The free pardo and moreno battalions of the Cuban militia (reglamento of 1769)
The reglamento that reorganised the Cuban militia in January 1769 put two battalions of free pardos and one of free morenos on the same establishment as five battalions of white infantry, and gave every militiaman the fuero militar: his civil and criminal causes removed from the ordinary courts, exemption from municipal offices and guardianships imposed against his will, hospital treatment as for veteran troops, no jail fees, and the fuero for life after twenty years or a disabling wound.
Why this wins its question: Free Black and mulatto militia companies in the Spanish Caribbean are usually mentioned in English as a curiosity of Bourbon defence policy, with no statute quoted and no account of what membership was worth. This object gives the establishment article that names the three battalions, the chapter that grants the fuero militar in general terms, and the specific goods it carried — causes out of the ordinary courts, exemption from municipal charges and guardianships, hospital care on veteran terms, no jail fees, the fuero for life after twenty years — and then prints the other half: the reglamento was still being called the reglamento of the "Milicias blancas" in 1862, and the pardo and moreno battalions had gone from the bodies the crown was reorganising. It also states that the text was read in an abridging nineteenth-century compilation, and takes the lower tier for it.
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 Reglamento para las Milicias de infanteria y caballeria de la isla de Cuba, approved by royal cedula of 19 January 1769, sets out the establishment in its first article: five battalions of white infantry — the first two as the Volunteer infantry regiment of Havana, the other three as Cuba and Bayamo, Puerto del Principe and Cuatro Villas — plus "dos batallones de pardos libres", the first named Pardos libres de la Habana and the second Pardos libres de Cuba y Bayamo, and "un batallon de morenos libres" named the battalion of free morenos of Havana.
Chapter IV, "Del fuero y goces de estos cuerpos", opens without any qualification by colour: "Todo Soldado Miliciano gozara del Fuero Militar", from the day these militias were formed, with the sergeant major, lieutenant colonel and colonel made answerable that nobody enjoys it who is not entitled to it.
What the fuero carried is itemised. No officer, sergeant, corporal or soldier could have a burdensome office or a guardianship imposed on him against his will, nor be assigned troop billeting or baggage without precise necessity. In garrison or on campaign the sick were received and treated in the hospitals as the veteran troops were, at the same stoppage of pay. No soldier of these corps paid jail fees for any arrest, that exemption being "anneja al Fuero Militar de que todos gozan". An officer retiring after twenty years kept the fuero for life, and one crippled by a wound kept both the fuero and the invalid's pay.
A further chapter states the jurisdictional privilege at its widest: all colonels, officers, sergeants, corporals and soldiers of these regiments were to enjoy the military fuero, civil and criminal, and neither the ordinary justice nor any other judge or tribunal could hear their causes — only the governors of the plazas of Havana and Cuba and their lieutenants, each for the militia of his own jurisdiction, with appeal to the captain general; and they were to enjoy exemption from municipal offices and charges, guardianships and receiverships imposed against their will. Where jurisdictions clashed, the accused went to the military chief who claimed him while the captain general decided which jurisdiction should hear the case.
A royal cedula given at Aranjuez on 15 April 1771 and signed by Julian de Arriaga made declarations on the same reglamento, among them that the military judge and no other was to hear the testamentary causes of those who died as militiamen, and that the officers of loose companies commissioned by the captaincy general of Cuba likewise held the fuero. The privilege was therefore maintained and refined rather than allowed to lapse.
The reglamento nowhere states that the pardo and moreno battalions held the fuero on different terms from the white battalions; the chapters on the fuero speak of every militiaman and of these regiments generally, and the segregated battalions are listed in the same article as part of the same establishment. That the fuero extended to them is therefore an inference from the text as printed rather than an express provision, and the source read here does not settle how the privilege worked in practice for a pardo defendant.
The units were segregated by law and the law kept them so for a century. The same compilation prints, under 11 June 1862, a royal order lowering the minimum height for recruits to "los cuerpos de Milicias blancas de la isla" — white militias — and, under 19 July 1862, a reorganisation of the disciplined cavalry militia into four regiments formed out of the white disciplined militia of Havana, the Dragoons of Matanzas and the rural squadrons of Fernando VII. No pardo or moreno battalion appears among the bodies reorganised. When and by what act they ceased is not stated in this source and is not asserted here.
The transmission limits what can be claimed. The 1769 reglamento is read here in Joaquin Rodriguez San Pedro's Legislacion ultramarina of 1865, a compilation of overseas law still held to be in force, which prints only the articles that mattered to its purpose and marks every omission with a row of dots: chapters III and V to IX appear as headings with no text under them at all. Nothing is claimed here about what those chapters contained.