Service in coca and indigo (Recopilación, libro VI, título 14)
Three laws on the two American crops the crown judged most dangerous to the people who grew them. Coca is not banned — the king refuses to take from the Indians "este género de alivio para el trabajo, aunque solo consista en la imaginacion" — but is put under an ordinance of dry clothing, rations, salaried surgeons, wages paid to the worker and not the cacique, and no loads carried on backs to Potosí. Indigo work is forbidden outright, even to volunteers.
Why this wins its question: The usual English sentence about coca under Spanish rule is that the crown taxed it and the church denounced it. The actual título says something stranger and more specific, and this object quotes it from a digitised printing: the king declines to prohibit coca because he will not take from the Indians a relief from labour "aunque solo consista en la imaginacion", while stating in the same law that infinite numbers die producing it, and while the ordinance's opening sentence admits the crop matters because of the silver it draws out of the mines. Alongside it sits the 1563 indigo ban that overrides the worker's own consent — and names, in its own words, the enslaved Africans the planters were meant to buy instead — and, on the next folio, the título that authorises compulsory allocation to the mines.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
Título XIV of libro VI, "DEL SERVICIO EN COCA, Y AÑIR", runs from folio 305 to folio 308 of the second tome of the 1791 printing and contains three laws. Ley j, margined "D. Felipe II en Madrid á 18 de Octubre de 1569", states the reason for the whole título: in the working of coca "perecen infinidad de Indios, por ser cálida, y enferma la parte donde se cria, é ir á ella de tierra fria, de que mueren muchos, y otros salen tan enfermos, y débiles, que no se pueden reparar".
The same law records a petition to prohibit coca outright and the crown's refusal, in a sentence that is unusual in this compilation for arguing from the users' point of view: "aunque nos fué suplicado, que la mandásemos prohibir, porque deseamos no quitar á los Indios este género de alivio para el trabajo, aunque solo consista en la imaginacion". What is ordered instead is that viceroys see the workers well treated so that no harm follow to their health. The suspicion of the leaf is not dropped: the same law calls the strength it gives an "ilusion de el Demonio" according to the experienced, ties its use to "idolatrias, ceremonias, y hechicerías", and charges prelates, curas and doctrineros to watch and report.
Ley ij, the Ordenanza de la Coca of 11 June 1573, opens by naming the interest at stake before it names the abuses: the coca trade "es uno de los mayores, y que mas las enriquecen, por la mucha plata, que por su causa se saca de las minas". The protective ordinance is written about a commodity the crown values because it feeds the silver mountain, and says so in its first sentence.
The ordinance caps production and reserves the exceptions. No person may hold a chacra yielding more than five hundred cestos of coca per mita, nor raise more than the ground can replace, on pain of five hundred pesos — half to the royal chamber, and of the remainder a share to the hospital of the Indians who work the coca, the rest to the sentencing judge and the denouncer. Whoever holds less may not plant more without the viceroy's licence, and the viceroy may not licence beyond the five hundred. Exempt are the Indians' own plots set aside to pay their assessment and tribute, the coca of yanaconas and corpas, and coca paid as wages, "que siempre estará á su eleccion recibirla en especie, ó dinero".
The clauses that follow read as a list of what was killing people. Owners must build large galpones with raised barbacoas where the hired workers sleep with their wives and children; because the coca country is wet and the workers sicken from not changing out of soaked clothes, no Indian may enter the work without carrying a second set to change into, at twenty cestos of coca for each man found without; owners must bind themselves to a monthly food ration in the quantity the justice judges necessary, "y el contrato, que de otra manera se hiciere, sea nulo"; they must keep salaried physicians, surgeons and apothecaries attending the hospital, the cost prorated among them; the justice sets the wage and it is paid "á los mismos Indios, y no á sus Caciques"; the sick are not obliged to furnish substitutes; nobody may be pressed to the work against his will by owner or cacique; no one may be held beyond the agreed term even if paid, nor hired for longer than one mita; on coca days the workers may not be sent for fodder, water or firewood; and coca may not be carried up to the sierra for Potosí on Indians' backs, on pain of five hundred pesos and loss of the load, though they may help load the pack trains.
Ley iij, "Que los Indios no trabajen en el beneficio del Añir, aunque sean voluntarios", margined to 1563, is the sharpest text in the título and carries its own cost in the same sentence. The Spaniards of the province of Guatemala had taken up the indigo trade, and — the law says — "por ser género de mucho aprovechamiento, y no haber Negros, han introducido Indios para la beneficiar, y coger". The Audiencia, understanding it was "trabajo dañosísimo para ellos, y en que se acabarian en pocos años", provided that they not work it even of their own will, and the crown confirms and extends the ban to Yucatán: "porque deseamos el bien, y conservacion de los Indios, mas que el aprovechamiento, que puede resultar de su trabajo, mayormente donde interviene manifiesto peligro, y riesgo de sus vidas". A prohibition that overrides consent is here, and so is the alternative labour the planters were expected to buy instead.
The next título shows the limit of the principle. "TÍTULO QUINCE. DEL SERVICIO EN MINAS" opens at folio 308 with ley j (Felipe II, Madrid, 10 January 1589, cap. 46), which declares that Indians may be ordered to the mines — "como no sea mudando temple, de que resulte daño á su salud" — with doctrine and a justice to protect them, provisions, good payment of wages, a hospital where the sick are cured and cared for, moderated work and an inspector, the salaries of doctrine and justice charged to the miners "pues resulta en su beneficio el repartimiento de Indios". The same compilation that forbids indigo work to volunteers authorises compulsory allocation to mine work under conditions.
What the título cannot show. It is law as compiled in 1680 and reprinted in 1791: it establishes what was ordered and when, not what happened in the montaña or the indigo works. Its very detail is evidence of the practices it names — compilers repeat what is not being obeyed — and the 1563 provision against indigo labour was still being printed as law over a century later. Nothing here establishes how many worked the coca harvest, what wages were actually paid, whether the five-hundred-cesto cap held, whether the duplicate clothing was ever carried, or whether Indians stopped entering the indigo vats.