THE COLONIAL ECONOMY 83
and Portuguese were accustomed to keeping black
slaves, the beliefs that blacks were the descendants
of the biblical Ham and bore his curse and that
they were better able to support the hardships of
plantation labor, Spanish defenders of the “Indian”
did not display the same zeal on behalf of enslaved
Africans.
In fact, the rapid development of sugar-cane
agriculture in the West Indies in the early 1500s
brought an insistent demand for black slave labor
to replace the vanishing natives. A lucrative slave
trade arose, chiefl y carried on by foreigners under a
system of asiento (a contract between an individual
or company and the Spanish crown). The high cost
of slaves tended to limit their use to the more profi t-
able plantation cultures or to domestic service in
the homes of the wealthy. Large numbers lived on
the coasts of Venezuela and Colombia, where they
were employed in the production of such crops as
cacao, sugar, and tobacco, and in the coastal val-
leys of Peru, where they labored on sugar and cot-
ton plantations, but smaller concentrations were
found in every part of the Indies. In Chapter 5,
we shall consider the much-disputed question of
whether African slavery in Hispanic America was
“milder” than in other European colonies.
In summary, all colonial labor systems rested
in varying degrees on servitude and coercion. Al-
though contractual labor gradually emerged as
the theoretical norm, all the labor systems just de-
scribed coexisted throughout the colonial period.
Indigenous slavery, for example, was legally abol-
ished in 1542, but it continued in frontier areas
on various pretexts into the eighteenth century.
Which labor system dominated at a given time
and place depended on such factors as the area’s
natural resources, the number of Europeans in
the area and the character of their economic ac-
tivities, the size and cultural level of its indigenous
population, and the crown’s economic and politi-
cal interests. Finally, it should be noted that in the
course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
the labor pool was gradually expanded by the ad-
dition of mestizos, free blacks and mulattos, and
poor whites. Since most of these people were ex-
empt from encomienda and repartimiento obliga-
tions, they usually worked for wages and enjoyed
freedom of movement, but like the indígenas, they
were subject to control through debts. In Chapter
7, we shall discuss eighteenth-century changes in
the labor system.The Colonial Economy
The Conquest disrupted the traditional subsis-
tence-and-tribute economy of indigenous com-
munities. War and disease took a heavy toll of
lives, to the detriment of production. In some ar-
eas, the complex irrigation networks established
and maintained by centralized native authorities
were destroyed or fell into ruin. The Conquest
also transformed the character and tempo of eco-
nomic activity. When the frenzied scramble for
treasure had ended with the exhaustion of the
available gold and silver objects, the encomienda
became the principal instrument for the extrac-
tion of wealth from the vanquished. The peoples
of the Aztec and Inca empires were accustomed to
paying tribute in labor and commodities to their
rulers and nobility. But the tribute demands of the
old ruling classes, although apparently increasing
on the eve of the Conquest, had been limited by
custom and by the capacity of their ruling groups
to utilize tribute goods. The greater part of such
tribute was destined for consumption or display,
not for trade. The demands of the new Spanish
masters, on the other hand, were unlimited. Gold
and silver were the great objects; if these could not
be obtained directly, the encomenderos proposed
to obtain them by sale in local or distant markets
of their tribute goods. Driven by visions of infi nite
wealth, the Spaniards took no account of indig-
enous tribute traditions and exploited them mer-
cilessly. A compassionate missionary, writing in
1554, complained that before the Conquest the
native peoples in his part of Mexiconever used to give such large loads of mantas
[pieces of cotton cloth], nor had they ever
heard of beds, fi ne cotton fabrics, wax, or
a thousand other fripperies like bed sheets,
tablecloths, shirts, and skirts. All they used to
do was cultivate the fi elds of their lords, build
their houses, repair the temples, and give of
the produce of their fi elds when their lords
asked for it.