R
RELACIONES GEOGRÁFICASIn 1577, the Spanish Crown drew up a set of 50 questions that were intended
to elicit information on Crown holdings in the New World. The questions
covered a range of issues concerned with history, geography, and economy.
The questionnaire was motivated by the fact that Crown territories in the New
World were still fundamentally unknown to administrators and members of
the Council of the Indies, which oversaw all Colonial policies and practices in
the New World. The hope was that a systematic investigation of all aspects of
life in the communities governed by Spain would lead to a more enlightened
administration in those far-flung holdings, both in the Viceroyalty of New
Spain and that of Peru. The written responses to the questionnaire take the
form of what are referred to today as the Relaciones Geográficas de Indias
(Geographical Relations/Accounts of the Indies).
Within a decade of the printing of the questionnaire, copies had made their
way to the Viceroyalty of Peru and were being implemented in inquests
undertaken by administrative governors (corregidores) or priests in the
various regions of the viceroyalty. Some 21 of the Relaciones Geográficas de
Indias that returned to Spain and were published pertain either to the
Audiencia (judicial region) of Lima or that of Quito. In both cases, the
information elicited by the questionnaire related not only to the actual
circumstances of Andean communities, but concerned conditions during the
Inca domination of the region as well.
These documents are a source of exceptionally important information for
researchers today trying to reconstruct provincial organization under the
Incas. This includes such matters as the nature of settlements in a given
region, the resources (e.g., minerals, plants, animals, sources of water)
available, as well as the types of infrastructure (e.g., roads and storehouses).
Many questions of a more explicitly cultural nature were also included, such
as: What languages were spoken in a given town? How were towns
governed? How were the houses built? Some questions were quite specific in
asking about Native culture and customs, often reflecting the presumptions