Negotiated Settlements: Andean Communities and Landscapes under Inka and Spanish Colonialism

6: Uneasy Compromises: Colonial Political-Ecological (Dis)Articulations

6 UNEASY COMPROMISES Colonial Political-Ecological (Dis)Articulations By the 1570s, the Franciscan mission in the valley was more or less formalized within a system of convents and doctrinas, but the incipient congregation of settlement taking place in the doctrinas was soon to be eclipsed by the massive resettlement program initiated during the visita general of the viceroy Francisco de Toledo. Long favored by the Crown (Abercrombie 1998:223– 29)andalreadypartiallyimplementedinNewSpain(GadeandEscobar1982; Málaga Medina 1974), the reducción program became one of the primary policies instituted by Toledo in his efforts to augment faltering tribute collection , foster the civil and religious indoctrination of the native population, and secure a steady labor supply for the massive mining operations of Potosí and Huancavelica (Hemming 1983:392–456; Levillier 1935; Málaga Medina 1974; Spalding 1984:156–68; Stern 1982:76–79; Zimmerman 1938). As discussed in the previous chapter, reducciones were to literally embody the colonialist schema of “reducir” (to order, unify, and make uniform). Drawing again on Sewell’s (2005) formulation of the duality of structure, reducción villages constituted a nonhuman resource intended to redefine community and interpellate subjects to a new hierarchical social order. Each village was to be a stage setting for producing a new colonial civitas, with a central plaza surrounded by buildings housing the village’s two principal civic and religious institutions—the cabildo (town hall) for orderly administration, surveillance , and tribute collection in the caja de comunidad (community chest) and the church for the religious indoctrination of the native populace (Málaga Medina 1974). It is commonly noted that reducciones were designed around a grid of blocks and streets like European cities, but even considering their variability in execution (see below), they embodied this ideal more perfectly than almost any European city of the time. In this sense, their layout epitomized an urban archetype in miniature. Uneasy Compromises: Colonial Political-Ecological (Dis)Articulations 215 The resettlement program was an unprecedented experiment in colonial social engineering, and Toledo and his predecessors were aware of the problems that could arise from dislocating native communities. Although the reducción project might seem a straightforward example of top-down state imposition,decision-makingprocessesthatdeterminedhowandwheretoestablish reducciones in a given locale remains very poorly understood, in large part because local-level protocols detailing the establishment of reducciones areexceedinglyrare inthearchives(butseeJulien1991).This is a critical lapse in documentation, since in practice, the reducción project had to reckon with existing indigenous schemas and resources. How were they reconciled? It is atthislocalscalethatthenegotiationoftheconditionsofdailylifeplayedout. Researchonthelayoutofreduccionesandtheirdomesticspacesarescarce (Cummins 2002; Gutiérrez 1993; Llosa and Benavides 1994; Málaga Medina 1974), and no detailed study exists, but their evident variability, many of which were adapted to local topography (see Gade and Escobar 1982) or built on Inkaic rectilinear and trapezoidal plans (e.g., Julien 1983), belie the prescriptive homogeneity of a standard gridiron plan. Many important aspects of settlement planning must have been negotiated at the local level as the visitadoresmetwithlocalclerics ,communities,andkurakas.Forexample, while Toledoordered(echoingMatienzo)thatthenucleatedvillagesbeestablished on relatively level terrain “in healthy places of good climate” near abundant water and cultivable land, he also advocated, in the interest of efficiency and minimizing disruption, that reducciones be situated in the locations of previous large prehispanic settlements (Toledo 1924 [1570–75]:163–64). At the same time, the viceroy stipulated that the visitadores establish the new settlements as far as possible from prehispanic cemeteries and huacas—priorities often at odds with one another (Toledo 1924 [1570–75]:163–64). Also, while Toledo set the maximum size of a reducción at 500 tributaries (i.e., men between 18 and 50 years old), many exceeded this size considerably (Cook et al. 1975 [1582]; Gade and Escobar 1982:432). Even the stringent specifications of the settlement configuration were subject to considerable variation. It was left ambiguous whether the church should occupy the same plaza as the buildings of civil authorities or have its own block. But most important, it is unclear how decisions were made regarding who, in terms of Andean community arrangements, was “reduced” where. Given that in many rural contexts, ayllus were spread over several settlements and production zones, resettlement had the potential to fundamentally disarticulate native systems of production, and thus posed a serious threat, both to ayllu organization and to the state’s ability to siphon tribute revenue. How were these conflicting priorities negotiated in situ? The Colca Valley 216 Negotiated Settlements providesanexcellentcontexttoinvestigatethisquestion.IntheCorregimiento...