New Laws of 1542: Las Casas and Indigenous Rights in the Indies

The New Laws of 1542 (Leyes Nuevas) were a set of royal ordinances issued by Emperor Charles V, as King of Spain, to reform the government of Spain’s American empire and protect its Indigenous peoples. Signed in Barcelona on 20 November 1542, they banned the enslavement of Indigenous people and aimed to phase out the encomienda, the labour-grant system on which Spanish colonists depended. Inspired largely by the campaign of the friar Bartolomé de las Casas, they triggered fierce resistance and an armed revolt in Peru.

Background: conquest and the encomienda

Within fifty years of Columbus’s first voyage, Spain had conquered the Caribbean, Mexico and Peru. Spanish settlers were rewarded with encomiendas: grants of the tribute and labour of Indigenous communities, nominally in exchange for protection and Christian instruction. The system, examined in our article on the encomienda in the Spanish Americas, often amounted to forced labour.

Catastrophic population decline, caused above all by epidemics but worsened by war, overwork and dislocation, alarmed some observers. As early as 1511 the Dominican Antonio de Montesinos preached in Hispaniola against the colonists’ cruelty. The Laws of Burgos of 1512–1513 tried to regulate the encomienda but were poorly enforced. In 1537 Pope Paul III’s bull Sublimis Deus declared that the peoples of the Americas were rational beings who could not be deprived of liberty or property.

The campaign of Las Casas

Bartolomé de las Casas (c. 1484–1566) had himself held an encomienda in Cuba before renouncing it in 1514 and becoming the most prominent critic of colonial abuses. He later joined the Dominican order. In 1540 he returned to Spain and spent two years lobbying at court.

In 1542 he presented to the emperor an account of atrocities committed in the Indies, later published in Seville in 1552 as the Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies). Charles V, who had been receiving complaints from many quarters, also wished to curb the power of the conquistadors, whose civil wars in Peru, including the assassination of Francisco Pizarro in 1541, showed how unruly they had become. A council of jurists and theologians met in 1542 to recommend reforms, which became the New Laws.

What the New Laws said

The ordinances, signed in Barcelona on 20 November 1542 and supplemented at Valladolid on 4 June 1543, covered both government and the treatment of Indigenous people. Their main provisions included:

• Indigenous people were free vassals of the Crown and could not be enslaved for any reason, including war; those held illegally were to be freed.
• No new encomiendas were to be granted, and existing ones would revert to the Crown on the death of the holder rather than passing to heirs.
• Royal officials, clergy, religious houses and hospitals were to give up their encomiendas, and anyone who had mistreated Indigenous people would lose theirs.
• Forced labour such as carrying heavy loads and dangerous pearl diving was to be restricted.
• New institutions were created, including a viceroyalty of Peru with its seat in Lima and new high courts (audiencias) in Lima and Central America.

Resistance and revolt

The laws caused uproar among settlers, who argued that the colonies would collapse without encomienda labour. In New Spain (Mexico), Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza and the royal inspector Francisco Tello de Sandoval suspended enforcement of the most disputed clauses to avoid rebellion.

In Peru the response was violent. The first viceroy, Blasco Núñez Vela, arrived in 1544 determined to enforce the laws to the letter. Colonists rallied behind Gonzalo Pizarro, brother of the murdered conqueror, and the judges of the new audiencia arrested and deported the viceroy. Núñez Vela escaped, raised an army, and was defeated and killed by Gonzalo’s forces at the Battle of Añaquito, near Quito, on 18 January 1546. For a time Gonzalo Pizarro ruled Peru, and some of his supporters urged him to declare himself king.

Retreat and restoration of royal authority

Charles V gave way on the central point. On 20 October 1545, at Mechelen (Malines) in the Low Countries, he revoked the clause that ended inheritance of encomiendas. He then sent the cleric Pedro de la Gasca to Peru with wide powers and an offer of pardon. Gasca won over many rebels, and on 9 April 1548 Gonzalo Pizarro’s army melted away at the Battle of Jaquijahuana, near Cusco. Gonzalo was executed the next day.

Key people

• Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain, who issued the laws.
• Bartolomé de las Casas, Dominican friar and leading advocate of reform.
• Blasco Núñez Vela, first viceroy of Peru, killed in 1546.
• Gonzalo Pizarro, leader of the colonists’ revolt in Peru.
• Pedro de la Gasca, royal envoy who ended the revolt.

Consequences and legacy

The New Laws did not end the exploitation of Indigenous peoples, and encomiendas survived in many regions for generations, alongside new forms of forced labour such as the repartimiento and, in the Andes, the mita. But the outright ban on Indigenous slavery was maintained in principle, and over time encomiendas became less important as the Crown limited the services they could demand and expanded its own bureaucracy.

The laws also marked a decisive step in replacing conquistadors with royal officials. The debate they sharpened continued in the famous Valladolid debate of 1550–1551 between Las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda over the justice of the conquest itself. Historians such as Lewis Hanke have seen these controversies as an unusual attempt by an imperial power to examine the morality of its own conquests, while others stress how limited the practical results were.

Myths and facts

• Myth: Las Casas’s figures for the dead of the conquest are precise statistics. Fact: His Short Account was a work of advocacy, and its totals of many millions of victims were not based on counts. Modern historians agree that the Indigenous population collapsed dramatically, mainly through disease, but estimate the numbers by other methods.
• Myth: Las Casas never accepted any form of slavery. Fact: Around 1516–1518 he suggested that settlers be allowed to bring enslaved Africans to relieve Indigenous workers. He later regretted this deeply and condemned African slavery as equally unjust in his History of the Indies.
• Myth: The Short Account was simply Spanish self-criticism. Fact: It was soon translated into Dutch, French, English and other languages and used by Spain’s Protestant rivals as propaganda, contributing to what later historians called the Black Legend of Spanish cruelty.

Timeline

• 1511: Antonio de Montesinos preaches against abuses in Hispaniola.
• 1512–1513: The Laws of Burgos regulate the encomienda.
• 1537: Pope Paul III issues Sublimis Deus.
• 1542, 20 November: Charles V signs the New Laws in Barcelona.
• 1543, 4 June: Supplementary ordinances are issued at Valladolid.
• 1544: Viceroy Núñez Vela arrives in Peru; Gonzalo Pizarro rebels.
• 1545, 20 October: The inheritance clause is revoked at Mechelen.
• 1546, 18 January: Núñez Vela is killed at Añaquito.
• 1548, 9 April: Gonzalo Pizarro is defeated at Jaquijahuana and executed the next day.

Why it matters

The New Laws were the most ambitious attempt by the Spanish Crown to protect Indigenous peoples during the conquest era. Their partial failure showed the limits of royal power over distant colonists, but their principles, especially the ban on Indigenous slavery, shaped Spanish colonial law and the long debate over human rights in the Americas.