Forced Labor in Colonial Peru -- Donald L

FORCED LABOR IN COLONIAL PERU -- DONALD L. WIEDNER Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts Things to Consider: 1. Describe and compare the Inca corveé to that employed by the Spanish? How did the Yanakona and plazero fit into this system? 2. One example cites the Spanish replacing the Incan”…ideal of communal cooperation…” with monetarist system. (¶8 §3) Explain the difference in the concept and application of ‘tribute’ by the Spanish and the impact it had on indigenous peoples. 3. What was the nature and function of the encomienda? Corregidor? How did they fit into the colonial social and economic structure of Spanish America? 4. Describe the Toledo reforms to the mita and assess the extent they were successful. 5. It has been argued the mita and encomienda amounted to little more than forms of slavery. Explain why these systems would be characterized in such a manner. 6. What percentage of the native population ultimately participated in forced labour systems and why did the system eventually collapse? Why do you think laws were ineffectual in protecting the indigenous? Explain. THE well-organized Inca nation of Peru yielded to the Spanish quest for tribes of the Peruvian highlands, its outpost garrisons (mitma-kona) evolved into precious metals and mission fields. The new Indian subjects, having groups of loyal settlers. First as spies, then as cultural leaders, they redirected developed stable economic and political nationhood before the conquest, were the conquered tribes toward cultural as well as political union with Cuzco.6 accustomed to work and amenable to organization. Out of this substance, a Astute Inca politicians soon found it expedient to resettle more than half of each colonial state could be moulded to make a substantial contribution to the newly conquered tribe in another part of the Empire, replacing them with loyal Spanish purposes. subjects: this process retained the same name (mitma-kona), but became something akin to the period of public service (mit’a) to which every subject Spaniards readily rationalized that precious metals were material rewards for gave some time.7 the missions' spiritual ambitions;1 conquest itself had precedents both among the Romans and the Incas, but Spain's Christianity gave her even greater The Inca labor draft, however, was part of an extensive economic system justification.2 based on communal effort and production rather than any monetary concept. The government provided whatever its subjects needed, and there is little The conquerors, in the early years, tended to disdain manual labor,3 but reason to think a subject cared whether he worked on an allotment of land or an considered' work' a virtue which no Indian should evade. 'Freedom' was' the assignment of public service. His reward was the same. Leisure time and right to do what was right,' and Pope Paul III extended this' freedom' to the freedom of choice do not seem to have been elements in this system, for all Indians.4 The Spaniards therefore felt a sense of stewardship toward native jobs and time were organized; the responsibility rested exclusively with the labor, a feeling which is closely associated with both their concept of ' administering nobility.8 It appears that the system worked largely because the conquerors' rights' and the practical need for labor in Peru. administration remained compassionate rather than tyrannical, incredible It was argued that Rome had sent mittimae [tax collectors] to all corners of though this seems to Europeans who expect power to corrupt men. the pagan empire5 and there was the vague precedent set by Christian Alongside this system, there seems to have been a semi-professional class conquerors who had remoulded the Moorish labor force in southern Spain. of artisans and specialists, centered about the court at Cuzco but somewhat Far-fetched though these references may seem, they appear to have been very itinerant and quite unattached to either the mitma-kona or mita systems.9 One real to Spaniards seeking European as well as indigenous precedents for their can only speculate whether this class, called Yanakona, might have been the" actions. safety valve" in which the restless and the creative elements of the common Certainly a more realistic precedent was observed in the Inca domains they people were absorbed. conquered. As the Inca suzerainty expanded from Cuzco to envelop other To the Spaniards, the whole system seemed readily adaptable. They but did not solve the problem in the cities, where merchants and house owners believed they were instituting ‘freedom' (as defined by the Pope and applied by had need for day laborers. It was soon apparent that few Indians were going to the Christian king of Spain), and they introduced a monetary concept. With volunteer to work for the conquerors, so it became necessary to draft labor from these changes, what had been a system based upon the ideal of communal nearby native settlements. By the early 1550's, these coerced corps were cooperation became a semi-theocratic monetarist arrangement. The arrival of being collected in city plazas, where they could be hired at a small wage for the the Spanish transformed the internal economy of a sovereign Indian people into day by those who wanted them. Called plazeros, they worked primarily as a system of which they were but one part. This change in orientation may help gardeners, handy-men, and odd-jobbers; the supply was adequate for neither explain many of Spain's subsequent labor problems. larger nor longer undertakings, and the system soon proved to be the least important or oppressive form of forced labor.15 ENCOMIENDA LABOR AND PERSONAL SERVICE The Roman concept of tribute -- levied in the ancient Roman Empire upon all After feasting on the initial loot of conquest in 1535, organization naturally conquered provinces16 -- was incorporated into the Spanish system, and the became the Spaniards' first concern. The first arrangement the conquerors privilege of collecting and sharing in its yield was one of the most desirable made was to apportion Peru in the manner of encomiendas. This device was, privileges included in an encomienda grant. The Incas has paid tributes in effect, a grant of labor supply to the work-disdaining Christian victors, and before, either as part of the produce or in the form of labor they gave to their served to initiate political control over the Indians.10 Although the conquerors government, but most of the produce was returned to them as they needed it.17 established their preeminence, these soldiers prevented effective royal control Its exaction worked somewhat differently under the Spanish. Pizarro, the for over a decade.11 The encomienda system was usable largely for conqueror, made the tribute in produce part of the system of rewards to his agriculture, since Indians were generally not expected to serve any great soldiers and a means of support for the government. It was levied in addition distance from the encomienda to which they were assigned.12 Perpetual to the requirements of encomienda, personal service, or the plaza duties.18 grants were never actually authorized, so there was some flexibility -- as well as politics -- in the assignment of labor supply.13 Much of what subsequently None of the preceding arrangements, however, was adaptable to the labor develops on the Peruvian labor scene is an outgrowth of this flexibility, for many demands resulting from the introduction of large-scale mining. Lucrative silver grants reverted to the Crown as years passed, thus becoming substantial veins, uncovered at Potosí in 1545, quickly attracted a deluge of settlers and sources for other kinds of forced labor. promoters. Personal service -- labor performed for the Spaniards themselves, as LABOR DEMANDS IN THE EARLY MINES distinguished from work on farms or in commerce -- was a problem of The initial demand for labor seems to have been met in two simple ways: considerable concern. The former itinerant Inca class of Yana-konas, now neighboring Spaniards abandoned farming and used their encomendados to called Yanaconas, without either fixed residences or obligations, apparently exploit the mines; and a number of foreigners, who were willing to work with were promptly absorbed into Spanish households. In addition there seems to their own hands, came in.19 Surely many Spaniards were also actively have been a tendency to supplement this domestic service with Indians from the prospecting during the individualistic early years of surface digging. encomiendas. Official efforts to separate the two classes, and to ban the latter from personal service, were countered by delaying tactics and outright Within two years (1547), the haphazard surface scrapings and foxhole disobedience for at least a generation, but substantial progress was made diggings20 yielded to the use of large tunnels, which started consuming laborers' toward establishing the principle that all such labor should receive nominal lives and led to increased development.21 From 1548 to 1554, the opportunity pay.14 There must have been much official confusion in distinguishing actual to earn tribute money induced Indians to go to Potosí, but a decimating Yanaconas from encomienda Indians, but the difference was important in the epidemic of "nasal catarrh " was blamed for reducing this source of labor. eyes of the law. Indians, Potosifios claimed, liked to come to the mines because they were freed from disease, encomienda duties and the dictation of their curacas (chiefs).22 Encomienda grants satisfied the greater part of the rural demand for labor, By 1554, Spanish local officials and Indian curacas were forcing Indians to go to problem. Biographers and commentators are inclined to cite him either as a the mines to earn their tributes.23 monumental reformer or as a source of great evil in the subsequent history of Peru. It would seem fair to recognize in him a sense of duty and a definite set Apparently the money tribute was being preferred to the relatively of moral opinions, perhaps quite akin to those of his contemporary, John Calvin unnegotiable tribute in produce.

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