To the east of Chile, the estuary Río
de la Plata, or “River of the Silver,” which
lies on the southeast coast of South
America between modern Uruguay and
Argentina, had been discovered by
Spanish navigators as early as 1516.
Colonization there began with an expedi-
tion under Pedro de Mendoza that was
launched directly from Spain in 1535 and
resulted in the founding of Buenos Aires
in 1536. The settlement was later tem-
porarily abandoned, but a new settlement
at Asunción in what is now Paraguay
(founded 1538) provided a permanent
base for expansion. Settlers from Peru
began the permanent colonization of
Argentina in 1553, with Buenos Aires
resettled in 1580. Uruguay was con-
quered relatively late, with the first per-
manent Spanish settlement not
established until 1624.
Government
The conquistadores enjoyed the glory and
the first rush of wealth from the New
World. But the Spanish crown, which
licensed their adventures and took a share
of their spoils, had no intention of allowing
these ambitious, individualistic men to
chop up the empire into personal fief-
doms. Having mastered the art of central-
ized, autocratic control among the
fractious warlords of the Iberian Peninsula,
Spain exercised that control in Spanish
America. The conquistadores were pushed
aside as Cortés and Pizarro had been,
their domains put under the authority of
royal officials. A royal council called the
Council of the Indies was established in
1524 to supervise the government of the
empire.
New Spain, with its capital at Mexico
City, and Peru, with its capital at Lima,
were declared viceroyalties. The Vice-
royalty of New Spain encompassed all
Spanish territory on the North American
mainland as far south as what is now Costa
Rica. The Viceroyalty of Peru at first
encompassed all of Spanish South America
except for the Venezuelan coast (governed
from Santo Domingo). In the 18th centu-
ry, however, New Granada (roughly corre-
sponding to present-day Ecuador,
Colombia, and Panama) and Río de La
Plata (modern Bolivia, Chile, Argentina,
Paraguay, and Uruguay) broke off from
Peru to became separate viceroyalties.
The viceroyalties were segmented
into kingdoms or audiencias, so called for
the audiencia, or tribunal, that headed
each unit in association with a governing
executive. Within a kingdom, at the
provincial level, corregidores, or provincial
governors, were in charge of administra-
tion and justice. Some kingdoms, called
presidencies, were governed by a president
while others, called captaincies-general,
were governed by a captain-general. In
principle, these officals were subordinate
to viceroys, but in practice they had con-
siderable independence, especially the cap-
tains-general, whose job was to protect
colonies deemed particularly vulnerable
to foreign attack, such as Guatemala,
Cuba, Venezuela, and Chile. The de facto
autonomy of the kingdoms made it diffi-
cult to unite them once Spain left the
New World. Many present-day Latin
American countries correspond roughly to
the colonial kingdoms.
By the 1580s, at the peak of Spain’s
world power, the Spanish empire in the
Americas was mostly under firm royal
control. It had passed from the initial peri-
od of exploration and conquest to one of
consolidation and stability. Many places in
Spanish America were claimed but not
subdued, with Spanish settlements still
sparse and Native Americans still putting
up strong resistance. Nonetheless, Spanish
control gradually increased over these
areas, until the time came when Spain
was forced out of the Americas, not by
Native Americans, but by the descendants
of its own colonists.Economy
The economy of New Spain was domi-
nated by a small elite of wealthy land-
owners, miners, factory owners, and
merchants. At first the landowners were
mainly encomenderos, but as enco-
miendas came under increasing royal
control, other labor arrangements
became more important. In many places,
a system developed for exacting com-
pulsory or draft labor from Native
Americans, with Native American com-
munities providing a quota of laborers for
a prescribed time, and the laborers re-
ceiving minimal wages in return. In New
Spain the system was called repartimien-
to (not to be confused with the forerun-
ner of the encomienda system), in PeruSPAIN IN THE AMERICAS 41