Spanish mining law declared natives owners while they were worked to death

Evidence

It is estimated that 185,000 kilograms of gold and 16,000,000 kilograms of silver flowed from Latin America to Spain during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, coming principally from mines in Bolivia and, later, Mexico. A Catholic priest described these mines as veritable mouths of hell, in which slave or indentured laborers—men, women, and children treated “like stray animals”—died from exhaustion, abuse, or poisoning within four years of arriving. In an ironic and cruel twist, however, Spanish law (the Compilations of the Laws of the Indies) prohibited the exploitation of the “Indians” working in the mines and granted them the right to own and profit from them. In other words, while in reality indigenous people were being worked to death, the letter of the law treated them as rightful owners of the mines, explicitly denying the fact of their extermination. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 337

Categorization

• XREF: The gap between legal recognition and material extermination maps directly onto the reader’s ‘claims that is (Small acts of decorum toward corpses matter more than practical logic)’ theme - empty formalism against lived reality. — connects to: Spanish colonial law aimed to keep colonized peoples in perpetual legal minority — David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State, 2245; Enslavement of Indigenous people marked Spanish exploration from 1539 onward — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project: A New American Origin…, 469; Courts legally confirmed unbounded colonial power over native populations — David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State, 70
• DEEPTHINKING: The law that declared the exploited the legal owners while denying their extermination is a paradigm-bearing example of how formal recognition can coexist with, and even serve, material destruction.
• SHARE: Narrow enough that a specific person into colonial legal history or the dialectics of recognition would savor it.

Broader Connections

• Spanish colonial law aimed to keep colonized peoples in perpetual legal minority #corroborates (0.85) — David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State, 2245
• Courts legally confirmed unbounded colonial power over native populations #corroborates (0.85) — David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State, 70
• Enslavement of Indigenous people marked Spanish exploration from 1539 onward #corroborates (0.80) — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 469