Everything the Spaniards organized outside their own settlements in the sixteenth century—the encomienda, the rural parishes, Indian municipalities, the initial administrative jurisdictions—was built solidly upon individual existing altepetl.
James Lockhart, 199289
Between 1530 and 1550, the Spanish replaced the Indians’ pre-Conquest altepetls with “Indian republics” modeled on the Spanish municipality. Residents of these republics enjoyed the right to use land held communally by the republic and had their own vigorous form of self-government. Such governments, which were recognized as legal entities, would collect taxes, organize collective labor for public works, and impart justice in cases involving minor offenses. The Indian republics effectively traded payment of tribute for ownership of communal land and local autonomy. This proved to be an effective survival mechanism, as the continued existence of some 4,000 Indian towns and villages through the eighteenth century indicates.90
The legal status of Indians differed markedly from that of Spaniards. The Crown considered indigenous people as minors needing protection and tutelage. The colonial government sharply limited Indians’ ability to buy land, receive loans, or join a guild. Spanish law prohibited Indians from wearing European-style clothing or, for security reasons, riding horses. Those violating this latter provision received a hundred lashes and forfeited the animal if it belonged to them. Rather than admitting a fear of Indian revolt, Jose de Galvez, Minister of the Indies, justified the prohibition by claiming that Indians should be kept “in that humble condition designed for them by the Creator.”91
However, being an Indian carried with it certain advantages, such as being exempt from the compulsory tithe on agricultural produce non-Indians paid to the Church. Indians enjoyed exemptions from military service and remained outside the purview of the Inquisition. They also received more lenient criminal penalties than those meted out to non-Indians.
At a time when Creole town councils were essentially self-perpetuating oligarchies, Indian communities held often vigorous elections to select their local officials. These officials would safeguard land titles and population registers, protect the community’s historical rights, and coordinate access to land, water, and forests in the area under their jurisdiction.92
Between 1592 and 1820, a special court, the juzgado de indios, adjudicated disputes between Indians or between an Indian and a non-Indian. The cases coming before this court mainly concerned:
1) land rights, 2) mistreatment or excessive demands made on Indians, and 3) criminal cases involving Indians.93
Early in the colonial period, the Crown protected indigenous communities, preferring to collect tribute rather than letting the encomenderos appropriate their wealth. The Crown also saw the Indian community as a useful counterweight to the elite of New Spain. At this time, the Spanish depended on indigenous producers for agricultural products since few Spaniards became farmers. Indigenous people seized upon the opportunities for self-defense provided by the Crown and soon became adept at playing individual and even institutional Spanish interests against each other.94
After the conquest, the Spanish officially recognized Indian ownership of lands they occupied and cultivated. The rate at which communities were dispossessed varied according to time and
Place. Indians first lost land in regions of heavy Spanish settlement. Colonists simply usurped land by force, especially in the decades after the Conquest. In other cases, Indians sold land. Most importantly, the plummeting Indian population emptied formerly settled and cultivated lands. During the first half of the seventeenth century, Indians still controlled 44 percent of New Spain. Another 30 percent was uncultivated desert or highlands technically owned by the Crown. Spanish colonists controlled the remaining 26 percent.95
Despite sincere efforts made by some viceroys to preserve a viable agricultural base for the Indian community, by the end of the colonial period, Indians remained in control of only 37 million acres, or about 8 percent of Mexico’s land area. The amount of land left in Indian hands varied according to local resources and marketing opportunities. To take advantage of the well-developed food market in the Valley of Mexico, by the end of the colonial period, non-Indians had deprived Indians of virtually all their land. However, in Oaxaca, Indians retained substantial holdings due to the weak market for food and the survival of strong Indian communities to defend land titles. Of the 4,081 Indian pueblos remaining in 1803, 873 were in Oaxaca. Indians also retained more land in the south where they grew, but did not engage in the export of, crops such as indigo, cacao, and cochineal.96
Obligations imposed by both Church and state forced Indian peasants to earn cash. Contrary to modern orthodoxy that taxes stymie economic development, colonial officials imposed taxes to force Indians to engage in wage labor so they could meet their obligations. As long as they had access to subsistence plots, Indians doggedly (and rationally) refused to become wage laborers. Rather they sought to produce for their own consumption. In addition to producing their own food, Indians continued to weave cotton textiles on their backstrap looms, to the frustration of Spanish manufacturers, importers, and officials.97
Indians quickly adapted to their new situation as colonial subjects. As historian Susan Kellogg noted, “Far from simply being passive victims of the Spanish Conquest, the Mexica and other central Mexican groups proved to be significant social actors who helped shape the history of the early colonial state.” Indian leaders exercised remarkable discretion in accepting or rejecting the diverse elements of Spanish colonial culture. They soon mastered such subterfuges as hiding infants and the bodies of the dead to avoid paying baptism and funeral fees. Indian farmers improved productivity by placing metal tips on their digging sticks (coas) and using the plow. Indigenous people soon began raising pigs and sheep and were the sole producers of cochineal dye. Between 1578 and 1598, 5 million pounds of this dye were exported from Veracruz to Seville.98
Indians engaged in the Spanish-introduced practice of litigation with considerable sophistication. If the occasion arose, Indians would even forge land titles to bolster their claims. Their success at litigation frequently vexed Spaniards, such as the curate of the Sagrario in Merida, who complained to the government about Indians who contested land claims:
The capriciousness, malice, and dishonesty of the Indians are well recognized in the sacred laws that govern us. If royal officials do not stand firm against their feigned humility and other tricks, we Spaniards will never be able to enjoy peaceful possession of our property, especially since they are led by the detestable proposition that they are on their own homeland, that all belongs to them, and other insolent notions.99
In the early post-conquest period, the Spanish relied on the Indian elite to maintain order and organize production. Members of this elite were allowed to maintain their positions as long as they provided repartimiento labor and collected and delivered tribute to Spaniards. With their status affirmed by the Spanish, many members of the indigenous elite acquired land and diversified economically. Some adopted Spanish economic practices, such as employing other Indians to raise pigs. Others, such as the Maxixcatzin family in mid-sixteenth century Tlaxcala, held extensive property farmed by lower-class Indian laborers. Shortly after the Conquest, a significant number of Indian noblewomen married Spaniards. This not only provided Spanish men with spouses but gave them access to Indian land and labor.100
Given their importance to the Spanish, during the early colonial period members of the Indian elite enjoyed a number of privileges. These privileges included special permission to wear Spanish clothes, ride horses, carry swords, and become priests. The colonial administration also exempted members of the Indian elite from paying tribute.101
As the colonial period progressed, Indian nobles became less useful to the Spanish since Indian labor became accessible through the repartimiento and wage labor. In many areas, such as Michoacan and the Valley of Mexico, by the middle of the eighteenth century, the Indian elite had lost Spanish backing, and its members had become virtually indistinguishable from commoners. In Oaxaca, caciques retained large land holdings and high social status throughout the colonial period since they faced little competition from Spaniards. Often noble “Indian” families intermarried with Europeans and mestizos, and their wealth determined their status more than their genealogy. As the status of Indian nobles declined and more Spanish women arrived, Spanish men ceased to marry Indian nobles.102
The Spanish colonial regime generally respected indigenous landholdings that were cultivated. The Indian village typically held lands communally and never placed them on the market. Its leaders assigned cropland to each household to work on an individual basis. Villagers enjoyed communal use of other lands for lumbering, hunting, and fishing. Residents sowed other plots communally to generate income to maintain the church and pay tribute.103
Although Indian communities enjoyed local autonomy, colonial officials held ultimate control. Spanish control passed from encomenderos to corregidores and alcaldes mayores after the middle of the sixteenth century. Spanish officials appropriated as much of the Indians’ crops, community funds, and land as possible. The Indians, in turn, would use their communal structure to minimize transfer of wealth to these officials.104
Before the Conquest, most Indians lived in scattered homes near their fields, rather than in compact villages. However, late in the sixteenth century, the Spanish forced many Indians to move from their isolated farms to grid-pattern villages. This facilitated evangelization, social control, and tribute collection. From 1596 to 1606 alone, colonial authorities forced an estimated 250,000 Indians into 190 new towns. The crowding resulting from forced urbanization made Indians much more vulnerable to European disease than those remaining in isolated homes. Since Indians bitterly opposed such resettlement, in some instances authorities relented and permitted a return to old home sites. In other cases, Indians simply ran away and became even more dispersed, taking shelter in caves and inaccessible areas.105
This resettlement (congregacion) played a major role in breaking down the old pre-Conquest indigenous culture and creating a new, distinct Indian culture. The newly emerging Indian culture, rather than mirroring Spanish culture, borrowed from both the Spanish and pre-Conquest traditions to form a unique blend. Often Indians retained their pre-Columbian festivals, but celebrated them on saints days. Most of the ancient Indian towns that currently exist were formed by congregacion.106
A process known as composicion facilitated non-Indians taking Indian lands. Those claiming land received legal title to it by paying a fee. When forced to choose between the hard cash charged for legalizing such titles and the long-range desire to maintain a viable Indian community, the Crown generally chose the former. Often these lands became vacant after the Indian population plummeted and congregacion forced Indians out of rural areas.107
Most Indians in central and southern Mexico remained in Indian communities. However, some began to move to haciendas and Spanish towns to find employment and escape tribute, eroding the policy of racial separation. Abusive encomenderos and corregidores, as well as the destruction of crops by Spanish livestock, led to further out-migration. As the Indian population increased in the eighteenth century, still more Indian villagers moved to Spanish-run estates. The children of many of those who left their villages became Hispanized and joined the ranks of the mestizo, or mixed blood, population. In some cases, villagers would work seasonally on commercial estates without breaking their ties to their village.108
Some of these migrants settled in cities and towns and retained their Indian identity for generations. At the end of the seventeenth century, Indians in the city of Antequera worked in twenty-two occupations. Masons formed the most numerous occupational group, followed by bakers and tailors. Throughout New Spain, urban Indians also worked as laborers, carpenters, merchants, adobe layers, and in a variety of crafts. Even though Indians came to towns voluntarily, as historian John Chance noted, “With the exception of a handful of caciques, few Indians managed to escape their status as members of a lowly minority forced into the most menial of urban occupations.”109
As the urban Indian population grew, the notion of “Indian” shifted from being a racial to a social concept. Individuals who so desired could shed their Indian identity and become mestizos. Individuals who accumulated wealth or married a non-Indian could more easily shed their Indian identity. Non-Indians expressed their contempt of such ethnic shifts, but could do little to stop them. In 1692, a priest in Mexico City commented on Indians shedding their identity: “Many of them wear stockings and shoes, and some trousers, and they cut their hair shorter. The women put on petticoats, become mestizos, and go to church at the Cathedral.”110
World History
