Aztec by Gary Jennings

Author:Gary Jennings
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-03-26T05:00:00+00:00

I H S

S.C.C.M.

Sanctified, Caesarean, Catholic Majesty, the Emperor Don Carlos, Our Lord King:

Royal and Redoubtable Majesty, our King Paramount: from this City of Mexíco, capital of New Spain, this day of St. Paphnutius, Martyr, in the year of Our Lord one thousand five hundred thirty, greeting.

It is typically thoughtful of Our Condolent Sovereign that you commiserate with Your Majesty's Protector of the Indians, and that you ask for more details of the problems and obstacles we daily confront in that office.

Heretofore, Sire, it was the practice of the Spaniards who were granted landholdings in these provinces to appropriate also the many Indians already living thereon, and to brand their cheeks with the "G" for "guerra," and to claim them as prisoners of war, and cruelly to treat and exploit them as such. That practice has at least been ameliorated to the extent that an Indian can no longer be sentenced to slave labor unless and until he is found guilty of some crime by either the secular or the ecclesiastical authorities.

Also, the law of Mother Spain is now more strictly applied in this New Spain, so that an Indian here, like a Jew there, has the same rights as any Christian Spaniard, and cannot be condemned for a crime without due process of charge, trial, and conviction. But of course the testimony of an Indian, like that of a Jew—even of converts to Christianity—cannot be allowed equal weight against the testimony of a lifelong Christian. Hence, if a Spaniard desires to acquire as a slave some robust red man or personable red woman, all he need do, in effect, is to lodge against that Indian any accusation that he has the wit to invent.

Because we beheld the conviction of many Indians on charges that were moot at best, and because we feared for the souls of our countrymen who were apparently aggrandizing themselves and their estates by sophistical means unbecoming to Christians, we were saddened and we felt moved to action. Wielding the influence of our title as Protector of the Indians, we have succeeded in persuading the judges of the Audiencia that all Indians to be branded henceforth must be registered with our office. Therefore the branding irons are now kept locked in a box which must be opened with two keys, and one of the keys resides in our possession.

Since no convicted Indian can be branded without our cooperation, we have consistently refused to cooperate in those cases that are flagrant abuses of justice, and those Indians have perforce been reprieved. Such exercise of our office as Protector of the Indians has earned us the odium of many of our countrymen, but that we can bear with equanimity, knowing that we act for the ultimate good of all involved. However, the economic welfare of all New Spain might suffer (and the King's Fifth of its riches be diminished) if we too adamantly obstructed the recruitment of the slave labor on which depends the prosperity of these colonies. So

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