80 CHAPTER 4 THE ECONOMIC FOUNDATIONS OF COLONIAL LIFE
perpetual. The heaviest blow of all to the encomen-
dero class was the catastrophic decline of the native
population in the second half of the sixteenth cen-
tury. In central Mexico, it dropped from perhaps 25
million in 1519 to slightly over 1 million in 1605.
On the central coast of Peru, the tributary popu-
lation seems to have fallen by 1575 to 4 percent
of what it had been before the Conquest. For rea-
sons that remain unclear, the rates of population
decline in both Mexico and Peru appear to have
been considerably higher on the coast than in the
highlands. Diseases—especially those of European
origin, against which the natives had no acquired
immunity—such as measles, smallpox, typhus,
and malaria were the major direct cause of this dem-
ographic disaster. But overwork, malnutrition, se-
vere social disorganization, and the resulting loss
of the will to live underlay the terrible mortality
associated with the great epidemics and even with
epidemic-free years. In Peru the great civil wars
and disorders of the period from 1535 to 1550 un-
doubtedly contributed materially to depopulation.
As the number of their tributaries fell, the en-
comenderos’ income from tribute dropped propor-
tionately, whereas their expenses, which included
the maintenance of a steward to collect tribute, sup-
port of a parish priest, and heavy taxes, remained
steady or even increased. As a result, many enco-
menderos, as well as other Spaniards without en-
comiendas, began to engage in the more lucrative
pursuits of agriculture, stock raising, and mining.
The decline of the indigenous population, which
sharply reduced the fl ow of foodstuffs and metals,
stimulated a rapid growth of haciendas (Spanish
estates) that produced grain and meat.
Thus, in central Mexico by the 1570s, and in
the northern and central Andean highlands by the
end of the sixteenth century, the encomienda had
lost its original character of an institution based on
the use of native labor without payment. Its impor-
tance as a source of revenue to Spanish colonists
had greatly diminished, and it had been placed in
the way of extinction through the progressive rever-
sion of individual encomiendas to the crown. These
changes, however, did not take place everywhere.
In areas that lacked precious metals or where ag-
ricultural productivity was low, and where con-
sequently there was little danger of the colonists
acquiring excessive power, the crown permitted en-
comenderos to continue exploiting the forced labor
of the natives. This was the case in Chile, where the
encomienda based on personal service continued
until 1791; in Venezuela, where it survived until
the 1680s; and in Paraguay, where it still existed in
the early 1800s. The crown also allowed the enco-
mienda as a labor system to continue in such areas
of New Spain as Oaxaca and Yucatán.
In Paraguay the encomienda assumed a pecu-
liar form that refl ected the culture and social organ-
ization of its Guaraní people. After a failed attempt
to colonize Argentina, the Spaniards who moved
into the vicinity of the present-day city of Asun-
ción found a population that lived in villages, each
having four to eight communal buildings. Each
building housed a patrilineal lineage composed of
several families, which were frequently polygy-
nous. With no hereditary chiefl y class, the chiefs’
tenure depended above all on their personal quali-
ties, and there was no political organization above
the village level. The Spaniards won the friendship
of the Guaraní by helping them defeat their war-
like neighbors, the nomadic hunting groups of the
Chaco desert, and were rewarded with presents of
food and women. In effect, the Spaniards became
a class of headmen in Guaraní society. Because
women played a key role in Guaraní agriculture
and social organization, the relatives of the women
who became Spanish concubines were expected to
provide the Spaniards with labor services as part
of their kinship obligations. The lineage or house-
hold thus became the basis of the Paraguayan
encomienda—the name with which the Spaniards
formalized their control of the groups of concubines
and their relatives who surrounded and served
them. Because the Spaniards could increase their
access to labor by adding to the number of their
concubines, offi cial efforts to stop the colonists from
invading native villages to get them or from trad-
ing women for horses or dogs proved ineffective. Ef-
forts to limit the number of days the Guaraní had to
work for the Spaniards were equally ineffective.
This arrangement was the encomienda origi-
naria, and it continued to the end of the colonial pe-
riod. In 1556 a second encomienda, the encomienda