Escalating legal repression failed to contain slave revolts across New Spain

Evidence

Yet neither the code of 1571–1574 nor the issuance of restrictive legislation in the 1570s and 1580s was of any avail. A viceregal order of 1579 revealed that the contagion of revolt nearly covered the entire settled area of the colony outside of Mexico City, in particular the provinces of Veracruz and Panuco, the area between Oaxaca and Gualtuco on the Pacific coast, and almost the whole of the Gran Chichimeca. Only emergency repressive measures and the continued importation of Africans maintained Mexico’s slave labour supply. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 653

Categorization

• SEED: The phrase ‘the contagion of revolt’ opens an essay on how colonial authorities themselves described slave resistance spreading like a disease — early framing of rebellion as epidemic.