Spanish Peru, 1532–1560: A Social History

II ENCOMENDEROS AND MAJORDOMOS

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 themselves . it is well to begin by telling who the powerful group of men holding encomiendas were. and how the system functioned in Peru. By no means every Spaniard in the Indies was an encomendero .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 particularly 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 encomienda 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 12 SPANISH PERU number of encomiendas and the largest individual units feasible at any particular time and place. Where conditions were bad. that is. where difficult geography cut up the country into small fragments and the Indians were accordingly organized in small political units. the governors issued many small grants. Where the local population was organized in large political entities. making it possible to draw benefit from a larger encom1enda by the use of traditional indtgenous authOrity. the governors granted whole regions to the most eligible individuals. An abrupt change in the nature of encom1enda grants occurred between the area of southern Central America. from which Peru was conquered. and Peru itself. The great city and province of Lima. encompassing at its founding perhaps a third of present-day Peru. had far fewer encomiendas and encomenderos than the city of Panama. with only a fraction of Lima's area and population and incomparably less wealth. The determining factor in establishing the difference was not Spanish policy. but the situation at the time of contact. a situation which the preconquest Inca empire had already faced. Within its borders. few and large encom1endas were the rule. for it was upon large entities that the empire had fed. Outside those borders. the Spaniards of necessity reverted to small and numerous grants like those of Panama. Puertoviejo and Guayaquil. making up a relatively small. povertystricken . wet tropical area. had nearly as many encomenderos as large provinces like Cuzco or Lima. Chile. with its indom1table population. again had a disproportionately large number of encomiendas. In the whole of greater Peru. including all the more closely inhabited parts of twentieth-century Ecuador. Peru. and Bolivia. there were never more than five hundred encomenderos . that number being substantially attained by 1540 and thereafter remaining quite stable. Whatever exact proportion of the Spanish population the encomenderos represented. they were certainly a small minority. To give a rough idea. the 500 encomenderos may be compared with at least 2.000 Spaniards in Peru in 1536. the time of the great Indian rebellion; with contemporary estimates of between 4.000 and 5.000 Spaniards in Peru in the mid-1540·s. and with the Copyrighted Material ENCOMENDEROS AND MAJORDOMOS 13 approximately 8.000 estimated in 1555 by Viceroy Caftete.2 Where so much wealth was granted to so few. its recipients naturally sought help in the work of tribute collection and exploitation. In the area of fonner Inca domination. every encomendero had at least one Spanish steward. called a majordomo. who frequently went to the encomienda...