Olive groves in the Indies: a tree that took, an oil that did not, and the labour law that named it

By 1590 the olive was growing in Mexico and Peru and there was still not one oil mill in either: the fruit was cured and eaten, and all the oil came from Spain. The law of the Indies nevertheless made the olive grove a named workplace, and then in 1601 and 1609 forbade allotting Indians to work in one — giving its own reason. The Recopilación prints both that ban and the rule that no wage be paid in drink.