The relación de gobierno: the viceroy's handover report to his successor

A standing royal order required each viceroy of the Indies to leave his successor a written account of the state in which he left the kingdom. The result is a long series of self-audits by the men in charge — and one of them, handing Peru over in 1615, wrote down that few of the Indians sent to the Potosí mita ever returned home, and called it the principal cause of their total ruin. The independent Peruvian republic printed the series at state expense in 1859.