Bayles, taquies and the pulque law: indigenous festivity under colonial regulation
Two laws printed side by side in the Recopilación regulate indigenous festivity: public dances need the governor's licence and may not fall in harvest time, and pulque may hold nothing but the simple native juice of the maguey — an adulteration standard written after the drink was being cut with roots, boiling water and lime. The same law caps the capital's taverns at thirty-six and names the tax farmer of the duty on the drink it condemns.
Why this wins its question: Colonial pulque is usually written up either as a suppressed indigenous tradition or as a vice tolerated for the revenue, and neither version quotes the law. Read from the printing, the law does something more specific and more interesting than either: it calls the maguey a plant of much benefit, concedes that the drink taken with temperance could be tolerated, and enacts a purity rule on the simple native juice — an adulteration standard — while capping the capital's taverns at thirty-six with twenty-four for men and twelve for women and naming the tax farmer of the duty in the same paragraph. Beside it, from a bishop's manual, is the discipline the feasts actually met, with its three admonitions and its sowing-and-harvest calendar. Achievement, motive and cost, all quoted.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
Public dances required a licence and were pushed out of the working calendar. Libro VI, título 1 of the Recopilación, ley xxxviij, on printed page 198 of tomo II of the 1791 fourth impression, is headed "Que no se consientan bayles á los Indios sin licencia del Gobernador, y sean con templanza, y honestidad", with the margin "D. Felipe II en el Pardo á 2 de Noviembre de 1576. D. Cárlos II y la Reyna Gobernadora", and reads: "NO se consientan bayles públicos, y celebridades de los Indios sin licencia de el Gobernador, y estos no sean en las estancias, y repartimientos, ni en tiempo de cosechas, y en ninguna ocasion se permita, que en juntas, y festejos se desconcierten, y destemplen en la bebida, pues se han experimentado muchos excesos, y deshonestidades de semejantes juntas." The rule is a licence and a calendar restriction, not a prohibition of dancing.
The pulque law immediately before it concedes more than a prohibition would. Ley xxxvij, "Sobre la bebida del pulque usada por los Indios de la Nueva España", printed across pages 197 and 198, carries in the margin a chain running from "El Emperador D. Cárlos en Toledo á 24 de Agosto de 1529" through Valladolid 1545, Philip III in 1607 and Charles II with the queen regent to "Los mismos en Madrid á 6 de Julio de 1672", and opens: "USan los Indios de la Nueva España de una bebida llamada pulque, que destilan los magüeyes, plantas de mucho beneficio para diferentes efectos, y aunque bebida con templanza se podria tolerar, porque ya estan acostumbrados á ella, se han experimentado notables daños, y perjuicios de la forma con que la confeccionan". The statute names the plant as useful and the drink as tolerable in temperance, and locates the harm in the preparation.
What the law actually enacts is a purity standard. It describes the additions — under pretext of keeping the drink from spoiling it is mixed "con ciertas raices, agua hirviendo y cal, con que toma tanta fuerza, que les obliga á perder el sentido" — and then orders "que en el xugo simple, y nativo del magüey no se pueda echar ningun género de raiz, ni otro ningun ingrediente, que le haga mas fuerte, cálido, y picante, así por inmixtion, destilacion, ó infusion, como por otra qualquiera forma, que cause estos, ó semejantes efectos, aunque sea á título de preservarla de destemplanza, ó corrupcion". A rule that defines a drink by a single permitted ingredient and forbids every fortifying addition is a food-adulteration standard, whatever else it is.
The charges the law levels against the drinkers are the ones a hostile account would want, and they are printed here rather than left out: that intoxicated Indians "cometen idolatrías, hacen ceremonias y sacrificios de la Gentilidad", quarrel, kill and fall into carnal vices, so that prelates fulminated censures and the viceroy and Real Audiencia prohibited it by autos and acuerdos. The law says the same of the settlers in the same sentence, extending its remedy to "el bien espiritual y temporal de los Indios, y aun de los Españoles, que tambien la usan".
The same law records the licensing regime and the revenue interest together. It approves the ordinances of eight chapters made by the viceroy and Acuerdo of the Real Audiencia of Mexico on 23 July 1671 "sobre el uso de esta bebida, y contribucion, que de ella resulta", with the condition "que el número de las pulquerías no exceda de treinta y seis, y que de estas las veinte y quatro sean para hombres, y las doce para mugeres", the visitation of all of them shared out by quarters and made by the alcaldes del crímen, corregidor and other justices, inferior ministers confined to denouncing while the justices try the causes — and orders that the Conservador appointed by "el Arrendador, ó Asentista de la contribucion" cease. The drink condemned in the first paragraph is a farmed revenue by the last.
The church answered the feasts with a graduated discipline, abstracted for parish priests by the bishop of Quito on printed page 285 of the Lyon 1678 Itinerario. Chapter 105 of the Lima council condemns "el abuso, que tienen los Indios en hazer borracheras, y taquies, y ofrecer sacrificios en honra del diablo al tiempo del sembrar, y del coger", orders it wholly removed, and requires that the Indians be first admonished publicly on three feast-days and only then punished with rigour if they persist. Chapter 69 covers those who at Corpus and other feasts, "fingiendo hazer las de los Christianos, adoran ocultamente sus idolos": information is taken and sent to the bishop or his vicar general. Chapter 106 adds superstitions, auguries taken at the start of business and ceremonies at burials, to be reported to the diocesan.
The dating of the condemned festivity in that chapter is what makes it legible as something other than disorder: the sacrifices are placed "al tiempo del sembrar, y del coger, y en otras coyunturas, y tiempos, quando comiençan algun negocio, que tienen por importante". What the manual is describing, and prescribing three admonitions against, is an agricultural and occasional calendar — sowing, harvest, the opening of an undertaking — which is also why the civil law in c1 bars public dances "en tiempo de cosechas".
What these two printings cannot show is stated rather than filled in. They are a code and a pastoral manual: they give no measure of consumption, no yield of the pulque duty, no prosecution counts for adulteration or for unlicensed dances, and nothing about how many of the thirty-six licences were ever issued. Neither carries an indigenous account of a taqui, a borrachera or a licence refused, and the survival of indigenous festivity — visible elsewhere in this corpus through cathedral repertories — is not evidenced by anything read here.