THE STRUCTURE OF CLASS AND CASTE 113
rapid and general in Mexico than in Peru. Many Az-
tec nobles lost their retainers through fl ight or as a
result of Spanish legislation that converted former
servile classes (like the mayeques) into free tribute-
payers. In both Mexico and Peru, Spanish refusal
to recognize the noble status of many prin cipales
reduced them to the condition of tribute-payers.
One cause of the nobility’s ruin was Spanish inva-
sion of their lands, to which they responded with
costly but often futile litigation; another was their
responsibility for the collection of tribute from the
commoners. When the number of tribute-payers
declined because of an epidemic or some other cir-
cumstance, the cacique or kuraka had to make up
the arrears or go to jail. To make good the defi cit,
he might have to sell or mortgage his lands or risk
the anger of commoners by imposing an extra trib-
ute assessment.^3
However, down to the close of the colonial pe-
riod there existed a group of thoroughly Hispani-
cized cacique or kuraka families who, in addition
to serving as intermediaries between Spanish elites
and their native communities, managed to enrich
themselves as landowners and entrepreneurs, ul-
timately becoming full members of the propertied
class. In late-eighteenth-century Mexico, for ex-
ample, the cacique of Panohuayan in Amecameca
owned “the hacienda of San Antonio Tlaxomulco
and other properties producing wheat and ma-
guey and yielding an income of thousands of pesos
(^3) A revealing example of the trouble that his responsibility
for collection of tribute might cause an indigenous gover-
nor is cited by Robert Heskett in his very informative Indige-
nous Rulers: An Ethnohistory of Town Government in Colonial
Cuernavaca (1991). In 1694 the governor of Cuernavaca,
don Antonio de Hinojosa, sought sanctuary in the town’s
Franciscan monastery because he owed nearly 4,000 pesos
(a staggeringly large sum for that time and place) in unpaid
tribute assessments. Maneuvers by don Antonio and his
family to prevent the sequestration and auction of his
estate were unsuccessful, and since his tribute debt was not
completely erased by the sale, later Cuernavaca governors
inherited the debt. Don Antonio died in the monastery in
1697 or 1698. His fi nal years, observes Heskett, “saw the
destruction of an estate carefully built up by his ancestors
through marriage, inheritance, purchase, and perhaps
usurpation.”
per year.” According to Charles Gibson, “Like any
Spanish hacendado, the cacique received payments
from Indians who cut wood and grazed animals on
his property. His great house was equipped with
Spanish furniture, silver dining service, and rich
tapestries. He possessed a private arsenal of guns,
pistols, and steel and silver swords. His stables and
storehouse and other possessions compared favor-
ably with those of wealthy Spaniards.”
In eighteenth-century Peru, this small class of
wealthy indigenous or mestizo nobles was repre-
sented by the famous kuraka José Gabriel Condor-
canqui (Tupac Amaru). Lilian Fisher writes that
he lived like a Spanish nobleman, wearing “a long
coat and knee-breeches of black velvet, a waistcoat
of gold tissue worth seventy or eighty duros (dol-
lars), embroidered linen, silk stockings, gold buck-
les at his knees and on his shoes, and a Spanish
beaver hat valued at twenty-fi ve duros. He kept his
hair curled in ringlets that extended nearly down
to his waist.” His source of wealth included the
ownership of three hundred mules, which he used
to transport mercury and other goods to Potosí and
other places, and a large cacao estate.
By contrast with the privileged treatment ac-
corded to indigenous rulers, the great majority of
commoners suffered under crushing burdens of
tribute, labor, and ecclesiastical fees. Viewed as a
constitutionally inferior race and thus as perpetual
wards of the Spanish state, they repaid the Span-
ish tutelage with the obligation to pay tribute and
give forced labor. Gente sin razón (“people of weak
minds”) was a phrase commonly applied to native
peoples in colonial documents. Their juridical in-
feriority and status as wards found expression in
laws (universally disregarded) forbidding them
to make binding contracts or to contract debts in
excess of fi ve pesos and in efforts to minimize con-
tact between them and other racial groups. These
and many other restrictions on indigenous activ-
ity had an ostensibly protective character. But an
enlightened Mexican prelate, Bishop Manuel Abad
y Queipo, argued that these so-called privileges did
them little good and in most cases a lot of harm:
Shut up in a narrow space of six hundred rods,
assigned by law to the Indian towns, they