Colonial inspectors colluded with mill owners to maintain Indian enslavement

Evidence

Antonio Vazquez de Espinosa recounts some of the measures used by Spanish colonists to delay the loss of Indian labor: “[A]lthough the Royal Council of the Indies … has tried to remedy this evil with warrants and the amelioration of this great hardship and enslavement of the Indians, and the Viceroy of New Spain appoints mill inspectors … since most of those who set out on such commissions, aim rather at their own enrichment… and since the mill owners pay them well, they leave the wretched Indians in the same slavery… . [T]he mill owners keep places provided in the mills in which they hide the wretched Indians against their will, so that they do not see or find them, and the poor fellows cannot complain about their wrongs.” — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1910