For since the natives of Nueva Espana
are a race inclined to drink and intoxication, and the wine made by
the Filipinos is distilled and as strong as brandy, they crave it
rather than the wine from Espana. Consequently, it will happen that
the trading fleets [from Spain] will bring less wine every year,
and what is brought will be more valuable every year. So great is
the traffic in this [palm wine] at present on the coast at Navidad,
among the Apusabalcos, and throughout Colima, that they load beasts
of burden with this wine in the same way as in Espana. By postponing
the speedy remedy that this demands, the same thing might also happen
to the vineyards of Piru. It can be averted, provided all the Indian
natives of the said Filipinas Islands are shipped and returned to
them, that the palm groves and vessels with which that wine is made
be burnt, the palm-trees felled, and severe penalties imposed on
whomever remains or returns to make that wine.
Incited by their greed in that traffic, all the Indians who have charge
of making that wine go to the port of Acapulco when the ships reach
there from Manila, and lead away with them all the Indians who come
as common seamen. For that reason, and the others above mentioned,
scarcely any of them return to the said Filipinas Islands. From that it
also results that your Majesty loses the royal revenues derived from
those islands, inasmuch as all those Indians are tributarios there,
and when absent pay nothing.
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