ENCOMIENDA early 1500s to1549.
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Corregidor y Encomendero disputan
las ganancias.
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ENCOMIENDA 15211549. Trusteeship that
allowed trustee and his
first -born son to receive
tribute payments and
unrestricted personal
services from a stipulated
number of Indians living in
a stipulated number of
villages. This provided the
basis for amassing wealth
through indian labor.
High numbers of indigenous peoples died of diseases reducing greatly the population
that could provide the required tribute and labor. The native population of Peru
declined from 1.3 million in 1570, to 600,000 in 1620. In Meso-America the
circumstances were no different. The population
of Indians went from 25.3 million in 1519, to a scant 1 million in 1605.
INDIGENOUS POPULATION AT CONQUEST of
MESOAMERICA (MEXICO AND CENTRAL
AMERICA)
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1519
1532
1548
1568
1580
1595
1605
1650
25.2 million
16.8 million
6.3 million
2.7 million
1.9 million
1.4 million
1.1 million
1.5 million
The Repartimiento System
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With the decline of the native population the structure and pattern of labor distribution
changed. By the 1540s the Spanish introduced a new way of distributing labor: allotments
of labor were made not by a royal grant (for life) as it was the case with the encomienda,
instead employers competed with one another in order to pay the colonial regime for the
labor force. This system was called the repartimiento. Under it, Indian labor was placed
under royal control. This was a case of paid forced labor (the encomienda had been
unpaid forced labor.
Under the new system:
a) the indigenous population was paid a salary, usually higher than anything done before.
b) royal authorities determined the working conditions -- including the number of hours
and the type of work.
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A small proportion of adult men from each Indian town would be assigned each year for a
period of time, between a week and a month, to a Spanish employer. The workers were
supposed to be paid a standard wage. Repartimiento lasted from 1550 until 1632, and
was then replaced with wage labor and the hacienda system. It continued much longer in
Guatemala and El Salvador.
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Under the mita, some three
million Quechua Indians were
compelled to work in the mines.
Hundreds of thousands died
there, of disease, from accidents,
and at the brutal hand of their
masters. Peasants fled as best
they could, abandoning the land,
but many were forced into
reducciones, concentration areas
where they could be counted and
conscripted. Although some
historians differ over the absolute
numbers, most agree that, the
course of the mita (1575-1825),
the native population of the Andes
declined by eighty percent...
African Slaves take the place of indigenous
slaves by late sixteenth century
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Although some slaves came with Cortes on his 1519 voyage,
Africans were first brought to New Spain in the late 16th
century to fill the void left by the decline of the indigenous
population. The peak of slave importation was during the
mining boom of 1580-1635. A lot of Spanish immigrants
arrived during this time as well. Slavery of indigenous people
was discouraged after 1560 so most slaves were African
during the Colonial period. Spaniards and criollos (those born
in New Spain) often used slaves as servants, overseers of
Indian labor and mistresses and concubines for merchants
and officials.
Slavery
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The wholesale ownership of
human beings as a commodity
to be used for their labor.
Spanish slavery differed from
indigenous slavery where
slaves could own property,
other slaves, and their
offspring were not slaves.
Between 4,000 -8,000 slaves
imported into Mexico. The
majority went to the Caribbean
islands and the Brazil. A total
of 3 million African slaves
were brought to the "new
world," primarily to work in
sugar plantations.
Wage Labor
 WAGE
LABOR--Selling of individual
labor as a commodity for a specific
wage. No obligations on the part of the
employer for social welfare or other
benefits--simply paying a wage. By
early 1600s, free labor and debt labor
were common practices.
Debt Servitude
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the former tienda de raya of
Guaracha's hacienda in the village of
San Antonio Guaracha, Mexico (near
Guadalajara)
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DEBT SERVITUDE or DEBT LABOR-Entrapment of laborers in a web of
debts for their purchases of basic
necessities. These were the first steps
in setting up tiendas de raya
(company stores), where people
purchased basic necessities at
extremely inflated prices and then
were indebted with interest. Company
stores were often the only place the
people working in mines and in textile
industries could purchase goods. Debt
servitude can also involve the loaning
of money and its repayment at
extremely high interest rates through
labor. Such debtor systems are often
called enganches or "hooks." People
got into debt were never capable of
working off.
Haciendas
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Hacienda Guaracha, unrestored
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The hacienda system was built on the
appropriation of indigenous village
lands to create a system of debt
peonage and share cropping (workers
turn over a percentage of the crop to
the land owner). Haciendas were
large landed estates held by
Spaniards and Creoles in which
indigenous populations lived on the
land or nearby. The hacendados
organized their estates to function as
self-contained units, incorporated
agrarian activities, artisanry,
commerce, and even small factories.
Besides wage laborers they used
tenants, sharecroppers, and peasants
from neighboring Indian communities.
In many cases the owners of the
hacienda, the hacendados, had
tremendous power over people who
worked their lands, often acting as
local lords.
Plantations
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These were large farms geared to
exports, often using foreign capital
and slave labor (the first slaves were
brought from Africa in 1538). They
were mainly in areas where the
indigenous population was soon wiped
out. The first great plantation crop was
sugar in northern Brazil, coastal Peru,
parts of Colombia and the Caribbean.
On the plantations, African slaves
worked in gangs, often in the most
brutal conditions , watched over by
armed guards. An average plantation
had between 80-100 slaves.
Plantation owners were business men
motivated by profit, and their farms
were usually both efficient and
inhumane.
Limpieza de Sangre
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Originally used to refer to the genealogical purity of Christians—
purity of blood of Jews, Muslims, and heretics—limpieza de sangre
was used as a weapon of exclusion to eliminate those with “stains”
in their ancestry from holding important clerical and political office
and as we for entry into universities, religious and military orders,
and certain guilds
Blended with the Mediterranean concept of honor, limpieza de
sangre was imported into New Spain.
The social value held for clean and honorable lineages was
maintained by endogamous marriage and legitimate birth
Women and racial purity
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Since it was primarily women
who could introduce “unclean
blood” into a lineage,
reproducing purity of blood
required guarding the chastity
of married women and premarital virginity
Controlling women’s sexuality
before and after marriage
became as much a matter of
purity as it was of honor.
Changes in indigenous communities in
the 1500 and early 1600s
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B. Spaniards initially set up a system of indirect rule in which they invested
those who had been of the noble class in indigenous societies more privileges.
Within Indian communities, members of nobility were exempted from tribute
payments and often served as caciques or bosses, collecting tribute for the Spanish.
They were allowed to dress like the Spanish and own and ride horses. They moved
into local government and in many cases exploited their own people to maintain
some individual privilege.
C. Below the nobility were non-noble indigenous people who were given the
position of conquered labor. They had a separate legal status as minor and wards of
the crown.
D. As the population became more mixed with the arrival of more Spaniards,
more born in New Spain, and the addition of slaves,, mixed group populations called
mulattos (b/W) zambos (indian/bl)_ and mestizos were grouped at the bottom of the
social hierarchy and considered fit for unskilled labor.
E. By the end of the 16th century a lot of the population didn't fit into the
hierarchy. As the indigenous population decreased, the castas, people of mixed
descent began to move into rural society.
Caste System
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A strict caste system
emerged in New Spain in
which perceived physical
difference became linked
to social rank and prestige
By 1549, no mulattos,
mestizos or persons born
out of wedlock could have
Indians laboring for them
in encomienda. Mestizo
became synonymous with
“illegitimate.”
Castas as hierarchy
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By the 1600s, purity of blood statutes of certain institutions
added mestizos and mulattos to categories considered
impure castes. As time passed, “the mixed bloods,” steadily
increased their numbers, despite efforts to control the
sexuality of elite women and to encourage racial purity.
The sistema de castas was a hierarchical ordering of different
groups based on their percentage of Spanish blood. At the
top of this system were those of “pure” Spanish blood
followed b a descending order of racial categories.
Initially the Spaniards recognized six basic racial divisions
based on appearances (white, mestizo, pardo, mulatto,
negro, natural/indio), but this expanded to an elaborate
system by the second half of the 17th century when mestizos
and mulattos occupied a clear numerical presence.
Racial Caste System
1. Español – India = Mestizo
2. Español – Mestiza = Castizo
3. Castizo – Española = Español
4. Español – Negra = Mulata
5. Español – Mulata = Morisco
6. Español – Morisca = Alvino
7. Español – Alvina = Torna atrás
8. Indio – Negra = Lobo
9. Lobo – Negra = Chino (3/4 Negro, ¼ Indio)
10. Chino – India = Cambujo (5/8 Indio, 3/8 Negro)
11. Indio – Cambujo = Tente en el aire (13/16 Indio, 3/16 Negro)
12. Tente en el aire – Mulata = Alvarasada (13/32 Indio, 11/32 Negro, 8/332 Españo
13. Alvarasado – India = Barsino (45/64 Indio, 11/64 Negro, 8/64 Español)
14. Barsino – India = Campamulata (109/128 Indio, 11/128 Negro, 8/128 Español)
15. Indio – Mestiza = Coyote
From heirs to laborers
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The change in laws related to a shift in interest
from producing heirs to producing laborers.
Because of the decline in indigenous population,
there was a need for a subordinated population to
supplement the tribute labor of Indians. Indian
communities in the seventeenth and early to mideighteenth century were also looking for ways to
add laborers to their communities
Linking “race” to social status and
occupation
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Legal and social limitation restricted the mobility of mestizos.
Social status became linked to occupation in 1600s.
Peninsular Spaniards...............bureaucrats and
merchants
Creoles............................large landowners
Mestizos...........................artisans, shopkeepers,
Mulattos............................urban manual laborers
Indians............................rural peasants.
Casta system, gender, and class
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1718-Crown regulation
required parental approval
of unions to avoid
"unequal marriage." but
mestizos came to
dominate.
Result was different
sexual standards for men
and women, but also for
different kinds of women
according to their
perceived race and place
in the caste system
Changes in indigenous societies
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In the 1700s, indigenous
identities underwent
changes. There was a
breakdown in the barriers
between nobles and
commoners and
proletarianization--loss of
land, happened to many
Indians. This happened
sooner in some areas than
others, with places like the
Tierra Caliente in Guerrero
experiencing competition
for land later in the 1700s.
Inca Noble woman
The status system was built on
“moving towards white.”
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Cartagena, Colombia--description of Spanish official, 1772
""Between the Mulatto and the Negro there is an intermediate
race, which they call Sambos owing their origin to a mixture
between one of these and with an Indian or among
themselves. Between the Tercerones (white and Mulato,
followed by Quaterones, white and a terceron) and the
Mulattoes, the Quaterones and the Tercerones are those
called Tente en el Aire, suspended in the air because they
neither advance or recede. Children whose parents are a
Quarteron or a Quinteron and a Mulatto or Terceron are Salto
atras, retrogrades because, instead of advancing towards
Whites, they have gone backwards towards the Negro race."
Changes in race categories and
population growth in Mexico
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“Indians”: 2.5 million in 1803, 4.6 million in
1930
“Whites” 1.2 million in 1803, 2.4 million in
1930
“Mestizos”: 2.4 million in 1803, 9.0 million in
1930