Jurisdiction, Justice, and the Evolution of Mesoamerican Forestry Practice in Early New Spain

Studies of New Spain’s forest history have tended to focus on the detrimental impacts at the local or regional level of certain economic enterprises and “portmanteau biota.” But since the hewers of wood in the kingdom were almost entirely indigenous, it remains to be explained how the imposition of Spanish rule impacted indigenous relations with forests more generally. This paper argues that changes in Mesoamerican forestry practices emerged from the larger jurisdictional struggles of the sixteenth century between, and often among, royal officials, encomenderos, indigenous caciques, and Hispanic and indigenous town councils, a process that culminated with the curtailment of indigenous jurisdiction and a strengthening of paternalistic bonds between the crown and the Republic of Indians vis-à-vis their shared opposition to the ambitions of the encomendero class. Weakened jurisdiction and strengthened protectionism thus drew indigenous litigants to seek remediation in matters of forest conflict before royal magistrates and viceroys who, in accordance with the casuistic nature of Habsburg law, issued rulings and injunctions derived not from positive metropolitan law but deference to local custom and the spirit of royal justice. Litigation and petition thus became the primary means through which forestry rights were negotiated and legitimated during the sixteenth century, often in transformed ways. Using a variety of archival records, this paper describes the evolution of this process and the active role played by indigenous litigants in (re)constructing forestry practices under Spanish rule.