History 476 / Anth 416, Colonial Latin America

Encomiendas and Spanish cities/towns, the two basic social forms of the early colonial years in every part of the Indies, were established very early on, often as the conquest was still in progress; the basic political/social units of indigenous society meanwhile continued to function and evolve.

A. The City. I don't have much to say about this now, except to note (1) that most Spaniards either lived in the cities or wanted to, and (2) because of this concentration, there was a tremendous variety of occupations in even very early cities in the Spanish Indies (greater than in English North American colonies at a comparable stage). See the Letters for a sampling of some of the social types.

B. Encomiendas were based on already existing indigenous political structures. In the Caribbean, these were village chieftainships ruled by a cacique; in Mesoamerica and the Andes, much larger political units (called provinces in the Lockhart & Schwartz chapter, "Indigenous ways") -- the altepetl in Mexico and the ayllu in Peru. The encomienda was correspondingly a much more complex organization in the core areas than in the Caribbean, or on the fringes. Again, see Lockhart and Letters on "the strategy of the estate," because as he argues the encomienda was the basic type of estate in the early years.

C. Transformation of indigenous political life. In Mexico, which we can take here as the standard for the sequence of events in the core areas, the altepetl underwent these reformulations:

1) The Spanish immediately recognized altepetl as larger, more complex units than those in the Caribbean, and called them pueblos ("towns") by which they meant town-and-surrounding-province, in Iberian style; i.e. Spaniards understood them to be urban-centered provinces, as in Spain. This was only partly wrong, for (as noted in previous handout) the altepetl were conceptually divided into separate, equal "cellular" parts, unlike the unequal urban/rural (or cabecera/sujeto) division of the Spanish region.

2) Encomienda was imposed on top of the altepetl: that is, in Mexico the encomienda and the altepetl is essentially the same thing, with an unchanged structure -- except that tribute goes to a new Spanish overlord.

3) Some large altepetl which were not given out in encomienda, and their tribute was reserved for the crown; these became the basis of the first Spanish political units in the countryside, corregimientos (Gibson, p 97). By the 1550s the corregimiento system was extended to cover encomienda areas as well, with several encomiendas (former altepetl) coming under a single corregimiento, with either a Spanish town or a small Spanish community in the largest Indian town at its core.

4) When the Catholic church structure reached out into the countryside (generally after 1530 in central Mexico; note: in much of Peru, after 1570), it was through establishing parishes, which were again based on the altepetl. (Due to a shortage of priests, there were usually several altepetl in a single parish in the early years; later they asserted their independence). -> Note how this contradicts frequent myths: evangelization was not through "missionaries" preaching to uprooted Indians in the isolated countryside, nor did "the cross precede the sword" (the mission system was exclusively a matter of the distant frontiers, such as the Paraguay/Brazil border in the 1600s and far northern Mexico in the late 1700s). In the core areas, where most Indians lived, conversion was accomplished well after conquest, through placing a parish priest at the center of a functioning altepetl/encomienda structure.

5) The final step was when the altepetl itself began to conform to Spanish models of town government: the tlatoani (cacique) became a gobernador (indigenous governor), the ruling council of pipiltin (nobles) became a cabildo of "principales," etc. The altepetl was now, in Spanish, a "pueblo de indios," and its government was a "república de indios." -> For a graphic example, see Letters, no. 28.

6) On top of this, there were fairly frequent attempts to "reduce" or "congregate" the Indians of the altepetl into a single, central, Spanish-style pueblo (or at least statements to the effect that such should be done). Such attempts at congregación were resisted more successfully than historians once thought.

D. On the decline of encomienda, and establishing royal control.

There are two aspects to royal power; one apparent, and one real. The merely apparent aspect lies in the crown's ability to formulate laws -- lots and lots of laws, which seem to regulate every aspect of life in the Spanish Indies. The truest judgment on this aspect was made by Charles Gibson (The Aztecs Under Spanish Rule, p. 235), and it applies to Latin America generally:

Or, as the viceroys liked to say in the face of legislation they didn't like, "obedezco pero no cumplo" ("I obey (you, the king) but I won't carry out (this, the law).")

A key example of this is the crown's attempts to control encomienda (Laws of Burgos, 1512-13, New Laws, 1542): the crown had a real interest in curtailing the power of the encomenderos, because they were independent and at first had monopoly control on the labor of people that the king wanted to count as his own "subjects"; but as long as the encomenderos (1) were the most powerful men in the Spanish Indies, and (2) were able to build a social system that accomodated nearly everyone in Spanish settler society, as their accomplices or dependents, the royal legislation had no effect. But (1) the demographic collapse led to a relative weakening of the encomenderos' economic base, while (2) a steady rise in the size of the Spanish sector of society made it impossible for the encomenderos to accomodate newcomers, and (3) the discovery of massive deposits of silver in Peru and Mexico injected a lot of wealth into settler society independent of the encomienda, and also required a lot of labor (much more than gold prospecting had), so that there were (4) rising demands within settler society for "reform" of encomienda. Thus, when the New Laws were finally more-or-less applied (1550s), it was for reasons internal to Spanish society in the Indies, not because of Spanish (European) intervention. (The resulting change, a move from encomienda to a new form of repartimiento, is described in Gibson, p. 143-5).

The real aspect of royal power was the king's ability, as the richest and most powerful patron around, to make or break the estates of individual encomenderos, and to build up (in effect) his own estate system at a distance in each of the conquered areas: the crown always got a share of the mineral wealth (the "king's fifth"), a share of the encomiendas, a share of the tribute. The crown also had the power of appointing officials, such as governors, audiencias, viceroys, and also church officials from the archbishop on down (the latter power, a special concession from the Pope, was called the patronato real). Being clever, the crown arranged to have the various jurisdictions of these officials overlap, so that they would be in constant conflict with each other and have to turn to the crown to sort out their problems. (Note that the standard viceroy/archibishop conflicts were built into this system and thus were not, contrary to Gibson p. 80, "struggles between church and state," for both were in effect state officials.)

A powerful tool of the crown was its ability not only to appoint new governors but to investigate current and former governors, through residencias and visitas (Gibson, p. 100). Unlike law, which is general, abstract, and only takes effect when enforced, these investigations were immediate, applied concretely to individuals, and could not be avoided -- thus, they worked within rather than against the grain of the general mode of society, which was family-based estate organization (again, even royal offices were considered semi-private domains, part of the individual officer's estate).