La Fiel Executoría of Mexico City — posted prices, sealed weights, and the indigenous sellers exempted from both
The market magistracy of Mexico City: the corregidor and the regidores fieles executores, on a perpetual grant from Charles V and Juana, under ordinances of 1718 confirmed in 1724. By the viceregal ordinance of 1619 they posted fruit prices weekly and grocery prices monthly on a board in the plaza, priced bread alike for bakers and shopkeepers, and allowed the seller a profit "moderada" for his work and risk — while leaving indigenous vendors outside the price regime altogether.
Why this wins its question: Colonial price regulation is usually described in the aggregate — "the Spanish authorities fixed prices" — with neither the mechanism nor its exceptions quoted. This object gives both from the colonial print: the weekly and monthly timetable, the board in the plaza where the prices hung, the uniform bread price for bakers and shopkeepers, the explicit "moderate profit" owed to the trader's work and risk, the noon rule that reserved the morning market to households, the tariff that had to be posted where the public could read it — and the article that put indigenous vendors outside the price regime altogether, free to sell where, when and to whom they liked. The penalties that carried all of it, informers' shares and a hundred lashes included, are quoted from the same pages.
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 magistracy's title and its rulebook are stated in auto CCCXXXIII of the Audiencia of Mexico: "La Fiel Executoría de esta Capital, de la que hicieron merced perpetua á su N. C. los Señores Don Carlos V. y Doña Juana su Madre, se gobierna por sus particulares Ordenanzas formadas por su Ayuntamiento con arreglo á las Leyes del Reyno, Reales Cédulas, Autos acordados y providencias del Superior Gobierno en el año de 1718, confirmadas por S. M. en 6 de Mayo de 1724, y reimpresas aquí en el de 1755", the junta being presided by the city's corregidor with the regidores fieles executores.
Weights and measures were inspected by sworn contrastes who were paid for the visit. A bando of 1 June 1776, abstracted as auto CCCXXXII, orders "que á los Fieles Contrastes se les paguen sus justos derechos por la visita de pesos y medidas, y que puedan recibir juramento á los Comerciantes y Tratantes de que no tienen otras, aunque sean de fuero exceptuado" — the oath reaching even traders who claimed an exempt jurisdiction.
The regime extended to registering a colonial staple: auto CCCXXXIV, on a real cédula of 4 February 1761, orders that the Fiel Executoría's ordinance be kept, "en cuyo cumplimiento se manifieste y registre en la Diputacion todo el cacao que se introdugere, sin que el Escribano lleve otros derechos que los asignados en el Arancel". The printed text numbers that ordinance 84 and the margin of the same page numbers it 64.
The working rules the magistracy applied were the viceregal ordinance of 17 August 1619 on bastimentos, compiled by the oidor Montemayor y Córdova de Cuenca in 1677 and reprinted in Mexico in 1787. Its first chapter allows shops and taverns to sell every kind of foodstuff — maize, firewood, charcoal, candles, soap, bread, sugar, honey of all kinds, green and dried fruit, cacao, wine, vinegar, oil, olives, cheese and all vegetables, fish, bacon, lard, pork offal — "todo con postura, medida y peso".
Spanish carriers and dealers in fruit were confined to the public squares and to a documented provenance: they might sell nowhere in the city but in the plaza del Volador, the great plaza in front of the Casas Reales as far as the corner of the calle de San Francisco and the bridge of the calle de San Agustín, having bought the fruit ten leagues outside the city's redonda and bringing a certificate from the justice of the place where they bought it, or, in his absence, from the minister of doctrine — and they sold with postura.
The third chapter of the same ordinance exempts indigenous sellers from that whole apparatus: "Que los Indios que traxinaren y truxeren fruta ó otros bastimentos á esta Ciudad los puedan vender en las plazas y fuera de ellas libremente, donde quisieren, sin postura, y á todas horas, á los Vecinos y personas qualesquiera, sin limitacion alguna" — with the one condition that what they sell be their own "y no de Españoles que por dichos Indios y por encubierta pretendieren venderlos".
The buying side was timed to protect households. Shopkeepers might not buy fruit from Indians or from carriers outside the plazas, and inside them only after the plaza clock had struck twelve, "porque hasta entonces se han de proveer y comprar los Vecinos y toda la República, y ellos no": a shopkeeper buying earlier, or in the streets, lost the fruit — which the corregidor and diputados applied to the convents and hospitals — and paid thirty pesos divided in quarters between the Cámara, the city, the judge and the informer, doubled for a second offence, with public shaming and two years' banishment from the city for a third.
Prices were published on a fixed timetable and in a fixed place. The corregidor was to set the postura of green fruit every Monday for all its kinds, sold by piece or by weight, "poniéndola en una tablilla en el pilar del Oficio de la Diputacion, y en la esquina de la plaza del Bolador que está cerca y enfrente las Casas Reales"; wine, vinegar, oil, olives, dried fruit, fish, bacon, lard, pork offal, cheese, sugar, honey and cacao were priced every month and posted the same way; bread was priced every three months "uniformemente asi para los Panaderos, como para los Tenderos, que en esto no ha de haber diferencia en el precio".
The pricing standard is written into the ordinance, and it is not a maximum imposed blind. Maize was to be priced "de suerte que no se encarezca este género por la reventa de él", and in setting the shopkeepers' posturas the corregidor was to have regard to giving them "la ganancia moderada, que es justo les corresponda á su ocupacion y trabajo y riesgo, y especialmente en la fruta y los géneros que padecen corrupcion y diminucion" — a moderate profit owed to the trader's work and risk, with an explicit allowance for perishables.
Publication was enforced against the officials as well as the traders: the escribano of the Diputación incurred twenty pesos, in the same four shares, for each occasion on which the posturas were not posted; and anyone who broke tasa, weight, measure or postura forfeited, for a first offence, everything of that kind in his shop to the convents of nuns and the hospitals, plus thirty pesos, the penalty doubling for a second offence and adding public shaming and two years' banishment for a third.
Two chapters bind the inspectors themselves. Visits to the shops were not to be made at night by the corregidor and diputados unless a prior denunciation or information obliged the diligence at that hour; and in the causes of the Diputación the escribano might take no more than the Arancel Real allowed, keeping that tariff "en parte pública de su Oficio, donde facilmente pueda ser leido", on pain of four times the fees exacted, fifty pesos in the same four shares and six months' suspension from office.
The exemption of indigenous sellers was backed by an article aimed at intermediaries. In the plazas where "los Indios é Indias venden fruta y bastimentos" no person was to insert himself among them under colour of protecting them — "quier sean Españoles, Mestizos, Mulatos, Negros é Negras y Mulatas" — but to let them sell freely wholesale or retail as they wished, "porque estos revenden la fruta y la encarecen ó hacen con ella ganancia sin ser suya", under penalty of a hundred lashes and two years' banishment from the city; and because "siempre es justo que los dichos Indios é Indias que venden tengan defensa y amparo", the amparadores and alguaciles appointed for it were to give that protection "con mucho cuidado y diligencia".
The cost of the arrangement is in the same articles as the protection. Enforcement ran on informers, a quarter of every fine going to the denouncer, and its ladder of penalties reached public shaming, banishment and, for the interlopers of the last article, a hundred lashes. The printed chapter names Spaniards first in the list of those it threatens and draws no distinction of person in the penalty it then imposes; who in practice received the lash rather than the fine is not shown by this text, and is not asserted here.
What these two compilations establish is the rule as printed and reprinted — the ordinance of 1619 gathered in 1677 and reissued in Mexico in 1787, and the magistracy's own ordinances of 1718 confirmed in 1724 and reprinted in 1755 — and not its enforcement. Neither source used here reports a prosecution, a price actually posted on the board, or any effect on what the city paid for food.