I know that for many, especially those across the pond, the answer seems obvious. But it is best not to answer until you have read the full article. Because it should be noted that we are in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, where ALL the European powers strive to expand their borders, discover new territories and subjugate their inhabitants, fleece their raw materials and precious metals and spread the Christian faith. In short, more power, more wealth and a greater number of subjects at your command.
Except for the religious nuance, it is something that has happened throughout history and in all corners of the world, even in the American continent as in the Aztec Empire before the Europeans arrived. Also the inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula were conquered by other peoples: Carthage, Rome, Germanic peoples, Muslims or France. I do not discover anything new, I only point out that we have also been on the side of the oppressed or subjugated.
The repartimiento was an institution inherited from Castile and adapted to the American continent to deal with the necessary works in infrastructure and services (churches, schools, roads…), exploitation of mines and agricultural work of vital or strategic crops. It consisted of awarding a Spanish settler the works or the land and the workforce to work on them. Labor was provided by the local tribes themselves and was compulsory work for them and rotated among the members of the community.
Thus, without further information, the conditions were slavery or semi-slavery. However, and seen with the eyes of the time, reality becomes more complex…
The encomienda, on the other hand, was another feudal institution used by the Crown to award land to an encomendero and a group of indigenous people to work on it. The encomendero made a profit but, in exchange, he had to educate the indigenous people in the faith, protect them and provide them with fair living conditions. The encomienda did not imply ownership over the natives and was a non-inheritable concession.
Thus, without further information, if in the repartimiento the indigenous people were forced to work and in the encomienda they were subject to the land they worked, the conditions were slavery or semi-slavery. However, and seen with the eyes of the time, reality becomes more complex…
First, because the repartimientos and encomiendas were feudal institutions that already existed in Europe before the Spaniards arrived on the American continent.
Second, because before the arrival of the Spaniards in America, there were already institutions similar to repartimiento, such as the Mexican coatequitl or the Peruvian mita. Through them, the caciques recruited rotating and compulsory labor among the different tribes for community work.
Third, and with regard to the encomienda, remember that the peasants -the Catalan peasants- of the Crown of Aragon had to take up arms in 1460 against the feudal lords to abolish the so-called bad uses, among them the right of remensa, for the that the peasant was tied to the land in a forced and hereditary way. That meant that if the lord sold the land, he sold it to the peasants who worked it, but thanks to the support of the Crown they achieved victory in the so-called Remensa Wars. But even so, we had to wait for the Arbitral Sentence of Guadalupe issued in 1486 by King Ferdinand of Aragon, in which the peasants managed to disassociate themselves from the land… although paying 60 salaries.
And fourth, the status that Queen Isabella the Catholic granted to the indigenous people, which was that of subjects of the Crown of Castile (“as our good subjects and vassals, and that no one be daring to harm or harm them”). In the will of the queen it was established, reiterating what was legislated during her lifetime, that the inhabitants of these lands had the status of free vassals of the Crown of Castile. In addition, she demanded that the Indians not be allowed to receive any injury to their person or property, and that they be treated fairly.
In 1537 Pope Paul III promulgated the bull Sublimis Deus: “We define and declare that such Indians and all those who are later discovered by Christians, cannot be deprived of their liberty by any means, nor of their properties, even if they are not in the faith of Jesus Christ; and they will not be slaves, and everything that is done in this sense, will be null and of no effect”. And in 1542 King Carlos I, in the face of complaints of abuse and mistreatment, insisted again and ratified that the Indians were free, categorically prohibiting slavery, under penalty of losing all property.
The problem was not the laws, but the immense ocean that diluted them, that some rulers ignored them and that Spanish colonists distorted them for their own benefit.
So, if the laws of the Crown and even the Pope himself prohibited the slavery of the Indians and the conditions of the repartimientos and encomiendas were perfectly regulated, one might wonder why these institutions are directly related to slavery. And the answer is because one thing is theory and another, very different, practice.
The problem was not the laws, but the immense ocean that diluted them, that some rulers ignored them and that Spanish colonists distorted them for their own benefit. The problem in the repartimientos was that the humblest Indians had to work several rotations in a row because others, by bribing the settlers or threatening the Indians themselves, avoided their work shifts. A job that, if the rotations were respected, would have been bearable but that became a grave for many.
Regarding the distribution of the mines, it should be pointed out that, being one of the hardest jobs, prisoners of war were used as punishment. And in the encomiendas the problem was that some encomenderos ignored the considerations that the adjudication of the land and the Indians entailed.
More than a relationship between master and slave, they were relationships between the powerful and the weak, between lords and servants. Something very similar to the relationship of servitude between feudal lords and vassals of old Europe with their respective uses… and abuses.
Not respecting the rotations in the repartimientos, the work of the prisoners in the mines, the abuses in the encomiendas and, above all, the spread among the indigenous of diseases of which the newcomers were ignorant carriers and for which the indigenous lacked of natural defenses, decimated the population.
Faced with the need for labor, slaves were brought from Africa. And these were considered slaves and were treated as such, because as they did not come from lands under the Crown’s domain, they did not have the status of subjects.
Facebook Comments
Disqus