The ordinances of 1525 for the villas of Honduras: a municipal constitution for towns not yet built
Written for two towns just founded in Honduras and declared to bind every town settled afterwards, these ordinances fix what a Spanish municipality in the Indies was to be: two alcaldes, four regidores, a procurador and a notary, renewed each new year; an inspector of weights, measures and food prices; marked refuse grounds; a bar on buying to resell; a third of every fine to the town hospital's poor. They fix the limit too — no council may meet without the governor's lieutenant present.
Why this wins its question: The Spanish American cabildo is usually met either as a symbol of creole self-government or as a rubber stamp, and almost never as a document. Here is one of the earliest: a municipal charter written in 1525 for two towns on the Honduras coast and made to bind every town founded after them, quoted clause by clause — the annual council and its sworn separation of offices, the inspector of weights, measures and retail prices, the staked refuse grounds, the thirty-day bar on buying to resell, the branding registry, and the third of every fine reserved for the poor of a hospital the town did not yet have. The same pages supply both counterweights, so neither reading survives intact: the officers are named by the governor, not elected, and the council may not meet without his lieutenant present; and the preamble that promises the natives will be perpetuated and conserved says in the same sentence that they have been brought to the yoke and servitude they owe. The object also records what its source cannot give — the text breaks off before its date and signature.
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 text is printed under the heading "ORDENANZAS HECHAS EN EL AÑO DE 1525", taken, like the documents before it, from the archive of the Duke of Terranova y Monteleone. Its preamble names the two towns it was written for — la Natividad de Nuestra Señora, founded in the port and bay of Santander, and la villa de Trujillo, founded on the same coast in the port and cape of Honduras — and extends itself at once to "todas las demas que de aquí adelante se poblaren", every town settled thereafter.
The preamble sets down two purposes and one admission. The purposes are that the vecinos should be governed by ordinances and that "los indios naturales de ellas se perpetuen, é conserven, é vengan en conocimiento de nuestra santa fé" — that the natives be perpetuated and conserved. The admission stands in the same sentence: the writer says that he has newly conquered these parts and has brought their natives "al yugo, é servidumbre que deben" to the Emperor. The preservation of the Indians and their reduction to servitude are stated as the same act, by the same hand, in the same paragraph.
The first ordinance is the constitution of the town. Each villa is to have two alcaldes ordinarios, four regidores and a procurador, with a notary of its council, who are to govern and to judge the civil and criminal causes arising in the town and its district, each strictly within his own office — the two alcaldes are not to meddle in the offices of the regidores, nor the regidores in those of the alcaldes. The officers are named for one year at a time, on the first day of January, and the outgoing officers administer the oath, which binds the new ones to look in everything to the service of God and of His Majesty and to "el bien y pro comun de sus pueblos".
The appointment is not an election by the vecinos. The same ordinance provides that no other person may choose or name the officers except the governor himself, or his lieutenant in his absence when he cannot be consulted, or whoever else may be governing these parts for His Majesty. The council is annual, sworn and separated into offices, and it is appointed from above.
Each town is to have a fiel — an inspector — who views and visits all the provisions sold in it and the weights and measures they are sold and weighed by, marking them with the town's own mark, so that nothing may be sold except by the measures he has issued and marked, on pain of forfeiting the goods. The fiel is chosen each year by the alcaldes and regidores and sworn. He keeps at home the standards, from the arroba down to the cuartillo and the half cuartillo, sealed and marked by the town council, and takes half a real de plata for each measure or weight he seals. Nobody bringing provisions to the town may retail them until the fiel, with one of the regidores, has seen them and set their price.
Public cleaning is written into the same code. The fiel is to mark out one, two, three or as many places as the site of the town requires for the refuse and filth taken out of the houses, and to drive stout high stakes into them; it is to be proclaimed that every vecino and resident throw his refuse there and nowhere else, on pain of half a real de plata each time, which the fiel may levy by distraining on his own authority without a judge's warrant, the accused being taken at his oath if he denies it.
Two clauses protect the buyer against the middleman and fund the town's poor. No rescatador may buy any merchandise arriving in the town in order to resell it until thirty days have passed since it arrived, on pain of losing it. And the forfeitures are divided in thirds — one to the fiel, one to the public works, and one "para los pobres del hospital, que hubiere en las dichas villas". A hospital for the poor is presumed in the first constitution of a town that had barely been laid out.
Livestock is brought under the same registry. Cattle brands and marks are to be registered before the notary of the council and may not be changed without the council's licence; a man with no registered brand forfeits the beasts he has left unbranded to the alguacil mayor of the town, and one who holds a brand without registering it, or changes it without licence, pays fifty pesos de oro to the public works.
The limit on the town's autonomy is explicit and severe. The alcaldes and regidores "no puedan hacer, ni hagan cabildo, ni junta sin que esté presente mi lugar teniente", or the person he leaves in his place, on pain of losing their offices and paying two hundred pesos de oro; the notary of the council is forbidden to join them in the lieutenant's absence on pain of losing his office and the same two hundred pesos; and the alguacil mayor is to enter the cabildo with the lieutenant, the alcaldes and the regidores, with a vote equal to any of theirs, speaking last. A Spanish American town council was a real body with real jurisdiction and it could not lawfully convene by itself.
The text as printed is incomplete, and its editor says so. It ends after the clause on the alguacil mayor with the bracketed note "[Parece que falta la conclusion.]" — the conclusion appears to be missing. There is therefore no date beyond the year in the heading, no place and no subscription, and this object asserts none. The 1524 ordinances in the same appendix, by contrast, close with a full date and signature.
Their editor rates them high, and his reasons are worth separating from his verdict. Writing in 1844 he observes that the 1525 ordinances settled the form and powers of the municipal bodies, and that although made for the two Honduras villas, having been declared to rule in all others thereafter founded, they "deben ser consideradas como la base de toda la administracion económica de las poblaciones que se fueron estableciendo". He is a nineteenth-century Mexican conservative arguing that the government which preceded independence deserved study, and by his own statement he does not cite his authorities; the judgement is recorded here as his, with confidence set accordingly.