Del comercio, mantenimientos y frutos de las Indias — the provisioning title of the code
Titulo XVIII of libro IIII is the food-supply law of the Indies: provisions may be carried freely through every province, corregidores may not corner the wheat trade, Castilian weights and measures are imposed, a baker may not also keep a store, and wine is sold in sealed barrels at a capped price. A law of 1601 lets Indian cochineal producers ship to Castile on their own account because dealers bought cheap. The same title doubles every penalty if the seller is black.
Why this wins its question: Colonial Spanish American commerce is usually described from the outside — the fleet system, the monopoly of Seville, mercantilism as an abstraction — and the law that governed the food a town actually ate is quoted almost nowhere in English. Read from the printed título, it is a specific regime: a 1553 guarantee that provisions move freely through every province and that town councils may not legislate against it; an order forbidding corregidores to corner the wheat sent to Panama; the Toledan measure and Castilian vara imposed because settlers had been setting weights "á su arbitrio"; public royal scales at moderate charges; a bar on the baker also keeping the store; wine sold in barrels sealed by the fieles ejecutores in measures stamped with the city's seal at a capped four pesos a botija; and a 1601 law letting Indian cochineal producers ship to Castile on their own account because dealers were buying low and selling high. Beside them, from the same folios, the two hundred lashes reserved for a black tobacco seller and the customs revenue named in the same breath as the harm to Indian drinkers. Accumulation, not omission — and every quotation read off the page images of the 1791 impression.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
The título exists and this is what it is called: libro IIII, título XVIII, "DEL COMERCIO, MANTENIMIENTOS, Y FRUTOS de las Indias", read here on folios 62 to 67 of the tomo segundo of the fourth impression of 1791, the Complutense copy. Twenty-three laws, dated between 1503 and 1634, on how food, drink and raw produce might be moved, sold, weighed and priced in America.
The general rule is a guarantee of free internal trade in food, and it is early. Ley viij, the Emperor Charles and the Prince Governor at Valladolid on 18 December 1553: "ES nuestra voluntad que los mantenimientos, bastimentos, y viandas se puedan comerciar, y traginar libremente por todas las Provincias de las Indias, y que las Justicias, Concejos y personas particulares no lo impidan ni se hagan sobre esto ningunas ordenanzas, pena de la nuestra merced, y perdimiento de bienes". The prohibition is aimed first at the local authorities: town councils are told they may not legislate on it.
Four laws apply that rule to named routes, each naming the officials it binds. Ley viiij (Felipe II, San Lorenzo, 13 July 1590) orders the viceroys of New Spain to see continuously to provisions for Cuba "de forma que esté bien abastecida y proveida". Ley x (1595) forbids the viceroys of Peru to impede provisions going from the valleys of Trujillo and Saña to Panama. Ley xj (1621) orders the governors of Santa Marta and Río de la Hacha to put no impediment on the trade in provisions or their export to Cartagena. Ley xij forbids the justices of Cartagena and neighbouring districts to stop provisions reaching Portobelo, "no haciendo falta en las demas de sus distritos".
The anti-monopoly law is directed at the crown's own magistrates. Ley xiij (Felipe III) recites that no wheat is grown in the province of Panama, so the flour must come from Peru, "donde los Corregidores suelen hacer estanco, y las remiten por su mano, sin permitir, ni dar lugar á que las personas, que tienen este trato, las traygan por su cuenta", and orders the viceroys not to consent to corregidores cornering wheat or flour, providing instead that traders may buy freely "para que no falte el sustento á Panamá". The abuse is printed in the law that forbids it, and the wrongdoers named are royal district governors.
The law of this título with the strongest claim to be under-told. Ley xxj, Felipe III at Matapozuelos on 23 January 1601, headed "Que no se impida á los Indios enviar grana y cochinilla á estos Reynos por su cuenta": among the trades of the Indians of New Spain and Guatemala is the beneficio of grana or cochineal, "y porque algunos, que en esto tratan, se la toman á baxos precios, y venden despues á muy subidos, de que reciben mucho agravio: Mandamos que si los Indios quisieren enviarla por su cuenta á estos Reynos, no se les prohiba, ni ponga impedimento." A statutory right for indigenous producers to bypass the buyers who were squeezing them, with the monopsony stated as the reason for the remedy.
Weights and measures, with the problem and the fix both on the page. Ley xxij (Felipe II, Lisbon, 3 December 1581, and 1 December 1573) recites that the pacificadores and pobladores of the Indies "ponian pesos, y medidas á su arbitrio, y de la diferencia de unos á otros resultaban muchos pleytos, y disensiones", and orders that everyone trade "con pesos, y medidas, justos, é iguales", using "la medida Toledana, y vara Castellana" as the laws of Castile provide; and it authorises viceroys and presidents, where useful and "con derechos moderados", to set up public royal scales — "pesos Reales" — so that sellers and buyers may come and weigh what they wish.
A conflict-of-interest rule for the retail trade. Ley xiiij (Felipe IV, Madrid, 27 November 1623) orders that whoever has the trade of amasijo — baking bread — or makes candles may not be a pulpero, that is keep a general store; a man using both trades pays ten pesos corrientes the first time, twenty the second, and at the third "sea privado del exercicio". The money is divided in thirds: one to the royal Cámara, one to public works, and one shared between the judge and the denouncer — the standard incentive structure of this código, which pays informers out of the fine.
One law shows the whole apparatus of market control at work in a single city. Ley xv (Felipe III, 17 December 1614 and 2 March 1619; Felipe IV, 23 January 1623 and 1 June 1632) bans Peruvian wine from Panama outright, with the wine forfeit in thirds to the Cámara, public works and the judge and denouncer, the almojarifazgo first deducted at seven and a half per cent "por ser frutos de la tierra", a thousand pesos and ten years' exile for the master of the ship that brought it, and two hundred pesos for the boat owners who ferried it in. Where wine is admitted on register, it must be put into a pulpería and sold "en barriles sellados por los Fieles executores, los quales dén al Pulpero medidas con el sello de la Ciudad", at "quatro pesos de á ocho reales botija, y no mas"; a pulpero caught mixing it with Castile wine to resell pays a hundred pesos "y vergüenza pública". Sealed measures stamped by the city, a maximum price, and a protectionist import ban, all in the same law.
The cost, quoted rather than summarised. Ley xvj, Felipe II at San Lorenzo on 16 September 1586, forbids any tabernero or pulpero in Panama to sell "ningun vino cocido" — adulterated boiled wine — on pain of fifty gold pesos and the wine, doubled with banishment on a second offence; and forbids anyone to sell, give, carry, sow or hold tobacco there, the tobacco to be "públicamente quemado como yerba prohibida, y dañosa", with perpetual exile for a second offence. Then the differential: "y si fuere Negro, ó Negra, libre, ó cautivo, qualquiera de las penas sea doblada, y mas se le dén docientos azotes por las calles públicas." Apothecaries were licensed to keep two pounds of tobacco and no more, declared before the cabildo. The same título that protects the buyer from watered wine prices a black seller's body into the penalty.
Mixed motive, printed in one sentence. Ley xviij (Felipe III, 18 May 1615; Felipe IV, 19 June 1626) bans the carriage of Peruvian wine into Guatemala through the port of Acaxutla, on the representation of the city of Santiago that such wines, "por ser fuertes, nuevos, y por cocer causan á los Indios generalmente muy grande daño, con que se acaban muy apriesa" — and in the same clause, "demas de ser causa de que tantos ménos se lleven de España en perjuicio del comercio, y derechos, que nos pertenecen". Protection of indigenous drinkers and protection of the customs revenue are given as two halves of one motive, by the law itself.
Two more laws of the título, for the range it covers. Ley j (Felipe III, Aranjuez, 1 May 1606, and Madrid, 25 March 1607) orders a closed alcaicería built in Mexico City, because shops are few and their sites insecure, "y mucho peligro de ladrones, con que los Mercaderes no se animan en sus tratos, en perjuicio del comercio, y conviene al bien público" — a covered market as public works, with an order to keep good account of the cost. Ley iij, Fernando and Isabel at Segovia on 29 August 1503, forbids anyone in Castile to bring in, sell or buy any brasil — the American dyewood — "salvo del que se traxere de nuestras Indias Occidentales", on pain of forfeiture and half the offender's goods, with two years' banishment for a second offence. It reads as protection for an American export and as protection of the crown's own channel for it at the same time, and this object does not choose between the two readings.
The compilation shipped with a finding aid, which is part of why these rules were usable by a town official. The índice general printed as tomo quarto of the 1681 first edition carries, under the alphabetical heading "Ciudades", the entry "Ciudades, para abasto de las Carnicerías no se admitan pósturas á Clérigos, ni á Religiosos, ley 10. titul. 8. lib. 4. fol. 95", alongside entries on city arms, precedence and fire prevention — a keyword index that resolves a provisioning question to book, título, law and folio.
What a code cannot show. These are orders, not returns. Ley xv carries four separate dates between 1614 and 1632, which is itself evidence that the earlier prohibitions were not being kept; nothing read here establishes what a botija of wine actually sold for in Panama, whether any town ever installed a peso Real, or whether a single indigenous community shipped its own cochineal to Castile under ley xxj. The claims above are claims about what the law of the Indies said, and the corpus keeps that distinction rather than letting the statute stand in for the practice.