The rule of empires : those who built them, those who endured them, and why they always fall (30 page)

manufactures and the fi ve-peso tribute obligation were not suffi cient

152 THE RULE OF EMPIRES

inducement to get Andeans to work for wages. Slaves offered only a

partial solution to the problem because they were too expensive to

be used on a grand scale, and the Christian legitimizing ideology of

the Spanish Empire was suffi ciently potent to protect Andeans from

enslavement or blatant forced labor. Spanish offi cials and settlers

predictably blamed their labor problems on immoral Indian laziness,

but it is worth recalling Viceroy Conde Nieva’s candid observation in

1560 that the Spanish in Peru would “rather die of hunger than take

a hoe in their hands.”39

Ultimately, Toledo had to use established Andean tribute systems to generate labor. The Spanish Crown’s addiction to New World

precious metals made increasing silver production his top priority.

The mines of Potosí, source of the greatest deposits of Andean silver, produced 7.6 million pesos worth of bullion per year between

1580 and 1650.40 Located within the borders of modern Bolivia, they

were Spain’s single most important source of revenue in all of South

America, but secondary mines scattered throughout the Andes were

also important.

The Inkas worked many of these deposits before the Spanish conquest by assigning subject
mit’a
laborers (
mitayos
) to the mines to

fulfi ll their tribute obligations. As unskilled workers, they collected

ore from surface veins under the supervision of their
kurakas
and

turned it over to smelters, most of whom were
yanacona
specialists, who refi ned it using furnaces fueled by llama dung. These skilled

workers were permanently detached from their
ayllus
and lived at

the mines. The system continued during the Pizarrist era, except that

encomienderos
sent tributaries to the mines and collected refi ned

ore from their
kuraka
supervisors. The work was not unacceptably

burdensome while the surface veins remained productive, and many

mitayos
chose to stay at Potosí as
yanaconas
to avoid the
encomien-

deros
’ increasingly heavy demands on their home
ayllus
.

The situation worsened as the accessible deposits played out and

production dropped. The Spaniards compensated by using mercury

to refi ne the low-grade ores they had previously discarded, but ultimately the necessity of digging deeper required considerably more

labor. One of Toledo’s greatest priorities as viceroy was to lower the

cost of Peruvian silver production by ensuring that the mines had a

steady supply of cheap Andean labor. Handcuffed by Andean resistance to joining the cash economy, he turned the preconquest
mit’a

Spanish

Peru 153

system into a form of state-sanctioned labor conscription that required

ayllus
in the districts accessible to Potosí to send roughly 15 percent

of their adult male population to work on the mines for four months.

This revision of the Inkan system generally meant that every man

would have to serve a tour in Potosí once every seven years. Toledo’s

scheme initially produced approximately thirteen thousand unskilled

laborers per year.41

The Spaniards justifi ed the revised
mit’a
system on the grounds

that Andeans were too ignorant to recognize the benefi ts of honest

labor. They were also careful to distinguish the
mit’a
from slavery by

paying the
mitayos
, but Spanish mine owners still bought and sold

these laborers when they arrived at Potosí. Most workers fell into

debt buying extra rations in addition to the mining equipment, candles, and coca leaves (for increased endurance) they needed to do their

jobs. Over time, mine owners became increasingly reliant on more

skilled paid laborers (
mingas
) who came to Potosí voluntarily, but

mitayos
remained at the core of the mining economy in the Andes

until the very end of Spanish rule.

The work itself was backbreaking and frequently lethal. With

skilled salaried miners working the silver veins, the
mitayos
’ main

job was to carry the raw ore up the mining shaft wrapped in wool

blankets knotted at their chests. They could be whipped or beaten for

failing to meet a weekly quota of loads carried to the smelters. Moreover, the workers frequently contracted pneumonia as they climbed

from the heat of the pits into the chilly mountain air of Potosí, which

is more than thirteen thousand feet above sea level. Silicosis and

mercury poisoning also killed large numbers of
mitayos
and other

miners. European inspectors and specially appointed
kurakas
were

supposed to ensure that conditions did not become too bad, but they

had no capacity to address the abuses that were built into Potosí’s

mining economy.42

The silver demands of the Crown required Toledo to give mine

owners fi rst call on the
mit’a
drafts, but the system was so effi cient

in getting Andeans to work that he and his successors frequently

assigned
mitayos
to their friends and allies as patronage. In the seventeenth century, enterprising Spaniards with access to
mit’a
labor

drafts set up sweatshops producing high-quality textiles for export.

As in Inkan times, the Andeans themselves remained the most

valuable resource in Peru. Tributary Indians consequently became

154 THE RULE OF EMPIRES

prendas con pies
(assets with feet) that Spaniards vied to control.

Corregidors
and priests hid “their Indians” from the
mit’a
draft to

ensure a steady fl ow of tribute, and ambitious
kurakas
poached the

constituents of neighboring rivals to build up their own tributary

populations.

Andeans sought to escape the imperial regime’s labor demands

by avoiding census takers, hiding their wealth, and hiring lawyers to

appeal excessive tribute obligations. If all else failed, they simply fl ed

the
mit’a
draft, particularly after the death toll at the mines began to

rise. Many became
forasteros
, a new category of rootless people who

permanently abandoned their home communities. Although it did

not entail the protection of reciprocity,
forastero
status exploited a

loophole in Spanish law that made only
ayllu
members liable for tax

and tribute. Other Andeans disappeared into Lima, Quito, and other

major urban centers, where they survived in the informal sector

working as peddlers and day laborers. Consequently, people seemed

to disappear from the Indian republic, and by the late seventeenth

century the population of the sixteen provinces supplying most of

Potosí’s labor had dropped by 50 percent.

The reach of the Peruvian imperial state was relatively short in the

fi rst centuries of Spanish rule, which allowed Andeans to protect many

of their preconquest institutions. But as the decades passed, the realities of subjecthood inevitably broke down some of this particularism

and reshaped the identities and culture of later generations, though not

always in the ways that the Spanish intended. Toledo’s administrative

reforms and
mit’a
labor demands steadily wore down the reciprocal

communal relationships central to the Andean political economy under

the Inkas. Spanish insistence on taxes in cash rather than produce and

mandatory purchases under the
repartimiento
system gradually forced

Andeans into the cash economy, which promoted private rather than

communal conceptions of property. Urbanization and the explosive

growth of the mining economy created new market opportunities for

those with the resources to sell crops, crafts, and services.

As the princes of the Indian republic, the
kurakas
acquired the

power to monopolize the resources of their
ayllus
. Some, particularly

those in more remote regions, tried to follow the old reciprocal ways

by using new forms of wealth to provide their
ayllus
with aid and

material goods. Other
kurakas
, however, were more entrepreneurial and self-interested. They hired out their constituents to private

Spanish

Peru 155

employers or put them to work weaving cloth under contract for

Spanish buyers. Those living within Potosí’s orbit made fortunes by

supplying the mines with food and wine. Bearing Hispanicized names

with the noble honorifi c
don
, they essentially became minor imperial

functionaries.

The
kurakas
often used this ability to earn cash to purchase land.

Theoretically,
ayllu
land belonged to the community, but the pressure of tribute and taxation led Andeans to rent and sometimes sell

land to generate currency. Spanish buyers acquired some of these

tracts, but they had diffi culty developing them because, under the law,

the Indian republic was technically closed to Europeans. The
kura-

kas
therefore were best positioned to take advantage of the new land

market, and several powerful Hispanicized
kuraka
families became

important landholders in the highland regions near Lima and other

urban centers. More remote
ayllus
proved more resilient, but over

time common Andeans had to sell their labor in ever larger numbers

as they lost access to land.

These profound economic changes gradually turned Andeans into

tribute-paying Indians as local identities lost their economic underpinnings and broke down over the course of the seventeenth century.

To a large extent these Indians were partially Hispanicized Christians, but this imperially driven cultural transformation rarely lived

up to Spanish expectations. The idealistic rhetoric that legitimized

Spanish rule obligated Peruvian administrators to make a good faith

effort to “civilize” highland populations, which meant becoming culturally Spanish. Initially, the imperial authorities did not fully appreciate that Hispanicizing their subjects would complicate their ability

to exploit them.

As in earlier empires, in the Andes elites were the most open to

assimilation. The sons of Inkan royals and powerful
kurakas
attended

Church-run boarding schools that aimed to create a Hispanicized

Christian nobility for the Indian republic. Many of these boys grew

up into loyal subjects, but Spanish offi cials often worried that they

were too European and unreliable. Bearing Spanish names and titles,

acculturated Andean aristocrats wore western clothing, owned slaves,

and invested in urban property. In the highlands, Hispanicized Andeans, known as Ladinos, staffed the Indian republic’s bureaucracy as

clerks and village scribes, but the Spanish authorities similarly distrusted them and never ceased to view them as Indians.

156 THE RULE OF EMPIRES

Peruvian offi cials and clergymen encountered even greater problems when they tried to provide the Indian nobility with obedient

Christian subjects. The lasting power of the
wakas
testifi ed to the

strength of localism and the ability of common Andeans to resist

Spain’s civilizing project. Priests and friars therefore struggled to

win converts because they could not articulate the central tenants of

Christianity in Andean terms. They made some headway by opening

parish schools and producing Quechua and Aymara dictionaries and

lexicons in the early seventeenth century, but they soon discovered

that many Andeans adopted baptism, saints, hymns, prayer, and other

trappings of Catholicism without actually internalizing their offi cial

meaning. To their horror, Spanish churchmen began to fear that the

new converts were following the mestizo priest Valera’s lead in Andeanizing Christianity instead of accepting the subordinate role that

Spanish Catholicism assigned them in imperial society. The panic and

vigor behind the Church’s ill-fated extirpation campaigns against the

wakas
thus echoed the Andalusi authorities’ desperate attempt to

defend the boundaries of subjecthood by preventing the Mozarabs

from blending Islam with Iberian Christianity.

As in Al-Andalus, gender further muddied the distinction between

citizen and subject in the Andes. Peruvian administrators initially

hoped to create a more comprehensible community of subjects by

promoting Spanish conceptions of paternal masculinity. Drawing

on their own gendered biases, they assumed that men had a natural

right and responsibility to control women. They brushed aside preconquest norms that had accorded women a parallel but equal role in

the Andean political economy, thereby ensuring that there would be

no more female
kurakas
under Spanish rule. Toledo denied Andean

women legal standing in the courts and required them to reside in

their husbands’
ayllus
.

Yet the viceroy’s tribute demands made a nonsense of his attempts

at imperial social engineering. Marriage was the primary marker of

adulthood for Andean males, which meant that taking a wife made