{
  "id": "puga-cedulario-1563",
  "type": "entity",
  "name": "Cedulario de Puga (Mexico, 1563): the law of the Indies printed in the Indies",
  "summary": "A book of royal law printed in Mexico City by Pedro Ocharte in 1563, gathering the cedulas and provisiones issued for New Spain from 1525 onward. The viceroy's printing order, dated 3 March 1563, names the compiler — the oidor Vasco de Puga — and the purpose: the good government of the land and the good treatment of its natives. Its folios print the 1530 prohibition of Indian slavery and, on the same leaf, the grant of twenty-three thousand vassals to Cortes.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "americas",
    "new-spain",
    "mexico",
    "colonial-law",
    "law",
    "legislation",
    "colonial-institutions",
    "printing",
    "books",
    "sixteenth-century"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "recopilacion-de-leyes-de-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "new-laws-of-1542"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "alonso-de-zorita"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "encomienda"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "first-printing-press-americas"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "hernan-cortes"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "cepeda-relacion-del-desague-1637"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "bienes-de-difuntos-de-las-indias"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "What is the Cedulario de Puga?",
    "Who was Vasco de Puga?",
    "Was Spanish colonial law printed in the Americas?",
    "What did the 1530 royal order on Indian slavery actually say?",
    "Where can the text of early cedulas for New Spain be read?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "The title page of the copy read here is a woodcut architectural frame carrying the arms of Castile under the legend \"PHILIPPVS HISPANIARVM ET INDIARVM REX\", and the title set in gothic type beneath it: \"Prouisiones cedulas Instruciones de su Magestad: ordenanças de difuntos y audiencia, para la buena expedicion de los negocios, y administracion de justicia: y gouernacion desta nueua España: y para el buen tratamiento y conseruacion de los yndios, dende el año 1525. hasta este presente de. 63.\" The imprint is set into the pedestal of the frame: \"EN MEXICO EN CASA De Pedro Ocharte. M.D.LXIII.\"",
      "sources": [
        "puga-cedulario-mexico-1563"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.95
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "The book states its own commission on the leaf headed \"Comision para la impression\". At Mexico City, on 3 March 1563, don Luys de Velasco, viceroy, governor and captain general of New Spain and president of the Real Audiencia, recites that the king had ordered by royal cedula that all the cedulas and provisiones given for \"el buen gouierno desta tierra, conseruacion y buen tratamiento de los naturales della\" be collected and entered in one book; that he charged \"el señor doctor Vasco de puga, oydor desta real audiencia\" with the work so that there should be notice and clarity in the cases arising; that Puga accepted and has the compilation done; and that he now further commissions him to give order for the printing. It is countersigned by Antonio de Turcios.",
      "sources": [
        "puga-cedulario-mexico-1563"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "That commission is the substantive fact about the volume, and it is administrative rather than literary. The working law of a viceroyalty was compiled by a sitting judge of its high court, at the order of its viceroy, and then set in type in the capital of that viceroyalty — not shipped from Seville as a finished code. A colonial administration four decades old was producing, locally, the reference book its own courts would argue from, and the stated purpose of the compilation is printed on both the title page and the commission: the good treatment and conservation of the Indians.",
      "sources": [
        "puga-cedulario-mexico-1563"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.8
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "The folios gathered under the running head \"ANNO DE M.D.XXX.\" print the royal order against enslaving Indians, and the crown's own statement of the reason is an indictment of its subjects. Earlier licences had allowed Christians to hold as slaves those Indians taken in war and those the Indians themselves held; but considering the many and intolerable harms that had followed \"por la desenfrenada codicia de los conquistadores y otras personas\" — men who had procured to make war and take as slaves many Indians \"que en la verdad no lo son\" — and that the natives had suffered, besides the captivity, many deaths and robberies, the order revokes what had been permitted.",
      "sources": [
        "puga-cedulario-mexico-1563"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c5",
      "text": "The revocation printed there is unusually wide. All licences and declarations issued to that day, and any issued thereafter, are revoked and suspended as to the effect of taking and enslaving Indians in war — the text extends this to wars declared just. From the day the order is proclaimed in Seville \"en las gradas della\", and afterwards in the principal Christian towns of the Indies, no person is to take any Indian as a slave in war or out of it, \"ni por rescate ni por compra ni trueque ni por otro titulo ni causa alguna\", including Indians whom the natives held as slaves among themselves.",
      "sources": [
        "puga-cedulario-mexico-1563"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c6",
      "text": "The order carries a remedy and a register rather than a mere prohibition. Whoever is found holding a captive incurs forfeiture of all his goods to the royal treasury, and the Indians so held are to be returned and restored to their own lands at the cost of those who took them. Owners of Indian slaves are to declare them within thirty days before the local justices, who are to draw up \"vna matricula y libro\" signed by themselves and the notary, giving the number and the names of the slaves and of their owners, so that it be known who truly are slaves \"y de ay adelante no se pueda hazer mas\". It is dated at Madrid on 2 August, signed \"Yo la Reyna\", written by the secretary Juan de Samano.",
      "sources": [
        "puga-cedulario-mexico-1563"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c7",
      "text": "The next entry on the same folio is the counterweight, and the compiler prints it without comment: \"Merced al Marques del valle de veinte y tres mill vassallos en la nueua España\". Charles and Juana grant to \"don Hernando cortes nuestro gouernador y capitan general de la nueua españa\", in perpetuity and irrevocably, the towns of Cuyoacan, Atlacouaya, Matalcingo, Toluca, Calimaya, Cuauhnauac, Guastepec, Acapichtla, Yautepec, Tepuztlan, Guaxaca, Cuylapan, Tehuantepec, Xalatlauhtepec and others as far as Tuxtla, Tepeaca and Chiapa, \"hasta en numero de veynte y tres mill vasallos\", with their lands, villages, boundaries and vassals, and with civil and criminal jurisdiction, high and low, \"mero misto imperio\", rents, offices, dues, woods, meadows, pastures and running and standing waters.",
      "sources": [
        "puga-cedulario-mexico-1563"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c8",
      "text": "Reading those two entries as one page is the point of the volume and the discipline this object tries to keep. The same crown, in the same years, printed in the same book a prohibition of Indian slavery grounded on the unbridled greed of the conquerors, and a grant to the chief of those conquerors of twenty-three thousand vassals with jurisdiction over their persons. Neither cancels the other, and a compilation is evidence of what was ordered rather than of what was obeyed: this corpus's object on the Recopilacion records the same empire restating protections across a century, which is how a code registers its own non-compliance.",
      "sources": [
        "puga-cedulario-mexico-1563"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.8
    },
    {
      "id": "c9",
      "text": "The limits of this object should be stated. The pages opened and read were the title page, the commission for the printing, and the folios of 1530 carrying the order on slavery and the grant to the Marques del Valle; the remaining several hundred folios were located by full-text search and not read. The digitised copy also carries a manuscript flyleaf note describing itself as a facsimile edition published at Madrid, with a date read as 1945, so the sheets examined are most likely a twentieth-century photographic reproduction of the Mexico 1563 printing rather than the 1563 sheets themselves. The imprint above is taken from the reproduced title page.",
      "sources": [
        "puga-cedulario-mexico-1563"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [],
  "faqs": [],
  "evidence_tier": "primary",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "industry_observation",
    "source_types": [
      "paper"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": false,
  "winning_edge": "The Cedulario de Puga is cited constantly and quoted almost never: it appears in footnotes as a shelf-mark for early legislation on New Spain, and English-language accounts of the 1530 order on Indian slavery paraphrase it at third hand. This object opens the book. It transcribes the Ocharte title page, the viceroy's printing commission of 3 March 1563 that names Vasco de Puga and states the compilation's purpose, and the 1530 order in the crown's own words — including the two provisions that paraphrases lose, the extension of the revocation to wars held to be just and the register of existing slaves designed to stop new ones being made. It then prints what stands on the same folio, the grant of twenty-three thousand vassals to Cortes, because a reader who is shown only one of those two entries has been shown a different book.",
  "confidence": 0.85,
  "last_verified": "2026-08-10",
  "canonical_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/puga-cedulario-1563",
  "api_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/api/k/puga-cedulario-1563.json",
  "jsonld": {
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "name": "Cedulario de Puga (Mexico, 1563): the law of the Indies printed in the Indies",
    "description": "A book of royal law printed in Mexico City by Pedro Ocharte in 1563, gathering the cedulas and provisiones issued for New Spain from 1525 onward. The viceroy's printing order, dated 3 March 1563, names the compiler — the oidor Vasco de Puga — and the purpose: the good government of the land and the good treatment of its natives. Its folios print the 1530 prohibition of Indian slavery and, on the same leaf, the grant of twenty-three thousand vassals to Cortes.",
    "url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/puga-cedulario-1563",
    "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html",
    "dateModified": "2026-08-10",
    "citation": [
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Prouisiones cedulas Instruciones de su Magestad: ordenanças de difuntos y audiencia, para la buena expedicion de los negocios, y administracion de justicia: y gouernacion desta nueua España: y para el buen tratamiento y conseruacion de los yndios, dende el año 1525 hasta este presente de 63",
        "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=boEyAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA1"
      }
    ],
    "@type": "Article",
    "headline": "Cedulario de Puga (Mexico, 1563): the law of the Indies printed in the Indies"
  }
}