Pastos, montes y aguas comunes: the common-use rule of the Laws of the Indies
One título of the Recopilación made the pastures, woods and waters of the Indies common by law, capped how much range one stockman could hold, turned harvested fields back into common pasture, freed the wild fruit woods to all from 1510, kept livestock out of Indian tilled land, and let Indians cut timber provided the woods could still grow. It also ordered that the order of water distribution the Indians had used be kept among the Spaniards, with the same natives taking part in it.
Why this wins its question: "The Laws of the Indies" in English almost always means the 1573 grid-plan ordinances quoted by urbanists, and colonial land law is told as the story of the merced and the hacienda. The commons título is the part that touched every stockman, every irrigator and every Indian town, and it is not quoted anywhere a search returns. This object prints it from the fourth impression: the pastures, woods and waters declared common with the engrossers named as the reason, the cap of three stock sites per person, the harvested field reverting to common pasture, wild fruit woods free to all since 1510, timber free to Indians on condition the woods can still grow, livestock ordered out of Indian tilled land in 1607, and the law of 1536 that took the Indians' own order of water distribution and made it the rule for the Spaniards with the same natives taking part in it — beside the royal reservations of mahogany and the watershed of Havana that show whose interest the same título also served.
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 rule has a title of its own in the code and it is not the title anyone quotes. Libro IIII, título XVII of the Recopilación de leyes de los reynos de las Indias is headed "DE LOS CAMINOS PÚBLICOS, POSADAS, VENTAS, mesones, términos, pastos, montes, aguas, arboledas, y plantío de viñas" — public roads and inns and the commons in one título. Its second law, given by Philip II at Aranjuez on 23 November 1568, orders that no one be impeded in the liberty of travelling by whatever road he chooses, against innkeepers who turned travellers back to their own ventas; its fifth law states the commons.
That fifth law is an anti-engrossing law, and it says what it is aimed at. Under the enacting line of the Emperor Charles and Cardinal Tavera as governor at Talavera on 15 April and at Fuensalida on 18 October 1541, the Empress Governor at Valladolid on 8 December 1550, and Charles II with the Queen Governor, it recites: "NOS hemos ordenado, que los pastos, montes, y aguas sean comunes en las Indias, y algunas personas sin título nuestro tienen ocupada muy grande parte de término, y tierras en que no consiente que ninguno ponga corral, ni buhío, ni traiga allí su ganado". It then commands "que el uso de todos los pastos, montes, y aguas de las Provincias de las Indias, sea comun á todos los vecinos de ellas, que ahora son, y despues fueren", so that they may enjoy them freely and make their huts beside any dwelling and bring their livestock there together or apart as they wish, "sin embargo de qualesquier ordenanzas" to the contrary, which the law revokes and declares null.
The same law puts a number on how much range one man may hold, which is the part that shows it was written against accumulation. Concejos, justices and regidores are to keep and enforce it, and whoever obstructs it incurs a penalty of five thousand pesos de oro levied on his person and goods; within ten leagues of Santo Domingo on the Isla Española the rule holds as stated, and beyond those ten leagues each stock ranch is allowed one league of término around it, within which no other may make a livestock site, corral or house — "con que el pasto de todo ello sea asímismo comun". Each holding is to have a stone house and no fewer than two thousand head; above six thousand head, two sites; above ten thousand, three; "y ninguna persona pueda tener mas de hasta tres asientos".
Private title did not end the commons; it was suspended by the crop and resumed after harvest. Ley vj, given by Charles and the Empress Governor at Valladolid on 15 December 1536 and matching ordinance 34 of the ordinances of población, provides that the lands and inheritances granted or sold by the crown in the Indies, "alzados los frutos que se sembraren, queden para pasto comun, excepto las dehesas boyales y Concejiles". Ley vij, of 1533, goes further and names the beneficiaries: the woods, pastures and waters of places and woodlands contained in grants of señorío in the Indies "deben ser comunes á los Españoles é Indios", and the viceroys and Audiencias are commanded to see it kept.
The oldest law in the título is also the most open-handed, and it is older than the conquest of Mexico. Ley viij carries the enacting line "Doña Juana en Monzón á 15 de Junio de 1510" and reads: "NUestra voluntad es de hacer, é por la presente hacemos los montes de fruta silvestre comunes, y que cada uno la pueda coger, y llevar las plantas para poner en sus heredades y estancias, y aprovecharse de ellos como de cosa comun". Ley viiij, of 20 March 1532, leaves the general administration of the woods, waters and public houses to the viceroys and Audiencias, who are to provide what suits the settlement and permanence of the land and send an account of it.
The commons had a boundary drawn around indigenous cultivation, and it had to be drawn late. Ley x, given by Philip III at Madrid on 31 December 1607, is headed "Que en las tierras que los Indios labraren no se metan ganados", and orders that the justices not consent that livestock be put into the lands of labour of the Indians, that they have removed any that are there, "imponiendo, y executando graves penas contra los que contravinieren". That a law of 1607 was needed to say it is evidence that the animals were in the fields.
The water law of the título adopts an indigenous institution as the general rule for everyone, in as many words. Ley xj, given by the Emperor Charles and the Empress Governor at Valladolid on 20 November 1536, provides: "ORdenamos que la misma órden que los Indios tuviéron en la division y repartimiento de aguas, se guarde y practique entre los Españoles en quien estuvieren repartidas y señaladas las tierras, y para esto intervengan los mismos naturales, que ántes lo tenian á su cargo, con cuyo parecer sean regadas, y se dé á cada uno el agua, que debe tener, sucesivamente de uno en otro". The sanction is loss of the water: whoever wishes to take precedence and seizes and occupies it "por su propia autoridad" is to have it taken from him until all those below him have irrigated the lands assigned to them.
The right to take wood is stated as a liberty of the Indians and carries a conservation proviso in the same sentence. Ley xiiij, given by Philip II at Valladolid on 7 October 1559, reads: "ES nuestra voluntad que los Indios puedan libremente cortar madera de los montes para su aprovechamiento. Y mandamos que no se les ponga impedimento, con que no los talen de forma que no puedan crecer, y aumentarse".
The crown reserved out of the commons what it wanted for itself, and the reservations are in the same títulos as the liberties. Ley xij, of 29 May 1559, orders that fellings for timberwork be made at the seasons proper to its durability and firmness, at Guayaquil as elsewhere. Ley xiij, of 9 June 1622 and 24 May 1623, considering that mahogany, cedar and oak "son de la mayor importancia para los Navíos que se fabrican en la Isla de la Habana", forbids the governors and captains general to allow any of them to be cut except for royal service or shipbuilding. Ley xv, of 6 August 1624, prohibits any person of whatever quality from cutting timber of any kind within two leagues above the dam of the Chorrera river that supplies Havana, on pain of forfeiting the wood and a hundred ducados, and from floating timber past the dam and ditch.
The commons were also designed into new towns from the start, half a century before the Recopilación gathered these laws. The ordinances of descubrimiento, nueva población y pacificación of 1573 provide that however much a town grows there always remain "bastante espacio adonde la gente se pueda salir a recrear y salir los ganados sin que hagan daño"; that bordering on the ejidos there be marked out "dehessas para los buyes de lauor y para los cauallos y para los ganados de la carnicería y para el numero ordinario de ganados que los pobladores por ordenança han de tener", plus a good quantity more to be taken for the propios of the concejo; and that the remainder be marked out as arable divided into suertes, as many as there are solares in the town, with irrigated land, where there is any, likewise divided into lots and shared out in the same proportion among the first settlers, the rest remaining to the crown to grant to those who should come to settle later.
What this body of law establishes and what it does not are different things, and the distinction matters more here than usual. These are orders: nothing read for this object shows how much of the commons was kept, how often the five thousand pesos were collected, whether the three-asiento cap was observed anywhere, or whether an Indian community ever recovered water under ley xj. The beneficiaries are named differently from law to law — ley v makes the use common "á todos los vecinos", the settled householders of a town, while ley vij says the commons of lands of señorío are common "á los Españoles é Indios" — and this object does not resolve which reading governed a given case. The same crown that made the pastures common granted the lands, and the código that ordered livestock out of Indian fields is the código under which those grants were made. The 1791 fourth impression read here also prints the laws as they stood after more than a century of re-enactment, not as they were first issued.