The Obraje in the Late Méxican Colony

Abstract

One of the most important native industries in New Spain, allowed to flourish because of its rational necessity, and given exemptions from restrictive mercantile prohibitions was theobraje, or colonial textile factory. This institution had its origins in the tribute and labor policies of the quasi-feudal economic system imposed by the Spaniard in the decades after the conquests in the Caribbean and on the American mainland. For almost three hundred years clerics and humanitarians protested, viceroys raged, monarchs threatened, a plethora of regulations was issued, inspections were conducted, trials held, fines levied, obrajes were closed, and yet the obraje as an institution survived, and the inhuman conditions of the worker remained unchanged. While the Mexican encomienda system was being shorn of its abuses and gradually deemphasized by the crown, and while the repartimiento system of forced labor for wages was subordinated to a policy of conservation of human resources in the face of a shortage of Indian labor, the Mexican colony was becoming each decade more dependent on the locally-produced textiles, especially the commercial, non-luxury fabrics in everyday use. These were produced in the obrajes.