The Potosí Mita, 1573-1700: Compulsory Indian Labor in the Andes

The Potosí Mita, 1573-1700

COMPULSORY INDIAN LABOR IN THE ANDES

Jeffrey A. Cole

Potosí, a mining center in what is now Bolivia, was the most productive source of silver in the Spanish American Empire between the mid-1500’s and the late seventeenth century. Much of this success was attributable, at least initially, to the mita, a system of draft Indian labor instituted by Viceroy Francisco de Toledo in 1573 for the working of the silver mines and refineries.

Bitter debate swirled around the mita during most of its 250-year history. It was assailed by its enemies as a form of servitude worse than slavery and accused of depopulating the provinces subject to it, yet it was supported by many, however reluctantly, who believed that the Spanish Empire depended on Potosí silver for its survival.

The author traces the evolution of the mita from its inception to the end of the Hapsburg epoch in 1700. The primary focus is on the metamorphosis of the mita under the pressures of changing production realities at Potosí and demographic developments in the provinces from which the Indians were drafted. The author describes the role of native headmen (kurakas) in the system, the means used by Indians to evade service, and the efforts of the mining guild to tailor the mita to its needs. The secondary focus is on the Hapsburg government’s administration of the mita, especially those factors that prevented the Crown or its viceroys from being fully effective.

Jeffrey A. Cole is Associate Director of Argentine Relations for the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

The Potosí Mita, 1573-1700

Historical

Stanford

University Press

Library

Stanford University Press

Stanford, California

© 1985 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University

Printed in the United States of America

Published with the assistance of the

Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

The illustration on the tide page is entitled

"The first representation of the cerro of

Potosí, published by Pedro Cieza de León in

his Crónica del Perú (Seville, 1553)." It is taken

from Luis Capoche, Relación general de la

Villa Imperial de Potosí [1585].

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Cole, Jeffrey A.

The Potosí mita, 1573–1700.

Bibliography: p.

Includes index.

1. Indians of South America–Bolivia–Potosí (Dept.)–Employment-History. 2. Forced labor–Bolivia–Potosí (Dept.)–History. 3. Indians of South America–Bolivia–Government relations. 4. Silver mines and mining–Bolivia–Potosí (Dept.)–History. 5. Spain–Colonies–America–Administration. 6. Potosí (Bolivia : Dept.)–Economic conditions. 7. Encomiendas (Latin America) I. Tide.

F3319.1.P6c65 1985

331.6’99808414

84-40331

9780804765794

In honor of

Jane Elizabeth Larrabee Cole,

1922–1982

Preface

BITTER DEBATE swirled about the mita during most of its 250-year existence. The draft labor system was identified by its enemies as a form of servitude worse than slavery and was accused of depopulating the provinces subject to it. Its defenders denied that it was responsible for the demographic decline in Alto Perú and argued that the mita was necessary to produce the silver upon which the Spanish Empire was so dependent. The arguments of the two factions were destined to play major parts in the formation of the Black and White Legends of the nature of Spanish American colonization.

Despite being one of the principal bones of contention in a heated historiographical controversy, the mita did not, until recently, receive the careful historical analysis that it required.a Some early articles, such as those of Alberto Crespo R. and Jorge Basadre, offered broad sketches of the system that were, we should note, remarkably accurate. But too many other studies merely parroted the claims made about the mita during the colonial period. The problem was not a lack of source materials, but rather too many, spread throughout the South American and European continents. Investigators were forced either to content themselves with broad interpretations based on a few sources or to write highly specific works restricted to a very short time frame and subject.

This is not to say that larger studies were not planned. Silvio Zavala, Marie Helmer, and Alberto Crespo R. are among those who contemplated the task of writing a comprehensive history of the mita, but each eventually passed the torch to others.b Peter Bakewell, Enrique Tandeter, and I are among those who have sought to carry that torch forward. Bakewell and I have corresponded over the last few years and divided our work so that we do not tread too heavily on one another’s toes; he has chosen to focus on the period from 1545 to 1640 and the relationship between free and forced labor at Potosí, whereas I have looked primarily at the seventeenth century and focused my attention on the mita per se and its administration. Enrique Tandeter, meanwhile, has confined his energies to the latter half of the eighteenth century, for which dependable quantitative data (of the sort that specialists on the Hapsburg period can only dream about) are abundant. By spreading the work load onto more shoulders, we have begun to piece together the history of the mita, within the wider contexts of colonial Potosí and Alto Perú.

Our work has been made easier by the development of research tools—computers, microfilm, xerography, etc.—and the appearance of archival guides edited by Lewis Hanke, Gunnar Mendoza L., John TePaske, and others. Benefiting from the efforts of these scholars and recent technological advances is a virtual army of investigators, many of whom have participated in a three-year program piloted by Tandeter and Olivia Harris.c Through such cooperative ventures as this, it seems certain that our knowledge of Potosí and of Andean America in general will grow rapidly during the next decade. It is my great hope that this book will be an important contribution to that cause.

THIS STUDY of the Potosí mita is a revision of my dissertation, The Potosí Mita under Hapsburg Administration. The Seventeenth Century (University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1981), but it is a very different treatment of the subject. The original work employed a chronological format and was overly careful to present sufficient documentation to support each argument. The result was painfully long, with the evidence serving best to obscure the theses. The account of the mita offered here is thematic, with considerable amounts of detail sacrificed in favor of clarity of argument.d

In addition, the present text includes figures and tables that did not exist in the original. Some of these are the product of subsequent research and others are visual representations of data that earlier took prosaic form. Nevertheless, the primarily qualitative methodology of the earlier work remains; it remains because the data produced in Alto Perú during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were affected not only by unsystematic compilation and other irregular accounting techniques, but also by a desire to deceive as often as to enlighten. More derivative forms of quantitative analysis would, at this juncture, only compound the errors and biases in the sources.

I have also held fast to my belief that the Hapsburg administration of the mita is as interesting as the history of the mitayos themselves. Thus, in the chapters to follow, fully half of the text is devoted to the Hapsburg regime’s efforts to administer the draft labor system. Similarly, though I have endeavored to present as complete a view of the impact of the mita on the Indians of Alto Perú as possible, I maintain that the effects of the regimen on the mining guild (gremio de azogueros) of Potosí and the other players in its drama are just as important and worthy of study. And as the administration of the mita and the daily lives of the mitayos were inexorably linked, if not in the way intended by the administration, the one cannot be considered without the other.

The result is what some may consider an old fashioned institutional history. I agree; but I hasten to point out that we have needed such a history of the Potosí mita for some time. This is not to say that revisions will not follow, but revisionism requires that there be something to revise. This book will not be the final statement on the subject—it is not my last word on the subject—but it is an overview that will serve as the backdrop for more specific studies, including quantitative investigations that bear in mind the biases involved in the production of the data. In the meantime, Latin Americanists will have at their disposal an overview of the mita and its impact on Alto Peru in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

THIS BOOK has benefited from the cooperation and assistance of a great number of individuals and institutions. Research was made possible by financial assistance received under the Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange [Fulbright-Hays] Act of 1961 (PL 87-256), and from the Tinker Foundation, Inc. The selection of the mita as a dissertation topic and the availability of extensive microfilm holdings on the subject in the United States may be attributed to Professor Emeritus Lewis Hanke. For my ability to read manuscripts, I am indebted to Professor Hugh M. Hamill, Jr., of the University of Connecticut, who took me on as his research assistant when I was an undergraduate. An indispensable contribution from the earliest stages of research was made by Dr. Pauline Collins, Latin American bibliographer at the University of Massachusetts. Professor Peter J. Bakewell, of the University of New Mexico, has been an inspiration from the outset, read an earlier draft of this study and offered important comments, and graciously provided me with a draft of his own study of Potosí, recently published by the University of New Mexico Press.

While in Bolivia in 1979-80, I was encouraged and greatly assisted by Dr. Alberto Crespo R., director of the Archivo de La Paz and Biblioteca de la Universidad Mayor de San Andrés, the late Sr. Mario Chacón Torres, director of the Archivo Histórico de Potosí, Drs. Inge Marie Harman and Roger Neil Rasnake (then of Cornell University), Dr. Carlos J. Diaz Rementería of the Universidad de Sevilla, and especially Dr. Gunnar Mendoza L., director of the Archivo Nacional de Bolivia and Biblioteca Nacional de Bolivia, miracle worker and organizer of colonial documentation extraordinaire.

In Peru, Srta. Graciela Sánchez Cerro, directora of the Oficina de Investigaciones of the Biblioteca Nacional, and Sr. Mario Cárdenas, director of the Oficina del Archivo Histórico in the Archivo de la Nación, were both extremely kind during a brief stay in Lima. In Argentina, Dr. César A. García Belsunce, ex-director of the Archivo General de la Nación, and his staff were patient and exceedingly helpful, both in 1980 and during a return to the AGNA in 1982.

Back in the United States, Professors Jane M. [Loy] Rausch, Miriam U. Chrisman, and Donald A. Proulx of the University of Massachusetts endured the early drafts of the dissertation and made important contributions to its form and content. Professor Robert A. Potash, my chairman and mentor for five years, accepted my decision to write on colonial Alto Perú (rather than nineteenth-century Mexico or modem Argentina) and provided firm yet gentle direction thereafter. He made his greatest contribution earlier, however, by insisting that I meet his high standards of self-discipline and excellence.

Professor Brian M. Evans of the University of Winnipeg, a student of the 1683 numeración general de indios, has lent immeasurable aid. Thanks also go to Professor Kenneth J. Andrien of Ohio State University for comments on my work and overall encouragement; to the editors of The Hispanic American Historical Review and the Latin American Research Review for seeing fit to publish articles that were earlier versions of sections of this book; and to the unidentified readers for Stanford University Press, both the more recent, who caused its acceptance, and the initial, whose condemnation of the format and length of the dissertation prompted its thorough revision.

I owe my wife Marilyn the greatest thanks, however, for the year she spent away from the Greater Boston computer circuit to accompany me to South America; for her willingness to endure the plane, train, and especially bus trips, panza, chuño, the heat and humidity of Buenos Aires in February and March, and the thrills and chills of the November 1979 coup d’état in La Paz; for providing me with a word processing system; and for the understanding required to follow a tenuously employed academic from Concord to New Orleans, from New Orleans to Syracuse, and from Syracuse back to Massachusetts.

Leverett, Massachusetts

J.A.C.

Table of Contents

The Potosí Mita, 1573-1700 - COMPULSORY INDIAN LABOR IN THE ANDES

The Potosí Mita, 1573-1700

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Preface

Table of Figures

ONE - The Establishment of the Potosí Mita

TWO - The Metamorphosis of the Mita, 1580-1680

THREE - The Mita and the Azogueros, 1580-1680

FOUR - Administering the Mita, 1580-1650

FIVE - Administering the Mita, 1650-1680

SIX - Administering the Mita, 1680-1700

SEVEN - Conclusions

Notes

Bibliography

Index

The African Slave in Colonial Peru, 1524–1650

Table of Figures

FIGURE 1

FIGURE 2

FIGURE 3

ONE

The Establishment of the Potosí Mita

THE MITA was a draft Indian labor regimen designed by Viceroy Francisco de Toledo in 1573 to meet the need for unskilled labor in the revitalized silver industry at Potosí.e That revitalization was prompted by the development of a new amalgamation refining method suitable to the mining zone’s high elevation, which held the promise that Potosí might recapture the fabled production levels that had made it famous during its first two decades of exploitation (1545–65). Once Potosí had regained its old form, Toledo expected, the mita would no longer be necessary, for Indian laborers would once again flock to the mines as they had earlier.¹ The production boom that Toledo envisioned did indeed come to pass, but though silver production reached many times its earlier levels, the mita did not soon fade away. Instead it continued, with fundamental modifications, for more than two centuries, until it was finally abolished by Simon Bolívar in 1825. The key to the mita’s persistence lay precisely in those modifications, for it changed form over the course of 250 years in response to changing needs at Potosí and changing conditions in Alto Perú. This study concerns the metamorphosis of the mita during the seventeenth century, when Potosí was a crown jewel of the Spanish Hapsburgs.

Toledo arrived in Peru in 1569 with the twin responsibilities of restoring royal dominion in a viceroyalty wracked by civil strife and organizing all aspects of royal revenue production. Central to his effort was the final legitimadon of the Hapsburg claim to sovereignty in Peru.² In fact, the conquest of the Inca Empire was as yet incomplete, for Manco Inca and his successors held out at Vilcabamba until 1572. Concurrent with the consolidation of Spanish dominion was the replacement of the Indians’ pre-Columbian life-style with a more Hispanized existence.³ A general census, conducted by the viceroy himself during an extensive tour of the realm, recorded 1,077,697 Indians, belonging to 614 ayllus (large kin units, composed of one or more moieties).f The Indians were subsequently settled in new villages to facilitate their control, the collection of their tribute, and their religious instruction.⁴ Members of one or more ayllus were settled in one of two parcialidades, and each parcialidad was placed under an Indian gobernador (governor) and other kurakas (Indian headmen, initially nobles, also called caciquesg). The settlement of the Indians into aggregated villages had first been proposed in 1550 by President Pedro de la Gasca of the Audiencia of Lima, and was begun by 1567,⁵ but it was only under Toledo that the program became extensive and effective. This was to be characteristic of his viceroyalty—the use of extant policies and practices in a larger, more organized manner.

Another of Toledo’s missions was the harnessing of the encomenderos. The Crown was worried about the independence shown by the recipients of encomiendas throughout the Americas, and feared that it had created an ungovernable feudal nobility in its overseas dominions. h Toledo’s approach centered on the direct administration of the far-flung provinces by corregidores de indios, who would thenceforth perform the administrative, judicial, and fiscal duties previously left to the encomenderos. The Viceroy Marqués de Canete (1556—59) had been the first to attempt to introduce corregidores, but the encomenderos had forced him to recall all but those for Chucuito and Chincha. In 1565, President Lope Garcia del Castro revived the idea and, despite making little headway, his program was under way when Toledo arrived. Under the new viceroy’s leadership, corregidores were again sent to every corner of the realm; Toledo was able to overcome the opposition of the encomenderos by naming prominent soldados (conquistadores who had not received a grant of encomienda) to the magistracies.⁶

The viceroy understood that the generation of augmented royal revenues in Peru would depend upon a stable population base and an effective administration. The most promising sector of the colonial economy was mining, but the Crown’s desire to profit by the exploitation of Peru’s vast mineral wealth was tempered by lessons it had learned earlier, during the colonization of the Caribbean. The Indians there had been decimated by their forced application to mining ventures by Spanish colonists, obliging Charles V to promulgate the New Laws of 1542, which specifically banned the use of forced Indian labor in mineral exploitation.⁷ The Crown’s concern for the well-being of the Indians was in part a recognition that Indian labor was itself a precious natural resource.

In the case of Potosí, the need to force the Indians to work in the mines did not arise until the 1560’s. Prior to that time, Indian and Spanish miners alike had crossed the altiplano and worked in the mining zone of their own volition, drawn by the prospects of immense profits. A year after the vast silver lode at Potosí was discovered, the boomtown at the base of the mountain (cerro) held some 170 Spaniards and 3,000 Indians. By 1547, when the settlement—later to be entitled the Villa Imperial de Potosí—was officially founded, its residents numbered 14,000.⁸

In those early years, the Indians dominated every phase of silver production. The Spaniards’ efforts at smelting failed (their European methods were frustrated by the altitude); by contrast, Indian technicians using the pre-Hispanic guayra (wind oven) skillfully coaxed molten silver from the rich tacana ore.⁹ At one point, there were as many as 15,000 guayras in use.¹⁰ Many of the Indians who came to Potosí were yanaconas—artisans, former Inca retainers, and others who were not affiliated with an ayllu—men who had been displaced by the conquest. They worked individually, under contracts with Spanish mine owners, and were often called indios varas because they were assigned a specified length of vein (measured in varasi) to work. This was the skilled component of a two-tier division of labor at Potosí; the unskilled component consisted of Indians brought by their kurakas to earn the money with which to pay their ayllus’ tribute. These worked in shifts of a few months to a year, performing the more physical task of carrying ore out of the mines, after which they would return to their home pueblos.¹¹

The Spaniards’ contribution to silver production was limited to their ownership of the mines and their determination to profit by them. Legal title was no small factor, however, for in practice only the Spaniards were able to fend off legal challenges and so protect their claims against interlopers.¹² The silver produced was shared by the mine owners and indios varas under terms prescribed by their contracts; the ayllu Indians were paid a fixed wage for their labor.¹³

In the 1560’s, however, the high-grade ore began to run out. Attempts to introduce the new amalgamation refining process, developed in Mexico in 1554, failed for reasons unknown but probably having to do with the cold and oxygen-starved atmosphere of Potosí.¹⁴ As the mines ran deeper, the extraction of ore became more demanding and the ore itself yielded less when it was refined. The profits of the indios varas and the wages paid to the ayllu Indians fell as a result, while their labor became more strenuous. Many left Potosí to work elsewhere; others remained but occupied themselves in other endeavors. Of the 20,000 Indians living in the Villa Imperial in 1561, only 300 were working in the mines (down from nearly 5,000 the decade before).¹⁵ The Spanish mine owners thus found themselves confronted by a labor shortage that had very little to do with the number of Indians living in their midst. Rather, the shortage had been caused by economic pressures on the Indian laborers, who had decided that their profits simply were no longer worth the toil required.

Labor shortages were met elsewhere in the Americas with the importation of black slaves. In the Caribbean, Brazil, and lowland Peru, blacks filled a labor vacuum in activities from sugar refining to gold mining. At Potosí, however, they were not a viable alternative: first, the cost of their importation would have to be borne by the mine owners, who were not prepared financially to do so; second, if the cost of their introduction were to be minimized, they would come directly from Brazil via the Río de la Plata and Tucumán, an illegal channel of trade that the Crown was not anxious to encourage; and third, they were thought to be unprepared physically to withstand the rigors of Potosí’s elevation and cold climate, let alone the task of carrying ore out of the mines.¹⁶

Royal officials in Peru were quick to see that something had to be done if the Potosí silver mines were to be saved, and most of them agreed that some form of compulsory Indian labor was going to be necessary.¹⁷ Philip II, however, held fast to his father’s prohibition of forced Indian labor in mining. Toledo’s instructions in this regard were clear:

Given that the mines of Peru cannot be exploited using Spanish laborers, since those who are there will not work in them, and as it is said that slaves cannot withstand the work, owing to the nature and coldness of the land, it appears necessary to employ the Indians. Though these are not to be forced or compelled, as has already been ordered, they must be attracted with all just and reasonable means, so that there will be the required number of laborers for the mines. To this end, it seems that great care must be given to the settlement of large numbers of Indians in nearby towns and estates, so that they might more easily apply themselves to the work involved.¹⁸

The king’s instructions continued with injunctions that the Indians be well paid and treated, work reasonable hours, and not be detained once their shifts had been completed. Good working conditions and ample wages would thus attract the required number of Indian laborers without the need for recourse to force, which was expressly forbidden. It was left to Toledo to formulate a specific program that satisfied these criteria.¹⁹

Toledo was a skilled administrator, extremely efficient and adept at playing opposing groups against one another to the advantage of his sovereign. Efficiency was the hallmark of his resettlement program, and the divide and conquer gambit proved immensely useful in the distribution of corregidores. These skills were of little use to him, however, in confronting the issue of a labor force for Potosí. The viceroy was faced with a dilemma: the king wanted the Indians to work voluntarily for wages, but they were unwilling to hire themselves out for the compensation they would receive.²⁰ Subtle means of persuasion had been tried at Potosí since their exodus began in the 1560’s, but without success. The suggestion that Indian settlements be founded nearby was not feasible, moreover, because of the area’s geography: situated 4,000 meters above sea level, without significant vegetation for 25 kilometers in any direction, parched for nine months of the year and inundated by torrential rains the remaining three, Potosí had an environment so inhospitable that it would have been a desert had it not been for the discovery of silver there.²¹ (See Photo 1.) Indeed, the Villa Imperial was dependent upon distant valley regions, such as Chuquisaca (the environs of La Plata), for its sustenance. Food and other products brought in from 150 kilometers away commanded astronomical prices, but the profits in the early years had made them affordable.²² Those profits, however, were now past.

PHOTO 1. The city of Potosí today from the entrance to