Republica de Indios
I have written several entries for a new encylopedia that will be coming out next year. I will post several that give background on Spanish America
and the missions.
Robert H. Jackson
Republica de Indios
Key Words: Corporate Society, tribute, repartimiento, mita
Late medieval Iberia had a corporate based society, which meant that people were identified with a group, rather than as an individual, and separate
corporate groups had distinct rights and privileges as well as obligations to the Crown. Moreover, social mobility was limited, and status in society
depended on birth, instead of wealth as in modern neo-liberal capitalist society.
The Spanish introduced the corporate structure of society to the Americas, and created two separate major corporate groups or organize colonial
society. The two were the Republica de Espanoles, that incorporated Spaniards born in both Spain and the Americas, as well as the castas, peoples of
mixed ancestry. The second large corporate group was the Republica de Indios, that ostensibly embraced all native vassals of the king. The natives
grouped in the Republica de Indios had distinct rights, privileges, and obligations that formed the basis of the Spanish colonial system.
The basic political unit of the Republica de Inidos was the corporate indigenous community, or the pueblos reales. Communities were to be autonomous
self-governing entities governed by members of the indigenous elites, or governors selected by selected members of the community with the ratification
of royal officials. Communities were to be exclusively inhabited by natives, but Spaniards and castas settled on the communities and in some instances
assumed leadership roles. Tax and labor obligations were assessed on the community rather than the individual, and the communities had to make up any
shortfalls.
One aspect of the corporate colonial society in the Americas was the existence of separate laws and courts. The natives had access to the general
Indian court, and natives became very adept at using the court system and particularly Spanish stereotypical views of native peoples as defenses in
the courts. For example, the Spanish believed that native peoples were naturally inclined to drunkenness, and natives used being drunk as a defense.
Natives in many areas in Spanish America were obligated to provide labor services to the government or to private enterprises deemed to be of
importance to the colonial state, such as mining or agriculture. In central Mexico the labor draft was known as the repartimiento, which provided
workers for public works projects such as the draining of the lakes in the Valley of Mexico, as well as for private wheat farms, mines, and other
enterprises. In the Andean region the mita provided labor to the mines of Potosi, Oruro, Huancavelica, among others. The labor draft subsidized the
mining entrepreneurs, and the mines, in turn, generated considerable tax revenue for the Crown.
Another important obligation of the natives grouped in the Republica de Indios was the payment of tribute, a poll tax paid only by natives. Tribute
constituted an important source of government revenue, and in some regions continued to be collected well into the nineteenth-century following
independence. The native peoples living on the frontier missions also generally paid tribute, and in regions such as the Rio de la Plata tribute was
also an important source of revenue. In some instances, for example on the north Sonora frontier in the 1680s, missionaries received temporary
exemptions from tribute and labor services as an inducement to the natives to settle on the missions. Mission residents in Sonora had provided labor
to local mines for decades through a draft known as the repartimeinto de sello.
The reality, however, was that the separation between native and non-native was not as rigid as intended, and there were movements between the two
republicas. Thousands of natives moved to the Spanish cities and towns, adopted European-style dress, and passed into the ranks of the castas.
Spaniards settled in native communities. In practice, the Republica de Indios operated in ways that Spanish law and royal officials envisioned.
Bibliography
Teresa Blumers, La contabilidad en las reducciones guaran?es. Asunci?n: Centro de Estudios Antropol?gicos, Univ. Cat?lica, 1992.
Charles Gibson, The Aztecs Under Spanish Rule: A History of the a history of the Indians of the Valley of Mexico, 1519-1810. Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1964.
Nicolas S?nchez-Albornoz, Indios y tributos en el Alto Per?. Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1978.
Nicolas S?nchez Albornoz, ?Mita, migraciones y pueblos: variaciones en el espacio y en el tiempo; Alto Per?, 1573-1692,? Historia Boliviano 2:3,
1983,. 31-59,
Woodrow Borah, Justice by insurance: the General Indian Court of colonial Mexico and the legal aids of the half-real. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1982.
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