History
Encomienda System
The Encomienda System was a labor system established by the Spanish crown in the early colonial period of the Americas. Under this system, Spanish conquistadors were granted the right to extract labor and tribute from indigenous communities in exchange for protection and Christianization. The system was highly exploitative and contributed to the mistreatment and abuse of indigenous peoples.
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10 Key excerpts on "Encomienda System"
eBook - PDFWestern Expansion and Indigenous Peoples
The Heritage of Las Casas
- Elias Sevilla-Casas(Author)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
. ... in their dominions the encomenderos could employ the encomendados The Indigenous Tribute System as a Mechanism of Exploitation 101 as laborers, practically without limit and on the conditions that they themselves laid down. They had likewise the right to collect personal tribute from them, with neither limits nor rates being determined in advance... (Roel 1970: 90-91). We note that this was a kind of initial foray in which the aim was to get the greatest possible gain. This procedure was not peculiar to the territory conquered from the Incas; it was the same in Central America, to such an inhuman extreme that the health of the native population was rapidly undermined. It was contrary to the policy of the Crown, which strove to preserve the native manpower to a moderate degree, for without it there would be no labor force and that would seriously interfere with the possibilities of capital accumulation. Extermination in the West Indies, for example, reached exorbitant proportions; populations were dying en masse. Las Casas and the Dominicans maintained that the mortality of the aborigines was the inevitable consequence of the Encomienda System, invented by the insatiable cupidity of the Spaniards (Konetzke 1971:168). This series of abuses endangered the very existence of the Indian population, the basis of the economy, and obliged Spain to concern itself with the general system of exploitation in its colonies even though it had to counter certain private interests. Thus the way was prepared for the first laws to protect the inhabitants of the Indies. It is curious that the very defense of the Indian — the polemics of Las Casas and the Dominicans in favor of the Indian population, clothed in the garb of humanist-Christian ideology — was based on the advocacy not of an end to exploitation but only of a preservation of the indigenous labor force so as to allow a more rational and lasting exploitation of land and of natural and mineral resources.
eBook - PDF- Ann Jefferson, Paul Lokken(Authors)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- Greenwood(Publisher)
Some estimates place the native population of Hispaniola around 1 million before the arrival of the Spanish. By the time 15 years had passed, their number had been reduced to 30,000. Alarmed at the results of the enslavement of the natives, the king approved establishing the encomienda, a sys- tem that had been in use during the Reconquest by Christians of the Iberian Peninsula. ENCOMIENDA The encomienda was a grant of workers to a person known as the encomendero. The word encomienda comes from the Spanish verb encomendar, meaning “to entrust,” so in the literal sense, the enco- mienda was an entrustment of native people to a Spaniard. They worked for him and paid tribute to him. In theory, the encomen- dero accepted the responsibility to protect these workers and to Christianize them, thus saving their souls from eternal damnation. In the view of the Iberians, the Christian god was the greatest gift they could bring to the heathens of the New World. In practice, of course, the encomendero was more concerned with organizing the efficient payment of the tribute, which took the form of bolts of woven cloth, fowl, and agricultural products, than he was with saving the souls of the Indians. In addition, the way the encomi- enda system was put into practice made it not much different from outright enslavement. The tribute demands imposed on the natives held in encomienda were a major factor in the demographic col- lapse. Another factor was the lack of time people had for the work that had sustained them in their pre-Columbian communities, that is, finding food and medicinal herbs, weaving cloth, building shel- ter, and appeasing the gods that provided for the community’s needs. In the first two decades of Spanish colonization of the Ca- ribbean, the colonists came close to accomplishing the total deple- tion of the native population.
eBook - PDFSpanish Peru, 1532–1560
A Social History
- James Lockhart(Author)
- 1994(Publication Date)
- University of Wisconsin Press(Publisher)
II ENCOMENDEROS AND MAJORDOMOS TIiE encomienda. as is well known. was the basic instrument of Spanish exploitation of Indian labor and products in the conquest period.· Since the system was also central to the economic and social organization of the Spaniards them- selves. it is well to begin by telling who the powerful group of men holding encomiendas were. and how the system func- tioned in Peru. By no means every Spaniard in the Indies was an enco- mendero.l The number of indigenous sociopolitical entities put a severe upper limit on the number of possible viable encomiendas. Even in that framework. Spanish governors and captains generally seem to have created the smallest -An encomienda is generally described as a royal grant. in reward for meritorious service at arms. of the right to enjoy the tributes of Indians within a certain boundary. with the duty of protecting them and seeing to their religious welfare. An encomienda was not a grant of land. In Peru as elsewhere. the grant came from the governor or viceroy. the crown taking no active part in the process. and par- ticularly in the first years after the conquest. the terms of the grant went beyond the right to collect tributes. specUlcally entitling the encomendero or grantee to use the Indians in mines or agricultural enterprises. In practice. as will be discussed in the course of the chapter. grants were assigned not only to reward service at arms. though that was usually a prerequisite. but also for social and political considerations. And the encomenderos. leaping over technicalities. made their encomiendas the basis of large estates even if they did not legally own the land. HistOrically. the en- comienda is situated on a line of development leading from the march lord domain of the European Middle Ages to the Spanish American haCienda or great estate of the seventeenth century and later. 11 Copyrighted Material
eBook - PDFThe European Seaborne Empires
From the Thirty Years' War to the Age of Revolutions
- Gabriel Paquette(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Yale University Press(Publisher)
2 More gener-ally, the voracious demand by Europeans for labor in their overseas empires portended the invention of new oppressive labor regimes or else the survival, expansion, and (often) perversion of earlier practices. 146 la b o r r e g i m e s Coerced labor took several forms. In Mexico, Amerindian slavery predominated at first and was built on indigenous foundations, as at least 5 percent of Aztec society was enslaved. Though the Spanish Crown soon prohibited enslavement of Amerindians, it did not foreclose other modes of accessing indigenous labor. The Encomienda System, though derived from Iberian precedent, was recast in Spanish America. It allotted groups of Amer-indians to an encomendero, typically a conquistador, who gained control over their labor and, according to the 1512 Laws of Burgos, was responsible for their spiritual welfare and protection. In spite of efforts to rein them in, notably through the 1542 New Laws that explicitly articulated Amerindians’ free status, the largest encomenderos formed what amounted to a colonial aristocracy for the first decades after the conquest of Peru and Mexico. Hernan Cortés, for example, received encomienda right over 115 , 000 natives. The average size of an encomienda in the Valley of Mexico averaged six thousand in 1530 . In Andean South America, the mita prevailed. Taken from a Quechua word, it referred to the annual labor service demanded by the Inca emperor and organ-ized by local lords who were loyal to him. Spain continued this practice, though with more exacting brutality. They forced Amerindians to provide labor on a rotational basis in mines, agriculture, and textile factories. In the mines of Potosí, one-seventh of the adult population was forced to work one year out of every seven, which produced devastating population dislocations. The vast majority, around 80 percent, of laborers in the mines of Potosí and Zacatecas at the zenith of their productivity ( 1550 – 1650 ) were indigenous.
Available until 31 Dec |Learn more- Ian Jacobs(Author)
- 2024(Publication Date)
- University of New Mexico Press(Publisher)
182 CHAPTER SIX Encomiendas, Encomenderos, and Guerrero’s Indigenous Communities The Spanish invasion of Mexico was privately financed by a small group of adventurers who naturally sought a return on their investment and seigneur- ial privileges. The Crown had no intention of rewarding them from the royal treasury, so another way to remunerate the conquistadors was required. The solution was the encomienda. The term encomienda originated in the Spain of the Reconquista, where it signified a temporary grant of sovereignty over a territory. In the Caribbean colonies, an encomienda grant gave a con- quistador the right to Indian labor to produce food and mine gold. The encomienda in New Spain was a third variant: an allotment of Indians who provided tribute (originally in kind, later in cash or a mixture of the two) and labor to the encomendero. In return, the encomendero was, in theory, obliged to care for the welfare and religious instruction of the Indians, an obligation frequently honored in the breach. Crucially, the encomienda granted no property rights and was not heritable unless the Crown con- ceded limited inheritance for one or occasionally more generations. Cortés wasted little time in distributing encomiendas to his loyal lieutenants until the Crown asserted more control over the institution through the Audiencia and the viceroy. As an answer to an urgent problem, the encomienda was an important institution in the first half of the sixteenth century, its importance gradually diminishing after 1550 as the Crown appropriated encomiendas, although some lasted well into the seventeenth century. 1 6.1. The Regional Distribution of the Encomienda Counting the number of encomiendas in Guerrero is not an exact sci- ence. Data for the early years especially are at times sketchy and contradic- tory. Moreover, the encomienda was not immutable. It might be divided 183 ENCOMIENDAS, ENCOMENDEROS, AND GUERRERO’S INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES TABLE 6.1.
- Rolena Adorno(Author)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- Yale University Press(Publisher)
It consigned groups of Indians to privileged Spanish colonists; these grantees ( encomenderos ) were en-titled to receive labor and tribute in goods from the designated Indians. An encomienda grant conferred no landed property or juridical jurisdic-tion; as Charles Gibson (58) writes, it ‘‘was a possession, not a property, and it was per se inalienable and non-inheritable. Save insofar as the terms of particular grants might allow.’’ Its use spread from the Antilles and was imposed on the peoples of the former Mexica federation in New Spain, those of the former Inca empire in Peru, and all Spanish posses-sions in the Americas. The Indians were regarded as juridically free, yet the legal distinctions between encomienda, slavery, and other forms of servitude did not su≈ce to render the di√erences clear in practice. ∏ The high point of this discussion in Spain is commonly identified with the debate in Valladolid in 1550–1551 between Fray Bartolomé de las councilors warring at the royal court 101 Casas and the humanist and chronicler of the emperor, Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda. π The Valladolid debates, carried out before a select body of the emperor’s councilors, was a signal event in the larger controversy. While the question of the character or comportment of the Indian was not the central issue of that dispute, it was introduced there by Sepúlveda and it cannot be separated from the events of conquest and colonization and the elaboration of royal policy pertaining thereto. The trajectory of the larger debate and pertinent legal actions can be quickly summarized. ∫ legislative events and polemical confrontations In 1495, because of the shipment of Indians from the island of Hispaniola to Spain to be sold as slaves, Ferdinand and Isabel ordered a meeting of theologians and other learned men to consider whether this could be done according to the requirements of Christian conscience.
eBook - ePubThe Sweat of Their Brow: A History of Work in Latin America
A History of Work in Latin America
- David McCreery(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
Chapter 2 The Colonial System, 1550–1750T he Crown’s goal for the New World was a labor force that was able and willing to freely contract its work for wages. The Catholic kings had outlawed vagrancy and ended serfdom in Spain, and for a half century after the Conquest the state struggled to implement a free work regime in the colonies. Black slavery did not contradict this policy because the Crown did not consider the captured Africans citizens, whereas the indigenous inhabitants of the New World emphatically were. But the Indians generally were not eager to work for the Spanish. Most saw little reason to seek out the meager wages and difficult conditions offered. They had to pay taxes, and fees to support the new religion, but until at least the end of the sixteenth century, and in many areas much longer, these could be paid in kind, in the Indians’ own products. Alternatively, they could obtain what they needed by trade or by gathering it in the wild. Much of the indigenous population at least initially was able to satisfy its tax liabilities, and even to obtain money to buy new consumer goods, without directly entering the Spanish economy, and, particularly, without working for the Spanish.If the Indians did not work voluntarily they would be made to work, for their own moral good and to sustain the state and church. As the Crown reined in the encomiendas and brought an end to the enslaving of indigenous peoples in the central areas, the Spanish and creole elites, the Indians, and the state worked out forced wage labor systems, called variously repartimientos or mitas. These had different histories in different parts of the empire, but where forced wage labor did not soon disappear it tended to calcify into a “custom” (costumbre)
eBook - PDFGeneral History of the Caribbean - UNESCO
Autochthonous Societies
- J. Sued-Badillo(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
And the worst of it is, that in the name of faith ... they try to put a pretty face on their tyrannies, robberies, and greeds. ,93 The theoretical and judicial difference between the encomienda and pure slavery is underscored by Pedro Martir de Angleria, at that time a member of the Council of the Indies, when he describes this new system of work: That the little kings assigned with their subjects by royal munificence to whatever it may be, they are treated as tribute-payers and citizens of the jurisdiction, and not as slaves. ,94 The practical effect of the encomienda, however, its day-to-day functioning, leads a historian as scrupulous as Carlos Esteban Deive to pronounce the following categorical judgment: 'The encomienda - we will never tire of saying this - was, in fact, disguised slavery' (La esclavitud del negro: 15). That it could be a complex matter to evaluate fairly the encomienda is shown by the paradoxical verdict, apparently issued in 1517, by the Franciscan friar Pedro Mexia, who believed that 'it is bad to take the Indians away from the Spaniards and it is bad to leave them with them.' It was bad to take them away 343 General History of the Caribbean because (it was alleged) the financial hopes of the colonists would be dashed and the Crown's official grants to them would be violated. In addition, without Spanish oversight, the sowing of the Christian faith among the natives would fail, for 'there not being persons to compel them, the Ave Maria that they say today, in ten years they would not know how to say.' On the other hand, it was bad to leave them to the encomendaderos (as the recipients of this human gift were called) 'because leaving them, in a short time there would perish all the Indians in these lands.
eBook - PDF- Christopher M. White(Author)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- Greenwood(Publisher)
While the encomienda faded rapidly as an institution, the repartimiento (forced labor draft system) and the hacienda (great estate) served to equally exploit the Indian. Indians also received a separate legal identity within separate institutions from the Spanish. Indian governance even in cases where Spanish and Indians The Colonial Period, 1524–1821 39 lived in the same area, were governed within a comunidad (community) with their own administrador (administrator) and several socios (assistants) whom the local Indians elected. However, the Indians had very little rights compared to the Spanish who were given de facto legitimacy due to their birthplace or family history. In a case in point, when a volcanic eruption threatened the town of Nejapa in 1658, Indian villagers petitioned Spanish authorities to set- tle on land near a Spanish hacienda and were rejected on the official reasoning that the hacendado’s cattle would harm the Indians’ crops. Another problem was even more pressing: in the minds of the Spanish, the indigo mills on those lands were too valuable to be jeopardized by the survival needs of the Indians. Spaniards of the time portrayed the plight of the Indians as a result of their in- herent inferiority, and not attributable to Spanish actions. Instead, the Indians’ backwardness was viewed as the result of God’s will. This view of the Indians as naturally inferior was supported by many in the church. Monastic orders entered El Salvador in 1551, bringing droves of priests to the region that converted the Indians, oversaw the building of churches (by Indian laborers) and tended to the spiritual needs of their Spanish and Indian parishioners. By the 1570s both San Salvador and Los Izalcos had Domini- can and Franciscan monasteries, while only the Franciscans built one in San Miguel on the east end, which was seen as less important than the other two at the time.
eBook - PDF- Henry Charles Lea, Arthur C. Howland(Authors)
- 2016(Publication Date)
Ovando availed himself of this to assign to each of his Spaniards a cacique with his subjects, so that all, men, women and children, were practically reduced to slavery, and although there was an admonition to instruct them in the faith, this was purely formal. 18 The system was legalized by Ferdinand in cédulas of August 14, and November 12, 1509, ordering that as soon as natives are reduced to obedience the governor shall allot them among the setders, each of whom shall have charge of those as-signed to him, protecting them, providing a priest to instruct and ad-minister the sacraments to them and training them in civilization. 19 Thus was inaugurated the system of repartimientos or encomiendas, which remained as the organization of the Spanish colonies. It mattered little what humane regulations might be prescribed by the sovereigns; the colonies were distant; the colonists were eager in the pursuit of wealth and utterly unscrupulous as to the means of gaining it; the Indians were slaves in all but name, without the protection afforded by owner-ship; under the lash they were worked beyond their strength with insufficient food, nor was there decent consideration for women big with child or exhausted by childbirth, and it is not surprising that they melted away like hoarfrost in the sun. The mining of the precious metals cost its millions, but perhaps even more deadly were the tasks imposed on them as carriers, for the islands afforded no native beasts of burden, imported horses were too valuable to be employed in such work, and all transportation was performed by Indians, who were overloaded and goaded till they perished. There is doubtless exaggeration in one of the accusations brought against Fernando Pizarro during his trial in Madrid— that he had slain more than twenty thousand infants torn from the 18 Hist, de las Indias, Lib. Π, c. xiii, xiv (Col. de Doc., LXIV, 71, 81). 18 Recopilación, Leyes ι, 1, Tit. viii, Lib. VI.
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