Spanish Repartimiento System

III. Indian Labor (pp. 134 – 144)
A. Colonial America’s export economy depended on forced labor, and Iberian settlers established various systems in order to mobilize indigenous populations to participate in the monetized colonial economy through compulsory labor and fiscal demands (pp. 134 – 135).
B. The encomienda system allowed the Iberians to harness the labor power of the economically advanced indigenous societies that already existed, and to generally exploit the labor power of the indigenous peoples (pp. 135 – 138).
1. In the Caribbean, the Spanish encomiendas used indigenous labor in gold extraction; the abuses on Española, however, were so dramatic that the Spanish king Ferdinand had to issue the Laws of Burgos (1512) to regulate
As colonial officials gained control of the encomiendas, they required more cash tributes than substitute tributes, forcing indigenous peoples to produce goods and find wage labor, which they found in the rotational labor drafts of the repartimiento. (pp. 138 – 140).
1. Under the repartimiento system, indigenous communities had to fill a quota of workers for a certain period of time, which would give the laborers wages for their mandatory tribute, or other taxes.
a. The system differed regionally; central México used it for agriculture; Peru, mining, etc.
2. An important example of the system was in the South Andes at the Potosí mines, where more than 13,000 indigenous peoples were drafted.
a. “The historical labor burden of the Andean communities, a system that began as reciprocal obligations within the ayllu, had become the forced transfer of wealth from poor Indians to rich Spaniards” (pp. 139).
i. The quote is important because it shows how the Spanish colonialists abused the traditional Andean mita labor system and continued the ruthless exploitation of indigenous populations.
D. Eventually, large estate owners and miners needed a more regular supply of labor and began to offer free wage labor to indigenous populations (pp.
Chattel slavery was used when colonial elites wanted immediate economic profit and did not have the mineral wealth or excess agricultural production to help them achieve it.
2. Mesoamerican populations had previously used various forms of slavery, which Spaniards used to justify the chattel slavery.
3. An indigenous slave trade developed within the New World.
4. The New Laws ended indigenous slave trade, though it persisted in various regions throughout the New World.
5. An increased Portuguese population necessitated more slaves in Brazil.
a. The Jesuits justified it calling it a “Just war” on the savage cultural practices of the indigenous populations.
b. Portuguese hunted indigenous peoples for use in the slave trade; they especially liked to target Jesuit missions.
F. The yanaconas (mentioned in section I, sub letter D) lived on Spanish estates and worked for the Spaniards as payment (pp. 142 – 143). 1. These laborers were exempt from the mita and paid less tribute.
2. They were also basically attached to the estate on which they resided—they were not bought and sold individually, but often included in the sale of an estate.
G. The Repartimiento de Bienes allowed Spaniards to create a permanent imbalance of trade in which natives had to work as laborers in order to make up the debt owed (pp. 143 –