit is that rotting oysters produce \"malos vapores, y enfermedades\", and it orders the waste thrown where it \"no puedan causar perjuicio á la salud, ni ocasionar peligro á los Buzos, y Nadadores\" - divers and swimmers named as the persons at risk. Ley xxxiiij, ordinance 37, forbids throwing the shucked shells back over the bed, because doing so has brought sharks that \"hecho mucho estrago en los Negros\", to the point of men refusing to dive.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c6",
      "text": "A drowned diver must be searched for, and the stated reason is the fishery's. Ley xxxv, ordinance 26, records that because the bodies of drowned Negros were not recovered \"han acudido muchos tiburones, y cebádose en ellos con grave peligro de los vivos\", so that fishing had to be suspended; it therefore orders the dead man's canoe master and all the others to leave off fishing and search for the body with diligence, at twenty pesos for each canoe that does not go out. The duty is real and the motive printed beside it is the loss of working days.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c7",
      "text": "The duty of rescue and the duty of recapture sit on the same page. Ley xxxvj, ordinance 24, requires every canoe or piragua to carry at least one large chain hook for taking sharks; ley xxxvij, ordinance 27, orders that a canoe in danger of swamping be helped without delay by all the rest, \"pues todas están sujetas al mismo accidente\"; and ley xxxviij, ordinance 20, orders that \"quando los Negros de alguna Canoa se alzaren, y huyeren con ella\", every other canoe put out at once and follow until it is taken, on pain of a hundred pesos and six years' banishment from the rancheria for the canoe master who fails.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c8",
      "text": "The reason the crown legislated a fishery in this much detail is stated in the title. Ley xxxx, ordinance 21, requires royal officials to reside personally wherever pearls are taken so that the shells are opened in their presence \"y percibamos el quinto, que á Nos pertenece\"; ley xxxxj, ordinance 2 of the Emperor, forbids any Spaniard, mestizo, mulato, Indian or Negro, free or enslaved, to step ashore before the officials are there, and requires everyone to declare the pearls they bring in.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c9",
      "text": "What the fishery was before the law is described by the crown's own chronicler, and it is enslavement. Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo, in book XIX chapter X of the Historia general y natural de las Indias, writes of Cubagua that \"los chripstianos que en esta granjería entienden, tienen esclavos indios, grandes nadadores\", sent out by their master six or seven to a canoe; at nightfall the divers hand over the day's oysters and the wage is paid not to them but \"al señor, cuyos son estos pescadores ó á su mayordomo\", who has them given supper.",
      "sources": [
        "oviedo-historia-1851-tomo1"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c10",
      "text": "The technique is recorded in enough detail to be reconstructed. Oviedo describes two stones tied to a cord, one at each side of the back, a span apart with the diver between them, letting him sit still on the bottom until he shrugs them off to rise; the oysters go into a net bag tied at waist or neck; the divers rest and eat a mouthful in the canoe between descents. He also reports some staying under \"un quarto de hora de relox\", which is a report of what he was told rather than a measurement, and gives the working depth as four fathoms or less at Cubagua and ten to twelve at Terarequi in the South Sea.",
      "sources": [
        "oviedo-historia-1851-tomo1"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.7
    },
    {
      "id": "c11",
      "text": "Overfishing and recovery were both observed in the sixteenth century, by a witness with an interest in the trade. Oviedo writes that the Christians pressed so hard after the pearls that, not content with the divers, \"han hallado otros artificios de rastros é redes\" and took so much that scarcity set in and the beds no longer yielded as before; but that \"en poco espacio de tiempo que repose la gente, tornan á hallar muchas ostias en cantidad\". That is the empirical ground under the conservation rules of the title, a century before they were compiled.",
      "sources": [
        "oviedo-historia-1851-tomo1",
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.75
    },
    {
      "id": "c12",
      "text": "Read together, the two texts give a sequence rather than a verdict. Oviedo describes enslaved Indian divers working the beds in the 1530s; the crown opened the fishery to Indians as free fishers in 1578 and made forcing anyone to dive a capital offence in 1585, and the same title then regulates the fishery it had just handed to enslaved Africans, down to shark hooks, rescue at sea and the recovery of the drowned. The protection was real, the price of it was somebody else's freedom, and both halves are printed in the same title of the same code.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t2",
        "oviedo-historia-1851-tomo1"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.75
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [],
  "faqs": [],
  "evidence_tier": "primary",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "industry_observation",
    "source_types": [
      "industry_observation"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": false,
  "winning_edge": "English-language coverage of Caribbean pearl fishing arrives in one of two shapes: an atrocity summary drawn from Las Casas, or a gem-trade page that treats Cubagua as a boom town. Neither quotes the law, and the law is where the argument actually is. This object gives the numbered laws of libro IIII titulo XXV with their issuing sovereign, place and date, read page by page in a digitised printing - the 1578 grant of free fishing to Indians, the 1585 capital penalty for coercion, the shucking limit written against bad air, the shark-hook rule, the duty to recover a drowned diver - and sets them against the crown chronicler's own account of enslaved Indian divers at Cubagua and of beds fished out with rakes and nets. It also refuses the two easy readings by printing, from the same title, the law that ordered every canoe to chase down a canoe whose crew had escaped.",
  "confidence": 0.85,
  "last_verified": "2026-08-15",
  "canonical_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/pesquerias-de-perlas-de-las-indias",
  "api_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/api/k/pesquerias-de-perlas-de-las-indias.json",
  "jsonld": {
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "name": "The pearl fisheries of the Indies: a title of the law written around the diver",
    "description": "Book IIII, title 25 of the Recopilación de leyes de las Indias governs the Caribbean pearl fishery law by law: free access for Indians in 1578, the death penalty for forcing anyone to dive in 1585, rules against overfishing a bed, a duty to rescue a sinking canoe and to recover a drowned diver. The same title conscripts enslaved Africans in place of the Indians it protects, and orders the pursuit of any canoe whose crew escapes with it.",
    "url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/pesquerias-de-perlas-de-las-indias",
    "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html",
    "dateModified": "2026-08-15",
    "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": "Historia general y natural de las Indias, islas y tierra-firme del mar Oceano, primera parte - the text of Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes",
        "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=yw4-AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA280"
      }
    ],
    "@type": "Article",
    "headline": "The pearl fisheries of the Indies: a title of the law written around the diver"
  }
}