The obrajes of New Spain and the law that tried to open their doors

The cloth workshops of colonial Mexico were the hardest labour regime the viceroyalty tolerated, and the fullest account of what happened inside them is the government's own. This entry reads the law of the Indies that barred Indians from obrajes outright and the viceregal regulation of 1767, reissued in 1781, that instead regulated them - and prints what each one concedes.