Caciques, Class Structure and the Colonial State in Bolivia

BROOKE LARSON Caciques, Class Structure and the Colonial State in Bolivia

During the last century of formal colonial rule, Andean peasants intensified their struggle against the state and members of the dominant colonial elite. That struggle took distinct forms, both violent and non-violent, individual and collective. The revolts of Juan Santos and Tupac Catari, who both used Inca guerrilla strategy and tactics of psychological warfare, and the famous military insurrections led by Tupac Amaru in 1780 and 1781, are certainly the most massive, violent and chronicled rebellions of the century', but peasants resisted colonial oppres- sion in other, less visible ways. Indians who continued to wor- ship their ancestral deities and engage in traditional ritual prac- tices, especially in the early colonial period, resisted the evangelization efforts of the colonizers and undermined the ideological justification of conquest and subjugation2. Other native people expressed their resistance in more direct ways. For example, Indians often sabotaged the system of tribute collection by baptizing their children in foreign provinces or recording their male infants as females in the parish records, in hopes of saving them from future tribute exactions1. But of the non- violent forms of resistance to colonial exploitation, flight and mobility — especially the emigration of tributaries from their native communities - most concerned colonial authorities in the 18th century. In 1754, during the viceregal administration of Jose Anto- nio de Velasco, conde de Superunda, Jose de Orellana con- ducted a population count which revealed the magnitude of Indian dislocation in Peru*. In the census, adult Indian males between the ages of 18 and 50 were divided into two categories: originario and for aster o. Indians registered as originarios

* New School for Social Research, New York. 198 Brooke Larson were supposed to be those individuals who lived and worked among members of their extended kin groups (ayllus or parcia- UJades). By virtue of their kin membership in a comunidad\ originarios possessed usufructary rights to the village's cultiv- able and pasture lands. In short, the originarios theoretically constituted a stable peasantry which composed discrete kin groups with their own territorial base and which had direct access to community resources. In the census of 1754, 88,210 Indians were matriculated as originarios in the entire Vice- royalty of Peru. The other category of adult Indian males, forastero, meaning «outsider» or «foreigner», referred to those individuals whose ascribed ethnic status was «Indian* but who were alienated from their native kin groups and who had no landholding rights. In 1754 authorities estimated Peru's forastero population to be some 54,920 Indians, or about 38 percent of the viceroyalty's adult Indian male population.

Regional distribution of originarios and forasteros, 1754.

Ecclesiastical Originarios Forasteros Total % for. jurisdiction

Chuquisaca 11,589 15.359 26,948 57 Mizque 3,182 506 3,688 14 LaPaz IO.5JO 13,644 24.'94 56 Cuzco 20,711 ",053 32,764 37 Arequipa 3,08} 667 3,750 18 Huamanga 8,587 i,933 10,520 18 Lima 17.720 5,37i 23,091 Trujillo 12,788 5.387 18,175 3° Total 88,210 54,920 143,130 38

SOURCE: Memories de los vireyes que ban gobernado el Peru... (Lima 1859), vol. IV, pp. 7-15; see also N. S^nchez-Albornoz, Indios y Tributes en el Alto Peru (Iep, Lima 1978), p. 52.

If we glance at the regional distribution of forasteros, we see immediately that most Indians registered as forasteros lived in the southern half of the viceroyalty, from the bishopric of Cuzco south to the archbishopric of La Plata. More than a third of Cuzco's Indian males were registered as forasteros in 1754, while in the ecclesiastical districts of La Paz and La Pla- ta, forasteros composed the majority of adult Indian males. In 1770 colonial authorities matriculated 31,053 forasteros in all of Upper Peru, or about 61 percent of some 50,900 adult In- dian males. Some twenty years later, about three-quarters of Upper Peru's 123,174 tributaries were registered forasteros1. Caciques, Class Structure and the Colonial State 199 In his recent study of Indian demography in Upper Peru, N. Sanchez-Albornoz emphasizes the significance of this population as a proportion of the area's native manpower. In few other parts of Spanish America in the 18th century were so many Indians cut off from their kin groups and their ancestral deities and alienated from their community's resources'. The massive forastero population in Upper Peru is one of the more puzzling and important characteristics of the Southern Andean economy and society in the 18th century; yet the forastero phenomenon has only begun to attract the attention of historians. Why did so many Indians opt out of their kin groups and relinquish their rights to parcels of comunidad land? As I sug- gested earlier, one explanation is that Indians saw flight from their villages as one way of avoiding demands imposed on them as members of a subject culture. Sanchez-Albornoz believes that forasteros proliferated in the southern Andean provinces pre- cisely because Indians in that zone were subject to the coercive labor institution of mita. The corvee labor system that was supposed to move Indians between their villages and the mines of Potosi in an orderly and systematic fashion produced instead a floating native population which moved from place to place to escape from mita duties and tribute collectors. Sanchez-Albor- noz also emphasizes the employment opportunities available in Upper Peru's eastern temperate and semi-tropical valleys of Cochabamba, Tomina, and Chichas where Spanish haciendas absorbed forasteros as service tenants'. The movement of In- dians from highland villages to valley haciendas was nothing new, of course. The 16th century jurist, Juan de Matienzo, referred to those Indians who had abandoned their birthplaces to live as servile laborers under Spaniards as yanaconas'. In the 18 th century, the valleys still attracted many former comunidad Indians from highland provinces. Cornblit and Martinez-Alier both suggest that the seigneurial regime offered some protection for Indians against the exactions and tyranny of colonial authorities, and Sanchez-Albornoz seems to agree". But not all forasteros sought refuge in the apparent paternalism of hacienda life. Many Indians who abandoned their kin groups became proletarianized, working on the free labor market as mingas at Potosi, or else they joined the growing vagabond population in Upper Peru. It would be misleading, however, to conceptualize forasteraje as the steady accretion of manpower from native productive units to the Spanish sector where Andean peasants became acculturated agricultural and mine workers, petty traders or a 200 Brooke Larson floating reserve labor force. To some degree, this was indeed what happened. But as we study more closely the valley haciendas of Upper Peru in the 18th century, I suspect we will find that those estates did not exert the powerful magnetic force we might at first be inclined to believe. Many haciendas in the Co- chabamba valleys, for example, were already over-supplied with rural laborers in the mid and late 18th century, and opportunities for employment of migrant Indians were somewhat limited in that region ". Only the cocales of the Yungas seemed to absorb large numbers of permanent and seasonal migrant laborers from highland provinces ". But more to the point, we should recall that until the 1870*5, about two-thirds of all Indians in Upper Peru still lived in independent communities ". The situa- tion therefore was more complicated than the transfer of labor from a highland, subsistence economy to a booming, cash crop economy in the valleys, for Indians also circulated among the comunidades themselves. Indian villages both expelled and absorbed labor during the course of the colonial period. In fact, the high proportion of forasteros in the Indian villages as early as the 1680's impelled the Viceroy, Duque de La Palata, to register for the first time the landless forasteros. The 1683 census showed that even in a province like Chayanta, where few haciendas existed, 34 percent of all adult Indian males were assigned the fiscal status of forastero ". Like their cousins living on Spanish haciendas, the forasteros of the comunidades were usually landless tenants who found some compensation for their lack of kin ties and land rights in their exemption from mita duty and, until the mid 18th century, from all tribute payments. The entry of Indian tenants into local village society stimulated social realignments within the comunidades which we are only beginning to understand ". As Sanchez-Albornoz and Santamaria have shown so well, the reports and commentary of royal inspectors can be mined for a wealth of detailed information about social conditions in the Indian villages of Upper Peru in the late 17th and 18th centuries. But the statistical censuses {pairones) alone leave us with a static view of Indian society frozen in time at specific historical moments (when the censuses were completed: 1683, 1754, and in the last decades of the 18th century, for example) ". From these records, we can note how many Indians were registered as landless forasteros, but we have no way of knowing the provenance of those immigrants. Nor do the records distinguish between recent forastero households and the ancestors of immigrants to a particular comunidad. A more se- Caciques, Class Structure and the Colonial State 201 rious limitation is that the basic fiscal dichotomy between originario and forastero tells us little about social stratification in Indian society at a specific historical moment or through time. Yet from scattered evidence, we know that throughout Upper Peru some comunidades held richer land at more varied alti- tudes than other villages. Members of villages which managed to hold onto ancient lands in distinct ecological zones and which had easy access to water for irrigation and rich pasture land were generally better off than the inhabitants of conti- guous, dry (temporal) land. Forasteros who leased irrigated valley land may well have had an advantage over the originario shepherd and potato cultivator in a poor highland community ". But even within the same comunidad, some forasteros rented more land and owned more livestock than other forasteros, although they paid the same amount of tribute. In those cases where individuals managed to gain possession of a plot of comunidad land, colonial authorities sometimes assigned them a tax status of forastero con tierra and delegated to them the same responsibilities that originarios carried in the comunidad. But the fact that most forasteros were registered as being landless tells us little about their economic standing in the host comunidad or their specific social relations with kin members of the village. The economic status and relationship of forasteros to other comunidad members probably varied considerably from region to region. For example, in the province of La Paz in the 1790's, many forasteros leased parcels of land from originarios in exchange for periodic labor services in the fields. This tenure arrangement seemed to assume the form of reciprocal relations between kin households and immigrant ones. In contrast, forasteros in the valley of Sorata (Province of Larecaja) often paid rent to individual members of the village by working for them in the mines of Tipuani ". In both cases, forasteros seemed to be subject to the labor demands of originarios, but the rent labor required of them and the conditions under which they worked were entirely different. The economic subordination of forasteros to village kinfolk was not so clear cut, however, in the river gorge and mountain comunidad of San Augustin de Tapacarf (Province of Cochabamba), which we will examine in detail later on. Most forasteros were poor rural tenants all right, but many originario households also lived in wretched misery on inadequate parcels of land. During his inspection of the comunidad in 1786, the Intendant Francisco de Viedma commented on the plight of many originario families who were not better and sometimes worse off than forasteros in the vil- 202 Brooke Larson lage ". In Tapacari and, I suspect, in many other Indian communities a sharp division separated prosperous Indians from the mass of poor Indian peasants, but those economic distinctions did not always correspond to fiscal categories. In this paper I want to examine the development of class relations in Bolivia's Indian communities. At this preliminary stage of research, it seems to me that we can best understand the growth of this elusive group of Indians, classified as forasteros by colonial authorities, by examining the internal transformation of social relations in Indian society. To view forasteraje in terms of an expulsion/attraction equation between comunidades and haciendas and the gradual relocation of highland In- dians in the eastern valleys is to miss perhaps the more important aspect of the problem. We need to probe the internal social dynamics and tension of village society itself, realizing that early schematic notions about class stratification must be tested in a comparative regional framework. By framing the analysis in terms of changing social relations and structure in the Indian comunidades of Upper Peru, we can move beyond the static picture of a society divided in half between insiders who have land rights and outsiders who are landless and shed light on the phenomenon of forasteraje itself. In studying the processes of social inequality and differentiation, our attention is immediately drawn to those individuals in Indian society who had access to village resources far in excess of their own subsistence needs and of other village members (whether originario or forastero), specifically to caciques in many of Upper Peru's comunidades. The census records of 1683 and the later Bourbon era make abundantly clear that most caciques - including hereditary chieftains - had long since superceded the traditional bounds of their authority, and many managed to buttress their position of power with personal wealth. Countless Indians complained to royal inspectors in 1683 of the abuses they suffered from rich and tyrannical caciques M. More than a century later, a royal inspector of the Pro- vince of Chichas in 1798 informed the crown of the arbitrary authority and landed wealth enjoyed by caciques in the Indian villages of that district". Trial records, particularly in the second half of the 18th century, provide further and richer evidence of the material wealth and despotism of caciques. We know from one such record that in the comunidad of Tiqui- paya (Province of Cochabamba) a local cacique not only con- trolled village land in his personal domain, but retained other comunidad members as yanaconas to work that land". These Caciques, Class Structure and the Colonial State 203 are not isolated examples of wealth concentration or abuse of authority. On the contrary, many caciques in 18th century Up- per Peru accumulated and bequeathed considerable personal wealth. Other members of village society were also able to gain either through cacical patronage or their independent economic activities. Consider, for example, that as early as 1662 the Vice- roy Conde de Alba claimed that Indians paid a total of 600,000 pesos to buy exemption from the mita, and that a century later the so-called indios de faltriquera each paid between 80 and 100 pesos every so often to buy their way out of mita duty". Where did this cash come from, and who was able to pay it"? The issue of class formation in village society is closely related to these crucial questions. In addition to the material found in royal reports on social conditions in the comunidades and that in trial records in which village Indians articulated their grievances and plight, information about patterns of alliances and schisms in particular comunidades during the 1780 and 1781 rebellions of Upper Peru may also throw light on the underlying social tensions and divisions within Indian society. It seems significant to me, for example, that recent research into local political alignments and leadership during the Tupac Amaru rebellions reveals that most caciques remained loyal to the colonial government". It is still often presumed, however, that many caciques held sway over the loyalties of local comunidad peasants. Yet my own research into the nature of the 1781 struggle in the Cochabamba province indicates that the insurgents had an incipient class consciousness and identified the enemy in terms of wealth difference and economic power more than race or cultural differences. In the initial violent outbreak in the comunidad of Tapa- cari, for example, the rebels turned against the village's two hereditary caciques - not only because they were corrupt collaborators with colonial authorities, but more important, because they were «rich men» who «robbed» other members of the comunidad, including originarios u. Farther down river in two other comunidades (Sipesipe and El Paso), the rebels took op- posite sides from their chieftains - even when the cacique pro- claimed allegiance to Tupac Amaru II". How often and which factions of Indian communities turned against each other in 1780-81 can tell us much about Indian consciousness of social inequality and relations of exploitation even within the framework of local village society. I suspect that as we study more systematically the patterns of revolt in the latter part of the 18th century, we will find that on a local level many of those 204 Brooke Larson struggles were essentially incipient class conflicts rather than mere tax rebellions or expressions of a kind of cultural natio- nalism. From this perspective, then, the event may tell us much about village social structure and relations. If much of the scattered evidence we have so far points to Indian villages internally divided between richer and poorer folk, the larger task of interpreting the historical reasons behind economic inequality in Indian society still remains to be done. K. Spalding made one of the first attempts to explain social differentiation within Peruvian village society. In an article published in 1975, Spalding argued that the process of internal differentiation was more advanced the more intensively members of a village participated in the market system". In earlier studies, she documented in detail how commercial activities of caciques (or kurakas) — particularly in the early colonial period — altered traditional forms of economic organization, based on reciprocal relations and communal labor and landholding patterns, eroded the self-sufficiency of comunidades, and allowed some individuals to accumulate wealth beyond their subsistence needs". In this essay, I want to pursue Spalding's line of in- quiry. But instead of focusing attention primarily on the expansion of commerce and the participation of village members in European modes of exchange, my objective is to explore the ways in which specific relations of exploitation in different historical conjunctures directly or indirectly created and reinforced a class structure within Indian society. My emphasis on the role played by the colonial state in shaping village social structure leads me to examine three specific periods in time, each of which was characterized by a peculiar system of political control and economic exploitation: 1) the pre-Toledan decades, 1550-70, when encomienda-tribute forced direct producers in- to the emerging product and labor markets, undermined self- sufficiency of traditional productive units, and stimulated some social realignment in southern Andean kin groups; 2) the To- ledan century (c. 1570-1670) during which time the state shifted most of the burden of labor cost in the mining industry to the royally administered communidades; and 3) the following century or so of decentralized bureaucratic rule and declining overseas commerce, when certain sectors of the colonial elite increasingly resorted to coercive exchange relations in the An- dean comunidades. In brief, my hypothesis is that class lines hardened in rural Indian society during the economic crunch of the turbulent 18th century, as Andean peasant households became alternative sources of commercial accumulation for mem- Caciques, Class Structure and the Colonial State 205 bers of the dominant colonial elite and as colonial authorities simultaneously reinforced their ties to a small stratum of wealthy Indians. It is important to stress at the outset, however, that despite the relatively narrow margins within which members of the conquered race could maneuver in the colonial context, Indians were also agents of historical change - either as collaborators or by engaging in various forms of resistance and struggle, and we cannot begin to understand the evolution of colonial relations of exploitation, on the one hand, or the emergence of a class stratified village society, on the other, without considering the active role played by members of native society.

When the Spanish crown began to intervene in 1549 to con- tain encomendero power in America, colonial authorities in the Andean region gradually formulated a tribute policy that would help to provision the new mining town at Potosi (discovered several years earlier, in 1545)". In the early 1550's Potosi was already inhabited by several thousand persons, and the town suffered a chronic scarcity of food crops and other articles. In 1550 and again three years later, the President of the Audien- cia of Charcas codified the earliest tax laws, after which time all tribute exactions were officially subject to royal legislation. The first effort made by President La Gasca to assert royal authority over tribute was to «rationalize* the levies, by adjusting the amount of tax in kind which an encomendero could legitima- tely exact". In most cases, the state reduced the legal amount of tribute encomienda Indians were to pay. But if the state lightened the tax burden in terms of the quantity of produce a group of Indians had to deliver, the new legislation also placed new pressures on those Indians by requiring them to provide a specified amount of pre-determined items, including both native and European food crops, poultry, livestock and manufac- tures. The tariffs reveal that colonial authorities recognized that while many villages had direct access to a wide variety of resources in distinct ecological zones, some communities were richer in certain resources than others ". But clearly the new tax requirements were not designed primarily to make life easier for members of villages. They simply allowed Spaniards to take advantage of the particular resources or specialized skills of different comunidades and at the same time allowed Spanish towns like Potosi to be provisioned with a wide variety of com- 206 Brooke Larson modifies ". Those villages which could not produce the required items within their own kin units were compelled to barter with other villages to obtain the necessary products ". The encomenderos themselves placed demands on their subjects which reflected the glowing importance of the Potosi market. In the 1550's Indians in private encomienda not only provided crops, but increasingly they were compelled to transport the tribute they owed to Potosi". Did more encomenderos recognize the enormous market demand for food at the mining town and the exorbitant prices they fetched there in the 1550's*? Or, did the gravitation of tribute commodities to the mining center signal the union of the encomenderos and the mineowners as one interlocking elite? In either case, the encomienda - as a specific relation of exploitation - was increasingly at the service of the consumptive needs of the mining industry". Not only were encomienda Indians forced to directly provision the mining town, but, in some cases, royal officials converted levies in volume to tribute calculated in monetary terms. In the late 1550's, for example, the quantity of maize and other products paid by the Kurakara Indians of Macha and Chaqui was determined by current price fluctuations at Potosi. Those Indians handed over more fanegadas of maize to their encomendero in times of relative abundance and lower grain prices at the mining town ". In fact, it is quite likely that on many occasions, the tributaries sold the crop first and paid their levies in money. Thus, as early as the 1550*8, tribute exactions not only intensified barter exchange in the countryside, but they forced In- dians to travel to Potosi, the European center of production and settlement in Upper Peru, and to depart from modes of exchange (barter and reciprocal exchange relations) with which they were familiar to provision the mining town with the ne- cessities of life. But it was the introduction of tribute requirements in the form of money, although still fairly limited in the 1550's and 1560's, which had a more important impact on Andean social organization. In seeking money, Indians could sell the surplus product of their own extended kin units. But in lieu of that alternative, they were obliged to leave their villages and tem- porarily enter into European relations of production - as agricultural, mine workers, pack drivers, etc. In the royal encomienda of Chucuito, Indians had to raise 20,000 pesos in dues in 1568. To earn the money, the Aymara villages regularly sent a contingent of Indians to Potosi and hired others out as pack drivers. With access to money, Chucuito Indians engaged in Caciques, Class Structure and the Colonial State 207 two different types of transaction: «one, trade in native goods effected by direct barter; the other, trade in Spanish goods, effected by the abstract intermediary of a money equivalent» ". On the other hand, some communities raised money by pro- ducing textiles for individual Spanish merchants within their own traditional productive units. We are only beginning to understand the earliest forms of direct labor expropriation by individual colonizers, but the evidence indicates that by the 1560's Spaniards were actively arranging a kind of primitive «putting out» system, providing raw wool and a cash advance to caciques in exchange for finished garments. Spalding has shown that such arrangements were widespread in Huanuco after 1560, and Garci Diez reported in 1567 that Chucuito's caciques entered into similar agreements with Spanish merchants ". Further research may show that the need to raise tribute in cash forced many other Indians in Upper Peru to engage in textile production for commercial distribution at Potosi. But where Indians lacked the opportunity or capacity to use their looms and labor to produce garments for a Spanish middleman willing to pay cash, direct producers were turned at least tem- porarily into wage laborers, unwittingly helping to build a seigneurial regime, in order to pay tribute in a precious commodity called money. The other alternative open to Indians forced to obtain money was more drastic and often spelled their permanent entry into European relations of production. I refer of course to the alienation of lands held by an extended kin group since ancient times. Encomenderos and other Europeans consciously used tribute exactions in money to pressure Indians into exchanging parcels of land for cash. For example, in 1563 several Spaniards purchased rich maize bottomland in the valley of Cliza (Pro- vince of Cochabamba) from the Pozo Indians for 560 pesos corrientes. They justified the transaction in terms of native demand for money, writing in the notarial book that the In- dians urgently needed the money to pay tribute they owed, as well as to purchase cows and sheep (European stock) and llama pack trains. The Spaniards thought the Indians could use the pack animals to transport coca from the Yungas (probably to Potosi, where coca prices were extremely high). Thus, in the minds of these Europeans, the levy would not only allow them to sink roots in the rich Cliza valley but would impell the proletarianized Pozo Indians to provide transport services in the incipient market economy of Upper Peru'. In other cases, In- dians who sold their lands became servile tenants, or yanaco- 208 Brooke Larson nas. As such, they were sold or bequeathed along with the landed property. The alienation of land from native control and growth of yanaconaje in the 16th century were most widespread in the temperate valleys of the Cochabamba and Chu- quisaca Provinces". The imposition and extension of tribute by Europeans was but one part of the violent confrontation of two social formations, each with its own specific logic governing social behavior and consciousness. N. Wachtel has discussed in detail the ra- mifications of this confrontation, in terms of both the material and psychological changes suffered by Indians between 1532 and 1570 ". We need only briefly mention some of the ways in which tribute exactions affected intra-village social relations in the i55o's and 1560's. It was clear to royal authorities from the earliest times that they needed to secure the collaboration of provincial and local native chieftains to effect the transfer of material wealth from Andean communities to Spanish hands. Consequently, the Spa- niards concentrated power among provincial caciques (or, kurakas) during the first three decades of colonial rule, limiting the authority of the highest chieftains to about 1,000 tributaries". The caciques were responsible for raising the tribute owed by their moieties (or, parcialidades). Spaniards also realized, however, that the traditional chieftains were absolutely essential to mobilize a work force within the villages to turn yarn into cloth for eventual sale in colonial towns. The famous visitor to Chucuito in 1567, Garci Diez, quoted an informant saying that Indians would not work, even for two pesos a gar- ment, unless their caciques instructed them to weave". We are only beginning to understand to what extent caciques could still command the labor services of members of their comunidades as part of a «lifelong interchange of services and obligations* between himself and village members". Spalding shows that caciques in Huanuco still retained their traditional authority, preserving it in part by contributing the fees they received as intermediaries in textile transactions to their comunidad sto- rehouses, or treasuries {cajas de comunidades). But in other areas of Lower Peru (Huancayo, for example), and in Chucuito caciques no longer provided the traditional services expected of persons with their status in the comunidad, and thus they resorted to compulsion in mobilizing tribute and surplus labor from members of their kin groups. Surely, in some communities the fragmentation of traditional reciprocal relations between chieftains and peasant households resulted from the decision of Caciques, Class Structure and the Colonial State 209 caciques to turn their role as intermediary between the two social formations to their own personal advantage, accumulating wealth and adopting European standards of status and prestige". But I think we can only begin to understand the relative survival or destruction of Andean forms of production and exchange in these decades by examining the interplay between specific relations and intensity of exploitation imposed by colonial authorities and encomenderos, whose interests were increasingly tied to the growing mining industry in Upper Peru, and the differential capacity of communities to respond to those pressures. In this context, we need to examine which communities in Upper Peru managed to hold onto their mitmaq lands in this period (and thus could better preserve some degree of self-sufficiency), as well as to compare rates of native demographic decline in different regions and villages ".

ill.

The early tax reforms of La Gasca (1550-53) requiring comunidades to pay encomienda tribute in a combination of crops and money turned out to be an increasingly inadequate means of provisioning Potosi and other Spanish towns. By the mid- 156o's the needs of the mining sector for food-stuffs had grown considerably. But more important, the mining industry itself was in crisis: the rich surface lodes were exhausted by 1565 and continued smelting was no longer feasible with the lower- grade ore. Potosi faced its first serious cyclical downturn in the late i56o's. The conjuncture of the mining crisis in Potosi and the urgent financial needs of the imperial state impelled the colonial state to revolutionize the productive structure at Potosi. In order to promote deep-shaft mining of low grade ore and amalgamation, the crown organized and regulated mill ownership, established a royal monopoly over mercury supplied by Huancavelica, promoted massive capital investment and, most important, altered the basic relations of production by mobilizing a corvee labor force (mita)". The creation of the famous mita labor system bound Indian comunidades in 18 provinces in the southern viceroyalty more tightly to the export industry and intensified the exploitation of those villages w. These villages not only contributed the surplus value of the labor power of mitayos to owners of the mines and mills (and indirectly to the state and merchant/investor), but they also provided for the subsistence needs of those draft laborers. Mitayoi WP"* fi-

14 2io Brooke Larson ten accompanied by their entire households, and the labor of women and children was employed in helping to earn enough to feed the mitayo and themselves. Comunidades were also supposed to supply mitayos with provisions to last while the In- dian completed his turn in the mines. The mitayo therefore was not proletarianized, even on a temporary basis, and unlike the «free» (minga) mineworkers, he received remuneration which was less than that which he needed even for bare survival. The articulation of Andean agrarian communal and household production and corvee mine labor was in large part responsible for the spectacular growth of silver output at Potosi in the early i57o's which lasted until sometime into the mid-i7th century. In addition to the mita, the commutation of most tribute in kind to money by the Viceroy Toledo in the same period compelled more Indians to seek temporary wage labor, either as mingas in the mines or as seasonal agricultural workers on the growing valley haciendas. But if in the vast southern zone of the viceroyalty the state's main source of concern in the mid-1560's was the mining crisis, throughout the central highlands of Peru, colonial authorities confronted a more urgent problem: the spreading millenarian movement led by Taqui Ongo in Huamanga and the resistance of Inca nobles and their followers entrenched in Vilcabamba". We cannot underestimate the threat that these struggles must have represented to colonial authorities who, after thirty years, had still not managed to consolidate state power over Indians or even over their own warring factions. Thus, the Toledan reforms not only intended to rejuvenate mining production through technological improvement and massive labor recruitment; they were also designed to extend a tight network of administrative control over the subject population - to organize direct state supervision over Indians for the dual purpose of security and more intensive exploitation. This helps explain why Toledo initiated his extensive program of native resettlement, in which he concentrated most Indians in royally-designated villages under the jurisdiction of a corregidor de indios and/or a priest. But the resettlement policy did more than up- root and concentrate kin groups (in the process often blurring ethnic differences). Toledo wanted to create an infrastructure which could support the mita system. In every comunidad, therefore, royal officials were supposed to see to it that each household was allocated the resources necessary for its own subsistence (presumably, including what it needed to pay tribute dues)". Caciques, Class Structure and the Colonial State 211 Royal disposition of comunidad land reflected a third and certainly the most serious problem of all: the continuing decline of Indian population. Sanchez-Albornoz estimates that In- dians in ten provinces in Upper Peru declined by about one- third between 1560 and 1574 ". Colonial authorities were aware of the disastrous effect of European disease on native people, but they also believed that Indians suffered from abuses perpe- tuated by individual colonizers. Part of the effort to assure the physical reproduction of the native labor force therefore en- tailed the intervention of the state between Indians and rapa- cious encomenderos or other exploiters, theoretically to protect the former by guaranteeing the material means of subsistence. Tribute paid to the state thus assumed, on an ideological level, the form of ground rent in exchange for which Indians received usufructory rights (either to new or their ancient lands) and evangelization. As Mdrner and others have shown, however, tribute continued to be fundamentally a tax imposed by the state on a conquered people to whom Europeans officially ascribed the ethnic status of «Indian*54. In Upper Peru, Toledo's census takers registered 351,107 persons as Indian in 1573, and of those people, some 79,263 adult males (between 18 and 50 years old) were matriculated as tributaries ". In thinking about the impact these reforms must have had on social relations in the comunidades in Upper Peru, we immediately confront the discrepancy between policy aims and the social consequences of those policies. Toledo sent out emis- saries to count the number of households in each ayllu, and number of ayllus in each moiety in the comunidades under royal control, in order to regulate the amount of tax a particular comunidad could afford. Yet almost immediately after the tax lists were compiled, they were out of date. Indians continued to die or disappear in large numbers, and as a result the sur- viving/remaining comunidad members shouldered the ever heavier weight of tribute and mita burdens. To meet the tax quotas, Indians drained the treasuries of their comunidades and resorted to other more drastic measures, mentioned earlier. Colonial authorities and caciques under pressure to mobilize mitayos each year desperately searched for bodies to join the mita expedition, and they relied on various illegal schemes to recruit mitayos. For example, in 1617 caciques in the Cocha- bamba province were supposed to dispatch 409 mttuyos. But the extremely high rate of mortality in the valleys had virtually emptied many comunidades of all but widows and old spins- ters. The corregidor complained to the Cabildo that he was able 212 Brooke Larson to send only 219 Indians to Potosi that year. The burden of mita grew even heavier in later years, and caciques eventually took to forcing forasteros to go to Potosi and to hiring anyone they could to serve as mitayo*. By the late 17th century, the mita had in fact become a pecuniary tax in many villages, in which Indians paid fees (rezagos) instead of serving and caciques remitted those fees to mineowners ". Where comunidad members could not buy their exemption from mita duty they, too, often abandoned their villages to accept the tax-exempt status of landless forastero in other, host villages or on haciendas. The fact that about 45 percent of adult Indian males in ten southern and central provinces of Upper Peru were registered as forasteros in 1683, some no years after the Toledan reforms, is important testimony to the eventual failure of those reforms". Toledan policy engendered another contradiction in terms of the role played by collaborating caciques. As part of the man- datory resettlement plan, Viceroy Toledo - aware that in many comunidades traditional limits on an individual's exercise of power and authority had broken down - wanted to counter- balance cacical power with native cabildos invested with some legislative and administrative authority ". But at the same time, Spanish law defined the status, function and privileges of native chiefs and in doing so, exempted caciques from the liabilities that most other Indians faced. Caciques were in a notorious bind. They were personally responsible for collecting taxes and dispatching mitayos and thus under great pressure to use coercion to accomplish those ends. Yet they were also supposed to serve as the mouthpiece for their fellow comuneros, to arti- culate their grievances in the colonial courts w. For such services and collaboration with colonial authorities, they enjoyed certain privileges (defined in European terms) which more often than not created a gulf between themselves and other members of their village. To a point, of course, that was advantageous to colonial authorities. But in some cases caciques were able to turn the rank and privilege accruing to those in their position in the colonial system to their own personal benefit, and this undermined the original Toledan aim to check wealth and power differences in the newly resettled comunidades. The mita connection with Potosi afforded opportunities for some caciques, for example, to establish themselves as merchant mid- dlemen supplying goods to the mining town during its spectacular growth. Murra has documented the commercial activities of Diego Chambilla, a lupaqa cacique of Pomata, who regularly Caciques, Class Structure and the Colonial State 213 traded aji, wine, chuno and dried fish at the mining town in the early i62o's ". Chambilla himself invested in some of those goods, but the comunidad was also able to produce directly some surplus food crops on its extensive, vertical landholdings. How many other caciques in Upper Peru managed to prosper from commerce in the mining towns"? Was there a «new In- dian elite», whose wealth derived mostly from trade, as there seemed to be in Lower Peru"? Where caciques did not invest in long-distance, wholesale trade, some caciques probably made small deals with mita captains (enteradores de ntita), commis- sioning them to sell comunidad stocks or other items once they reached Potosi". A cacique of Jesus de Machaca, Gabriel Fernandez Guarachi, seems to represent the archetypal Indian merchant of 17th century Upper Peru. His comunidad was located at a strategic site along the trade routes from the mines to the coastal, wine-pro- ducing zones of Lower Peru. Fernandez Guarachi prospered enormously from the trade in wines and coca to Oruro, Porco and Potosi". Thus, although Machaca was not situated in a ter- ribly fertile part of the altiplano, the cacique was able to accumulate commercial capital in purely mercantile activities outside his comunidad. Had Fernandez Guarachi been subject to the same mandates as other village members, he probably would not have enjoyed the commercial success he did. How did the accumulation of commercial capital by a few enterprising Indians affect or alter village social structure in the 17th century? The obvious point is that, by virtue of their activities and material success, those Indians were no longer subject to traditional Andean norms limiting individual wealth accumulation and obliging participation in reciprocal labor relations. Power in the comunidad was more a derivative of one's business acumen and personal wealth than conferred either by colonial authorities or by comunidad members. But what is no- teworthy about the case of Fernandez Guarachi of Machaca is the fact that, unlike other caciques, he used his wealth to buy the protection of comunidad lands that Toledan decrees had failed to give. In 1645 Ferndndez purchased a land title {com- position) for 1,500 pesos to legitimize communal ownership of certain tracts of territory ". While nearby comunidades in Via- cha and Guaqui faced encroachment from haciendas on their communal lands, Machaca was able to consolidate its corporate holdings, thanks to the cacique's personal wealth. Fernandez also invested in goods works in the village as well as loaned money (for tribute dues?) to members of the comunidad". In 214 Brooke Larson this case, the cacique's personal enrichment was apparently not at the direct expense of the village initially (through fraud or illegal sale or rent of village land). On the contrary, Fernandez's own wealth alleviated the burdens of colonialism for his kin group. Nonetheless, the commercial activities and prosperity of this cacique had restructured social relations in the village, cast- ing them in the European mold of patron/client relations ". In brief, the Toledan model of egalitarian villages, where each household had sufficient land to subsist and pay tribute, was undermined by both the steadily intensifying pressures on peasant households as well as the rare opportunities for commercial accumulation emanating from the mining centers. In trying to weigh the forces that fragmented Indian social structures and allowed some individuals to accumulate wealth, including village land, far in excess of others, I hesitate to as- cribe central importance to the commercial accumulation by caciques and other comunidad Indians during the expansion of Potosi. While we will probably continue to uncover success stories like that of Machaca's cacique, I suspect that only in rare cases did caciques amass wealth through long-distance trade. After all, even under the best of circumstances, large for- tunes were rarely made and kept in commerce. Spalding found that in Lower Peru, Indians who benefitted most from commerce belonged to the few comunidades which had special resources like salt pans or especially fertile and abundant land". In Upper Peru, villages like Machaca which were close to important trade routes or mining towns also had some advantages. But we still lack substantial evidence to indicate that the ad hoc activities of caciques and other native individuals who engaged in trade and commerce in the 17th century were responsible for the concentration of wealth within the village structure. I would argue that the main force behind the growing economic inequality in village society in the 17th century was negative: the steady loss of manpower by the comunidades. It was under entirely different historical circumstances, during the protracted recession in mining and trade, that caciques and their clientele concentrated economic power in their villages. Furthermore, as I will argue, in the economic crunch, provincial authorities and other members of the colonial elite had a vital stake in enhanc- ing and reinforcing the wealth and power of a native elite in the comunidades of Upper Peru. Caciques, Class Structure and the Colonial State 215

IV.

The failure of the Toledan system of control over Andean peasants was markedly evident to the crown and colonial elite in the second half of the 17th century. Just as the northern viceroyalty was beginning to recover from a protracted period of decline, the Andean economy suffered one setback and crisis after another. Indian population, mineral exports and capital declined steadily in the late 17th century. The 1683 census revealed that tributaries had declined by about 57 percent since 1573, and more and more Indians were slipping through the nets of royal tax collectors. How could the Toledan policy of segregation, taxation and forced labor recruitment of the peasantry function if almost half of all adult Indian males in southern and central Upper Peru were separated from their ayllus and reduced to tenants or vagabonds, freed from the burden of tribute? Furthermore, the whole purpose behind the Toledan reforms - to stimulate mineral production - seemed to have been lost. Potosi mine and mill owners faced increasing labor costs, credit and capital shortages. In addition, the royal monopoly over transatlantic trade was seriously undermined in the late 17th century by Portuguese, Brazilian and later British contraband in the Rio de la Plata zone. The conjuncture of these trends in the 1670's and 1680's ushered in an era of economic stagnation and weakened metropolitan rule K. During the century that followed the sharp downturn in silver production at Potosi and royal income, colonial authorities increasingly resorted to the power bestowed by political office to circulate commodities among the peasant population. The forceful distribution of colonial and European goods to peasant households at fixed prices {repartimiento de mercancias) was not just one more institution that mandated Indians to transfer material wealth or labor to the Spanish sector: a kind of tributary commerce. Compulsory exchange differed from other forms of exploitation (such as tribute and rent) in the sense that colonial authorities could offer no ideological justification for imposing it. As I mentioned, comunidad Indians paid tribute theoretically in exchange for usufruct land and eternal salvation. Indian tenants on haciendas, on the other hand, paid rent for access to the means of subsistence and perhaps for some shelter from the mita and tribute exactions. Thus, coercive exchange relations, superimposed on tribute and/or rent, depended on the exercise of pure power, threat and naked force. Co- 216 Brooke Larson munidad Indians under direct jurisdiction of colonial authorities, unprotected by landlords interested in monopolizing control over the labor power of those who leased their land, were in the most vulnerable position. Enterprising colonial authorities could use the apparatus of state power at their own discre- tion to systematically dispose of commodities in the Andean villages. The growth of the compulsory market in 18th century Peru was the foundation of a new political economy of domination in two essential ways: i) it was an alternative mecha- nism of distribution and source of commercial accumulation in a period of declining mineral production and exports; and 2) the repartimiento de mercancias was the economic underpin- nings of the colonial bureaucracy, which not only financeditsel f for most of that century but provided a new source of royal income from the sale of offices. Although coerced exchange functioned best for the distribu- tor where there was no landlord to intervene, the compulsory market on the whole strengthened the seigneurial regime in the 18th century by providing an essential market outlet for the products of grain haciendas, coca plantations, livestock estancias, and textile workshops throughout the viceroyalty". Of course there is no way to measure the annual value of commodities that colonial authorities and their Indian agents foisted upon comuneros, nor what proportion of Bolivia's imports in textiles (from Quito), coca (from Cuzco) of mules (from Tucu- man) was destined for the rural compulsory market as opposed to the urban centers of consumption ". We do know, however, that the crown eventually issued a tariff in the early 1750's which listed the maximum value of goods corregidores were legally permitted to distribute in their districts during their five year term in office". In the twenty provinces of Upper Peru, corregidores had royal sanction to distribute colonial and Eu- ropean commodities worth 1,555,603 pesos. We don't know whether all of these goods were dumped on the comunidades, but the figure gives us some idea of the magnitude of enforced trade and of the arbitrary nature of the product market in this region. During the first quinquennium of the 1750's, the value of merchandise distributed through political channels was worth more than half the total tax income to the royal treasury of Potosi. When the Royal Exchequer collected only 77,851 pesos in tribute in 1754, corregidores in Upper Peru thrived from the coerced consumption of goods worth almost four times that amount". J. Golte has estimated that in the 1770's An- dean peasants absorbed commodities worth as much as the total Caciques, Class Structure and the Colonial State 217 value of Peru's exports in the same years ". In other words, the Andean villages collectively had become as important a market for colonial products as Europe itself. Colonial authorities, financially backed by merchants, channelled textiles from Quito, Cuzco, and Europe, coca from the Yungas, and mules from northern Argentina to the interior of Upper and Lower Peru". With sword in one hand and census records in the other, provincial bureaucrats and their collaborators forced the comunidades to absorb some of the surplus of Peru's haciendas, estancias, and obrajes11. The repartimiento de mercancias was the cornerstone of the colonial formation in this period for another reason. The spread of coerced consumption of commodities conferred monetary value to political office. As individuals with access to investment capital realized that political power could be converted into enormous personal wealth, they were more willing to pay a price to occupy certain posts in the colonial bureaucracy. The supreme provincial office of corregidor was the most lucrative and coveted post. Although corregimientos were not officially sold for several decades later, in 1649 the first known tariff ap- peared, assigning monetary value to corregidor posts in Boli- via". The corregimientos of Chayanta and Chucuito (both provinces were densely populated with comunidad Indians) carried the highest prices, presumably because they offered the greatest opportunities for commercial gain in the mid-17th century. But while generations of corregidores had used their bureaucratic positions for personal enrichment, a new, greedier breed of bureaucrats assumed office in the late 17th and 18th centuries. Not only were other sources of capital drying up, but the very deterioration of the colonial economy motivated the crown to commercialize more bureaucratic posts to compensate for declining tax revenue. After 1678, the Hapsburgs systematically sold the office of corregidor and other posts to Spanish investors. The new bureaucrats, having invested in the office, had five years in office to realize a return and, in many cases, to redeem the debts incurred by their initial capital outlay. Thus, the Andean peasantry forced into purchasing goods from provincial bureaucrats found itself in a position of subsidizing the cost of that colonial bureaucracy and indirectly providing a new source of rentier income to the Spanish crown. The sale of offices also generated a new source of income for those who financially sponsored direct investors in public office. In many cases, merchants loaned capital to prospective corregidores (and later undoubtedly supplied them with merchandise to distribute in 218 Brooke Larson their districts)". Did many merchants manage to cut their losses from the declining import/export trade by posting bond for political posts and eventually cornering the compulsory peasant market in the province of their beneficiary? We need more research on the role played by mercantile and usurious capital (and the connection between the merchant and provincial political elites) in the organization and expansion of the compulsory market in Peru. The sale of office in the colonies institutionalized and shar- pened the conflict between the crown, dependent on raising tax revenue, and colonial bureaucrats, interested in turning their public functions into private gain. On the one hand, the metropolitan state needed the tax revenue from the sale of office and therefore had to give de facto (and eventually, legal) sanction to the repartimiento de mercancias. On the other hand, despite all royal precautions (the issuing of licenses, judicial reviews, appointments of peninsulares), those who purchased the corregimientos were determined to realize a return on their investments. They not only forcefully sold goods, but they de- veloped all kinds of schemes to embezzle tribute funds. When that became too dangerous, local colonial authorities doctored the tribute records themselves, often under-registering Indians and pocketing their tax proceeds. We have some idea of the magnitude of this corruption from the fact that in 1753 and 1754 approximately two-thirds of the tax due from Cuzco's registered tributary population never reached the royal coffers". How much of the missing tribute income was due to tax eva- sion by Indians as opposed to corruption by officials we cannot say. But other sources (residencias of corregidores and trial records, for example) offer ample evidence of the widespread corruption which cost the crown tribute monies and, worse, drove originarios out of their villages. Even where corregidores did not embezzle tribute, many made it a practice to distribute merchandise in the villages before tribute {tercios) came due in late June and december. When it was time to levy the head tax, many Indians'fell further into debt or fled their villages alto- gether ". The more successfully individuals were able to exploit Indian communities as markets in this period of economic con- traction, the greater the loss in tribute revenue incurred by the Royal Treasury ". Thus, coerced trade in the interior of the southern Andes seemed to expand at the expense of royal tribute revenue, either because Indians had no money left with which to pay their tribute or because corregidores themselves Caciques, Class Structure and the Colonial State 219 withheld more tax money (perhaps to invest in more goods to distribute?) Almost as soon as the metropolitan state began to sell offices, therefore, it also designed or backed various schemes to raise tribute income. The Bourbon reforms introduced after 1770 were merely the culmination of various piecemeal attempts to increase tribute revenue beginning around 1680. One strategy was aimed at curtailing corruption of colonial officials, through procedures of judicial review, on-site inspections, and, finally, in 1754 a royal attempt to regulate the volume and value of merchandise distributed by corregidores. The crown followed a second strategy that proved even more difficult in this century: the extension of tribute to a larger part of the population. In the 1680's the Duque de la Palata tried to impose tribute on forasteros when his census takers registered them for the first time. But the Viceroy's plan was never implemented, and forty years later, the Marques de Castelfuerte again attempted to ma- triculate forasteros. He advocated more radical reforms than his predecessor, however. Castelfuerte wanted to extend tribute to the legion of laborers whose ethnic identity was ambiguous (cholo, mestizo, etc.) in order to compensate for the se- vere loss of comunidad population after the epidemics of 1719 and 1720". In particular, the Viceroy looked to the provinces of Porco and Cochabamba where many laborers (mainly mineworkers in Porco and Potosi and tenants on haciendas in Co- chabamba) were exempt from tribute and mita obligations". He accused corregidores of allowing these people to pass as mestizos in order to exploit them further, and he ordered an inspection of the Cochabamba province. But clearly the Vice- roy's attempt to push some of the financial burden of the colony onto a segment of Cochabamba's peasantry who had previously enjoyed exemption from tribute and mita was as dangerous as it was hopeless to sort out «cholos» (liable to tax collectors) from tax-exempt mestizos. The great tax rebellion in Cocha- bamba in 1731 clearly demonstrated the limits of state power when used to subject a peasantry whose cultural identity was ambiguous and who were quite aware of their interstitial position in colonial society ". The Viceroy Conde de Superunda in the 1750's seemed to have learned the lessons of the 1731 in- cident, as he proceeded to try to raise tribute in a more cautious and limited way. Superunda and other officials wanted to in- voke the Toledean plan of levying tribute as a kind of ground rent. Various plans were proposed in the mid-i8th century to parcel out vacant land in the comunidades to forastero families 220 Brooke Larson and then to levy tribute and mita on those households. We have some examples where officials in fact did distribute parcels of village land to forasteros in Upper and Lower Peru and then raise their taxes". But there is no evidence to suggest that land redistribution was significant in the 1750's or that Superunda succeeded in re-establishing many model Toledan communities where all households had subsistence plots of land and social differences were leveled. These schemes are important not so much for what they accomplished, but for what they indicate about the desperate efforts of the crown to reassert its control over the Andean peasantry that was subordinated more than ever to the economic interests of the provincial colonial elite". In point of fact, the contradictions of the colonial formation in this era seemed to have had the effect of concentrating wealth in the comunidades and exacerbating social divisions within the village structure. The evolving relationship between caciques and colonial authorities may throw light on the ways in which the colonial regime promoted the concentration of wealth in the comunidades in the mid-18th century. As I mentioned, the corregidores depended on force and power to distribute merchandise in the villages and thus had a vital stake in reinforcing the power of collaborating caciques. But they as well as the Royal Treasury had another motivation to strengthen cacical authority and enhance their wealth. Under heavy pressure to remit more tribute revenues (and at the same time realize returns on their investment in office), colonial authorities, who subsidized, sponsored, or supported wealthy caciques in any way, could rely on those caciques to personally underwrite tribute deficits incurred by their comunidades. In Toledo's time, villages were supposed to draw on their community stocks or lands to cover tribute losses. But in the 18th century most cajas de comunidades were empty ", and it was left for individuals within the villages to raise the necessary revenue to meet the tax quotas. In some cases, colonial authorities installed their own agents (mestizos, Spaniards, or whomever), but in other instances corregidores did not want to risk deposing hereditary chieftains. Instead, the corregidor could subsidize these Indians, if only by sanctioning their right to appropriate and claim village resources as their private property. Thus, even in those villages where there was little opportunity for individuals to accumulate commercial capital and invest in land, colonial authorities had a stake in creating or reinforcing a native landed elite. The cabecera village of San Augustin de Tapacari (Province Caciques, Class Structure and the Colonial State 221 of Cochabamba) is an example of a comunidad where caciques publicly claimed the right to private domain within the village on the basis of their responsibility for financing community tribute deficits". In the mid-i8th century Tapacari's two caciques personally carried the burden of financing tribute deficits; but in return for serving as guarantors, they exercised absolute control over a considerable portion of the comunidad's resources. When the cacique of anansaya, Guillermo Liro de Cordo- va, testified before the Audiencia of La Plata in the late i74o's about his hereditary right to hold the office of cacicazgo in Ta- pacarf, he said that upon inheriting the office from his father he received a gift of 900 fanegas of wheat, potato, and oca seed to plant on parcels of land (chacras) within the bounds of the comunidad. He explained that the land itself had belonged to his family for at least two previous generations. Liro de Cordo- va clearly saw that land as his private property, and he said that he hired laborers from his comunidad at half the official daily wage of two re ales and a small ration of food. He told members of the High Court that the harvests from that land were to «be applied towards* covering the tribute debts of dead and absent tributaries as well as «poor Indians*. Bias Condori, Cordova's rival and Tapacari's other cacique, was appointed directly by the corregidor of Cochabamba (Bartholome de Fiorilo), and he also owned land in the village. He too explained to members of the Audiencia that the wheat crop from two of the six estancias he owned in the community was always earmarked for sale to cover the tribute deficits of his moiety urinsaya*. Thus, the hereditary and appointed caciques each claimed legitimate right to govern on the grounds that they were financially capable of covering the village's outstanding tax dues. It is true that the Recopilacion de leyes stated that all tribute collectors were expected to post bond for the amount their districts owed". But the testimony of these caciques would suggest that caciques turned this law to their own advantage to justify the appropria- tion of community resources and, when necessary, to use their economic status in the community to legitimize their right to hold office. Both Tapacari caciques made a point of listing their assets in the trial, and Liro de Cordova assured the court that he could call on a number of wealthy Indians from other villages, including the caciques of nearby Sipesipe, to serve as his bondsmen (fiadores) to help finance tribute deficits *\ Wealth and good connections, not birth or tradition, were the new standards by which an individual claimed the right to govern a comunidad. Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that in the nu- 222 Brooke Larson merous extant trial records of the 1750's Indians often referred to the office of cacicazgo as property - which in a sense was purchased in installments from the corregidor and Royal Trea- sury". As the office of cacicazgo became commercialized in the 18th century, more individuals assumed power in the village hierar- chies who could claim neither hereditary right nor even membership in the comunidad. Corregidores sometimes found it advantageous to appoint individuals merely because they were wealthy and would cooperate in distributing goods to members of the village. As a result, Indians in many villages in Upper Peru initiated law suits against appointed caciques, sometimes accusing them of being outsiders (Spaniards, mestizos, or forasteros), in other cases, arguing that a particular cacique did not deserve to rule for lack of financial resources. But, as we shall see, while the crown and some colonial authorities were increasingly concerned in the latter part of the 18th century about the process by which outsiders assumed the office of cacicazgo, they never dislodged wealthy Indians from office. Faced with the responsibility of distributing unwanted goods and posting bond for tribute dues, did Indians generally covet or shun the office of cacicazgo in the 18th century? Spalding's study of Huarochiri shows that the new types of pressure on Huarochiri's Indian elite impelled many wealthy Indians to emigrate to urban centers". Perhaps the proximity of Lima made urban life seem like an attractive alternative which, in the face of growing pressure from Spanish authorities, no amount of local prestige or kin ties could diminish. In Bolivia, we have thus far only one example of a cacique in Larecaja in the late 18 th century who complained to tax collectors of his difficulty posting bond and delivering the expected tribute dues ". In general, Indians apparently considered the office to be an extremely lucrative one to hold, and the bitter feuds between con- tenders of that office which led to interminable trials in the 18th century provide ample testimony. Despite the limited opportunities to profit in long-distance trade and urban commerce, Indians found other ways of accumulating money even beyond their need to cover tribute debts. The padrones and trial records in the second half of the 18th century show that many caciques in Upper Peru leased their estancias and chacras to outsiders, sold parcels of village land, engaged in petty trade, transport, and arbitrarily levied taxes in their own communities. Beyond their holdings inside their villages, some caciques managed to invest in real estate and moveable wealth outside their villages. Caciques, Class Structure and the Colonial State 223 In the late 1740's Guillermo Liro de Cordova, himself, had built up quite a fortune in landed property and livestock both in and outside the comunidad". By the eve of the 1781 upris- ing in Tapacari, some forty years later, Liro de Cordova's son, Sebastian Francisco, was one of the wealthier landowners in the Cochabamba province. And when trouble came to the pueblo of Tapacari in february 1781, the insurgents converged on Liro de Cordova's hacienda Milloma, which bordered comunidad lands, and turned that bastion of cacical wealth into their main fortress of resistance. If some caciques in Bolivia used their political office and per- quisites to invest in haciendas and other property, a few also found ways to pass the community's tribute debts on to other members of the community. The comunidad of Tapacari furni- shes one example of how this happened. Since Toledan times caciques were not supposed to fuction as actual tribute collectors. The so-called cobradores de tributos were other Indians who were either assigned or nominally elected to do that thank- less job. In 18th century Tapacari, however, the caciques ex- ercized complete control over the selection of the cobradores. Twice a year they assigned two originarios to collect tribute from the 207 originarios and 903 forasteros (who were taxed, beginning in the 1750's) who inhabited the village in the mid- 18 th century ". The Indian tax collectors who travelled for a month or so in the backlands were supposed to receive one percent of the proceeds they collected. But they usually returned from their jour- neys with only part of the tax; immigrant forasteros and newly registered tributaries rarely covered even one-third of the yearly outstanding taxes of missing, injured or recently dead tributaries ". Even were the cobradores able to collect the full tax, they incurred personal losses just by leaving their own fields to ful- fill their duty. Of course, it was the cacique who held responsibility for tribute debts, but in Tapacari at least, the cobrador himself was liable to the cacique who assigned him. In 1745 the cacique Pedro Condori testified before the Audiencia that the tax collectors he had appointed during the previous four years owed him more than 4,000 pesos. He claimed that he had personally raised the outstanding tax money by selling his grain in Arequipa and the Yungas. A number of Indians who served as collectors also complained about their indebtedness to both caciques". In sum, the case study of Tapacari in the mid-i8th century seems to suggest that the peculiar combination of two forms of exploitation (tribute and coerced unequal exchange) 224 Brooke Larson accelerated the process of social differentiation at both ends of the social scale. On top of the local hierarchy, colonial authorities helped to entrench a native elite whom they depended on for distributing merchandise and providing some hedge against large tribute deficits. The caciques in turn shifted the burden of tribute debts to other members of the community, creating in effect a group of debtors at the bottom of the social heap. Pe- riodic enforced commodity distributions probably kept those originarios and other households in a perpetual state of economic subordination. The emergence of a wealthy, local elite in Tapacari and its very function in serving the fiscal needs of the state and mercantile interests of local individuals naturally altered in a fundamental way social relations in that comunidad. The evidence leaves me with a distinct impression that local society was divided between debtors and creditors. Either as patron who advanced credit or as despotic chief who distributed merchandise and passed on tribute debts to appointed cobradores, the cacique was in a position to claim personal service from many members of the village. Certainly many of those originarios who owed sums of money to Liro de Cordova and Condori repaid part of them by working on the caciques' lands. In addition, many originario households were obligated to perform domes- tic services (pongueaje) for the caciques and other ministers of the pueblo in the 1740's and i7^o's"". Those originario households were caught between the demands placed on them by caciques and the state, on the one hand, and the growing number of Indians, both originarios and forasteros, who competed for land, on the other. Many originario households probably had no more economic status than Indians classified (in the tax rolls) as forasteros who paid ground rent to the caciques in kind, cash, and labor services. If the originarios did not comply with cacical demands, they could lose their rights to hold village land"". For, in this particular comunidad kinship no longer guaranteed access to the means of subsistence. In Tapacari and, I suspect, in many other comunidades caciques dictated who received village land, and the credit rating of households was probably one factor determining patterns of land distribution. Could it be, then, that as many originario families fell deep into debt they eventually lost their landholding privileges altoge- ther? If so, did they abandon their villages? Or, did some opt to remain in their own comunidades as tenants who were eventually matriculated in the tax records as landless forasteros} As I mentioned at the beginning of this paper, the tax re- Caciques, Class Structure and the Colonial State 225 cords in the mid and late 18th century show that Bolivia had an extraordinarily large forastero population. From a global perspective, the growth of forasteros reflected to some degree the inter-regional flow of native labor power, especially in the direction of the valley haciendas of Cochabamba, Chuquisaca and the Yungas, and the cities of Porco, Potosi and, above all, La Paz. But the case study of Tapacari suggests that in searching for the origins and reasons behind growing numbers of forasteros we should not limit ourselves to the study of the geographic mobility and changing fiscal status of Indian laborers. The growth of itinerant workers and tenants throughout Bolivia was to some degree a symptom of the internal transformation of social relations and increasing differentiation in many of Bo- livia's comunidades. The most fundamental change was the concentration of economic power in the hands of a small native elite, backed by colonial authorities, and the simultaneous rise of a servile tenantry in the villages. Kinship ties in the comunidad did not necessarily guarantee direct access to the means of subsistence, and for a variety of reasons, originarios often lost their landholding rights and independent sources of livelihood. It is conceivable that those kin members of a comunidad who lost their usufructary land eventually managed to trade their fiscal status as landholding originario for that of landless forastero, which carried with it fewer obligations to the state'". When Bourbon census takers began to systematically inspect the comunidades of Upper Peru in the late 1780's and 1790's, some remarked on the fact that originarios had passed into the lower tax bracket. In the Province of Porco in 1799, for example, the royal inspector mentioned that for want of land to cultivate, many originarios in that district had assumed the tax status of forastero, with the object of paying seven pesos in yearly tribute as opposed to the ten pesos they would have owed the crown as originarios"0. In Tapacari in the 1780's no more than 15 percent of the cabecera's tributaries had landholding rights. How many of Tapacari's socalled forasteros were really kin members of the village's moieties who had lost economic standing in the community, including their legitimate right to cultivate rent-free land and pasture their animals? Per- haps some forasteros in Tapacari in the 1780's were the grown- children of Indians who had lost their landholding rights, say in the 1740's and 1750's, who passed themselves off as forasteros in the Bourbon censuses? In sum, did the matriculation of large numbers of forasteros in Upper Peru during the second half of the 18th century directly reflect the destruction of kin- 226 Brooke Larson ship as the basis of resource distribution in the comunidades, on the one hand, and the tendency of census takers to distinguish only between the landholders and landless Indians, re- gardless of their kin connection or provenance, on the other'"? Future investigation into the patterns of social mobility within the village society will deepen our understanding of forasteraje in terms of changing social relations and resource distribution in the comunidades of Upper Peru.

In this paper I have argued that, under the specific historical circumstances of protracted economic decline in the export sector and decentralized political rule, the emergence of a proper- tied class in the comunidades served the commercial interests of the colonial elite (merchant, administrative and landed) and, in the short-run, the fiscal interests of the crown itself. Why, then, did the Spanish state finally throw the bulk of its weight behind the enforcement of Indian land reform laws after about 1780? I would suggest that it was neither the pressure of one particular colonial interest group nor the result of an invigor- ated administration of one colonial official, but rather the conjuncture of global, imperial and local trends punctured by peasant rebellions which explains the crown's effort to deal seriously with the «problem* of Indian administration. The motivations of the metropolitan state to intervene in colonial government in the southern viceroyalty have long attracted the interest of historians'". It is sufficient here to but mention some of the reasons behind the Bourbon attempt to re- centralize authority, systematize tax collection, and implement land reforms within the Indian communities. Perhaps the most obvious point is that corruption had gotten so out of hand by the 1770's that the crown felt compelled to take stronger measures to control political malfeanse and to channel more tribute to the Royal coffers. Furthermore, the crown had every interest to revert to the traditional plan of extending the head tax to a greater number of Indians (rather than rely on deficit financing by wealthy individuals in the villages) since native population was rapidly increasing in the latter part of the 18th century. Even before the Intendant system was introduced, the crown commissioned the Visitor-General Areche y Guirior to inven- tory the Indian population of Upper and Lower Peru, matricu- lating all adult Indian males (originario or forastero) and com- puting the tax owed by each household (on land value). But the fiscal reforms introduced (at least on paper) in the late 1770's were not the outcome of a sudden royal impulse to rid the im- Caciques, Class Structure and the Colonial State 227 perial house of corruption. The need for increased royal income seemed to be greater than before because of England's emerging commercial hegemony in the southern Atlantic zone. If the Bourbons were to protect the long stretch of coastline in the Rio de la Plata area and the port of Buenos Aires from Portu- guese and Britisli interlopers, they had to make the southern Andean zone a revenue producer to offset the high cost of administration and military defense. According to the plan, and indeed by 1790, Upper Peru was to finance the protection and bureaucracy of the vast viceroyalty of La Plata "*. Thus, the extension of tribute was in part the local manifestation of Spain's imperial response to the expansion of industrial capi- talism and England's increasingly aggressive search for foreign markets. In 1776 Upper Peru was severed from the viceroyalty of Peru and integrated into the new viceroyalty of La Plata whose capital was the port of Buenos Aires. This early stage of administrative reform, however, left in tact the established network of interests on the provincial level of government. So while Indians faced the prospect of new or heavier tribute exactions in the late 1770's, they were still forced to engage in compulsory exchange relations. It was only after the peasant rebellions of 1780-81 that the Spanish state began to dislodge corregidores and abolish the legal repartimiento de mercancias. After the uprisings, the metropolitan state once again, this time with more muscle, tried to resurrect some aspects of the Tole- dan system of exploitation. On the books, the reforms were to begin on a grassroots level. In order to increase tribute and rejuvenate the mita, the crown wanted to redistribute comunidad land to provide subsistence plots of land and pasture rights to a greater proportion of the Indian population. The newly designated landholders in the Indian villages would be subject to full tax levies and to the mita'". In addition, the state wanted to restore cacical authority to Indians who were both loyal to the crown and respected by members of their comunidades. The legitimacy and succes- sion of chieftains became central issues both to members of comunidades and to colonial authorities in the last decades of the colonial period. The trial records of those years reveal the shift- ing and often contradictory standards of selecting caciques on the basis of birth, deed, wealth, and/or loyalty to the crown"". But the question here is whether these reforms - which were designed to provide more community land to the peasant households, release Indians from the coercion of merchant-distributors, and simultaneously siphon off more material wealth in the 228 Brooke Larson form of household tax - fundamentally altered the class structure in the comunidades. While the state succeeded in raising more tribute revenue in the last decades of colonial rule, it neither distributed comunidad land to a significant number of peasant households nor eliminated the stratum of wealthy rural Indians. One reason for this was simply the reluctance and inability of Spanish authorities to enforce the land reform order. In his study of the late Bourbon padrones of Upper Peru, Santarnaria found several examples of Spanish officials, ordered to inspect Indian villages and redistribute land, claiming that obstacles (the scarcity of free comunidad land, poor quality of soil, threat of retaliation from those who faced land losses, etc.) prevented them from executing royal orders'". Even in the Cochabamba province where Francisco de Viedma was most determined to redistribute land to more originarios as well as convert some tenants in the villages to landholding tributaries, the Intendant managed to increase the number of originarios in four villages from 339 (13.6 percent of all tributaries in the Province) to 607 (23.7 percent)"'. Still, at the end of the colonial period, more than three out of four comuneros in Cochabamba had no usufructary rights. More important, the land reforms in Cochabamba - probably the most extensive ones carried out in Upper Peru - did not destroy the native oligarchy in the villages. It is true, caciques no longer received state sanction to appropriate comunidad resources, but by then they had already accumulated considerable personal wealth outside the boundaries of their villages. Nonetheless, the hereditary cacique families of Tapacarl still received favors from colonial authorities, such as licenses to build and commercially operate the only grain mills in the village. Land reform in Cochabamba's villages spelled change not for the native elite, but for the tax-exempt mestizo tenants and perhaps a few creole hacendados who leased comunidad land. Within Indian society, the class structure was left in tact, and colonial authorities continued to rely upon wealthy cacique families as agents of economic and political control. Despite the fanfare and decrees of the Bourbon reform decades in Upper Peru, traditional colonial relations of exploitation fostered and rested upon class difference within Indian society. The crown had eliminated the office of corregidor, but it had not dis- mantled the colonial administrative apparatus on the local level (of partido and parish). Minor government officials (subdelega- dos and alcaldes ordinarios, for example) had to post bond for the tribute quota of their districts, and thus they continued to Caciques, Class Structure and the Colonial State 229 have a vested interest in supporting and (where possible) ap- pointing caciques who could guarantee a certain tax return from their villages. The Bourbons failed to unravel old financial net- works that bound members of the provincial and local bureaucracy to wealthy Indians in the comunidades. It could be argued in fact that the intensified pressure on these authorities to raise tribute funds after 1780 strengthened this economic bond'". But I think we can also presume that the village power structure persisted because colonial officials, entrusted with the task of redistributing land and reducing social inequality in the comunidades, were perfectly aware of the danger involved in wrenching control from all those caciques (or their heirs) who had remained loyal to the state during the mass uprisings in 1780 and 1781. Colonial authorities needed the collaboration of caciques more than ever before, and thus even those Spanish reformers like Viedma who were determined to release comunidad peasantry from exploitation and domination by cacique overlords and petty bureaucrats found themselves in the un- comfortable predicament of promising and promoting limited land reform while reinforcing the class structure in the comunidades.

1 See L. G. Campbell, Recent Research on Andean Peasant Revolts, 17.50- 1820, * Latin American Research Review », 1979, n. 1, pp. 3-50. 2 K. Spalding, Resistance and Accomodation: Colonial Government and Na- tive Elites, unpublished paper presented at the Eighth National Meeting of the Latin American Studies Association (Lasa), Pittsburgh, april 5-7, 1979; P. Duviols, La lutte contre les religions autochtones dans le Perou colonial, Institut Fran?ais d'Etudes Andines, Lima 1971. ' D. J. Santamarfa, La propiedad de la tierra y la condicidn social del indio en el Alto Peru, 1780-1810, «Desarrollo econ6mico», 1977, n. 66, p. 257. 4 Memorias de los virreyes que ban gobernado el Peru durante el tiempo del colonaje espanol, Bailly, Lima 1859, vol. IV. ' The term comunidad refers simply to an Indian village or community, composed of several extended kingroups (ayllus) and which is usually divided into the traditional moieties (parcialidades) of anansaya and urinsaya. * E. P. Grieshaber, Survival of Indian Communities in Nineteenth Century Bolivia, unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, University of North Carolina, 1977, p. 104 and N. Sanchez-Albornoz, Indios y Tributos en el Alto Peru, Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, Lima 1978, p. 41. 7 Sanchez-Albornoz, Indios y Tributos cit., pp. 51-53. 1 Ibid., p. 50. He notes the high percentage of Indians who were registered as forasteros in the earlier general census of 1683 who inhabited the valley regions of Upper Peru: Cochabamba, 90%; Tomina, 77%; and Chichas, 63%. ' J. de Matienzo, Gobierno del Peru, 1567, Travaux de l'lnstitut Francais d'Etudes Andines, Paris 1967, pp. 25 ff. See also N. Wachtel, The Vision of 230 Brooke Larson

the Vanquished: The Spanish Conquest of Peru through Indian Eyes, Bar- nes and Noble, New York 1977, pp. 131-36. 10 O. Cornblit, Society and Mass Rebellion in Eighteenth Century Peru and Bo- livia, R. Carr (ed.), St. Anthony's Papers, n. 22, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1970, pp. 24-25; J. Martinez Alier, Relations of Production in An- dean haciendas: Peru, K. Duncan and I. Rutledge (eds.), Land and Labor in Latin America, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1977, pp. 141-64. " See my unpublished study: Economic Decline and Social Change in an Agrarian Hinterland: Cochabamba in the Late Colonial Period, Ph. D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1978, chapter 2. 12 H. S. Klein, Hacienda and Free Community in Eighteenth Century Alto Peru: A Demographic Study of the Districts of Chulumani and Pacajes in 1786, « Journal of Latin American Studies*, 1975, n. 2, pp. 193-220. 13 A. Pearse, Peasants and Revolution: the case of Bolivia,« Society and Econo- my», 1972, n. 3, p. 257; see also Sanchez-Albornoz, Indios y Tributos cit., chapter 5. 14 Sanchez-Albornoz, Indios y Tributos cit., p. 50. 15 Sanchez-Albornoz for example raises the question of the effect of migration on ethnic distinctions and identity among native groups. Indios y Tributos cit., p. 171. On this point, see also T. Bouysse Cassagne, Tributo y etn'ias en Charcas en la epoca del Virrey Toledo, «Historia y Cultura», 1976, n. 1, pp. 98-99. " On methodology and Indian census records: D.G.Browning and D.J.Robin- son, The Origin and Comparability of Peruvian Population Data, 1776-181}, «Bulletin of the Society for Latin American Studies*, 1976, n. 25, pp. 19-38. " On 'vertical' landholding patterns in Andean society: J. V. Murra, El control vertical de un maxima de pisos ecoldgicos en la economia de las sociedadet andinas, in Formaciones econdmicas y sociales del mundo andino, Instituto de Estudios Andinos, Lima 1975, pp. 59-116; Santamaria, La propiedad cit., pp. 253-56. " Santamarfa, La propiedad cit., p. 260. Forasteros renting parcels of land from kin members of a comunidad were often called agregados. " F. de Viedma, Descripcidn geografica y estadistica de la provincia de StnU Cruz, Los Amigos del Libro, Cochabamba 1969, p. 64. 20 Sanchez-Albornoz analyzes in detail the 1683 census reports filed by inspectors of each province in Upper Peru: Indios y Tributos cit., chapter 3. Part of the census appears as an appendix to that chapter. 21 Santamaria, La propiedad cit., p. 258. 0 Archivo Hist6rico Municipal de Cochabamba (Ahmc), legajo 1046: Petici6n de Diego Paredes, 1804. 21 Memorias de los virreyes cit., vol. II, p. 175; Archivo Nacional de Bolivia (Anb), Minas n. 789, Avios sobre... la mita..., 1762. " E. Tandeter raises these questions from the perspective of the mining industry in 18th century Potost in his unpublished paper, Rent as a Relation of Production and a Relation of Distribution in Late Colonial Potos't, presented at the Eighth National Meeting of Lasa, Pittsburgh, april 5-7,1979. " Cornblit, Society and Mass Rebellion, and L. G. Campbell, The Tupac Am*- ru Revolt of 1780: Structure and Leadership Formation, unpublished paper presented at the Eighth National Meeting of Lasa, Pittsburgh, april 5-7, 1979. See also H. Bonilla, Estructura colonial y rebeliones andinas, « Apun- tes», 1977, n. 7, pp. 91-99. * Ahmc, legajo 1275, 1781,(1. 6->)v. 21 Archivo de la Biblioteca de la Universidad Mayor de San Andres (La Paz), n. 97, Ynformacion... sobre las alteraiaones en Cochabamba, 1781, f. 6 ff.; L. E. Fisher, The Last Inca Revolt, 1780-178}, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman 1966, pp. 160-62 and 166-67. Caciques, Class Structure and the Colonial State 231

" K. Spalding, Hacienda-Village Relations in Andean Society to 18}o, < Latin American Perspectives*, 1975,n. i,pp. 107-21. " ID., Social Climbers: Changing Patterns of Mobility Among the Indians of Colonial Peru, * Hispanic American Historical Review*, 1970, n. 4, pp. 645-64 and Kurakas and Commerce: A Chapter in the Evolution of Andean Society, ivi, 1973, n. 4, pp. 581-99. " J. Barnadas, Charcas: Origenes hisloricos de una sociedad colonial, /5J5- 1^6},Cipca, La Paz 1973, pp. 26-27. " Wachtel, The Vision cit., p. 117. " See T. Platt, Acerca del sistema tributario pre-1 oledano en el Alto Peru, «Avances», 1978, n. i,p. 34. u Thus while the Indians from the mining zone around Macha were required to pay part of the tribute in metals, they also owed some 25 other items as well. Bouysse Cassagne, Tributo y etnias cit., pp. 101-2. Similarly, Aymara Indians in the royal encomienda of Chucuito paid tribute in the raw wool they gathered from their own abundant herds of llamas and alpacas, but they also had to deliver many other products not so easily procured. G. Diez de San Miguel, Visita hecha a la provincia de Chucuito en el ano 1567, Casa de la Cultura, Lima 1964; Wachtel, The Vision cit., pp. 104-9. " Bouysse Cassagne, Tributo y etnias cit., p. 102; Wachtel, The Vision cit., pp. 117 and 248. " Barnadas, Charcas cit., pp. 391-92; Platt, Acerca del sistema tributario cit., P-39- * B. Larson, Merchants and Economic Activity in Sixteenth Century Potosi, unpublished Masters Thesis, Columbia University, 1972. 37 C. S. Assadourian, La produccidn de la mercancia dinero en la formacidn del mercado interno colonial. El caso del espacio peruano, siglo xvi, E. Flo- rescano (ed.), Ensayos sobre el desarrollo de Mexico y Amirica Latina, Fon- do de Cultura Econ6mica, Mexico 1979, pp. 223-92. * Platt, Acerca del sistema tributario cit., pp. 38 ff. " Wachtel, The Vision cit., pp. 107 and 121. * Spalding, Kurakas and Commerce cit., p. 587. Wachtel points out that In- dians in Chucuito produced twice as much cloth for private Spanish merchants (perhaps some 2,000 garments) as for the royal tribute collectors. The Vision cit., p. 129. " Ahmc, legajo 1195, testimonio de don Luis Abasire, 1563. 42 On yanaconas in the valleys of Chuquisaca: F. Pease, Una visita al obispado de Charcas (1590), « Humanidades» 1969, n. 3, p. 102. Also, Barnadas, Charcas cit., p. 289; Sanchez-Albornoz, Indios y Tributos cit., pp. 42, 66-67: on yanaconas in Cochabamba valleys. 41 Wachtel, The Vision cit., see especially chapter 2, p. 2 on Destructuration. 44 Ibid., p. 128. Wachtel's estimate derives from the examples of kuraka jurisdiction in Huanuco and Chuchuito in the IJ6O'S. 45 Diez de San Miguel, Visita cit., p. 58; both Spalding and Wachtel quote the informant (Kurakas and Commerce cit., p. 588 and The Vision at., p. 130). " Spalding, Kurakas and Commerce cit., p. 589. On these traditional services and responsabilities of Andean kurakas, see J. V. Murra, Social Structural and Economic Themes in Andean Ethnohistory, « Anthropological Quarter- ly*, i96i,n. 3,especially, p. 49. 47 Wachtel, The Vision cit., pp. 129-31 and 158. 41 On the question of landholdings of highland ayllus in the Cochabamba valleys after Conquest: Sanchez-Albornoz, Indios y Tributos cit., pp. 159-60; J. M. Urquidi, El Origen de la Noble Villa de Oropesa, Canelas, Cocha- bamba 1971, pp. 350-51; Repartamiento de Tierras por el Inca Huayna Ca- 232 Brooke Larson

pac (1556), Universidad Mayor de San Sim6n, Cochabamba 1977- A more general survey of regional ethnic distribution is T. Bouysse Cassagne Per- tenencia etnica, status economico y lenguas en Charcas a fines del siglo xvi, N. D. Cook (ed.), Tasa de la visita general de... Toledo, San Marcos, Lima 1975. PP- 312-27- On general demographic decline between Conquest and 1570: Sinchez-Albornoz, InJios y Tributes tit., p. 23 and Wachtel, The Vision dt., pp. 89-90. " D. Brading and H. Cross, Colonial Silver Mining: Mexico and Peru, «His- panic American Historical Review », 1972, n. 4, pp. 545-49 and the anony- mous Description de la villa y minas de Potosi, aho de 160), M. Jime'nez de la Espada (ed.), Relaciones geogrdficas de Indias: el Peru, Atlas, Madrid '96j> PP- 375-76; L. Capoche, Relacidn general de la Villa Imperial de Po- tosi, Atlas, Madrid 1959; P. Bakewell, Technological Change in Potosi the silver boom of the 1570'j, * Jahrbiich fur Geschichte von Staat», 1977, n. 14, PP- 55-77; P- Vilar, A History of Gold and Money 1450-1920, New Left Books, London 1976, pp. 119-33. " A. Crespo Rodas, La mita de Potosi, «Revista Historica*, 1955-56, vol. 21, pp. 158-62; J. Rowe, The Incas Under Spanish Colonial Institutions, •His- panic American Historical Review*, 1957, n. 2, pp. 155-99. " Wachtel, The Vision cit., pp. 169-84. " Cook, Tasa de la visita general cit., introduction. 53 Sanchez-Albornoz, Indios y Tributos cit., p. 23. u M. Morner, Race Mixture in the History of Latin America, Little, Brown, Boston 1967; Pearce, Peasants and Revolution cit., pp. 260 ff. 55 Bouysse Cassagne, Tributo y etnias cit., p. 98. 56 Archivo General de la Naci6n (Agn), Buenos Aires, Sala XIII, Padrones, 18, 1, 1, legajo 41; Minutes of the Cabildo meeting of 27 february 1617 published in Digesto de Ordenanzas, Heraldo, Cochabamba 1900, vol. 3, pp. 5-6; Anb, tomo 129, n. 1170,1792. " Sdnchez-Albornoz, Indios y Tributos dt., pp. 91 ff. and Tandeter, Rent as a Relation of Production cit., pp. 8 and 13. 51 Sanchez-Albornoz, Indios y Tributos cit., p. 27. " Spalding, Social Climbers cit., pp. 656-57; Wachtel, The Vision cit., p. 252 and W. Espinosa Soriano, El Alcalde Mayor lndigena en el Virreinato del Peru, Anuario de Estudios Americanos, i960, vol. XVII, pp. 183-300. *° Sanchez-Albornoz, Indios y Tributos tit., p. 100. 61 J. V. Murra, La correspondencia entre un 'capitan de mita' y su apoderado en Po/os»,«Historiay Cultura», 1977, n. 3, pp. 45-58. " See another example: R. Choque C, Pedro Chipana: cacique comerciante de Calamarca, «Avances», 1978, n. i,pp. 28-32. " Spalding, Social Climbers cit., pp. 661-62. ** Anb, Minas, tomo 129, n. 1176,1794. " S. Rivera C, El Mallku y la Sociedad Colonial en el siglo xviz; el caso de Jesus de Machaca, « Avances», 1978, n. i, pp. 7-9. " H. Bonilla Mayta and Fonseca Martel, TradiciSn y conservadorismo...; Jesus de Machaca: una comunidad Aymara del altiplano andino, Lima 1963, pp. 31-32; cited in Grieshaber, Survival, pp. 88 and 125. 67 Rivera, El Mallku cit., pp. 16 and 18. Fernandez claimed that Indians owed him about 4,000 pesos. " Rivera suspects that the cacique employed Indians indebted to him in his various commercial enterprises (transport and retail trade, for example). " Spalding, Hacienda-Village Relations cit., p. 113. 70 On Potosi's decline in the 17th century, especially after 1680: Brading and Cross, Colonial Silver Mining cit., pp. 569, 573-76; on the decline of peruvitn Caciques, Class Structure and the Colonial State 23)

royal income: J. Te Paske and H. Klein, The Seventeenth Century Crisis in the Spanish Empire: Myth or Reality, paper presented at the American His- torical Association Meeting, Washington (D.C.) 1976. " Cp. Spalding who argues that hacendado interests were hurt by the forced distribution of merchandise in the comunidades of Lower Peru because it increased the power of caciques who competed with hacendados for access to the labor of other village Indians (cf. Hacienda-Village Relations at., p. 118). In Upper Peru in the mid and late 18th century, hacendados did not seem to face any labor shortage or competition from a native « kulak» group for the labor of peasants in comunidades. I believe commercial accumulation by hacendados depended in part on the strength of an upper stratum of Indians (as well as local colonial bureaucrats) to serve as commercial distributors. " See J. GSIte, Redistribution y complementaridad regional en la economia andina del siglo xvm, paper presented at the XLIIC International Congress of Americanists, September 2-9,1976. " The tariff for Greater Peru is published in A. Moreno Cebrian, El Corregidor de indios y la economia peruana en el siglo xvm, Instituto Gonzalo Fernan- dez de Oviedo, Madrid 1977; and for Lower Peru, in P. Macera, Un tedrico del colonialismo espahol, Trabajos de Historia, Instituto Nacional de Cultu- ra, Lima 1977, vol. 1, pp. 264-65. " Archivo General de Indias (Agi), Seville, Contadurfa, legajo 1819. " Golte, Redistribution tit., pp. 12 and 29. '* Residencias and trial records replete with testimony of Indians forced to accept commodities provide detailed information about the type and quantity of merchandise they purchased and the prices they paid. " Two important pieces on the commercial repartimiento are K. Spalding, Tratos mercantiles del Corregidor de Indios y la formacidn de la hacienda serrana en el Peru,« America Indfgena*, 1970, n. 3 and M. Carmagnani, Una forma mercantile coatta: il 'repartimiento' nella regione messicana di Oaxaca nell'ultimo terzo del secolo xvm, J. Schneider (ed.), Wirtschaftskrafte und Wirtschaftswege; Vbersee und alfgemeine Wirtschaftsgeschichte, Bamberg 1978, vol. IV, pp. 139-45. " See J. Tord Nicolini, El Corregidor de indios del Peru: comercio y tributos, • Historia yCultura*, 1974, n. 8, pp. 189-90. ™ Ibid., pp. 193 ff. and G. Lohmann Villena, El Corregidor de indios en el Peru bajo las Austrias, Ediciones Cultura Hispanica, Madrid 1957, pp. 115- 130. " Tord Nicolini, El Corregidor cit., p. 199. " Agi, Charcas, legajo 367, f. 98 on the cause of ausentes in Cochabamba's comunidades. " Tord shows that when the sales tax (alcabalas) rose (presumably because in- terregional trade and the forced commercialization of products increased in a given year), tribute revenue almost invariably declined (Tord Nicolini, El Corregidor cit., pp. 204-5). u Agi, Charcas, legajo 343, Castelfuerte sobre la Revisita a la provincia de Cochabamba, 21 april 1731; Sanchez-Albornoz, Indios y Tributos at., pp. 55, 180-81. 14 On Porco, see B. Arzans de Orsua y Vela, Historia de la Villa Imperial de Potosi, L. Hanke and G. Mendoza (eds.), Brown University Press, Provi- dence 1965, vol. 3, pp. 192, 227-28, 260^1 and 271-72. On Cochabamba: Agi, Charcas, legajo 343, 29 april 1731. 15 P. C. Hutchins, Rebellion and the Census of Cochabamba, 17)0-1732, unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, Ohio State University, 1974. " Sdnchez-Albornoz, Indios y Tributos cit., pp. 180-81 and Spalding, Hacienda- Village Relations cit., p. 118. 234 Brooke Larson

" Spalding, Hacienda-Village Relations cit., pp. 117-19. " Anb, Expedientes, n. 160,1777. " Sdnchez-Albornoz studies demography and social change in the partido of Tapacarf (which included the cabecera and three other comunidades along with the important Spanish town of Quillacollo), Indios y Tributos cit., chapter 4. 90 Anb, Expedientes, n. 46, 1758, ff. 4-6. " Recopilacion de leyes, libro VI, titulo 5, ley 64 and libro VIII, titulo 9, leyes 9-10. n Agi, Charcas, legajo 367, Testimonio de Guillermo Liro de G5rdova contri Pedro Condori, 1746. 91 Anb, Expedientes, n. 184 (Chayanta 1798); n. 83 (Berenguela 1799); n. 48 (Pocoata 1796); n. 100 (Chuquisaca 1756). ** Spalding, Social Climbers cit., pp. 663-64 and Indian Rural Society in Co- lonial Peru: the example of Huarochiri, unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley 1967, pp. 133-34,166-73, 202-8. " See Santamaria, La propiedad cit., p. 2 58. * I found information on Liro de Ccirdoba holdings in two wills: Ahmc, legajo 1256 (1782) and legajo 1090 (1792). See my study Economic Decline and Social Change, pp. 382 ff. and Appendix 22. " Sanchez-Albornoz, Indios y Tributos cit., p. 163. " Agn, IX, Interior, 30,4,6, legajo 30, Expediente 39,1791, fi. 39-39V. w Agi, Charcas, legajo 367, ff. 64-661;; Anb, Expedientes, n. 46,1758. 100 Agi, Charcas, legajo 367, ff. 217-19. 101 Anb, Expedientes, n. 46, 1758. Sanchez-Albornoz found an example of • Tapacarf gobernador confiscating land from an originario in the lite 17th century, Indios y Tributos cit., p. 137. "" Cp. Sanchez-Albornoz, who believes that few Indians, either forastero or originario changed their fiscal status without state sanction. He reasons thtl forasteros had little means of acquiring comunidad land and furthermore would not want to enter the higher tax bracket as originario with usufructary rights. The originarios, on the other hand, apparently did not want to cede their rights to forasteros, even when they might be free of mita duty and higher tribute payments (Indios y Tributos cit., p. 62). For many originarios, this was undoubtedly the case. But if some originario families were in fact no more than tenants in their own communitiei, would not these Indians or their offspring eventually try to pass as forasteroi, simply by virtue of their landless condition? Sdnchez-Albornoz hypothesize! that forastero Indians in the nearby Spanish parish of Quillacollo managed to pass as mestizos in the late 18th century and thereby evade tribute exactions, while forasteros in the Indian village of Tapacarf found it mote difficult to assume the tax-exempt status of mestizo (ibid., p. 169). Still, I wonder whether some of the growing number of forasteros in the village were descended from originario families, who were registered in the tax rofl» on the basis of their subordinate economic standing in the village. That forasteros in Quillacollo apparently moved out of the tributary status al- together indicates a fair amount of movement between fiscal categories ind the possibility for Indians to alter their fiscal status under some circumstances. "" Santamarfa, La propiedad cit., p. 268. 1M On the increasing ambiguity of the categories originario/forastero in the lite 18th century, see Cornblit, Society and Mass Rebellion cit., p. 26. 105 See especially J. Lynch, Spanish Colonial Administration, 1782-1S10; Tbt Intendant System in the Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata, Athlone, London 1958. Caciques, Class Structure and the Colonial State 235

"* H. S. Klein, Structure and Profitability of Royal Finance in the Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata in 1790, «Hispanic American Historical Review», 1973, n. 1, pp. 440-49. '" Sanchez-Albomoz, Indios y Tributos cit., p. 181. "* Article 10 of the Royal Ordinance of Intendants ordered that Indians were to have the right to follow the old custom of electing from among themselves the alcaldes and other officials of the comunidad (Anb, Expedientes, nn. 245 and 247, 1796). But while blood relations to traditional cacical families was supposedly one requirement for assuming the office of cacicazgo, colonial authorities looked for other qualifications, such as the individual's pshychological disposition towards the colonial regime and his financial assets. Anb, Expedientes, n. 158,1808; n. 49,1798. '" Santamarfa, La propiedad cit., p. 268. "* Agn, XIII, Padrones, 18, 2, 1, legajo 46 and 18, 2, 5, legajo 150; Sanchez- Albornoz, Indios y Tributos cit., p. 185. '" See my Economic Decline and Social Change cit., pp. 295-300, 395-98.