Ordenanzas de Alfaro (1612) — the abolition of personal service in Paraguay, Tucuman and the Rio de la Plata

The ordinances a crown judge sent from Charcas laid on the southern provinces in 1612, ending the personal service of Indians and cutting the encomienda back to the tribute owed to the crown. Read from two historians who agree on the year and on what was abolished, and from the argument against it that one of them prints at length: the reform, wrote a naturalist of the Enlightenment, was politically absurd and stopped the conquest dead.