142 CHAPTER 7 THE BOURBON REFORMS AND SPANISH AMERICA
work. On Jesuit farms in eighteenth-century Quito
(Ecuador), says Nicholas Cushner, “the debt was a
mechanism for maintaining a stable work force”
whose wages were pitifully low. “It was an Indian
analogue of black slavery,” adds Cushner.
In practice, as previously noted, the impor-
tance of debt peonage and the severity of its en-
forcement depended on the availability of labor.
In New Spain, by the late eighteenth century, the
growth of the labor force through population in-
crease and the elimination of small producers had
sharply reduced the importance of debt as a means
of securing and holding laborers. Eric Van Young,
for example, has documented a reduction of the per
capita indebtedness of resident peons in the Guada-
lajara area, suggesting their decreased bargaining
power in dealing with employers. The new situa-
tion enabled hacendados to retain or discharge
workers in line with changing levels of production.
Thus in late-eighteenth-century Mexico, landown-
ers simply dismissed workers when crop failures
occurred to save on their rations. These changes
were accompanied by a tendency for real wages
and rural living standards to decline.
In the Andean area, the mita—in provinces
subject to it—continued to play an important role
in the provision of mining and agricultural labor
almost to the end of the colonial period. In other
provinces, agricultural labor was theoretically
free, but heavy tribute demands and the opera-
tions of the repartimiento de mercancías created a
need for cash that compelled many natives to seek
employment on Spanish haciendas. These yanaco-
nas included a large number of so-called forasteros
(“outsiders”) who had fl ed their native pueblos to
escape the dreaded mita service and tribute bur-
dens. In addition to working the hacendado’s land,
these laborers or sharecroppers and their fami-
lies had to render personal service in the master’s
household. Theoretically free, their dependent
status must have sharply limited their mobility.
EARLY LABOR STRUGGLES
Our knowledge of labor struggles in colonial Span-
ish America is fragmentary, in part because histori-
ans took little interest in the subject until recently.
The fi rst labor confl icts of a relatively modern
type seem to have taken place in late-eighteenth-
century Mexico, the colony with the most devel-
oped and diversifi ed economy. Strikes sometimes
took place in artisan shops; in 1784, for example,
the workers in the bakery of Basilio Badamler went
on strike to protest “horrible working conditions.”
More commonly, they occurred in industries that
had large concentrations of workers or a division of
labor that promoted workers’ cooperation and soli-
darity. One large-scale industry was the manufac-
ture of cigars and cigarettes by the royal tobacco
monopoly, whose founding was accompanied by a
ruthless suppression (1773–1776) of artisan pro-
duction of these goods. The immense factory op-
erated by the monopoly in Mexico City employed
about 7,000 workers of both sexes. The workers,
who included natives, mestizos, and some Span-
iards, were paid in cash, and the annual payroll in
the 1780s and 1790s came to about 750,000 pe-
sos. The militancy of these workers was displayed
in strikes and protests that worried the authorities.
In 1788 the consulado of Mexico City declared that
this large assembly of workers presented a threat
to public order, citing a march on the viceroy’s pal-
ace caused by a “small increase” in the length of
the workday. The workers, heedless of the guards,
swarmed into the palace and occupied the patios,
stairs, and corridors. The viceroy, having heard
their complaint, “prudently gave them a note or-
dering the factory’s administrator to rescind that
change, and so with God’s help that tumult ended,
the multitude left, bearing that note as if in tri-
umph, and the viceroy decided to overlook that
turbulent action, so likely to cause sedition.” In
1794 the workers again marched on the viceregal
palace to protest a change in the contractual ar-
rangement that permitted them to take part of their
work home to prepare for the next day’s tasks.
A more dramatic labor struggle broke out in
the 1780s in the Mexican silver mining industry.
The scene of the confl ict was the mines of Real del
Monte in northern Mexico. Here, as in all other
Mexican silver mines, the majority of the work
force was free, but a minority of the workers were