TRIBUTE AND LABOR IN THE SPANISH COLONIES 81
mitaya, was established alongside the original one.
Guaraní men who lived within a 139-mile radius
of Asunción were allocated to Spaniards, with the
number of tributaries varying according to the
rank or merits of the grantee. In Paraguay, unlike
in the central areas of the empire, there was no pay-
ment for labor or specifi ed amounts of tribute in
goods or money. By 1688, as a result of the ravages
of disease, the effects of mestizaje, and fl ight, only
21,950 Guaraní were recorded as being held in en-
comienda. By 1778, the number had dwindled to
hundreds. Consequently, the mestizo (mixed-race)
descendants of Spanish fathers began to supplement
the few surviving Guaraní with black slaves, paying
for them with the proceeds from the export of yerba
mate, the area’s chief staple and the source of a tea
still greatly prized in southern South America. By
1782, blacks outnumbered Guaraní in the area.
THE REPARTIMIENTO, YANACONAJE,AND
FREE LABOR
In the key areas of central Mexico and the Andean
highlands, however, a new system, the repar-
timiento, replaced forced labor under the enco-
mienda after 1550. Under this system, all adult male
indígenas were required to give a certain amount of
their time in rotation throughout the year to work
in Spanish mines and workshops, on farms and
ranches, and on public works. The crown hoped this
would regulate the use of an ever-diminishing pool
of native labor and give access to such labor to both
encomenderos and the growing number of Span-
iards without encomiendas. The indígenas received
a token wage for their work, but the repartimiento,
like the encomienda, was essentially disguised slav-
ery. Those who avoided service and community
leaders who failed to provide the required quotas
were imprisoned, fi ned, and physically punished.
In Peru, where the condition of indigenous
peoples seems to have been generally worse than
in New Spain, the repartimiento (here known as
the mita) produced especially disastrous effects.
Under this system, developed by Viceroy Francisco
de Toledo in the 1570s, all able-bodied native men
in the provinces subject to the mita were required
to work for six-month periods, one year in seven,
at Potosí or other mining centers, or were assigned
to other Spanish employers. The silver mines of Po-
tosí and the Huancavelica mercury mine were no-
torious deathtraps for laborers under the mita. In
Peru and Bolivia, the mita remained an important
source of labor in mining and agriculture up to the
end of the colonial period.
In the Andean area, the repartimiento was
supplemented by another institution that had been
taken over from Inca society: the system of yanaco-
nas,which separated indígenas from their commu-
nities and forced them to serve Spaniards as personal
servants. Like European serfs, the yanaconas were
transferred from one landowner to another as part
of the estate. It is estimated that by the end of the
sixteenth century, the number of yanaconas on
Spanish haciendas was almost equal to the number
of natives who lived in their own communities.
Although the repartimiento offered a temporary
solution to the critical labor problem, many Spanish
employers found it unsatisfactory because it did not
provide a dependable and continuing supply of labor.
From an early date, mine owners and hacendados in
New Spain turned increasingly to the use of wage la-
bor. The heavy weight of tribute and repartimiento
obligations on a diminishing native population and
Spanish usurpation of indigenous communal lands
induced many to accept an hacendado’s invitation
to become farm laborers who would work for wages,
mostly paid in kind. Some traveled back and forth
to work from their communities, whereas others
became resident peons on the haciendas. Yet others
were drawn to the northern silver mines by the lure
of relatively high wages.
When the crown abolished the agricultural
repartimiento in central Mexico in 1630, it provoked
little or no protest, since most landowners relied on
wage labor. The mining repartimiento, however,
continued in New Spain. It was still employed in-
termittently in the eighteenth century but had little
importance because the mines of New Spain oper-
ated mainly with contractual labor. In Peru and
Bolivia, wage labor was less important because the
mita—supplemented by yanaconaje—was the dom-
inant labor system and provided a mass of cheap
workers for the high-cost silver mines. However,
as many as forty thousand free indigenous miners