The Consolidación de Vales Reales in the Bishopric of Michoacán
N 1804, the Spanish crown issued a decree that many historians consider an important, even essential, cause of colonial estrangement from Spain. The Consolidacion de Vales Reales ordered that liens and mortgages whose interest supported the pious works of the church-charities, chaplaincies, special masses, devotional cults, and the like-should be redeemed, and that property belonging to these foundations should be sold. The proceeds, along with any funds that came into church coffers to establish new pious works, were to be loaned to the crown. Though the crown was primarily motivated by its pressing financial needs after more than a decade of European warfare, the stated goal of the decree was to bestow on Spanish America the benefits that Spain had derived from a similar law implemented in 1798.1 Instead, in one stroke, the decree at best offended and at worst undermined the principal defenders of colonial stability: the church and the propertied classes. In Spain, the church had quietly accepted the loss of control over property belonging to pious works, perhaps regarding the bonds (vales reales) they received in return as a more desirable and less risky form of asset than property, which required considerable maintenance and supervision.2 In New Spain, however, pious works owned few properties-most of their assets were already in paper form, as mortgages on rural and urban property.3 Here, far from freeing the church of an economic bur-