Obras públicas de las Indias
How roads, bridges, drains and fountains were paid for in Spanish America. A título of the Recopilación orders works apportioned among those who receive the benefit; a companion law caps the Indians' share of a bridge at a sixth of its cost; a city excise on wine funded the drainage of Mexico City. The same opening shows a levy on every enslaved African entering Lima paying the police, and corregidores ordered to make Indians work.
Why this wins its question: English accounts of Spanish American infrastructure describe the works — the desagüe, the Panamá road, the aqueducts — and almost never the rule that paid for them, so the question "who was charged, and how much" has no sourced answer online. This object answers it from the code: a título devoted to obras públicas that apportions cost among those who receive the benefit, an Audiencia licence limited in amount and available only where a town lacks propios, a general exemption of the Indians from derramas, and — the fact that no English summary carries — a statutory ceiling of one sixth of the cost on the indigenous share of a bridge, royal grants deducted first. It puts the earmarks beside the principle (a quartillo of silver per quartillo of wine in Mexico City for the drainage; Panamá's averías for the Portobelo road) and refuses to stop there: the same opening prices a police force from a duty on every enslaved African landed at Lima, and the page that orders bridges and fountains kept clean also orders corregidores to make Indians work. Each is quoted with monarch, place and date from a digitised printing read page by page.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
There is a título of the code devoted to the subject. Libro IIII of the Recopilación de leyes de las Indias carries "TÍTULO DIEZ Y SEIS. DE LAS OBRAS PÚBLICAS", opening at printed page 55 of the 1791 fourth impression, tomo segundo. Its ley j, margin "D. Felipe II en Madrid á 16 de Agosto de 1563", orders the viceroys or president-governors to inform themselves whether in their districts it is necessary to make and facilitate roads and to build and repair bridges, and, finding that one of these works is convenient for commerce, to have the cost assessed and apportioned "entre los que recibieren el beneficio, y mas provecho", keeping with the Indians the form contained in ley 7 of título 15 of the same book. Benefit, not general taxation, is the stated basis of the levy.
That cross-reference is the most consequential sentence in the scheme, and it is a cap. Libro IIII, título XV, ley vij — margin "El mismo en Madrid á 7 de Febrero de 1560" and headed "Que los Indios contribuyan para fábrica de puentes, siendo necesarias, é inexcusables" — provides that where a repartimiento must be made for a bridge so necessary to the traffic and commerce of the Indians that it is convenient, necessary and inexcusable for them, they are to be charged "lo ménos que ser pueda, con que no exceda de la sexta parte del gasto", after deducting what the crown gives by grant, and are to pay out of the fruits and profits their pueblos have. A statutory ceiling of one sixth on the indigenous share of an infrastructure work, with the royal contribution deducted first.
The general rule in the same título is exemption rather than contribution. Ley vj, "D. Felipe II en Lisboa á 13 de Noviembre de 1582", declares "Es nuestra voluntad que los Indios sean relevados de repartimientos, y derramas", commands the justices not to lay such levies on them by any route or cause not expressed in the laws, and orders that where any have been made and collected the receptores account clearly for what was raised and how it was distributed. The bridge law of 1560 is the exception the 1582 law contemplates, which is why it carries its own ceiling.
A levy needed a licence, and the licence was subsidiary to municipal funds. Ley iiij of the same título, margin "D. Felipe II Ordenanza 52 de Audiencias de 1563. en Toledo á 25 de Mayo de 1596", permits the Audiencias to grant licence for repartimientos when towns or persons in their name ask for it, "con limitacion de la cantidad", and solely for lawsuits pending before them and for public works "y no para otra cosa", and this on condition that the towns lack sufficient propios. Ley ij of título XVI adds, "El mismo en el Escorial á 25 de Febrero de 1567", that a public work or building in a city where one of the Audiencias resides is to be undertaken with the president's agreement.
Where a work was permanent the funding was an earmarked excise, and the code prints the earmark. Ley viij of título XV — margin "D. Felipe III allí á 6 de Junio de 1612. En Aranjuez á 23 de Abril de 1616. y en Madrid á 5 de Febrero de 1618" — orders that on every quartillo of wine sold in the city of Mexico a quartillo of silver be collected as sisa "para el desagüe" until the work is finished and brought to perfection, and that it not be charged on the wine "que Nos damos de limosna á los Religiosos de San Francisco". Ley viiij, "D. Felipe IIII en Aranjuez á 19 de Abril de 1633", puts the averías and sisas imposed in the city of Panamá "para la puente, y aderezos del camino á Portobelo, y Casa de Cruces" under the royal officials of Tierra Firme, to be kept on a separate account.
The public-cause argument was used for a pest campaign as well as for roads. Ley v of título XV, "D. Felipe III en Élvas á 12 de Mayo de 1619", recites that the plague of locusts is very frequent in some provinces of the Indies and destroys fields and sown ground, that the seed it leaves under the earth must be sought out, and orders a repartimiento among the interested ecclesiastics and seculars and the royal treasury "pues el beneficio es comun, y la causa pública", so that those who turn out for the remedy are paid; the governors are charged to have the ground dug or ploughed or pigs turned onto it to uncover and destroy the seed before the damage grows.
Maintenance was a standing duty of the ordinary magistrate with an accountability channel attached. In the título on governors, corregidores and alcaldes mayores in libro V, read at printed page 121, the code requires them to provide that the officials use their offices well and without fraud, that the land be well supplied with meats, fish and other provisions at reasonable prices, and that "las cercas, muros, cavas, calles, carreras, puentes, alcantarillas, calzadas, fuentes, y carnicerías estén limpias y reparadas, y todos los demas edificios, y obras públicas, sin daño de los Indios, de que darán cuenta á la Audiencia de el distrito". The qualifier and the reporting duty are both in the text.
The same opening of the same título that funds a bridge funds a police force out of the slave trade, and the object states it here rather than leaving it out. Ley x of título XV, "El mismo en Madrid á 30 de Marzo de 1635", orders that the proceeds of the duty of two pesos ensayados "que se cobran de cada Negro, que entra en Lima para la paga de los salarios de Alcaldes de la Hermandad, Sargento, Quadrillero, y Escribano" enter the hands of the royal officials, be issued from there against the consignments charged on it, and that any surplus belong to the royal treasury. A per-head levy on enslaved Africans disembarked at Lima is, in this código, an ordinary head of municipal revenue.
The coercion sits on the same page as the maintenance duty. Printed page 121 carries, as ley xxiij, the instruction that it is fitting that the corregidores and justices see that the Indians be neither idlers nor vagabonds, that they work on their haciendas, tillage and trades on working days and be induced to earn wages with one another, following in all else "la forma y disposicion de España", and that on feast days they be made to attend mass. Two laws further on, leyes xxvj and xxvij forbid corregidores and alcaldes mayores to take food, mounts, trades or personal services from vecinos or Indians without paying at once, under penalty of loss of office and a hundred thousand maravedís, and forbid the use of Indians incorporated in the royal crown. Both halves are law.
One limit governs everything above and is not a formality. What has been read is a printed code of 1791 compiling orders of 1560 to 1635: it establishes what was commanded, by which monarch, at which place and on which date, and its repetitions are evidence that the commands were being evaded. It does not show that a single bridge was built, that any Indian pueblo was in fact charged no more than a sixth, or that the wine sisa reached the drainage works rather than something else. The compliance question needs fiscal records, which are not in this source.