The jornal of the Indian day-labourer: wages in coin, into his own hand
A wage clause in the personal-service laws of the Recopilación de leyes de las Indias that is rarely quoted: the day-wage of Indians is what they themselves will take, no tariff imposed, and paid "en propia mano cada dia, ó semana, á voluntad de los Indios". A second law voids payment in wine, chicha, honey or yerba. The same títulos print the crown's contrary reasoning for the drafts, and a law clearing Indians out of the obrajes by telling owners to use enslaved Africans.
Why this wins its question: The debate about indigenous labour in Spanish America is usually conducted at the level of the institutions — encomienda, repartimiento, mita — and almost never at the level of the wage clause, which is where the law is most specific and most testable. This entry quotes it: the jornal set by the worker's own will with no tariff imposed, paid "en propia mano cada dia, ó semana, á voluntad de los Indios", with payment in wine, chicha, honey or yerba declared forfeit and fined — a truck prohibition of 1609 and 1618. It then prints, from the same títulos and with equal weight, the crown's stated reason for keeping the drafts at all (that free Indians would refuse work "por su natural inclinacion á vida ociosa"), and the law that clears Indians out of the obrajes and sugar mills by ordering owners to "beneficienlos con Negros". Both the protection and its price are on the same three pages, quoted rather than summarised.
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 wage rule is a law of its own, in Recopilación de leyes de las Indias libro VI, título XIII ("Del servicio en chacras, viñas, olivares, obrages, ingenios, perlas, tambos, requas, carreterías, casas, ganados, y bogas", opening at folio 299 of the second volume). Ley ij carries dates from Valladolid 22 February 1549 and 5 June 1552 through 21 January 1559 to ordinance 24 of the personal-service ordinances of 1601, and its rubric is "Que si los Indios no se moderaren en el precio de sus jornales, los tasen las Justicias".
Its first clause is a rule against wage-fixing: "EL jornal que deben ganar los Indios sea á su voluntad, y no se les ponga tasa." The power to intervene that follows is exceptional and conditional — if in some places they should ask prices so excessive as to exceed just and reasonable estimation, so that mines and farm enterprises might stop, the viceroys, audiencias and governors are to provide "conforme á los tiempos, horas, carestía, y trabajo", after informing themselves of knowledgeable persons, so that neither the Indians nor the enterprises are wronged.
The payment clause is the sharpest sentence in the título: "y este precio se les pague en propia mano cada dia, ó semana, á voluntad de los Indios" — into the worker's own hand, on his own choice of daily or weekly, and not through the cacique, the overseer or the employer's account.
Payment in kind is voided rather than merely discouraged. Ley vij (Aranjuez, 26 May 1609; Madrid, 10 October 1618), "Que á ningun Indio se pague su jornal en vino, chicha, miel, ni yerba", orders that Indians working in the vineyards and in any other labour not be paid "en vino, chicha, miel, ni yerba del Paraguay", that whatever is paid in those goods "sea perdido, y el Indio no lo reciba en cuenta", and that a Spaniard who tries to give them as pay incur twenty pesos each time, "porque nuestra voluntad es, que la satisfaccion sea en dinero".
The road-service laws of the same título attach conditions of the same kind. Ley iij (Aranjuez, 26 May 1609) allows the repartimientos for tambos, pack trains and carting to continue only because they cannot be dispensed with, and then attaches three limits: no Indian women are to go to the tambos "si no fuere acompañadas de sus maridos, padres, ó hermanos"; those employed are to receive "cumplida satisfaccion de su servicio, regulada conforme á derecho"; and the governors are to divide the traffic of the pack trains and carts among three or four roads "porque los Indios no anden tanto tiempo fuera de sus casas, y puedan atender mejor á la conservacion de sus vidas, y haciendas".
Ley iiij (El Campillo, 19 October 1595; Aranjuez, 2 March 1596) separates provisioning from personal service: Indians at the tambos are not to be compelled "á servir por sus personas" to travellers, nor to give pack sheep, but are to supply bread, wine and meat, and maize for the mounts, the corregidores being charged with particular care that no wrong be done them. Ley v (Monzón de Aragón, 29 November 1563) requires that Spaniards, servants and their followers passing through the tambos pay "su justo precio, y valor" for lodging and for everything else including fodder, and orders the audiencias to punish contraveners "con todo rigor".
The crown's own justification for keeping the drafts is printed at the head of the título and is not creditable. Ley j (Aranjuez, 26 May 1609) says the Council of the Indies was consulted on how inconvenient it would be to remove some repartimientos of farms and public offices, "y considerando que si les quedase libertad, rehusarian el trabajo, y beneficio de estos ministerios, por su natural inclinacion á vida ociosa, y descansada". Any account of the wage clauses that leaves this sentence out is quoting the code selectively.
The same law states the limit it is trying to hold, in the crown's words: the drafts are continued so that the obligation is "mas justificada, y tolerable, de manera que no vivan oprimidos con nota, y ocupacion de esclavos", and the other repartimientos, which look less to the common good than to "las grangerías, y comodidades particulares de los Españoles", are to be prohibited. The distinction drawn is between compelled labour for public purposes and compelled labour for private profit, not between compulsion and freedom.
The heaviest cost is on the same pages. Ley viij (Madrid, 23 December 1595, with the personal-service ordinance of 1601) forbids Indians to work in obrajes of cloth, wool, silk or cotton, or in sugar mills and trapiches, whether forced or voluntary, with or without pay and whatever their caciques consent to — and prescribes the substitution in one clause: "beneficienlos con Negros, ú otro género de servicio". The protection of one population is written as the enslavement of another, and the law does not disguise it.
The penalties on that law show what enforcement was expected to look like: judges who condemn Indians to obraje service incur suspension of office for two years and two hundred ducats, owners of obrajes and mills who keep Indians two hundred ducats and a year's exile from where they are resident, doubled at the second offence and with permanent loss of the mill at the third; viceroys, presidents and oidores who "lo disimularen, y dexaren de castigar" are to be charged with it in their residencias and visitas.
Immediately before this título, the last law of título XII (Philip II 1568; Lerma, 10 November 1612) orders that among the clauses to be written into every grant of encomienda shall stand the express condition "que no haya servicio personal de los Indios" — the wage laws are the positive side of a prohibition the code was still inserting into title deeds seventy years after the New Laws.
What this evidence is. It is a printed law code read as page scans: the fourth impression, Madrid 1791, of the compilation closed in 1680, whose marginal attributions give the dates and places of the original cédulas and ordinances. It establishes what was commanded and, by the repetition, what was being disobeyed; it establishes nothing about how much any Indian was actually paid, in what, or how often the twenty-peso penalty was levied. Wage series, account books and court records would be needed for that, and none is cited here. A physical caution for anyone following the citation: at the boundary of the two títulos the running heads slip — page 300, which carries the wage law of título XIII, is headed "LIBRO VI. TÍTULO XII."