Real Ordenanza de Intendentes de Nueva España (Madrid, 1786)
The administrative rewrite of New Spain: twelve intendancies, the old corregimientos and alcaldías mayores extinguished, an irremissible penalty on any official who forced goods or cattle on Indians, Spaniards, mestizos or any other caste, and the annual election of Indian pueblo officers kept where the custom existed. The same code paid the new district judges not a salary but a percentage of the tribute they collected — the reform and the hole in it printed in one volume.
Why this wins its question: English-language accounts of the intendancy reform work from summaries: the Bourbon reforms "centralised administration" and "abolished the repartimiento", with no text quoted and the qualifications lost. This object is built from the 1786 Madrid imprint itself, read page by page, and it reproduces what the articles actually say — the twelve intendancies and the express exclusion of the Californias in article I, the extinction of the corregimientos in article 11, the exact wording and the three-way division of the fine in the repartimiento prohibition of article 12, the preservation of annual pueblo elections in article 13 tied in the same sentence to tribute collection, and the six per cent commission of article 132 that left the new district judges paid by the tribute they gathered. It also puts the vagrancy articles 59 and 60 beside the agricultural promotion of articles 61 to 64 rather than quoting only the second half. Anyone asking whether Spain legislated against forced sales in eighteenth-century Mexico can read the penalty clause here instead of a paraphrase, and can see in the same code the incentive that made the ban hard to keep.
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 document is a printed royal code: "Real Ordenanza para el establecimiento é instruccion de Intendentes de exército y provincia en el reino de la Nueva-España", issued "de órden de Su Magestad" and printed at Madrid in 1786. It opens over the heading EL REY with a statement of motive — the king writes that moved by the paternal love he owes all his vassals, "aun los mas distantes", and by the wish to uniform the government of the great empires God has entrusted to him and to put in good order, felicity and defence his extended dominions "de las dos Américas", he has resolved to establish intendants of army and province in New Spain, endowed with authority and competent salaries, to govern those peoples and inhabitants in peace and justice.
Article I divides the territory: the king orders that "por ahora" the district of that empire be divided into twelve intendancies, not including the Californias, and that thereafter the territory or demarcation of each intendancy be understood as a single province bearing the name of the city that is to be its capital and the seat of the intendant. The same opening pages bind the new officers to the existing law — the "sabias Leyes de Indias" and the two royal ordinances of 4 July 1718 and 13 October 1749 are to be observed exactly, with the amplifications and restrictions the articles of this ordinance explain.
Article 11 extinguishes the old district magistracies: the royal jurisdiction of the "Corregimientos y Alcaldías Mayores extinguidos" passes to the respective intendants, without prejudice to the jurisdiction that in towns of Spaniards belongs to their alcaldes ordinarios. Article 12 puts subdelegate judges of the four causas — justice, police, treasury and war — in the head towns, and the printed index summarises that article by its sanction: the "penas con que se prohiben los repartimientos".
The prohibition itself is unambiguous and is aimed at the officials, not at the victims. Neither the said subdelegates, nor the alcaldes ordinarios, nor the governors who remain, "ni otra persona alguna sin excepcion", may distribute to Indians, Spaniards, mestizos and the other castes any goods, produce or livestock, under the irremissible penalty of losing their value "en beneficio de los Naturales perjudicados" and of paying as much again, divided in three parts between the royal chamber, the judge and the denouncer, with a heavier consequence on a second offence. The same article requires that the subdelegate be appointed by formal title and "sin derechos" — no fee charged for the appointment.
Article 13 preserves indigenous municipal election in the same breath as it places Spanish judges over the head towns of "meros Indios". It is the king's will, "por hacerles bien y merced", to conserve to them the right and ancient custom, where it existed, of electing each year among themselves the gobernadores or alcaldes and the other offices of república that the laws and ordinances permit, for their purely economic government. The article states the other half of the arrangement in the same sentence: those elected officers are also to collect from the natives the royal tribute they pay in recognition of vassalage and of "la suprema proteccion que les está concedida".
Community property is treated as a fund to be accounted for rather than as a fee to be farmed. The printed index shows articles 44 and 45: the subdelegate judges in the pueblos de indios are given rules for the direction, management, accounting and custody of the products of the "Bienes de Comunidades", and the accounts of propios y arbitrios and of the bienes de comunidad de indios are to be examined and closed by named authorities in a prescribed way, alongside the annual account the mayordomo or depositario must form and present.
Under the causa de policía the ordinance reads as a development programme, and its index lists the objects article by article: encouragement of the cochineal crop and of the sowing, cultivation and working of hemp and flax, with the means intendants are to use to excite that application "en todas las castas de la Plebe" and the form in which crown or private land may be distributed to them for those ends (article 61); cotton and wild silk, and freedom from duties for coarse and fine wool, hemp and flax carried to Spain (article 62); agriculture, grain sowing, stock breeding and slaughter, conservation of woods and forests, and protection of industry, mining and commerce (article 63); and public roads, bridges and causeways, how they are to be kept repaired and what must precede the building of new ones (article 64).
The cost side of the same section is printed on the same index page. The two articles immediately before the development programme are coercive: article 59 instructs intendants how to correct and punish the "Ociosos y Malentretenidos", and article 60 assigns "Vagamundos y Mendigos de profesion" to destinations according to their classes and circumstances. A code that promotes cochineal and flax among the plebe also gives its officers a vagrancy power over the same people.
The structural weakness of the reform is legible in its own text. The ordinance forbids the subdelegates to trade with the people they govern, but article 132 gives them no salary for the work: for the collection, carriage and delivery of tribute the alcaldes ordinarios and subdelegates are allowed a premium of six per cent of the total paid into the treasury, of which one per cent must be left to the Indian governors or alcaldes who are the first collectors, "y los cinco por ciento restantes quedarán á su beneficio por la responsabilidad y trabajo en el todo de esta cobranza". The officer whose income depended on a commission over tribute is the same officer forbidden to make his living by forced sales — a tension the document creates and does not resolve.