Spanish law reduced enslaved Africans to divisible abstract units for taxation

Evidence

The term “pieza de Indias” (or peca de Indias)—piece of the Indies—became a common or standard measure of slaves in the late sixteenth century. Just how early it became standardized is unclear but its general meaning and use has been clarified by Enriqueta Vila and C. R. Boxer. Vila writes: “It can be seen from the account books of the royal treasury officials [of Spain] that at times, when counting small blacks of less than 12 years of age, known as muleques, it was customary to count two of them as one when it came to the payment of duties. Also suckling infants, known as crias or bambos, were considered free of duties and formed one ‘piece’ together with their mothers. All this was applied in an arbitrary manner, with no fixed standards. The oldest royal decree found so far, regulating the payment of duties on these blacks, is a cedula of 12 July 1624, addressed by Felipe IV to all the authorities of the Indies, in which are included some basic rules for general application: a muleque of seven years old should be counted as half a slave, and duty should not be charged on those of less than that age.” — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1847

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The ‘pieza de Indias’ unit powerfully exemplifies how chattel slavery rendered humans interchangeable, divisible commodity units — a concrete anchor for the book’s abstraction-of-labor thesis.
• DEFINE: Defines pieza/muleque/crias/bambos distinctions in Spanish slave statutes.