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At the time when Spanish Crown was consolidating its presence in American lands through the dispatch of its royal officials, in his treaty Sobre justicia distributiva Friar Juan Zapata y Sandoval, who belonged to the Creole elite, supports the idea that men born in the New World should enjoy ecclesiastic benefits and secular trades in their republics by election, since he considers them worthy and with enough merits to be candidates. In this paper my aim is to research his actual position on these matters within the section "Acerca de la distribución de los oficios seculares" in the same treaty, to prove that Zapata could not really sustain his defense in favor of those men born in the New World. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]