It seems as if in most things the principal object of the alcaldes-mayor in the provinces, and that in which they proceed with most assiduity--excepting many who conduct themselves with entire integrity--reduces itself to a rigorous and excessive collection of the tributes; and their other aim is the utmost attention to their own personal advantage. These two aims are most injurious and prejudicial to the public welfare and to the poor people of the said provinces--because, when there is no produce [with which to pay the tributes] the alcaldes-mayor either compel the headmen to search for it, and even to bind themselves to do this, or regularly make the headmen responsible for amounts which they not only will not but cannot collect. Another reason is, that the said headmen, with cruel injustice, compel Indians to pay tribute before the age which his Majesty commands and fixes, and this they do under the compulsion of the alcaldes-mayor; likewise, the said headmen exact more than the amount of their obligations for the conveyance of the tributes. In the other aim of the said alcaldes-mayor (that is, their own private advantage) is seen a monstrous hydra with many heads of injustice and iniquity. One of these is their compelling the Indians to labor in construction and other works which do not belong to his Majesty's service, although even for those [for the crown] the royal law spares and exempts them [from service] during the times when they sow and harvest their crops. The alcaldes also appoint certain Indians who are intimate with them, and who have influence among the other natives, to whom the latter deliver the commodities which they carry to the provinces; and these Indian agents, fixing the prices of goods at their own pleasure, compel the said Indian chiefs to supply them, either by sale or in exchange for other wares. From this results a most flagrant inequality in the prices and the exchanges of goods; and the loss in all these dealings always falls on the mass of the poor people, because the alcalde-mayor and the said petty chiefs or influential Indians always conclude their bargains with profit, and never with loss. Some alcaldes-mayor have gone to such an extreme of violence that, in case the said petty chiefs are unable to dispose of the goods which are thus committed to them, the alcalde compels them to assume the obligation, and to bind themselves to take the goods. Thus some of the Indians are constantly bringing upon others irreparable consequences and losses that are worthy of redress--all springing from the first injustice of compelling those to buy who neither possess nor can take charge of such commodities.