112 CHAPTER 5 STATE, CHURCH, AND SOCIETY
(small farmers) and formed part of the lower middle
class of artisans, overseers, and shopkeepers. With-
out roots in either indigenous or Spanish society,
scorned and distrusted by both, it is small wonder
that the lower-class mestizo acquired a reputation
for violence and instability.
INDIGENOUS PEOPLES: A SEPARATE NATION
By contrast with the mestizo, no ambiguity marked
the position of indígenas in Spanish law and practice.
They constituted a separate nation, the república de
indios, which also constituted a hereditary tribute-
paying caste. The descendants of indigenous rulers
and hereditary nobility, however, received special
consideration, partly from Spanish respect for the
concept of señor natural (the natural or legitimate
lord) and partly because they played a useful role
as intermediaries between the Spanish rulers and
native tribute payers. These nobles were allowed
to retain all or part of their patrimonial estates and
enjoyed such special privileges as the right to ride
horses, wear European dress, and carry arms.
Ample evidence exists that members of the
indigenous aristocracy were among the worst ex-
ploiters of their own people. In Mexico, where in
Aztec times there already existed a semifeudal
order and serfl ike peasants formed a large part of
the population, some Aztec lords took advantage
of the fl uid conditions created by the Conquest to
usurp communal lands, impose excessive rents on
their tenants, and force the commoners to work for
them. In both Mexico and Peru, their new role as
tribute-collectors and labor recruiters for the Span-
iards offered the native elites large opportunities
for wheeling-and-dealing with corregidores, enco-
menderos, and priests at the expense of common-
ers. For example, chiefs and corregidores might
falsify the tribute lists and share the resulting prof-
its, or they might conceal the true number of work-
ers available for mita or repartimiento labor and
employ the hidden workers on their own estates.
In Peru, where traditional bonds of kinship, ritual,
and mutual dependence still powerfully linked
kurakas, or headmen, to ayllu commoners, most
kurakas probably at fi rst sought to maintain a bal-
ance among complying with the new rulers’ de-
mands for labor and tribute, protecting their ayllus
against excessive Spanish exactions, and defending
their own interests. Gradually, however, adapting
to the new commercial climate, they began to ex-
ploit commoners to feather their own nests.
Many kurakas became hacendados in their
own right; by the end of the sixteenth century, says
Peruvian historian Luis Millones, some kurakas
controlled such large, complex enterprises, produc-
ing a variety of products for the Peruvian internal
market, that they had to hire Spanish employees
to assist them. Native peasant women, writes Irene
Silverblatt, were primary targets of kuraka exploi-
tation because they were especially vulnerable to
loss of land and water rights. The seventeenth-
century Inca chronicler Waman Puma de Ayala
claimed that no matter how much colonial author-
ities and native elites robbed poor peasant men,
“they robbed poor peasant women much more.”
He also accused the kurakas of illegally exploiting
the labor of women in their jurisdiction and abus-
ing them sexually, just as Spanish offi cials, enco-
menderos, and priests did.
The result of these trends pitting kurakas
against ayllu commoners, writes Steve Stern, was
the creation of “a more strained, suspicious rela-
tionship in which confl ict, coercion, and economic
power acquired added importance.” In 1737, for
example, community members of San Pedro de
Tacna brought suit against their kuraka for ille-
gally expropriating communal lands; they claimed
he was forcing them off communal property to fa-
cilitate creation of an aji (chili pepper)-producing
estate. In their testimony, writes Silverblatt, “wit-
ness after witness remarked that the kuraka’s pri-
mary targets were peasant women.”
In part, at least, what Charles Gibson says
about Mexico was no doubt also true of Peru: the
inordinate demands and aggressions of Mexican
caciques and Peruvian kurakas against the com-
moners represented “a response to strain, an effort
to maintain position and security” in the face of
Spanish encroachments on the lands and perqui-
sites of the native nobility. By the late sixteenth
century, however, a considerable portion of the
native aristocracy, especially the minor nobility or
principales, was in full decline, apparently more