The obrajes — a colonial textile mill, the law that regulated it, and the report that says the law was never kept

The cloth mills of Spanish America were governed by a title of the code that required a royal licence to found one, forbade any mita or repartimiento of Indians for it, and ordered the mill kept "continuamente abierto, para que entren, y salgan los Indios á su voluntad". A naval officers' secret report on Peru of the 1740s describes the master locking the door and leaving the workers "encarcelados" — and says the government's provisions were serious and never observed.