The New Laws, in Spanish Leyes Nuevas, issued November 20, 1542 by King Charles V of Spain regarding the Spanish colonization of the Americas, are also known as the "New Laws of the Indies for the Good Treatment and Preservation of the Indians", and were created to prevent the exploitation of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas by the Encomenderos (large enterprise landowners) by strictly limiting their power and dominion.
Blasco Núñez Vela, the first Viceroy of Peru tried to enforce The New Laws which caused the encomenderos to revolt in a large scale rebellion in which he was killed by the landowning faction led by Gonzalo Pizarro. Having seen the effects of the New Laws in the Viceroyalty of Peru, Antonio Mendoza, Viceroy of New Spain decided not to enforce the New Laws in his territories, in order to avoid conflict with the encomenderos. In this way due to massive pressure from the landowning classes the New Laws were never implemented in the two largest colonies of the Spanish Empire.
Read more about New Laws: Origins, Contents, Resistance, Legacy
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“The life of a good man will hardly improve us more than the life of a freebooter, for the inevitable laws appear as plainly in the infringement as in the observance, and our lives are sustained by a nearly equal expense of virtue of some kind. The decaying tree, while yet it lives, demands sun, wind, and rain no less than the green one. It secretes sap and performs the functions of health. If we choose, we may study the alburnum only. The gnarled stump has as tender a bud as the sapling.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)