Propios y arbitrios: the audited municipal purse of the Spanish American cities

Cities in the Indies held their own endowed revenues, and the law hedged them: no extraordinary spending above three thousand maravedís without licence, leases auctioned to the highest bidder, nothing spent on banquets for visiting judges under a thousand-ducat penalty, accounts taken yearly and reported to the Council. Two printed statements show what the rules governed — 108,669 pesos at Mexico, 13,410 at a second city — and what leaked through them.