Media Anata
Media Anata
Media Anata, an assessment of a half-year's salary imposed on officials taking posts in the Spanish Indies. In a royal order in council (cédula) of 21 July 1625, establishing the impost, Philip IV set the assessment initially at one month's salary (mesada) but in 1632 raised it to a half-year's stipend, where it remained for the rest of the colonial epoch. As the colonial epoch wore on, revenues from this source began dropping, largely because of the increasing number of exemptions from the assessment, including those for military officers and employees of the tobacco and powder factories. In the 1790s medias anatas produced revenues in Mexico of approximately 40,000-50,000 pesos annually, in Peru 8,000-15,000 pesos.
See alsoColonialism; New Spain, Colonization of the Northern Frontier.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Recopilación de leyes de los Reynos de las Indias, 4 vols. (1681; repr. 1973), libro VIII, título XIX.
Joaquín Maniau, Compendio de la historia de la Real Hacienda de Nueva España (1914).
Additional Bibliography
Jáuregui, Luis. The American Finances of the Spanish Empire: Royal Income and Expenditures in Colonial Mexico, Peru, and Bolivia, 1680–1809. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998.
Klein, Herbert S. La real hacienda de Nueva España: Su administración en la época de los intendentes, 1786–1821. México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Facultad de Economía, 1999.
John Jay TePaske