THE INDIANS AND SPANISH

The Ind ans and Spanish Justice

As HE STRODE PAST the oft white stone of Our Lady of Mercy, Huamanga's
oldest monastery, Don Miguel de Bendezu seethed with anger. A relined
young aristocrat, Don 1 iguel had recently come into possession of a modest
family encomienda. E er since, the deceitful Indians, led by the kuraka
Don Pedro Astocuri, 1 ad taken unfair advantage of the Spanish laws. In
when Don Migue was still a legal minor, the natives managed to win a
or reimpection, which bypassed the customary legal citation giving
notice of the procecdir g to interested parties. By pushing through their
claim that nearly two h ndred tributaries had died or fled, they lowered the
annual tribute assessm ~nt
some 700 pesos ensayados. Now, just two
years later, Don Pedr and his people were at it again. This time, Don
Miguel bad been cited to respond to their petition for a new count of the
tributary populatiou. A he made his way toward the plaza to declare his answer before a notary, th exasperated young patrician determined not to fall
prey
to the ''ignor nee and malice" of Don Pedro and his followers. He
would appeal to the ro, al court in Lima to cancel the revisita. Another inspection, he explained lesperatdy, would bring "the complete ruin of the
said repartimiento, bee use the said cacique, to avoid paying tributes and
complying with the llu; ncavelica mitas, will send off the Indians. They (the
kurakasj will order ther l to hide and claim them f()r dead or escaped, as is
their custrn11." 1 As the 1 ore experienced citizens of Huarnanga might have
told him, Don Miguel w >tdd have to master the formal and informal rules of
the
game quickly, f he wanted to protect his income. By learning how
to assert some
1i, hrs of their own, the natives, source of so much
wealth, had also bccom a source of great trouble.
For Don Miguel and others like him, the political revitalization of Peru

114

115

brought mixed blessings. On the one band, Tbledo's

established
reins of power effective enough to fashion an unparalleled economic boom.
On the other hand, it tied elites to a colonial state which defined
and illegitimate rules of exploitation, and whose judges and bureaucrats
would decide upon their implementation. Spanish legal philosophy associated sovereignty with the idea ofjurisdiction, conceived as responsibility for
reconciling life on earth with the principles of a higher, divinely ordained
law. The state was fundamentally a dispenser ofjustiee, and its oflicials were
invariably known as '~udges" or the like. 2 The resurgent role of the colonial
state in the 1570s gave new life: to this tradition. The great burst
and political reform sponsored by Toledo included detailed statements of the
natives' legal rights and procedures frlr claiming them. In
the
state's administrative network included burt'aucrats like the
Indians," whose stature, money-making possibilities, and power
upon their potential as formidable legal defenckrs of the natives. 1n short,
the juridical institutions which sponsored the extractions of a colonial ruling
class also gave the natives au opt'ning by which ro constrict
As
long as some bureaucrats or colonial powers found it in their
m
some cases, to back an as;;ertion of the natives' legal rights, the Indians could
find ways to impede, obstruct, or subvert extraction.
The natives made the most of the opportunity, and entangled th<' colonials' exploitative practices in labyrinthine adjudications whose final outcomes
were often uncertain. As we shall see, the Indians'
for Spanish justice, in the end, weakened their capacity to mount a radical
to, the
colonial structure, and thereby contributed to the dominance of colonial
elite. Along the way, however, resistance within Spanish
ridical frameworks locked the colonials into a social war which hammered
at specific privileges, and left the ultirnate victors with a good many bruises and
headaches.
THE LEGAL BATTLES OF A CONTENTIOUS PEOPLE
From early on, the natives earned a reputation as litigious
By the
1550s, they were flooding the
court, or
in Lima with
tions and suits, the majority of them between native communities, ayllus, or
ethnic groups. Two decades later 'I(1ledo hoped that local administrative reorganization might streamline the litigation process and avoid
the Lima jurists. 3 In practice, however, consolidatiou of a harsh
system administered through a set
charged with
guidelines did little to
litigation. Instt'.ad, the natives learned
how to press aggressively for the
allowed them. By the
had developed legal forms of
into a rnajor strategy for
dividual, ayllu, and community interests.

116

PERU'S INDIAN PEOP .ES AND THE CHALLENGE OF SPANISH

Even at this time of d dine in the native population, some of the conflicts
land. Spaniards and other proprietors coveted
with colonials concern
areas whose ecology, fo tility, or location promised high rewards for commercial agriculture. Des )ite the absence of generalized land pressure, 4 compel it ion in the prized z 1es sparked fierce conflicts. Spaniards enjoyed the
of a legal sys cm which enhanced their claim on lands. The composicicSn de tierras instit tion permitted Crown inspectors to award a community's "unused" or sur ilus lands to petitioners. 5 Since Andean agricultural
technology depended o a rotation system which let many lands lie fallow,
the composicioncs of the 1590s, 1620s, and 1630s offered landgrabbers an opportunity to claim esscr tial community lands which lay unworked in any
given year6 Communiti s which spent money and energy to contest the legality of Spanish or evc1 mestizo claims faced great risks. Spanish law officially devalued the CTCC 'biJity of native witnesses,7 and colonials enjoyed
more resources to spem on litigation and bribes. The judges "hared social
affinities and sympathic with Hispanic claimants. Even if ajudgc ruled on
behalf of the natives, a orregidor or his lieutenant might neglect enforcement. With the balance f forces tipped against them, and their funds eaten
up, the natives sornetim s withdrew their suits. 8
Yet despite the disad antages of law, economics, social prejudice, and
their modest political don, Indians won important local victories. In Socos,
near H uamanga, a lit en e Indian woman fought skillfully to fend off the incursions of a local land >wner 011 several prized hectares. When, in the
1590s, Don Crist6bal de. erpa tried to claim vast tracts of valuable lands just
south of the Rio Pampa., the community of Tiquihua won a decree by the
viceroy in Lima which 'pt Serpa out. Even when natives could not carry
through a struggle to a f nal victory, their litigation might prove costly and
disruptive to a colonial ntrepreneur. One family, eager to invest funds to
improve lands in the pr sperous .Huatata Valley near Huamanga, paid its
cncomienda Indians 50 pesos (of eight reales) to withdraw their lawsuit. 9
The legal battles from which the natives simply refused to withdraw concerned labor rather that land. Though the colonials accumulated a good
share of valuable land, t c most threatening feature of the Toledan system
for ayllu society was the ita. The labor drafts drained away native energy,
threatened the health of i 1dividuals and the ability of communities to reproduce themselves, and un !ermined the reciprocity relations on which native
society was built. By th 1590s, communities were waging an aggressive
campaign to protect then selves from "excessive" demands which violated official guidelines. Kuraka from Huanta and Vilcashuaman empowered the
solicitor of suits at the Li na audiencia "to present certain provisions that we
have won ... about the mi ta of Indians that we have to [send to] Huancavelica."10 The Tanquihu; s lndians cut in half the contingent of 120 natives

THE INDIANS AND SPANISH

11 7

they had sent to their encornendero's obraje. 11 Since the mita

up to one-seventh of the tributary population (able-bodied
to fifty years old), a rcpartimicntn with declining population could seek a rcvisita to revise its mita quota downward. With the ascent of the sympathetic
viceroy Luis de Velasco, a major reinspection effort got under way around
1600. At least ten, and probably more, ofHuarnanga's original twenty-three
core repartimientos had their tribute and mita assessments lowered.12
The Indians threw their most
efforts into resistance
the
mi ta. The kuraka of one ayllu sued for at least three years to avoid turning
over just one native for a mita
in H uancavelica. (A mi ta de
did
not send laborers to mines, but rather to serve in the households,
ranches of a city's citizens and residents.) His ayllu, "warm-weather"
natives who lived in low-lying
zones near Luricocha (rl uanta),
enjoyed legal exemption from work in cold climates like that of H mmcavelica. To clinch his case, the chief mobilized testimony by Indians and Spanish miners to prove that his ayllu never had to contribute to a
contingent of 100 laborers designated to work local mines, and later shifted to the
Huancavelica mita de plaza.t3
Much of the energy that the colonials expended to drive the natives to
comply with the hated labor drafts involved drawn-out legal battks. In Andahuaylas, for example, kurakas backed their unwillingness to fulfill a mita
order with a legal ruse which disrupted the draft. Ordered in October 1606
to turn over an allotment of fifteen rnitayos for two years to the
rn
Huamanga, the Chanca kurakas replied with a statement
the
draft. Their rcpartimiento legally owed one-seventh of its tributary population to mita service. With no more than 3,000 tributaries, they should have
to provide no more than 429.5 natives. Since, by the kurakas' count, they
had already turned over 462
the chiefs appealed the
of
the order. But their count included 112 functionaries of Indian municipal
and church government. Legally, the municipal officials and lay assistants
enjoyed special exemption from mita
hut communities held no right
to count this "reserved" group among its quota of natives fulfilling mita
duties authorized by the .state. Like other groups, the Chancas tried to
stretch the individual exemptions into a means of reducing the communities'
total mita liabilities (in this case, from 429. 5 to 317 .5 natives) H The Jesuits'
priest-lawyer contested the legality of their count, and in December won an
order to force compliance.
Still, the kurakas proved obstinate. In April 1607 they claimed that the enforcement order issued by the
court in the land, the
audiencia
in Lima, was illegal! After all, they
it demanded that Indians send
more than the one-seventh quota to rnita service. For months, the Chancas
simply reappealed unfavorable decisions with legal arguments of their own

J 18

PERU'S !NDIAN PEOl .ES AND THE CHALLENGE OF SPANISH

until in October the con egidor threw them in jail. Even then, the chiefs held
out. Only after the corcgidor approved the Jesuits' request to seize the kurakas' property and kee them in jail indefinitely did the chiefs submit. Finally, from the jail of, ndahuaylas, they dispatched fifteen rnitayos off to
H uarnanga, "without pr ~judicing our right and.what we seek to plead before
Your Excellency." The k irakas' recalcitrance had held up the mita order fix
a full year.
In their search for
I techniques to erode or disrupt forced labor requisitions, the Indians some times uses shrewd tactics. From the 1580s, the Tanquihuas Indians had
ed considerable experience in a protracted struggle
with Hernan and, later,
Guillt'n de Mendoza over mitayos and other
natives working on the f mily's obraje-hacienda complex. In 1615,the group
failed to send some twe ty peasants to Huancavelica for the SeptembcrOctober rnita. At a time of year when ayllus had to prepare and plant fields
for Guillen as well as th
they probably could not spare any hands.
When a judge cornmissi med at Huancavelica arrived later to investigate,
the 1imquihuas blamed be incident on "the many Indians that their encomendero Dou Diego Gu lll~n de Mendoza has working." The tactic worked
brilliantly, for it shifted he fr>cus nf the investigation to the hacienda complex and its impact on t e Huancavdica mita. In the end, the legal actions
inspired
the rn incrs' com pl a int cost Diego Guillen over 600 pesos. 16
The Indians' inferiors cial, legal, political, and economic status of course
threw up great obstacles o their success at law and reduced some "victories"
to insignificance. The re idencias, judicial reviews taken by incoming officials of the conduct and a .:counts of outgoing functionaries, theoretically offered a forum for redress against abuses by corrupt officials. But even when
the natives could break hrough the notorious tendency of incoming and
outgoing
tc collude in the rcsidencia, their "victory" often
;nnnunted to very little. 11any penalties and fines were owed to the Crown
courts rather than to tlI< natives. Even worse, the long process of appeal
gave the functionary tim to mobilize well-placed friends to back up arguments on his behalf. In nore than one case, officials initially sentenced to
t > reverse or lighten the rcsults.17 Politics clouded
stiff pcm1ltics
the "justice" of other proc
as well. When, around 1600, the Indians
sued for an investigation :if labor practices at the obraje of Chincheros, the
findings condemned the owcrful Ore family to the tune of thousands of
pesos. The natives' trium Jh gave them a legal excuse to abandon the workshop, but on appeal the vi :tory proved elusive. The family managed to have
the penalty reduced to a r 1ere 100 pesos, and mobilized the bureaucracy to
force the Indians to retlll 1 to work.IS
Still, the well-known c >rruptions, abuses, and collusions which made a
mockery of Indian
"' did not constitute the whole story. Indeed, the

THE INDIANS AND SPANISH

119

first obraje built by the Ore family had been shut down when an
tion supported complaints that the workers could not collect wages. When
Jeronimo de Ore built a new obr<~je in 1584 he made sure, said tlw Indians
later, to pay the workers well at the start. 19 As we have seen, the natives
fended off some incursions 011 their lands, won revised mi ta quotas in accordance with population declines, and constructed legal arguments
specific cases of forced labor. Even when legal actions failed to prevent
abuses or exactions, they delayed the colonials, carved out a bit
space to plant crops, or earned the Indians payoffs to withdraw their suits.
Thus the Indians suceeedcd enough to make legal action a viable form of
struggle. But we may ask why, in a system created to exploit the native peasantry, such redresses were possible.
THE OPPORTUNITY.
CLEAVAGES WITHIN THE COLONIAL ELITE
The exploitative system consolidated under 1oledo functioned not as a
monolithic bloc of power, but as an alliance of various local,
and
supraregional elite networks. 'I'hough in its overall structure this system
transformed the native Andean peoples into "Indians" available for colonial
appropriation, the elite networks were beset by sufficient internal contradictions to give the natives room to maneuver. In addition, Spanish colonial institutions gave law and, more generally, the juridical system central importance in the administration of rationalized extractive institutions such as
tribute or mita. By mastering the art of defending themselves in alliance
with appropriate bureaucrats or colonial powers, the Indians
era! disadvantages which hampered their success in litigation their chances of winning specific victories.
Any figure who sought to carve out a local fiefdom of privilege and profit
had reason to defend Indian clients
excessive greediness
rival
elite. Consider, for example, the cncomendero who had long held lands near
"his" (or occasionally, "her") Indian communities. Interested in
fertile or well-placed lands, and native workers for his
cncomendcro-hacendado frequently
competing landholders whose
claims might undermine the self-sufficiency or productivity of his encomicnda Indians. By assisting the natives
the usurpation of
the
encomenclero also enhanced his
to demand favors from his clientelc. Again and again, cncornencleros supported the
of their In
dians against land claims by other colonials or by rival nativcs. 20
co
lonials caught in land fights tended to blame European patrons rather than
the natives themselves for their troubles 1 As one
landowner, himself an cncomendero, put it: "Dona Teresa de
for her own ends,
goes about settling two Indians of Luis Palomino her sm1
a local

J 20

PERU'S INDIAN PEO LES AND THE CHALLENGE OF SPANISH

encomcndero-haccnda o I in order to disturb and upset my peaceful, longstanding possession." 21 The elites of any given locale, of course, often
worked out mutually l eneficial relationships which allied them in the exploitation of the nativ s. Nevertheless, attempts by outsiders to establish
themselves, or efforts b the established to expand their share of the spoils,
sparked conflicts. A8 wi h the encomenderos, such conflicts provided the Indians with willing, if u reliable, defenders. In the mines of Huayllay, Spanish miners spoke with vehement outrage when accusing a priest-miner
whose usurpations cut nto their own privileges. 22
More important, pe1 aps, than factional divisions within a local terrain
were the endemic contr dictions between local and supralocal interests. In a
certain sense, all local I rds shared with the natives an interest in subverting
tribute and mita allotm :ins to distant centers which undermined the local
economy or drained aw y its surplus. All supralocal claimants, on the other
hand, sought to squeez out a maximum of goods, money tributes, and labor from distant hinter! mis. The conflict pitted local exploiters against outsid<TS. An encomender -hacendado, joined by local kurakas and corregidor
alike, denounced the destructive effect of the Huamanga mita de plaza on
his repartimiento's Indi .ns and requested that mitayos sent to the city of
be assigned nstead to his local haciendas. 23 Royal officials, city
residents, and miners ; !ways suspected that local corregiclores, kurakas,
and priests conspired a, ainst formal mita and .tribute institutions. By rnanipulat ing population c nnts, contending that it was unrealistic to expect
complete mita continger ts, and documenting that it was "impossible" to eolkct tributes from the i ipovcrished natives, local officials extended their
ability to command uno ricial tributes, to set up putting-out systems, or to
organize a lucrative loc; 1 cornmerc:e. 24 These extractive relationships, and
the continuing vulueral ility of poor Indians to mita drafts, differentiated
the interests of local !or ls, Hispanic or Andean, from that of the poorer
peasantry. Nevertheless, the elites' interest in maintaining viable local economies supported ayllus a 1d communities in their most serious struggle - the
attempt to minimize the requisition of forced labor away from local homelands.
\Vhat compounded th .se cleavages within the elite was the resurgence of
the Spanish colonial stat~, under TiJledo, as a vital patron of exploitation.
Law and juridical adrnin stration grew into a serious fact of life, an undeniable component of the l eld of forces confronted by colonials and Indians
alike. The support natives enlisted from jurist-bureaucrats did not necessarily imply that administra ors acted as disinterested executors of legal guidelines. Though some disr layecl a certain integrity or commitment to legal
rules, the vast majority ieserved their reputations for corrupt patronage
and money-making. Mo e to the point than a disinterested sense of integrity

THE INDIANS AND SPANISH

121

was the way in which jurist-bureaucrats found it in their interest to support

some of the natives' struggles. As we have seen, corregidores had good
reason to support native
of institutions which sapped the local
economy. In cities such as Huamanga, Huancavelica, or Castrovirreyna,
the "protector of natives" enjoyed social influence and attracted offers of
bribes by virtue of his capacity to represent the natives
The
eye on money-making which rendered bnreaucrats corruptible
Spanish
clients also opened the door to bribery
the natives. The citizens of Huamanga appointed one of their own, Juan Nuiiez de Sotomayor, to take
action to correct the chronically incomplete mi ta contingents sent
the natives. To their chagrin, however, Sotomayor's loyalties faded before his private business interests. Travelling through the rural provinces,
"converted the mitas into his benefit, and allowed that the [tributaiy counts]
be lowered." 26
By legal or illegal means, the natives gained access to a more or less working juridical system and, as much as they could, pressed it into their service.
In the long run, all colonial elites shared a common general interest in exploiting the Indians through
coercion. This shared interest found
conscious expression in mutually beneficial alliances, marriage and kinship
bonds, diversification of economic interests . and a disposition to accommodate one another rather than invite conflict. Still, they were in the colouial
world to make money, and their narrower interests as competing
often clashed. For native Andean
these contradictions, in conjunction with a juridical system susceptible to their claims, represented an opening to defend themselves on issues concerning labor, lands, and tributes.
The Indians saw their opportunity, and they took it.
PROM DEFENSE TO MANIPULATION
As a result, legal tactics mushroomed into a major strategy oflndian life. By
the 1580s, kurakas commonly gave
general powers of attorney to
represent their legal interests. 27 At least one ethnic group, the Acos of Huanta, institutionalized its legal activity. "Each new year," declared seven kurakas in 1597, "we are accustomed to naming solicitors to use our power in all
our [legal] causes." With license from a Spanish alcalde and protector of natives in Huarnanga, eight chiefs appointed three persons- two kurakas and
a Spanish solicitor in Huamanga to look after the group's legal intercsts. 28
As the natives grew more adept at defending their rights, the distinction
between defensive action against colonial disregard of
and
more aggressive manipulation oft he juridical system to sa1Jrnra~~e
als grew increasingly blurred. Iu
the
correlation of tribute
and mita burdens with repartirniento tributary counts (healthy
teen to fifty years old) lent ayllus and communities a potent tool with which

122

THE INDIANS AND SPANISH

PERU'S INDIAN l'EO LES AND THE CHALLENGE OF SPANISH

,,

rt
'f uLfCOtj {l'J rKLl,JO
jJ

II

II
~.

h
fl

I\

ll

IJ

h
II

T'hc rising in1portance of legal docu1nentation. An Indian notary wrltes a petition and serves
as caretaker of the growing
nrtrnent of dorurncnts reJevant to native life.

123

to fight colonial extraction. By

for rev1sltas
of
their populations, native peoples lowered their legal tribute and mita quotas
in accordance with real and
declines.
the
seventeenth century, the revisita institution had become the
a social war fought to control official popula1ion
and tax liabilities.
Rather than offering a reliable
to the human resources available to
Huamanga's native societies, the revisita counts
the outcome of
this ongoing struggle.
treasury
On the one side, encomenderos,
and
others interested in maintaining eurrent tribute and mita levels tried either
to postpone the revisitas or to minimize their impact. In almost
proceeding, the affected parties held the right to participate and defend their
interests. In the revisitas, encomenderos received an official citation
them notice of the coming recount, and led the attempt to maintain the status quo. By appealing the
ofa revisita to the Lima audiencia, or objecting to the
an encomendero or
could postpone or slow down the
In the meantime, the
held rights to the old tribute levels. Once a
was under way, the
opposed parties did whatever they could to have the claims of the natives
thrown out. Asserting that kurakas hid tributaries and then
had died or fled to unknown parts, encomenderos and like-minded
demanded rigorous proof of the native contentions. If an
death did
not appear in the local priest's "book of
a judge often recorded the
Indian as a living tributary unless
otherwise. 30 In one
even a Spanish priest's testimony that he had indeed buried the Indians did
not suffice to reverse this
kurakas had to offer
that escaped natives had truly fled their homelands and eluded their
kinfolk's attempts to locate them. 32 In a revisita, Indians and ayllus
had to contend with colonial eiforts to inflate or maintain the list of tributaries liable to taxes and rnita. One encomendero persuaded an
reverse the exemption of local Inca descendants from normal
tus. 33 By the conclusion of a
colonial recipients might
tribute and mita rights based on census lists which included dead or
gone males among the tributaries.
On the other side, the natives did all
of priests and Indians to
ayllu burdens. Kurakas mobilized the
certify deaths and flights, and to
the faultiness of parish
books; they had Spanish doctors confirm mercury sickness and endorse the
removal of the ill from tributary rolls;
led inspectors on tours of crumbling, abandoned homes to prove that natives had fled the
Within several years of a completed
they came back with evidence
that tributes and rnita assessments should be lowered further. 30 To the extent

124

PERlJ'S INDIAN

not say that they

tives' story on the
The day-to-day
of his tour,

mounting daily
played with
settlement patterns.
had broken down

the natives,"
tributary in

AND THE CHALLENGE OF SPANISH

with judges or priests or on their own, manamong the dead or absent, they might
which exceeded true population declines.
whose Soras Indians pressed aggres1600s, complained that local priests contributaries "in order to employ them in their
the caciques." The priests who certified
and 1609, Palomino observed pointedly, "did
natives." Instead, they went along with the naseen their wives dressed as widows." 36
a revisita mirrored this tng of war. At the bevillage to which he came, the judge usually
in his public announcement to the throng
who may know that the caciques or other perdeclare them. If they do so, they will be reuncooperative ... will be punished." 37 The
of a judge concerned the natives as much
ethnic group petitioned for appointment of their
Since the corregidor already received a salperform the revisita without subjecting the naof another official. Probably the Indians also
held enough interest in local exploitative relatheir efforts to cut back tribute and mita. When
possible collusion by appointing an independent
objectiom held up the revisita for seventy-four
out into painstaking expeditionsayllu, household by household- which recorded
and death classifications against parish recfor all contentions, and earned the judge a
inspections took on a quality of hide-and-seek
payoffs or political alliances, and elusive
population clusters sponsored by Toledo
to allow ayllus and kurakas to settle natives "in
which escaped inspection. The possibility of nahand, gave harsh judges a rationale to dismiss
When two kurakas, supported by a "protector of
testimony to prove the death of a Lucanas
the judge declared "that it is not enough (to
not a Spaniard." Most Indians, he went on to
perjure themselves in order to remove (natives]"
mita rolls. 40
.... r ......

THE INDIANS AND SPANISH

125

The results of the recounts thus reflected the relative

and luck of the interested
as much as they did c1en1()!Tl'<l
Soras Indians, with 2,441 tributaries in 1570-1575, """"'"'~.,,
count by a mere 46 tributaries around 1600
the important
of smallpox (and perhaps also
of typhus and/or
struck the Huamanga region in the mid to late 1580s. The toll exacted
epidemic disease in these years is unknown, but the net decline of male tributaries among the Soras
from Tbledan census levels surely
amounted to more than 200 tributaries
2 percent) in the year 1600. Less
than a decade later, the Soras Indians lowered the tributary count
an impressive 439 tributaries despite the absence of major epidemics. Between 1600
and 1610, they had clearly learned how to use the revisita institution more effectively.41 In a less fortunate case, the Chancas of
their count by a large proportion, only to find that subsequent
of the revisita's accuracy wiped out most of their relief. The
of 1604 revised the 1594 count by
ofl,429 male~
men who had passed fifty years of age, and 1,117 new tributaries who had
reached eighteen years of age. The net decline was 768
from a
encomienda had
total of 3,277 in 1594 to 2,509 in 1604. The
reverted to the Crown, which received substantial tributes from the Chancas by the 1600s. Crown ollicials
to the credibility of the recount,
claiming that the judge was too interested in personal profit to double-check
alleged deaths or to include some 500 able-bodied young males in the count
of new tributaries. By 1606, the accusations of fraud
the
treasury led to the appointment of a
to
with power to
replace kurakas if necessary. Aided
" the
new inspector claimed to discover an undercount of 641
and
raised the count to 3 ,150 (a net decline of only 127 from l
By the early seventeenth century, the Andean peoples of
had
developed sufficient skills in loeal politics, juridical procedures, and subterfuge to lower the official tributary population by dramatic
By
1630, revisitas had cut the
count from over twenty-two thousand in
5.1). The drop cut gross tributes
15,000 pesos, and choked the once
to six hundred or less. In the
only
lower official counts to some
percent of the Tbkdan
tion. But between 1600 and 1630, the evidence suggests
and experience. Revisitas proliferated until they reduced the count to a
mere fifteen to twenty percent of the Thledan
What is more, by the 1620s many revisita
may have underestimated the human energy available in local ayllu eeonomies.
famil-

THE INDIANS AND SPANISH

CHALLENGE OF SPANISH

!()() (~

(22 ,1(16)

100

72,7% (lG,115)

- - ""'I 67.'.l % (14,918)

\

uf

'fokd;in

count

epidemic

:l2,2'fo (7,l:l7)

22,0%
(4,877)

1590

1600

1610

f620

14.4%
(3,192)
1630

Years

Figure cLl, Official counts, Huamanga tributary populations, 1570-1640

Note: Dashed linr is curv' based on counts for only two repartimientos, whose 160()-1610
abnormal y high (17,3% higher) when compared with the regional count

percentage

based on t'-'velvc reparti111ien 1s.

Sources: Census counts() riuarnanga)s twenty-three core repartirnientos and Sancos dur-

ing five,ye:u intervals,

n in Appendix C, The regional pcrcentagcs and estimates assurrw that the revisit as found in the ext<lnt dncurncntation are fr1irly representative of the rc-

rnunts in rhc region'" who The percentage given for the year 1600 (80,5 %) consolidates
figures for 1596-1600 and 160 -!GOS, particularly since I have not been able to specify exactly
which of these five-year inter ab is appropriate for some of the rernunts,

iar with Andean terrain and indigenous settlement patterns knows how easily a determined social , roup could hide a portion of its human, animal, or
even agricultural resou ces from outsiders, An investigation of idolatry in
the Hua11cavelica-Cast1 ivirreyna district showed that ethnic groups concealed some of the new orn even from local parish records. Several rn<~or
huacas each enjoyed th services of twenty or thirty men and women reserved for the cults, 'lo )rotect the servants from discovery, and from mita
labor in the mines, the I 1diarn "would hide them when [they were J children
and would not baptize hem so that they would not appear in the priest's
books, "4:l The Bishop of luamanga, who toured the region extensively during 1624 and 1625, notec that so many adult males had either died or 11ed to
live in hidden places aw y from villages that "it is impossible that one could
fulfill the mi ta of H nanc welica." Finding hidden natives was not easy, since
"those who look for the 1 do not want to find [the natives J but rather their
rnoney," 44
ln addition to this co 1cealed population, a community built access to a
significant group of ab ~-bodied males legally exempt from its tributary

127

count. Flight from home communities had created a sector of

Indians known asforasteros, Some
to live in new rural community settings rather than attach themselves lo European estates or
or
live in cities or isolated montana
These community forasteros oft en
married native ayllu women and participated actively in local economic
life. 45 Until the eighteenth century, however, they were
from the tribute-rnita counts of their adopted communities, The bishop who
toured Huamanga in 1624-25 certainly
when he said that the
total native population of rural
had remained
stable, if one
included children, hidden people, and forasteros (of all kinds), But a 168'.l
census ofChocorvos ayllus settled in Vilcashuarnau confirmed that the community forasteros constituted an important, if hitherto unquantified, st'ctor
of seventeenth-century ayllu econornies. Twenty-seven forasteros
the communities' populatio11 of able-bodied males
eighteen to fifty
33.8 percent. All but one lived in oue of the two towns inspected, where they
raised the count by 54.2 percent.
The sharp cutback in tribute and rnita thus represented a considerable
native achievement against formidable odds rather than an
sequence of objective demographic trends, Even had the revisita
reflected these accurately, population losses in themselves had not led automatically to commensurate reductions of tribute-mita levies. As we have
seen, the rate and scale of tributary count reductions were the result of hardfought juridical wars. Nor did population loss,
itself,
undercut the objective capacity of communities to support tribute-mita levies
based on high male tributary counts. The viability of alternative means of
extracting large profits from native communities (Chapter 6) casts doubt on
the assumption that ayllus simply could not have satisfied quotas whose ratio per male-headed household exceeded tl1at established by 'Ioledo, Indeed,
Indian communities or individuals unwilling or unable to
mi ta quotas in persons frequently paid money equivalents as an
or hired
other natives to replace
Kurakas who managed to accumulate
monies paid tributes for men who had fled the community, 48 Finally, the ef~
feet of hidden Indians and
combined with the developing skills of
native petitioners, meant that the official tributary counts, in at least some
cases, seriously underestimated the total human network available to local
societies, Andean communities, to be sure, suffered appalling losses to disease (especially in the epidemics of l 585-88 and 1610-15), abuse, and flight
which high birth rates 01 in-migration could reverse only
The net
effect may have cut the region's ethnic populations by half or more between
1570 and 1630, from over one hundred twenty thousand to a measure in the
tens of thousands. But the dramatic drop in tributary counts to a fifth or less
of the Toledan census was not a direct index of the decline in human re-

128

THE INDIANS AND SPANISH

PERtJ's INDIAN i EOPLES

sources or economi surplus available from ayllu society It measured instead the effects of the Indians' never-ending sabotage campaign against
tribute and mita.
THE IMPACT O, JUDICIAL POLITICS: THE COLONIAL ELITE
For the colonials, th natives' juridical activity constituted far more than an
occasional nuisance. By the early seventeenth century, the revisitas had undermined the reliabi it y of the state's official extractive institutions as suppliers of adequate Jabo and revenues to a developing economy. The total effeet
of the natives' camp ign
exploitation, however, did not subject Huarnanga to a
eel crisis. Mercury production - a key measure of economic dynamism at I markets suffered occasional setbacks due to techmcal and labor proble ns, and never recaptured the heady boom years of the
1580s and 1590s. Ne vcrtheless, Huancavelica continued to compile a reasonably consistent r .cord of prosperity (Figure 5.2), 50 and colonial Huamanga
shar econornic decline until much later in the sevent~enth
and
centuries. But the Indians' struggles sparked a scnes of
local or temporary Tises which disrupted enterprise and incomes, shut
down workshops, at d pinched production with labor bottlenecks. Cheap
mi ta labor grew scar e and unreliable. The natives' growing ability to evade
or lower m'ita-tribul quotas, and to entangle exploitative relations in legal
battles, gave the co mials strong incentive to find alternative sources ?f
profit more indepenc ent of state authority or patrimony. As we shall see ( 111

40,000

30,000

20,000

10,000

1.'171 l'J 76 158

. g()

1586 1591 1596 1601

-90 -9'.l -1600 -05

1606
-10

1611 1616 1621 1626 1631

-15 -20 -25 -30 -35

Five-year in1ervals
Figure 5.2. M rcury
Source: Lohn1ann) Las

n11 UL1 1

452-54.

registered at Huancavelica, 1570-1640

1636
-'HJ

129

Chapter 6), the colonial elites turned increasingly to more direct modes of
exploiting Indian labor, based on economic dependencies and forms of political control which escaped official state supervision, to shield their enterprises from vulnerability to
action.
Even the early revisitas of the 1590s bad saddled an
commercial economy with labor
The boom of the 1580s and 1590s encouraged investment in farms, ranches, and hacienda estates, but mita cutbacks
imposed significant hardships. By 1600, ninety-eight petty beneficiaries of
the mita de plaza received only one native each. Prominent citizens coped
with fewer mitayos to work vast holdings. An allotment of
laborers
for Crisostomo de Hontiveros was cut to twenty-nine; Pedro Diaz de R(~jas
lost ten of twenty-six mitayos; Alonso Hernandez Alvitez
of
losses "because of lack of help" when a revisita dropped his share from sixteen to thirteen mitayos. On the expanding complex of farm and pasture
lands held by Francisco de
a labor shortage posed severe problems by 1595. "The eighteen [ rnitaj Indians we used to have were very few to
take care of the herds and fields which we have in this district and
where)." Now, with his quota down to just twelve mitayos, Castaneda
lagged desperately behind in the agricultural cycle. "It is now the middle of
the month of November and beyond; I do not have the wheat harvested ..
on account of not having Indians with which to do it." Castaneda held some
300 hectares of farmland suitable for corn, wheat, potatoes, and other crops,
but dared plant only about 120. Perhaps
Castafieda claimed
that thirty Indians alone were needed to care properly for his
plying herds of over 8,000 sheep, 400 mares, 150 mules and
700
goats, 100 swine, and 25 oxen. In
the labor squeeze had cost him over
300 sheep and goats.51
lost its credibility as a major
By the seventeenth century, the mita de
supplier of labor to complement yanaconas in agriculture
The rnita reductions caused by the revisitas, and the rural
operation with natives to
enforcement of the
quotas,
grew into an inescapable fact of life. In 1606, and again in 1625 and 1645,
H uamanga's cabildo appealed to the
for a more effective mita de
plaza. These repeated pleas indicated that the viceregal decrees issued in response could not reverse the political, economic, and demographic realities
conspiring against the mita.52
The mining sector, of course,
the highest priority iu economic
policy, but even so had to contend with shrinking mita supplies. The opening of a major silver mining
in the 1590s shifted mitayos away from significant, but
gold and silver
at Atunsulla. Within a decade, eighty
normally distributed to Atunsulla foll
to twenty, and shortages of
labor threw the once thriving mines into

130

THE INDIANS AND SPANISH

PERl/S INDIAN PE( 'LES AND THE CHALLENGE OF SPANISH

decline. By extendin. the geographical reach of Huamanga's mining mi.tas

to new provinces, redi. tributing mitayo assignments to favor heavy rmnrn.g
work, and maintaining mi ta quotas in excess of ratios warranted by the rev1sitas, colonial authorit es shored up the labor drafts. Still, these measures
could not forestall ind cfinitcly the advent of mitayo scarcity, and greater
dependence upon rnor expensive voluntary laborers. In the late sixteenth
century, Fl uancave!ic, 's surplus production and pler:tiful labor. supply
facilitated cutbacks in 1itayos to accommodate competmg enterpnses and
declining community opulations. But by the 1610s and 1620s, miners
fought a losing battle t maintain and enforce hefty mita quotas. The Hmmcavelica mita dropped o 1,400 laborers in 1630 (sec Table 5.1), but authori54
ties expected only half hat number to show up.
Table :l.l
1577

Mitayos

3,2il0

l luancavdica mita assignments, 1575-1645

1590

1604

1618

16'.JO
l,,HJO

620

Earlier, in 1618, the \

Francisco de B01ja y Aragon had recognized
that only drastic meas res could save the Huancavelica mita. By his own
analysis of
sc en rural districts (six of them in Huamanga) deserved a reduction of 8 0 mitayos, which would cut the total allotment to
fewer than 1,500 workc1 s. Even more serious, the incompleteness of contingents arriving at the n ercury mines had grown into a serious headache
which made the quotas rnon~ apparent than real. Yet, Borja thought, the
chronic deficit "is not s much because of Indian mortality ... [as] from
them having abandoned their reduccioncs, fleeing from the mitas and
services assigned them.' Local kurakas, corrcgidores, and priests all had
reason to send only part al contingents, to hide natives, and to protect forasteros from their original communities' tax and labor obligations. Other interests, too- urban dw llers and artisans, ranchers and farmers, owners
and administrators of 1 aciendas, textile workshops, and sugar and coca
55
plantations welcomed nigrants who wished to escap~ ayllu burdcns. .
To revitalize the rnit < , Bo~ja commissioned an ambitious proJCCt which
was unrealizable from tl c begiuning. Don Alonso de Mendoza, corregidor
of Huanta, would take a census of all the Indians visible and hidden, local
and forastero- in the ci
farms and estates, obrajes, communities, and
countryside of twelve di. tric:ts which owed mitayos to Huancavel~c.a. Me1:doza should force forast ros to return to their original commu111t1es, or if
they had come from ove twenty
(fifty to sixty miles) away, he could

131

provisionally enroll thern in the

population of the closest To Jedan
village. Though Bo~ja latc1 claimed success, and Mendoza
tend rnita and tribute obligations to some new Indians, the
quickly recognized that wholesale repeal of unofficial migration and labor
patterns was politically and economically unfeasible. Threatened with loss
of Indian retainers, vai-ious "citizens and residents" of Huamang-;1 voiced
their opposition with "g1-eat feeling,
forth the irreparable harm which
would befall them." Mendoza backed away from Borja's ambitious proposals, and the viceroy had little choice but to arcede to a more modest reform.
Mendoza would inspect farms and estates in the area of the city of Huamanga. Where he managed to record yanacona retainers, the
would obligate the Indians' masters to either deliver a native whose mita
turn had arrived, or to pay a sum to hire a substitute laborer. 56 In the end,
the project made little practical difference. Huancavelica would have to adjust to the growing shortage of
labor caused by declining rnita allotments, and spotty enforcement of the quotas themselves.
Similarly, the formal tributes grew less and less signiSicant as sources of
revenue or capital. By the 1600s, the Crown bad assumed control nf
ing encomienda tributes upon the death of pensioners. In
Crown control already channelled tribute revenues to the royal treasury and to an
absentee Inca noble in four
ten rural parishes. 57 In addition, the decline in regional tributes from some 85
pesos ensayados to about
pesos by the 1630s reduced all encornienda incomes to modest proportions.
Six decades earlier, five of Huamanga's twenty-three core rcpartimientos
held more than 1,500 tributaries. Another eight had counts over 700, Thus,
over half the repartimientos had
revenues ranging from
3,000 to over 10,000 pesos. Even after the deductions for sala1ies and administrative costs, a dozen or so cncornienda families could each count on
net annual tributes worth thousands of pesos. By the 1630s, the revisitas had
relegated such pensions to the past. Tributes regularly fell into arrear,~. and
an encomendero was lucky to hold rights to a net revenue ofsevenil hundred
pcsos. 58
The natives not only squeezed the flow of mitayos and tributes to painful
levels. Perhaps worse, their judicial tactics imposed crisis and disruption
upon colonials who enjoyed nominally plentiful quotas of tribute or labor.
As we saw earlier, litigation shut down the Ore family's obn~je in 15B4, and
disrupted work at a second obraje in 1601. Enforcement of mita or tribute
rights always ran up against peasant resistance and juridical tactics. In
when the Soras still owed a
annual tribute, their encomendero complained that the Indians used a dispute over tributary counts as an excuse to
cease payment on thousands of pesos. Even after population decline and
Indian petitions cut back the initial Tbledan allotment of workers to the Ca-

J32

PERU'S 11\DlAN PEOPLES AND THE

camarca obrajc in V leashuarnan, the owner still held rights to sixty mitayos. But around 1610. his encornienda natives, embroiled in continual fights
over labor practices aud obligations, temporarily crippled production by
the Lima auc iencia to cancel the rnita altogether! Later, the drafts
were reinstalled, tho igh revisitas reduced them to insignificance. In 164.2,
local natives won an order (subsequently reversed) to close the obraje. By
this time, the new o ier, like his predecessor, understood that only by cultidirect rclat im ship:.: with a controlled clientelc of dependent workers
60
could he shield prod ction from community litigation.
THE IMPACT F JUDICIAL POLITICS: NATIVE SOCIETY
The Indians' juridic; 1 strategy inflicted considerable hardships upon many
colonials, but nevert eless brought unfortunate conseqt;ences to native Andean
Given t e bitter conflicts over lands, kurakazgos ( chieftainships),
and mita-tributc bur lens which shaped ayllu and ethnic life, one could not
expect that the native.' would limit judicial politics to peasant actions agai~st
colonial exploitation Andean litigants used their juridical rights and skills
one ~mother, 1 practice which left native society divided and dependent upon colonial a thorities to settle internal disputes. In addition, access
to Spanish power an l
institutions encouraged a certain indivi.dualization, or privatizatior, of interest and perspective on the part of natives who
acquired private Ian titles, secured legal exemptions from mita or tribute,
mediated ayllu relati nships with corrcgidores or other colonial powers, and
the like. By reinforci ig ayllu and ethnic strife, and fostering class dynamics
which tied privileged Indians to the colonial power structure, a working system of colonial justic '.weakened the capacity of native societies to unite for a
more ambitious, rad cal assault upon the exploitative structure as a whole.
A more fragmented. tratcgy pursued more limited victories- the particular
causes of particular ative groups or individuals. And the Indians grew increasingly dependen upon the legal institutions and favor of their c~ploiters
to advance such cau cs, even when the disputes involved only Indians.
For many native rroups, the most persistent land fights stemmed not
from colonial incur ions, but from rivalries with other ayllus and ethnic
groups. Particularly in regions such as the Rio Pampas or HuamangaHuanta-Angaraes, ; proliferation of interspersed ethnic groups generated
centuries of conflict c ver lands and pastures. To settle such disputes until the
next outbreak, local groups could resort to war, negotiation, or appeal to
outside authority. A cess to a
system which presumed to resolve local
disputes may actuall h;ive intensified them. A group too weak to win a vioknt battle, or to acce )! a modus oj1erandi based on local power balances, could
try to compensate b securing legal backing from a Spanish judge. But rival
groups, particularly f they were stronger, could not very well renounce thell'

THE INDIANS AND SPANISH

133

own claims simply because their enemies held legal title to the
resources. Ethnic disputes repeatedly flared up, and the group able to back up
its claims with legal precedents always turned to colonial
to help protect its local interests.61
Even within an ethnic group, access to colonial juridical institutions fostered conflicts which undermined its internal authority alld cohesion. Succession to major chieftainships bad
constituted a diffirnlt, thorny
process in Andean societies. Tbe potential heirs of a kurakazgo almost always included several rivals among the sons, and even nephews or brothers
of the incumbent chief. 62 Since
kuraka was identified more closely
with one of the several ayllus constituting a community or ethnic group, his
practical authority and acceptance by all the ayllus in his dornaill
upon his political skills and fulfillment of popular expectations. The identities of the major kurakas held crucial economic implications, siuce the kurakas supervised distribution of tribute and mi ta burdens among the various
ayllus. The endemic riv;ilries between individual aspirants could
into
such social divisions, tearing apart a community or ethnic group In more
than one case, the ensuing civil war led to "many deaths and misfi)rtunes"
among warring "brothers."64
By offering defeated aspirants a tool with which to overturn the status
quo, access to colonial judges kept disputes and local polarization
left ethnic chiefs dependent upon Spanish power to back up their
even with local kin. Two Soras cousins revived a dispute between their fathers until the aggressive
displaced his cousin as kurnka in 1594.
The Angara.es chief Don Juan Llanto complained that his nephew, a source
of trouble to local notables since the
had curried "the favor .
of the
corregidor and notary." With their help, the upstart had gotten two chiefs replaced and threatened to do the same to his nncle. The resulting "rebellion
over cacicazgos" sent Llanto to
in 1589 to commission a lawyer
to present his case before the audiencia in Lima. In Huanta, a conflict over
succession turned into sueh a bloody and costly affair that the three rivals,
each apparently backed by a significant following, agreed to settle upon an
uneasy truce in 1596. Litigation,
discovered, "has no end" and burdened the Hurin Acos ayllus with costly
foes and trips to Lima65
Spanish judicial authority developed into a major internal force used
Indians against their own authorities. By obtaining the favor of Spanish
judges, complained an ernbittered Lucanas native, a "tributary Indian pretending to be kuraka reserved all of his people from the mines and [ mita
labor] without consulting the
principal [chief kuraka]
A sick
peasant ordered
his kurakas to pay tribute and serve mita turned to the
protector of Indians for an
to the corregidor which undercut the
chiefs' orders. When Don Bernabe
fifty years of agt\ he

134

PERU'S

THE INDIANS AND SPANISH

to issue an order reserving him from tribute

pressured the wealthy native, a minor lord himself
to irrigated lands, to contribute to the mita burDon Bernabe responded by securing a viceregal
the kurakas if they persisted. The Anta
wealthy natives who, as ethnic descendants
exemption from rnita and tribute. Higher kuramore powerful ayllus, looked askance at the Incas'
as an old man, an Inca descendant complained,
the said mita or to hire someone in his place." By
presenting it to the corregidor, and securing his
the order, the Inca descendants could defend their

from the
to
main. An
and protect
ayllu property.

encouraged Indians to'develop individushielding them from the lot assigned to the
from mita or tribute enabled municipal
Inca descendants, and artisans to sidestep burkinfolk .68 Dependence upon colonial authorities
or to protect him from personal liability for the
of his ayllus, encouraged a native lord to work
which accomrnodated the exploitative practices of
arrangements enabled the chief to avoid the physiof wealth which befell kurakas of "deneeded help in his efforts to sabotage statetributes; and to mediate native-white relationto all the collaborating elites. 69 The periodic
gave further incentive to a process of privatization
differentiate themselves from poorer kin. Lecould sell any community lands deemed
p1ivate title. But the composicioncs also allowed
the auctioned lands, and kurakas to "privatize"
Huamanga's chiefs responded aggressively
converted himself into a spectacular landowner
totalling thousands of hectares, which "I have
ancestors. "70
could truly emancipate all such resources, if he
standing and mobilize labor to work the lands,
of ayllu society. But individual title allowed him
property rights on a traditionally ayllu dotitle to lands could sell them as one's own,
from the usurpations which threatened collective
petition put it: "the said lands [are] not

135

common but rather their own individual [property] from which [the
tioners] cannot be despoilcd."7 1
The natives' very success at
Spanish juridical institutions created
forces in everyday life and
which undermined the possibility of organizing a wider, more unified and independent movement on behalf of the
peasantry. First, judicial politics reinforced socially costly internal divisions
along ayllu, ethnic, and even class lines. Notarial accords among
distinct chiefs testify that common
to mita and tribute
efforts to unite diverse groups with similar interests and
we have seen, in practice juridical tactics could also pit Indians
another. Ethnic groups fought over
rival elites battled for
of kurakazgos, and individual natives searched for ways to accumulate and
protect wealth and privileges.
a rcvisita of the
all
shared an interest in
claims of death which lowered their collective mita-tribute quota.
judge adept at
the endemic bickering which plagued a ranked hierarchy of ayllus and kurakas
discovered hundreds of "false" deaths. (The techniques of
investigators probably involved
and interrogating
crs who, threatened with punishment or offered a reward, might reveal a
local secret-at least one
"other" ayllus or kin groups. Armed
with one or several such "wedges," a shrewd
could
to
try to exploit internal rivalries and divisions of loyalty to crack the community or ethnic group's wall of secrecy.
Second, a strategy of defense which depended upon colonial institutions
to resist exploitation tied the natives more
than ever to
power. Indians who evaded or cut back mita burdens, or nr1>tf'cur1
holdings, or enforced murky claims to kuraka status through the
powerful colonials used the rules, formal and informal, of
dominance to defend themselves. Those rules demanded acceptance of colonial
relationships which ultimately
the Andean peasantry. Indians
who won limited but important victories by securing the favor of colonials
and their institutions held a certain interest in
wholesale'"'''"'';";('
of authority which invited punishment or revocation of their achievements.
Moreover, judicial politics fostered loyalties among Indian elites and Hispanic patron-allies which held
implications for the peasantry.
Over time, the means by which
battled
extractions
encouraged alliances which assimilated native elites to the colonial power
structure, substituted extralegal
in place of the old
burdens, and differentiated the interests and
of native elites as an
emerging class - from those of
The juridical strategy n"'""'"'r">"
given the defeat of Taki Onqoy's radical

J 36

P ER U'S lNDIAN

EOPLES AND THE CHALLENGE OF SPAN ISH CONQUEST

,,

,,
11
11

,,

'U>.,..; (t:\ "'-! .....~~

The K ing as dispenser< j ustice. Pom a de Ayala imagines himself presenting his lon g illustrated "letter" to th e Kin ,. of Spain. Presumably, the King would read the treatise a nd adopt
th e reforms proposed by oma to end colonial abu ses . The letter, some 1, 200 pages m length,
was di scovered by Rich, rd Pietschmann at the Roy al Library in Copenhagen in 1908.

THE I ND IA NS AND SPANISH

JU STICE

137

~~~~~~~~~-

tion and wealth, the extension of outposts of colonial power throughout the
countryside , and the possibility of genuine inroads against the Indians' most
hated and feared burden , the colonial mita . Aggressive use of the colon ial
system of justice , complemented by "laz in ess," 75 flight, and a nony mous
forms of sabotage (hidden populations , mysterious fire s)7 6 offered "realistic"
mea ns of res istance . By masterin g the art of judicial politi cs , ethnic gro ups ,
ayllus, and even individuals won battles on pressing real-li fe issues such as
mita, tribute , and land rights.
But on ano ther level, the natives' achi evem ent cost them a great deal.
From the point of view of a society's ruling class, a system of justice functions successfull y if it represents a pact on the part of social groups and individuals not to go to war over their differences, but rather to settle con fli ct
within the framework of rules establ ished by society's domin ant force s.
Turning established rules or institutions to one's favor does not , of course,
by itself signify an unwillin gness to use force or to organize more radical
strategies. But to the extent that reli ance on a juridical system becomes a
dominant strategy of protection for an oppressed class o r social group, it
may undermine the possib ili ty of organizing a more ambiti ous assault
aimed at toppling the exploitative structure itself. When this happens, a
functionin g system of justice contrib utes to the hegemony of a rulin g cl ass .
This was the case, in Huarnanga at least, b y the early seventeenth century.
By then, subver sive religiou s moveme nts spoke not of elimin ati n g Hispanic
society or power, but simply of resistin g cooperat ion with Spaniards "unless
forced to." 77 The Indians' struggle for Spanish ju stice sul:>j ected a good
many colonials to constraints and hardships, and even forced some of them
to search for alternative ways to extract labor and profits. What it co uld not
do , however, was challenge colon ialism itself. Spanish justice , in some instances and on some issues , favored th e natives again st their oppressors. But
for th at very reason , it set into motio n relat ionships whi ch sustained colonial
power, weakened the peasantry's capacity fo r independent resistance, and
rooted exploitation in to the enduring fabri c of Andean societyrn