{
  "id": "ramo-de-pulques-de-nueva-espana",
  "type": "entity",
  "name": "The pulque revenue and the pulquerías of New Spain",
  "summary": "A crown compilation of 1787 states in its own words that pulque was drunk by the Mexicans before the conquest and is permitted by old laws as a regional drink beneficial to the Indians — and then prints what the treasury made of it: a monopoly branch with its own accountant, printed ordinances of 1671 reissued in 1753, over three million pesos in five years, and a penal scale that punished the same offence differently according to the colour of the offender.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "new-spain",
    "mexico",
    "law",
    "economics",
    "taxation",
    "indigenous-knowledge",
    "food-and-drink",
    "eighteenth-century"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "juzgado-general-de-naturales"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "monte-de-piedad-de-animas"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "arancel-para-los-venteros-de-la-nueva-espana"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "real-ordenanza-de-intendentes-1786"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "tributos-y-tasas-de-los-indios"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "republica-de-indios"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "Was pulque legal under Spanish rule?",
    "How much did the pulque revenue yield in New Spain?",
    "How were the pulquerías of Mexico City regulated?",
    "Did colonial punishments differ by race in New Spain?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "The compilation's own head entry on the subject, auto DCXVII, opens by conceding the drink's legitimacy and its origin: \"El Pulque lo usaron los Mexicanos en el tiempo de su Gentilidad, y está permitido por Leyes y Reales Cédulas antiguas como bebida regional y provechosa á los Indios.\" An indigenous fermented drink is thus described, in a printed abstract of the standing orders of the Audiencia of New Spain, as lawful and as good for the people who made it.",
      "sources": [
        "belena-recopilacion-sumaria-1787-autos"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "The same entry traces the fiscal history: the revenue was established under the name of Estanco and continued to be farmed out until 1762, when it began to be administered on account of the Real Hacienda; it then ran united to the Superintendencia de Alcabalas in the capital and, outside it, to the Dirección de Aduanas foráneas, by royal orders of 20 October 1777 and 23 April 1779.",
      "sources": [
        "belena-recopilacion-sumaria-1787-autos"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "It had its own printed rulebook, and the rulebook had a rulebook behind it: the ordinances particular to the branch were printed at Mexico on 16 May 1753 and published on 9 July of the same year, \"comprehensivas de las formadas en 26 de Julio de 1671\" — that is, the mid-eighteenth-century code restates one drawn up eighty-two years earlier.",
      "sources": [
        "belena-recopilacion-sumaria-1787-autos"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "The compiler prints the yield rather than describing it: in the last quinquennium, \"desde el año de 1781 hasta el de 1785 inclusive\", the branch produced 3,116,723 pesos 4 granos. The figure is the branch's own reported total for five years, printed in a directory of standing orders and not accompanied by any audit.",
      "sources": [
        "belena-recopilacion-sumaria-1787-autos"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.8
    },
    {
      "id": "c5",
      "text": "The revenue was administratively distinct from the sales tax it sat beside. A royal order of 16 November 1756 provides that in a vacancy or absence of the Superintendent of the Aduana of Mexico City the economic and governmental jurisdiction of the Ramo de Alcabalas devolves on that branch's principal accountant and that of the Ramo de Pulques on the accountant of pulques, \"con absoluta y total independencia entre sí\".",
      "sources": [
        "belena-recopilacion-sumaria-1787-autos"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c6",
      "text": "What the monopoly cost the people who sold outside it is printed in the next auto, and it is not the same cost for everyone. By the decree of 7 March 1760 no person of whatever quality might sell pulque except in the permitted places, on pain, for a first offence, of three days in jail; for a second, a Spaniard was banished forty leagues from the capital for two years and, for a third, sent four years to an overseas presidio; while \"á los Indios, Negros, Mulatos y demas gente de color quebrado\" the second offence brought fifty lashes at the whipping post and the third the doubled penalty \"en forma de justicia y quatro años de Obrage, ganando para sí\".",
      "sources": [
        "belena-recopilacion-sumaria-1787-autos"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c7",
      "text": "The same differential runs through the policing of the taverns. A bando of 17 October 1765, published on the 23rd, required every owner or administrator of a pulquería to set a torch in front of its jacalón each night, burning from the Oración until after nine, \"con el fin de evitar los robos, heridas y otros pecados que se cometen\", on pain of ten pesos; and whoever removed, put out or damaged it was to have fifty lashes at the whipping post if \"de color quebrado\", and a month in jail if Spanish.",
      "sources": [
        "belena-recopilacion-sumaria-1787-autos"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c8",
      "text": "Jurisdiction over what happened inside was settled by a royal cédula of 3 May 1765, which provides that the Sala del Crimen is to take cognizance of the offence of drunkenness and of the others committed in the pulquerías, and the ordinary judges likewise — a crown court, not merely a municipal one, made competent over the disorder its own revenue branch sold the means of.",
      "sources": [
        "belena-recopilacion-sumaria-1787-autos"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.8
    },
    {
      "id": "c9",
      "text": "The taverns also functioned as informal pawnshops, and were regulated as such: a bando of 23 April 1781 forbids vinaterías, pulquerías and shops to take in pledge any goods that appear to belong to a church, the known tools of a trade or craft, prohibited weapons, keys or locks, liveries, bridles and the rest of what an earlier bando had listed.",
      "sources": [
        "belena-recopilacion-sumaria-1787-autos"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.8
    },
    {
      "id": "c10",
      "text": "Two limits belong on the record with the rest. Everything above comes from one compiler, Eusebio Bentura Beleña, an oidor of the Audiencia abstracting in his own words the orders of the courts and revenue offices he served, with the originating cédula or bando dated in the margin rather than printed entire; and an auto acordado is evidence of what was commanded, not of what was done — the repetition of the lighting order, the pledge ban and the drunkenness jurisdiction is itself a sign that the earlier commands were not obeyed.",
      "sources": [
        "belena-recopilacion-sumaria-1787-autos"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [],
  "faqs": [],
  "evidence_tier": "primary",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "industry_observation",
    "source_types": [
      "paper"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": true,
  "winning_edge": "Accounts of pulque under Spanish rule run to two sentences: the Spanish taxed it, or the Spanish tried to suppress it. The printed abstract of the standing orders of the Audiencia of New Spain supports neither, and this entry quotes it instead: the drink is declared lawful and \"provechosa á los Indios\", the monopoly is dated (farmed until 1762, then administered directly), the code is dated twice (1671, reprinted 1753), the yield is given to the grano for 1781-1785, and the penal scale is set out as the compiler printed it, with banishment and presidio for Spaniards and lashes and four years of obraje for Indians, Blacks and mulattos convicted of the same act. The differential is not inferred from scholarship here; it is on the page of a crown compilation written to make the law easier to apply. The entry also states what an auto acordado can and cannot prove.",
  "confidence": 0.85,
  "last_verified": "2026-08-18",
  "canonical_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/ramo-de-pulques-de-nueva-espana",
  "api_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/api/k/ramo-de-pulques-de-nueva-espana.json",
  "jsonld": {
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "name": "The pulque revenue and the pulquerías of New Spain",
    "description": "A crown compilation of 1787 states in its own words that pulque was drunk by the Mexicans before the conquest and is permitted by old laws as a regional drink beneficial to the Indians — and then prints what the treasury made of it: a monopoly branch with its own accountant, printed ordinances of 1671 reissued in 1753, over three million pesos in five years, and a penal scale that punished the same offence differently according to the colour of the offender.",
    "url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/ramo-de-pulques-de-nueva-espana",
    "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html",
    "dateModified": "2026-08-18",
    "citation": [
      {
        "@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 pulque revenue and the pulquerías of New Spain"
  }
}