{ "id": "solorzano-politica-indiana", "type": "entity", "name": "Juan de Solórzano Pereira, Política Indiana", "summary": "The systematic treatise on the law of the Spanish Indies, written by a judge who spent eighteen years on the bench in Lima under a royal order to write down what he learned there. Its second book opens by naming the charge against Spain — that it enslaved the Indians — and answers it with law. The same book defends compulsory labour for the public good, so the answer and its limit stand on the same pages.", "locale": "en", "tags": [ "colonial-law", "law", "books", "jurisprudence", "spanish-empire", "peru", "americas", "human-rights" ], "relations": [ { "rel": "related", "target": "recopilacion-de-leyes-de-indias" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "new-laws-of-1542" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "cajas-de-comunidad-de-indios" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "encomienda" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "mita" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "school-of-salamanca" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "valladolid-debate" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "bartolome-de-las-casas" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "pena-montenegro-itinerario-para-parochos-de-indios" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "juicio-de-residencia" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "republica-de-indios" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "veracruz-speculum-coniugiorum" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "puga-cedulario-1563" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "avendano-thesaurus-indicus-1668" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "ganancial-property-in-united-states-law" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "correos-de-las-indias" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "cacicazgos-de-las-indias" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "reducciones-y-congregaciones-de-indios" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "audiencia-de-charcas" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "examen-y-etica-de-los-abogados-de-las-indias" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "yanaconas-de-las-indias" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "castilian-language-question-in-the-indies" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "colegios-de-hijos-de-caciques" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "personas-miserables-in-the-law-of-the-indies" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "gracias-al-sacar-arancel-1795" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "interpretes-de-las-audiencias-de-indias" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "abogado-y-procurador-de-pobres-de-las-indias" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "abad-y-queipo-coleccion-de-escritos-1813" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "consejo-de-indias" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "viedma-descripcion-de-santa-cruz-de-la-sierra" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "indios-outside-the-jurisdiction-of-the-inquisition" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "sangleyes-de-filipinas" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "incompatibilidades-de-los-oidores-de-las-indias" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "indigenous-custom-as-law-in-the-indies" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "casados-de-las-indias" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "jornal-de-los-indios" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "juzgado-de-bienes-de-difuntos" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "mestizos-en-el-derecho-indiano" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "criollos-en-el-derecho-indiano" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "cabildos-de-las-indias" } ], "questions": [ "Who was Juan de Solórzano Pereira?", "What is the Política Indiana?", "How did Spanish jurists justify or limit forced Indian labour?", "Did Spanish law recognise the natural liberty of indigenous Americans?" ], "claims": [ { "id": "c1", "text": "The book was written from the bench and by order. In the dedication to Philip IV in his Council of the Indies, Solórzano records that by command of Philip III he \"passè à las Indias Occidentales con plaza de Oidor de la Real Audiencia de Lima en el Perù, en el año de M.DC.IX.\", and was ordered to attend to and write up whatever he judged fitting to the law and government of those provinces — a serving judge commissioned to produce the doctrine of the jurisdiction he sat in.", "sources": [ "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-t1" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c2", "text": "He wrote it twice, in two languages and for two publics. The same dedication records that he first published in Latin, in volumes titled De Indiarum Iure, et Gubernatione, and then, back in Spain, put the work into Castilian so that the matter should not be known only to the learned — \"deben constar menos, los que mas saben\".", "sources": [ "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-t1" ], "confidence": 0.8 }, { "id": "c3", "text": "The volume read here is the third impression: \"POLITICA INDIANA, COMPUESTA POR EL DOCT. D. JUAN DE SOLORZANO PEREYRA, CAVALLERO DEL ORDEN DE SANTIAGO, DEL Consejo del Rey Nuestro Señor en los Supremos de Castilla, y de las Indias. DIVIDIDA EN SEIS LIBROS … SALE EN ESTA TERCERA IMPRESSION ILUSTRADA POR EL Licenc. D. Francisco Ramiro de Valenzuela … y en dos Tomos. CON LICENCIA. EN MADRID: Por Matheo Sacristan. Año de 1736.\" Its title page advertises the coverage: discovery, description, acquisition and retention of the Indies, the persons of the Indians and their services, tributes, tithes and encomiendas, the ecclesiastical government, and the whole civil magistracy from viceroys to the Council itself.", "sources": [ "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-t1" ], "confidence": 0.9 }, { "id": "c4", "text": "Book two states its own subject as a question about the limits of compulsion: \"LIBRO SEGUNDO DE LA POLITICA INDIANA. EN QUE SE TRATA DE LA LIBERTAD, ESTADO, Y condiciones de los Indios. Y à què servicios personales pueden ser compelidos por el bien publico\". Liberty is the premise; the public good is the exception being argued for. Both are on the same line of the same page.", "sources": [ "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-t1" ], "confidence": 0.9 }, { "id": "c5", "text": "Its first chapter opens by quoting the accusation rather than avoiding it. Solórzano writes that in this matter \"tambien nos muerden, y calumnian los mal afectos, oponiendonos, que los hicimos, y hacemos esclavos, privandolos de la libertad natural, y del dominio, y disposicion de sus bienes, y haciendas\" — the chapter heading being \"DE LA LIBERTAD DE LOS INDIOS, Y QUAN DESEADA, y encargada ha sido siempre por nuestros Reyes\".", "sources": [ "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-t1" ], "confidence": 0.9 }, { "id": "c6", "text": "He reports the argument for natural slavery and attributes it to a bishop. The chapter recalls the dispute of the bishop of Darién, Tomás Ortiz, with the bishop of Chiapa in the presence of Charles V, in which Ortiz \"se atreviò à decir, y afirmar, que eran hombres nacidos in servitute\", recounting so many vices and clumsinesses that it seemed a benefit to tame and hold them as slaves, since those who cannot use liberty well should not be left in full possession of it. Solórzano sets out this position in order to reject it.", "sources": [ "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-t1" ], "confidence": 0.8 }, { "id": "c7", "text": "His defence of liberty does not extend to everyone, and that belongs on the record next to it. In the same chapter he holds that in many of the wars waged on the Indians there was \"causa, y justificacion muy bastante\" for taking the defeated as slaves — by infidelity, by treachery and apostasy, or by receiving captives from allied peoples — and he refers the enslavement of \"los Negros de Ethiopia, que se cogen, y transportan del Africa … por los Portugueses\" to Luis de Molina, Rebelo and other authors rather than condemning it. The liberty argued for is the Indians' liberty, argued within a system that enslaved Africans.", "sources": [ "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-t1" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c8", "text": "On personal service the argument is grounded in natural liberty and Roman law. Taking his definition of servicios personales from José de Acosta — every profit drawn from the Indians' labour in farming, herding, building, mines, carriage, obrajes and domestic ministries — Solórzano writes that compelling them \"contradice à la libertad, la qual, segun la doctrina de Aristoteles, y nuestros Jurisconsultos, es una facultad natural, de hacer … lo que quisiere\", that no free man may be forced into servile and laborious offices, and that if the law will not compel a man to sell or let his goods, still less may it conduct by force \"los servicios de las personas, que son tanto mas dignas, preciosas, y estimables, que todas las cosas\".", "sources": [ "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-t1" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c9", "text": "He is explicit that the encomenderos' service is unlawful. The service the encomenderos introduced he calls \"injusto, è indigno de permitirle\", citing the great harms it caused in many provinces, and records among the abuses that they kept the wives and daughters of their Indians in their houses \"como en carcel privada, que les hacian hilar, y texer … como si fueran esclavas suyas\" — the practice answered by the 1601 cédula and by orders reaching back through 1591, 1568, 1563, 1555 and 1549.", "sources": [ "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-t1" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c10", "text": "The remedy he cites is a wage labour market with the worker choosing the employer. The Cédula del Servicio Personal of Valladolid, 24 November 1601, which he transcribes, orders that no Indians be allotted to any private person but that they be brought to hire themselves in the public squares to whoever needs them, Spaniards or other Indians, royal ministers or prelates, religious, doctrineros or hospitals alike, engaged there by the day or the week, going \"con quien quisieren, y por el tiempo, que les pareciere de su voluntad, y sin que nadie los pueda tener contra ella\", with wages assessed.", "sources": [ "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-t1" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c11", "text": "One clause he quotes states the priority in a single sentence. The declaratory cédula of 1609 refuses mita Indians for private household service — gardens, buildings, silks and the like — to churchmen and seculars alike, \"aunque sean Virreyes, Oidores, ò Inquisidores\", giving as the reason that \"aunque esto sea de alguna incomodidad para los Españoles: pesa mas la libertad, y conservacion de los Indios\". Solórzano adds that the viceroy of Peru, the Marqués de Montes Claros, began enforcement on himself, \"comenzando à quitarse à si propio los Indios de Mita\", and that the judges of the Audiencia did the same.", "sources": [ "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-t1" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c12", "text": "The limit of the whole argument is in the book's own title, and is not hidden by it. Solórzano defends compulsion for the public good — the mita — while denying it to private masters; the treatise is a brief for the crown's jurisdiction as well as for the Indians' liberty, and the volume was reprinted a century after his death as a working authority, not as a historical curiosity. Any reading that makes it simply a defence of indigenous rights, or simply an apology for empire, is reading half of the pages.", "sources": [ "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-t1" ], "confidence": 0.8 }, { "id": "c13", "text": "Two cautions about the copy read, recorded rather than smoothed over. The 1736 impression is a posthumous edition \"ilustrada\" by Francisco Ramiro de Valenzuela, whose additions are not always separated from Solórzano's text on the page, so a quotation from this printing is a quotation from the 1736 state of the work. And the digitisation is catalogued as \"Tomo segundo\" although the running foot reads \"Solorzan. Polit. Ind. tom. I.\" and Libro Segundo opens at printed page 56 — it is the first of the two volumes.", "sources": [ "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-t1" ], "confidence": 0.85 } ], "takeaways": [], "faqs": [], "evidence_tier": "primary", "evidence": { "level": "industry_observation", "source_types": [ "paper" ] }, "moat_flag": false, "winning_edge": "Solórzano is the most consequential jurist of the Spanish Indies and is almost unread in English, where the debate over indigenous rights is usually left in 1550 with Las Casas and Sepúlveda. The Política Indiana is a century later, written by a sitting judge of the Audiencia of Lima under royal commission, and it is quoted here from a digitised 1736 printing opened page by page: the accusation of enslavement stated in Solórzano's own words before he answers it, the natural-liberty argument against compelled personal service, the 1601 cédula's public-square hiring with the worker choosing his employer, and the 1609 clause that puts the liberty of the Indians above the convenience of viceroys and inquisitors. Beside them, from the same chapters, the two things a defensive account would omit — his acceptance of enslavement by just war, and his silence on the Africans the Portuguese were carrying across.", "confidence": 0.85, "last_verified": "2026-08-09", "canonical_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/solorzano-politica-indiana", "api_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/api/k/solorzano-politica-indiana.json", "jsonld": { "@context": "https://schema.org", "name": "Juan de Solórzano Pereira, Política Indiana", "description": "The systematic treatise on the law of the Spanish Indies, written by a judge who spent eighteen years on the bench in Lima under a royal order to write down what he learned there. Its second book opens by naming the charge against Spain — that it enslaved the Indians — and answers it with law. The same book defends compulsory labour for the public good, so the answer and its limit stand on the same pages.", "url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/solorzano-politica-indiana", "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html", "dateModified": "2026-08-09", "citation": [ { "@type": "CreativeWork", "name": "Política Indiana, compuesta por el Doct. D. Juan de Solórzano Pereyra, dividida en seis libros — first of the two tomos (Libros I-III)", "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=huEykw_YtzYC&pg=PA56" } ], "@type": "Article", "headline": "Juan de Solórzano Pereira, Política Indiana" } }