96 CHAPTER 5 STATE, CHURCH, AND SOCIETY
form it was to retain, with slight variations, until
late in the eighteenth century.
The Council of the Indies, originally a stand-
ing committee of the all-powerful Council of Castile
but chartered in 1524 as a separate agency, stood
at the head of the Spanish imperial administration
almost to the end of the colonial period. Although
great nobles and court favorites were appointed to
the council, especially in the seventeenth century,
its membership consisted predominantly of law-
yers. Under the king, whose active participation in
its work varied from monarch to monarch, it was
the supreme legislative, judicial, and executive in-
stitution of government. One of its most important
functions was the nomination to the king of all high
colonial offi cials. It also framed a vast body of leg-
islation for the Indies—the famous Laws of the In-
dies (1681)—which combined decrees of the most
important kind with others of a very trivial char-
acter. Although the council was frequently staffed
by conscientious and highly capable offi cials in the
early Hapsburg period, the quality of its personnel
tended to decline under the inept princes of the sev-
enteenth century. Nonetheless, historians owe the
council a particular debt for its initiative in seeking
to obtain detailed information on the history, ge-
ography, resources, and population of all the colo-
nies. The relaciones (reports) that incorporated this
information represent a rich mine of materials for
students of colonial Spanish America.
THE ROYAL AGENTS
The principal royal agents in the colonies were the
viceroys, the captains general, and the audiencias.
The viceroys and captains general had essentially
the same functions, differing only in the greater im-
portance and extent of the territory assigned to the
jurisdiction of the former. Each was the supreme
civil and military offi cer in his realm, having in
his charge such vital matters as the maintenance
and increase of the royal revenues, defense, indig-
enous welfare, and a multitude of other responsi-
bilities. At the end of the Hapsburg era, in 1700,
there were two great American viceroyalties. The
viceroyalty of New Spain, with its capital at Mexico
City, included all the Spanish possessions north of
the Isthmus of Panama; that of Peru, with its capi-
tal at Lima, embraced all of Spanish South America
except for the coast of Venezuela. Captains general,
theoretically subordinate to the viceroys but in
practice virtually independent of them, governed
large subdivisions of these vast territories. Other
subdivisions, called presidencias, were governed by
audiencias. Their judge-presidents acted as gover-
nors, but military authority was usually reserved
to the viceroy. Overlapping and shifting of jurisdic-
tion was common throughout the colonial period
and formed the subject of frequent disputes among
royal offi cials.
A colonial viceroy, regarded as the very im-
age of his royal master, enjoyed an immense del-
egated authority, which was augmented by the
distance that separated him from Spain and by
the frequently spineless or venal nature of lesser
offi cials. He might be a lawyer or even a priest by
background but was most commonly a representa-
tive of one of the great noble and wealthy houses
of Spain. A court modeled on that of Castile, a nu-
merous retinue, and the constant display of pomp
and circumstance bore witness to his exalted
status. In theory, his freedom of action was limited
by the laws and instructions issued by the Coun-
cil of the Indies, but a sensible recognition of the
need to adapt the laws to existing circumstances
gave him a vast discretionary power. The viceroy
employed the formula obedezco pero no cumplo—“I
obey but do not carry out”—to set aside unrealistic
or unenforceable legislation.
The sixteenth century saw some able and
even distinguished viceroys in the New World.
The viceroy Francisco de Toledo (1569–1581),
the “supreme organizer of Peru,” was certainly an
energetic, hardworking administrator who con-
solidated Spanish rule and imposed royal authority
in Peru. His resettlement program and his institu-
tion of mita, the system of forced labor in the mines,
however, profoundly disrupted indigenous social
organization and took a heavy toll of lives. In New
Spain, such capable offi cials as Antonio de Mendoza
(1530–1550) and his successor, Luis de Velasco
(1550–1564), wrestled with the problems left by
the Conquest. They strove to curb the power of the
conquistadors and to promote economic advance;