Charney Introduction

8/13/2019 Charney Introduction

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I n d i a n S o c i e t y

i n t h e V a l l e y o f

L i m a , P e r u ,

1532-1824

Paul Charney

University Press of America, Inc.

Lanham New York Oxford


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Copyright 2001 by

University Press of America, Inc.

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Lanham, Maryland 20706

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Cumnor Hill, Oxford OX2 9JJ

All rights reservedPrinted in the United States of America

British Library Cataloging in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Chamey, Paul.

Indian society in the Valley of Lima, Peru, 1532-1824 /

Paul Chamey.p. cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Indians of South AmericaPeruLima RegionHistory.

2. Indians of South AmericaPeruLima RegionSocial conditions.

3. Lima Region (Peru)Social conditions.

F3429.1.L7 C48 2001 985\2500498-k1c21 2001034773 CIP

ISBN 0-7618-2069-8 (cloth : alk. paper)ISBN 0-7618-2070-1 (pbk.: alk. paper)

w The paper used in this publication meets the minimum

requirements of American National Standard for Information

SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials,

ANSI Z39 48 1984


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To my mother, and in memory of my father


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Introduction

The great Peruvian historian, Ral Porras Barrenechea, wrote an article

in 1953 forEl Comercio,"La raz india de Lima," which suggested that

the foundation of Lima in 1535 caused the dispersal of Lima's pre-Hispanic population: "some becameyanaconasof the Spanish residents,

others fled or were 'desnaturado' (uprooted) from their land, or they

became vagabonds.1 He implied that Lima's Indians had virtually

disappeared to make way for the Spanish conquerors.2 Lima thus

became a Spanish city, which consequently relegated the Indians to a

cultural death. In his classic social history, Spanish Peru, James

Lockhart echoed this theme of a peninsular, urban society transplanted

virtually intact to early Peru.3 He argued that the city contained thedynamic principles of change and acculturation for those indigenous

people who are in daily contact with Iberians.4

The evidence for this study, however, paints a far more complex

picture of the Indian inhabitants of both Lima proper and of nearby

Spanish-created communities, or reducciones(see Table 1.2, Map 1.2

and Appendix 5). These Indians often circulated in the same physical

and cultural space which resulted in sustaining a greater Indian

community-even an Indian society organized in many ways like theSpanish one. As with Indians elsewhere, Limas were assigned the

Spanish-imposed indiostatus which required Indians to pay a tax and

provide labor services. This contrived ethnic label has often

symbolized to historians oppression and exploitation. Yet indiostatus

also afforded Indians the legal protection of their communal holdings,

or the privilege to form their own cofradas,or lay confraternities, with

the blessing of the Catholic Church. The cofradas, though derived

from Spanish culture, had the effect of galvanizing whole Indiancommunities.

To be sure, the colonizers term did not always accurately nor

consistently apply, especially as racial lines blurred and economic


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xviii Indian Society in the Valley o f Lima

opportunities arose. Historian Robert H. Jackson argues that the

Indians, coupled with the local elites perception of landownership and

economic circumstances, identified themselves as mestizos when theybecame small landowners just as the hacienda fragmented in nineteenth

century Cochabamba, Bolivia.5 Examples of racial drift and ambiguity

caused by similar circumstances also abound in urbanized environments

or in areas heavily settled by Spaniards during the colonial period.6 The

possibility of such manipulations have relevance to this study since the

contrived indio identity comes to be shaped and reshaped by

circumstances over which the Indian sometimes has control and

sometimes not.John L. Comaroff, an anthropologist, has argued that subordinate

groups with contrived ethnic identities often "define their 'ethnicity' as

an emblem of common predicament and interest. Their ethnicity, then,

becomes an essential feature of the natural order of things, the given

character of the world with regard to which people must conduct their

lives.7 Such a label, ipso facto, obtains an autonomous character for

it allowed colonized and segregated groups, like Limas Indians, to

pursue the formation of their own social networks and organizations andto assert the special rights and privileges that it bestowed on them. But

individuals at the expense of others of the ethnic-cum-status group

acquired resources in either the intra-ethnic arena or outside it that

inevitably leads to social and economic differentiation inside the group.8

As will be shown, the very resources Indians used for upward mobility

partially originated in that arena and thereby contributed to taming such

self-advancement. Individualism thus tended to be mediated through

communal-minded norms (some might say social leveling) andethnically-based institutions, like the cofradas, both of which

contributed to what Fredrik Barth has called, ethnic boundary

maintenance. An ethnic groups boundaries are marked by both the

self-ascription of its members and also by outsiders ascribing people

to that group.9 Such contradictory forcesethnicity and individualism-

coexisted, and they would contribute to ethno-genesis. Culture, more

so than biology shaped this new identity.

Still, the emergence of European-style, social and economicdifferentiation inside the Andean communities has been explained as the

product of an emerging global economy wrought by European

expansionism. This dependency and world system focus, as suggested

by a recent publication, has resulted in analyzing the Andean region or


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Introduction xix

community from the outside, thereby virtually ignoring cultural

strategies that might have adjusted to the market intrusion, or even how

the new ethnicity posed as a counterweight. Once externalized thecommunity became anchored to the ebb and flow of market forces and

subject to the straightjacket of a class analysis. The Indian community

was thus more economically defined than based on ancestral origin and

kinship.10

To be sure, market relations did play an important, though by no

means decisive role. While Indians might be forced to migrate in search

of work in order to pay the tribute, historians Ann Wightmen and Karen

Powers see another dimension to this movement. Despite their outsider

status, migrants often became an integral part of a process of social andbiological reproduction that acted to stabilize community populations.

Sometimes the migrants themselves primarily in kin groups contributed

to this reproduction. However, as Powers observes, depopulation, out

migration to the Spanish sphere (cities, haciendas, obrajes), and the

decline of traditional authority caused the breakdown of such strategies

of reproduction by the end of the seventeenth century. Nevertheless,

Andean commoners applied those strategies inside the Spanish sphere

where many had migrated.11Social reproduction in either case should

be considered as the Indians efforts to adjust and accommodate to

newer circumstances, as well as to maintain community and kinship ties

generationally. '

Erwin Grieshabers pioneering article showed that Indian tributaries

on nineteenth century Bolivian haciendas could have communal

cohesiveness inside the Spanish sphere. One reason is the Indians

maintenance of traditional inheritance practices; that is, women and

children became heirs. As such, will-making, an alien import, enabled

Indians to retain and pass on lands. Land retention and the growing oflow-value traditional crops fostered community survival.12

But can there be any sort of reproduction or cultural survivals in the

Lima valley where Spanish-Indian contact was most intense,

depopulation disastrous, and the penetration of the market economy

overwhelming? The answer is affirmative if the valley of Lima is not

viewed as a place where all Indians simply lost their identity. Lynn

Lowry in her dissertation on the Indians of the viceregal capital

described them as formulating their own identity as a ''nation'which

depended on individual and collective will, or choice.13 But her study

is limited to Lima proper and excludes analysis of a hinterland socially


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XX Indian Society in the Valley o f Lima

and economically linked to the city. This study strongly suggests that

the city can not be properly severed from its rural hinterland. Multipleconnections were formed between the two.

Chapter 1explores how despite demographic catastrophe, the valley-

born mingled with the Indian migrants which contributed to a sustained

indigenous presence throughout the colonial period. The identification

indio"predominated at the expense of other statuses that Indians in the

highlands attached themselves to in order to evade tribute obligations.

Integration from the beginning made moot theforastero-originario

(outsider v. original inhabitant) dichotomy that often provedprovocative elsewhere. Haphazardly attended to by colonial census

takers, the division only became an issue when personalities, and family

and political ambitions collided. Its infrequent use suggests that Indians

took control of the meaning of differences and established the criteria

of full integrationbetween acceptable outsiders and others whose

standing in the greater Indian community was found wanting. Indians

themselves shaped such criteria, which had little to do with ones fiscal

status. Moreover, despite their low numbers, the Indians played a

noticeable role in the valleys economy and found their niche in certain

skilled and unskilled occupations, some even pre-Hispanic. A complex

process of acculturation (understood as exchanging ones culture for

another) proceeded, though it was far from being a linear development.

Socio-racial segregation, continuing Indian migration, the interactions

of Indian residents of the city with those of the countryside, and pre-

Hispanic survivals combined to make the process of acculturation

problematic. To be sure, this chapter also recognizes that numerous

Indians were lost to the Spanish world by way of identifying with it

ethnically and culturally, some doing so by choice or involuntarily.

Chapter 2 examines the uncertainty of land tenure. Within this

imagined, colonized construct Indians asserted property rights (of

course, not exclusively) based on protectionist legislation, as well as,

pre-Hispanic practices, such as in the curaca s(chieftain) assignment

of land. This often ill-defined and uncertain aspect of Indian land

tenure differed from the private-property rights prevailing in the

Spanish sphere. Income-generating, urban and rural property directed

towards collective activities and/or tribute demands became intimately

bound to indio survivalthe communal interest. And this property

could be either individually or communally-owned. The Indian

leadership of the valleys communities, both commoners and curacas,


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Introduction xxi

became managers of indigenous resources. In a sense, Indians

accepted the colonial states juridical pre-eminence and expertise, but

used imposed terms and conceptualizations, like the privileged

communalism-the repblica de indiosto challenge other transplanted

concepts, like private property as it too became integrated into the

Indian community. Landholding was therefore mediated through

colonial law and pre-Hispanic practices.

Chapter 3 on Indian leadership demonstrates the rise of a leadership

class made up of commoners and nobility alike. As the commoners

acquired visibility by their participation in governance, the nobility

consistently exerted on colonial society a conscious of difference. Theygot others to recognize their nobility by articulating their lineage and the

memory of it, regardless of an equivocal racial background, the ravages

of epidemic diseases, or an economic position hardly befitting a

noblemen. As curacasthey managed to hold on to a Spanish-created

postgobernadorand kept it inside the families for generations, forged

cross-community marital ties, and acted as mayordomos of the

cofradas. The urban-rural connections, and the presence of real Indian

nobles made Indian commoners not the sole facilitators of reproductive

strategies in the Spanish sphere. The curacasof the communities nearLima could in fact participate in social reproduction if such

communities were tied to the urban core. By the eighteenth century, the

Indian nacinand the curacasgobecame part of the Indian nobilitys

discourse and a way to assert their leadership and exhibit their prestige.

The focus on the Indian cofradain chapter 4 depicts it as a crucial,

ethnic-supporting mechanism. The Indians devotion to, and financial

support of a foreign institution and religion reproduced a sort of

communalism, especially among urban Indians. Some of the Indiansmultiple cofradamemberships and multiple bequests to the cofrada

cut across urban and rural boundaries which helped define a wider

Indian community. The cofradas adamant opposition to non-Indian

membership no doubt conformed to the natural order of things and, at

the same time, reflected the way that Indians could pursue an

autonomous path.

The Indian family discussed in chapter 5 survived, though in

truncated form, partially because of the successful adaptation of Spanish

transplantsgodparenthood, will-making, and dowries. Their partibleinheritance practices revealed much about the extent of the Indian

household. Its size continued to be in flux and was hardly static. In the


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xxii Indian Society in the Valley o f Lima

hinterland and in the Cercado (the Indian town built on the eastern

outskirts of Lima), the Indian family emerged. Indians made efforts toreconstitute family life, however much high mortality and sexual

imbalance posed as obstacles.

Each chapter elucidates on the building blocks of the Spanish-

imposed indioidentity, which ultimately resides in a social identity

that is capable of concretizing ideas of sameness and difference.14 In

other words, the Indians of the Lima valley were virtually indigenous

by claiming to be so and by others recognizing them as such, even if

few autochthonous traits existed.Empowering themselves facilitated the concretizing process.

Lima's Indians empowered themselves by borrowing Spanish customs

that resembled their own or seemed useful, such as godparenthood with

its attended string of reciprocal obligations, or cofradas with their

mutual-support mechanisms.15 Will-making, though a distinctly

European practice, helped Indians to control some land and moveable

property and prevented alienation to the Spanish world. It resulted in

reproducing, or sustaining an Indian community. Along withacceptance came a form of resistance manifested in the Indians' defiant

retention of selected pre-Hispanic practices, as well as the appropriation

of elements of Hispanic culture. Undeniably, the Indians' best interest,

both politically and economically, would be to follow the prescribed

course which brought them benefits or protection. The curacas

probably first grabbed on to such perks and sought to maintain their

status by embracing European versions of hereditary and nobility,

though it was never a total embrace. One could even argue that theirsurreptitious use of the pre-Hispanic rules of political succession was

simply self-interested. That aside, for Lima's Indian population,

nobility and commoners alike, their resulting sense of ethnicity

however much a Spanish construct, and with all of its manifestations of

old and new waysdecidedly distinguished them from non-Indians.

The colonial Indians of Lima sustained their distinctiveness or

boundaries in an almost paradoxical fashion. Many spoke Castilian,

dressed like Europeans, professed Christianity, and participated in themarket. This acculturation grew out of the contact itselfthe

unavoidable proximity of Indians and Spaniards. It did not result,

however, in Indians losing their identity as a people, even though the

cultural content and ethnic diversity of coastal Indian society changed

dramatically. They ascribed to themselves elements of Spanish culture


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Introduction xxiii

that paradoxically underscored their collective sense of separateness, or,

more technically, their "indio"status. These elements included Spanishinstitutions, customs, and legal devices that Indians used for their own

needs in order to bolster their separation from non-Indian society. The

Indians also retained aspects of the pre-Hispanic past which furthered

the process of boundary maintenance.

The maintenance of ethnic boundaries had the effect of obscuring,

though not eradicating, Hispanic-style social and economic differences

within the "indio"community. Ethnic assertiveness, whether derived

from the individual, the family, institutions, or the community,

functioned as counterweights to class interest and to Spanish hegemony.As always, the constant dynamic of class and culture, ethnicity and

assimilation, made society-building a long-term process indeed.

Assertions of indio status and its application does not have

chronological precision, just like ethnicity itself. But this study is more

an analysis of the ways that indio,as Brooke Larson astutely observes,

may subjugate or empower.16 Indeed, the Indians' ability to

manipulate spacecultural and physicalacted as the dynamic that set

them apart from non-Indians and others not considered acceptable

Indians. This manipulation must be understood as a process with

cumulative effects. To be sure, the sixteenth century was marked by

demographic collapse and vast cultural changes. In the seventeenth and

eighteenth centuries, Indians reorganized themselves and adopted

strategies that ensured their separate identity and, in particular, a future.

>


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xxiv Indian Society in the Valley o f Lima

Notes1. El Comercio July 28, 1953, 3.

2. Ibid., 3.

3. James Lockhart, Spanish Peru, 1532-1560: A Colonial Society(Mad

ison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968).

4. , The Social History of Colonial Spanish America, Latin

American Research Review 7, no. 1 (1972): 28.

5. Robert H. Jackson, Race/Caste and the Creation and Meaning of Identity

in Colonial Spanish America,Revista de Indias 55, no. 203 (1995): 164-169;

and with Gregory Maddox, The Creation of Identity: Colonial Society in

Bolivia and Tanzania, Comparative Studies in Society and History35, no. 2

(1993): 269-272.

6. Martin Michom, The People o f Quito, 1690-1810: Change and Unrest in

the Underclass (Boulder: Westview Press, 1994), 153-183.

7. John L. Comaroff, Of Totenism and Ethnicity: Conciousness, Practice

and Signs o f Inequality,Ethos 52, nos. 3-4 (1987): 312.

8. Ibid., 305, 312-313.

9. Fredrik Barth, "Introduction," in Barth ed., Ethnic Groups and

Boundaries (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1969), 14-17; See also George

Devereux, Ethnic Identity: Its Logical Foundations and Its Dysfunctions, in

George De Vos and Lola Romanucci-Ross eds., Ethnic Identity: CulturalContinuities and Change (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), 48,

54, 57.

10. Karen Vieira Powers,Andean Journeys: Migration, Ethnogenesis, and the

State in Colonial Quito(Albuquerque: University o f New Mexico Press, 1995),

10, 173. She includes in her discussion scholars such as Stem, Spalding, and

herself.

11. Ibid., 10, 14-17; Ann M. Wightman,Indigenous Migration and Social

Change: The Forasteros o f Cuzco, 1570-1720 (Durham: Duke University

Press, 1990), 55, 62-63, 69.12. Erwin P. Grieshaber, Survival o f Indian Communities in Nineteenth

Century Bolivia: A Regional Comparison,Journal o fLatin American Studies

12, no. 2(1980): 251,256.

13. Lynn Lowry, Forging An Indian Nation: Urban Indians Under Spanish

Colonial Control (Lima, Peru, 1535-1765) (Ph.D. diss., University of

California, Berkeley, 1991), passim.

14. Michael Kearney, Indigenous Ethnicity and Mobilization in Latin

America, Latin American Perspectives 23, no. 2 (1996): 5-6. This issue

addresses the topic o f ethnicity and class.15. See James Axtell, Beyond 1492: Encounters in Colonial North America

(New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 116. He argues that North

American Indians often "turned to the invaders' cultures and religions for

empowerment, knowledge, and skills with which to sustain Indian identities and

values in other guises" (116). He sees the acceptance among Indians of North


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Introduction xxv

America of European ways as a survival tactic, even a stonewalling device. See

also, 117-121.

16. Brooke Larson, Andean Communities, Political Cultures, and Markets:The Changing Contours of a Field, in Brooke Larson and Olivia Harris eds.,

Ethnicity, Markets, and Migration in the Andes: At the Crossroads o f History

and Anthropology (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995), 35. This review

article I found to be especially helpful.


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Chapter 1

An Andean Coastal Society

Under Inca and Spanish Rule

While Inca rule did not radically alter the Lima valleys basic societalarrangements, the Spanish invasion proved different. Epidemic

diseases nearly obliterated these coastal peoples, and pre-Hispanic

ethnicity, which meant little to the Spaniards, did not endure. However,

Indian emigration from the highlands and other coastal areas bolstered

the survivors demographically and contributed to the "indio"presence

throughout the colonial period. Even full-scale induction into the

market economy did not muzzle this presence. Many Indians engaged

in economic activities that either fostered their ethnic, or "indio"

distinctiveness or provided them with certain privileges. To be sure,

numerous Indians in the process of assimilating Spanish culture,

whether it be forced or done voluntarily, began to identify with it.

Pre-Hispanic Lima

The first Spanish interlopers in 1535 must have been impressed with

the Lima valley's irrigated maize fields, fruit trees, and woodlands. The

Indians had constructed irrigation canals that drew from the three river

basins--the Lurn, Rimac, Chilln '(see Maps 1.1 and 1.2). These

canals were certainly necessary in this coastal society for a nearly

imperceptible mist, the garua,provided the only regular precipitation.

In the few areas where the Indians found the water table to be close to

the surface, they excavated gardens to allow for the water to seep up to

them. Known as mahamesby the Indians and hoyasby the Spaniards,

such gardens served as a supplemental source of water. Writing in the

1550s, the chronicler, Pedro de Cieza de Len, noted that the hoyasand

the dew from them contributed to bountiful harvests. Besides

agriculture, marine life abounded along the coast and in the three river

basins. In fact, it often complemented and promoted the growth of


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2 Indian Society in the Valley o f Lima

crops. Cieza de Len further observed that maize seeds would not

sprout if not sown together with "one or two sardine heads."2

Only bits and pieces of documents suggest the ways that such

agrarian and marine resources were distributed in pre-Hispanic times.

Reciprocal exchanges of goods and services based on kinship ties has

been identified as the key principle of exchange in the highlands, and

it seems to have operated along the coast as well. Exchanges occurred

within ayllusa group of households related to one another by blood kin

or by ritual with a common ancestor god. Lima's ayllus,not unlike the

highland ones, appeared to have been endogamous and headed by some

political authoritythe curaca, or theprincipal. This authority also

facilitated cooperation and resource-sharing among the ayllu's

households. Smaller than the ayllu, the household acted as the

fundamental economic unit, producing and consuming, if not playing

a central role in reciprocity and redistribution.3

Unfortunately, the few late sixteenth century Indian wills only

suggest how pre-Hispanic reciprocity, sharing, and other like norms

worked in the Lima valley. Juan China of the ayllu, Ydcay, in the

Spanish-created town of Surco noted that four Indians shared the use ofhis "large fishing net." This act of sharing was intended to benefit

more than one individual, perhaps an allusion to a pre-Hispanic

practice. Moreover, China bequeathed lands to two orphan boys. He

made one of them his heir, and the other benefitted from the harvest of

the indigenous food crop, yucca. Miguel Cocssi of Centaulli, another

aylluof Surco, gave his son the responsibility of delivering all the maize

harvest to his son's mother and grandmother "for their food." Another

testator, unnamed, provided for the delivery of maize to his widow. Healso gave part of his chili harvest to Pedro Pahay, for this "old Indian"

had worked in guarding a curaca's chacra.4 Such resource-sharing,

absent in later wills, reflect both communal and family obligations, from

which even the "old Indian" benefitted.

The obligation to help those in need or those least able to help

themselves was a pervasive norm that applied to everyone. An Indian

of Carabayllo noted in a 1586 inquiry, that "to the old ones, the curaca

sustains them in what they need." Another traditional duty carried outby this same curacainvolved assigning the able-bodied members' lands

"in which they cultivate what they desire." The assignment simply

involved working the lands for the harvest, not implying a perpetual

right of ownership. His Indians reciprocated by giving the curacaa

portion of their harvest and by working the lands attached to his office,


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An Andean Coastal Society 3

lands which he did not actually own, and they received in return some

of the harvest as a form of "payment."5 This resource-sharing acted to

bind the subjects to their curacaand to provide him and his householda sustenance, for he could not do it himself since he had other

responsibilities to attend to.

A 1550s' litigation perhaps recalled more accurately pre-Hispanic

practices. The curacaof Lima gave a group of outsiders-in this case,

yanaconasland to work and expected them to return this grant of use-

right by contributing labor for the upkeep of the canals that irrigated his

people's lands.6 He intended this resource sharing as a way to control

people otherwise not his subjects, his status and prestige being judgedby the amount of labor on which he could draw. Moreover, he simply

exercised his pre-Hispanic right to give access to resources to those

from whom he expected labor and loyalty in return. The

characterization of land tenure in the southern Andes by anthropologist

John V. Murra, as "meaningless without access to people," is applicable

here as it is further up the Peruvian coast.7

Any sort of labor energy expended deserved something in exchange.

The curaca,as head of the ayllu,simply did his duty by distributing

lands or taking care of the elderly. In turn he got to use the labor of hispeople or the produce of that labor. Nobody made claims on land, only

on people. As commonly practiced along the coast during pre-Hispanic

times, a curacadirected his Indians to cultivate the fields that supported

another curaca. The 1596 will of Francisca Chani, the wife of the

principalof the Indian town of Magdalena, hints indirectly at this pre-

Hispanic practice. She claimed in the will that don Francisco

Tantachumbi, the curacaof Surco, owed her twelve bushels of wheat,

or "three years of terrasgo"which to the Spaniards meant paying rent

to the owner. This crop formed a portion of the harvest, presumably

from her lands, that the curaca"commanded" his Indians to cultivate to

help pay tribute to the Spaniards. She noted another item in which the

fruits of labor were used to pay the tribute: the Indians of Cucham, an

ayllu of Surco, owed Chani one and a half bushals of wheat ("del

terrasgo") on the same land they worked at the behest of their curaca.8

Spaniards mistakenly viewed such payments as a rent, the "terrasgo,"

to the landlord, while the Indians still might have considered it in

accordance with their own cultural norms. That is, by allowing theIndians to use the landresource sharingChani expected something in

return, a "payment" in kind.9 Compensation for, or reciprocation of

their labor, comprised a portion of the harvest.


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The documents are niggardly about other forms of compensation for

labor service, but Spanish adeptness at using Andean norms to get what

they wanted reveals what might have occurred in pre-Hispanic times.The corregidorof Carabayllo, Heman Wsquez, adapted the Andean

way of reciprocating to his profit-mindedness. During his tenure (1577-

1580), he abused his authority by exploiting Indian labor to cultivate his

wheat fields, while other laborers made maize beer (chicha) and

prepared food that served as payment for the workers. Information

from the southern Andes shows that curacasoften distributed food and

drink to the subjects who had worked their land, and that they remained

ever-conscious to create a festive atmosphere as they did so.10 Thispractice of reciprocating labor energy appears to have been pan-

Andean; the Spaniards probably just mimicked the custom that had been

practiced for centuries.

The coast differed from the highlands in one respectgreater task

specialization. The highland ayllus relied on satellite settlements to

procure goods, which the home community in the vertical world of the

southern Andes, lacked. Historian Maria Rostworowski argues that

resulting task specialization gave rise to trade on the North Coast, if noton other coastal areas.11 Since this trade had no underlying market

mechanism based on risk, price, or profit, such exchanges made were

probably administered at a social and political level, rather than at

anything resembling the microeconomic in a market economy.12 No

doubt, task specialization compelled the ayllus to engage in trade.

Fishing ayllus such as Maranga (Lima) and Piti-Piti (Callao) served

coastal Lima. They each had their own beachheads or access routes to

the sea and often used salted, dried fish as trade items with the

highlands or even with neighboring ayllusfor agrarian products. The

inhabitants of Calla, an ayllu of Surco whose name translates as

"weaving" were perhaps weavers who traded their wares.13 Because

the evidence does not point to the existence of merchant specialists, the

curacasheading such non-agrarian ayllusprobably determined trading

arrangements with agrarian ones. Colonial documents reveal the fishing

villages that survived often had little or no cultivable lands.14 Farmers,

fishermen, and weavers thus indirectly participated in politically

sanctioned exchanges of diverse products, as opposed to the highland

colonization schemes.

Feasts or ritual ceremonies may have also provided the mechanism

for procurement of various goods. At these events, the act of hospitality

facilitated the exchange.15 The old curaca of Lima, Taulichusco,


17/39


welcomed the conqueror Francisco Pizarro with "many offerings and

gifts of llama meat, foul, fish, maize, fruit and whatever they had, and

they amused themselves with the said marqus (Pizarro)."16 Thecuraca'spresence and the many "offerings" and "gifts" suggest that

such hospitality served as a way to obtain a variety of goods. Perhaps

all of this food was not meant to be consumed on the spot, but to be

carried away. This giveaway might also have integrated the receiver

into the indigenous exchange or trading network. Whatever "trade"

went on, it must have had ritual or ceremonial foundations.

Undeniably, aylluspecialization defined the economy of this coastal

area, but the location of some ayllusand their respective peoples outside

the boundaries of their own curacasgossuggests the way that an ayllu

could extend its access to resources. Rostworowski found that each pre-

Hispanic curacasagocontaining a certain number of ayllus, identified

with a principal irrigation canal from which smaller ones irrigated its

farmlands (see Map 1.1). In turn the curacasgoclaimed these flowing

waters. Some canals separated one curacasgofrom another, like Surco

and Late, while others divided the curacasgo(e.g. Lima). According

to Rostworowski, the territorial "boundaries" for either the curacasgos

or ayllusdid not necessarily preclude outsiders and often remained ill-defined, no doubt because of the extensive resource sharing that went

on.17 Consequently, ayllusplayed host to peoples from other ayllus.

Groups of fishermen from Pachacamac and Lima in the fishing aylluof

Maranga, and Lima's "neighboring Indians and caciquesalso had lands

in said valley (Lima)."18 Although Rostworowski notes that particular

ayllushad rights to certain beachheads, these rights did not exclude the

possibility that other ayllus,with permission of the curaca,could gain

temporary access to those beachheads.19 Without evidence of

organized trade conducted by merchants, the curacas proved

instrumental in facilitating the coexistence of ayllus,exchanges between

them, and the maximization of resources through the adept use of labor.

The aylluwas greater than the individual who often identified with his

curaca,and ancestral lands always belonged to the aylluregardless of

where the individual went. Worship spots, or huacasgave sanctity to

the ayllu's landholdings and underscored the individual's ritual and

ancestral links to the ayllu. Curacasgos, too, had their one main

huaca.20Ancestry, though, did not exist in a timeless vacuum, nor did

everyone claim a coastal origin or the same ethnicity. Prior to Inca rule,

the Lima valley saw invasions from the highlands and inter-ethnic


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violence. Highland peoples often clashed and mingled with coastal

ones and incorporated coastal divinities into their pantheon. The central

highland Yauyos boasted in their folklore about their conquering forayson the coast. These coastal-highland connections contributed to the

multiethnic flavor of the valley. On the eve of the Inca invasion, the

Rimac and Lurin valleys formed the province of Ychma, subject to the

religious sanctuary of Pachacamac. The Chillon valley (Carabayllo)

constituted a separate curacasgoof Collique. The Incas acknowledged

the legendary sacredness of Pachacamac, which attracted pilgrims from

faraway places bearing gifts of gold and silver. The oracle at the Temple

of Pachacamac told the Inca conqueror, Yupac Yupanqui (1471-1493)to "enlarge the Temple" and to build branch oracles. Out of high

reverence, the Inca installed servile retainers at Pachacamac, adorning

it with gold and silver and even sacrificing human beings to it.21

Placement of retainers, from different ethnic groups, added to the

already multiethnic flavor of the valley.

The Spaniards had little desire to understand ethnic diversity,

however. They understood that curacasheld the power and the prestige

to procure the labor necessary to answer the Spanish demand for tribute,but they did not always grasp the basis of that power. The old curaca

of Lima, Taulichusco, had at least 3,000 Indians under his command but

was less specific about the territory of his "kingdom." This implicit

fund of combat-ready males undoubtedly impressed Pizarro.22 After

meeting the friendly curaca,the conqueror no doubt began to ponder

the potential wealth to be gained from so many able-bodied men, and

this may explain Pizarro's decision to make Taulichusco's domain his

encomienda. Taulichusco's father, not from Lima, was ayanaconaorservant of Mama Vila, wife of the Inca ruler, Huayna Capac (1493-

1527). Taulichusco jointly ruled with his brother, Caxapaxa, also a

yanacona who resided with the Inca in Cuzco, no doubt to assure

Lima's loyalty. The warm relationship struck up between the old

curacaand Pizarro bore fruit later on when Taulichusco and his people

supported Spaniards against rebellious Incas and Pizarro himself against

his rivals.23 Perhaps Taulichusco wanted to break free of Inca rule, or

he had already been notified of its demise at the ruthless hands ofPizarro and his men and viewed his meeting as an opportunity to join

the winning side. The offerings of food, as mentioned earlier, may have

been a way to cement an alliance with Pizarro. In any event,

Taulichusco was an outsider apparently imposed by Cuzco. His sons,

first Guachinamo (baptized don Francisco) and then don Gonzalo,


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continued to be Lima's curacas with the blessing of the Spaniards.

Perhaps to solidify their claim to the curacasgo, the descendants of

Taulichusco's brother, Caxapaxa, married into the local nobility (see

Appendix 3). Farther up the coast, the Incas appointedyanaconasaspolitical chiefs to keep the Colli of the Carabayllo valley in line. To

punish them for their resistance, the Incas replaced their higher-ranked

curacas.2*

Apart from the occasional impositions of yanaconas, the Incas

exerted their authority or made known their presence in other ways.

They appropriated local lands for their Sun deity and for the Inca

bureaucracy, and they required the local Indians to work the lands.

They then collected tribute from the valley'sayllus

and encouraged thespread of their language, Quechua.25 The Inca relocated ethnic peoples

to achieve various imperialist ends, such as creating multiethnic support

groups for the temple. They installed the Mochic, for instance, from the

Kingdom of Chimor (the indigenous name for the valley of Trujillo) as

mitimaq, or colonists, in Maranga. This reflected part of a broader,

relocation effort designed to scatter the Mochic people to various parts

of the empire in order to prevent any further resistance. In those areas

vacated by the Mochic, the Inca resettled ethnic groups considered loyal

and accustomed to Inca rule.26 The Colli, an ethnic group in the valleyof Carabayllo thus became unwilling neighbors of Indians from

highland Huancayo. Because of the Colli's stubborn resistance, the Inca

settled the loyal highlanders in the curacasgoof Collique.27 The ethnic

composition of the valley had mixed and shifted a great deal before the

Incas, but this ethnic engineering caused particularly abrupt changes.

Indian Depopulation and Survival

More abrupt and traumatic than the Incas' assault on coastal society

were the Spanish invasion and the epidemic diseases which preceded it

and continued to afflict the Indian population throughout the colonial

period. Even before Pizarro had touched South American shores in

1532, small pox had already traveled southward from Mexico to Peru

by the mid-1520s. Epidemics of measles, influenza, and typhus

followed and hit the Indians especially hard because they lacked

immunities to these Old World diseases. Further, the Indians could not

always resist such diseases even as they built up some immunity to

them. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, epidemicsperiodically struck Lima and other regions in Peru, and sometimes

followed natural disasters. The earthquakes of 1687 and 1746 in Lima


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caused the spread of various illnesses and resulted in many deaths.28

The Indian population of the Lima valley almost vanished as a result

of its exposure to Old World diseases. Declining drastically in the firsttwo generations, it reached a nadir by 1600 and returned to the 1575

population by the end of the eighteenth century (see Table 1.1 and

Appendix 5).

Demographic recovery also coincided with the stabilization of sex

ratios. This contrasted to the early years1591 and 1602when an

excess number of males in the Indian communities surrounding Lima

resulted from the movement of Indian women from those communities

to the city. According to the 1613 census of Lima's Indian population,of the 38 migrants from the two largest Indian communitiesSurco and

Magdalena21 were females.29 In the eighteenth century, however, the

sex ratios became stabilized as indicated by the 1784 figures:

Date * Males * Females Sex Ratio

1591,1602 1151 920 1.26 * Totals of

1784 2706 2804 .96 Appendix 5

Although males predominated in the Indian communities in the late

sixteenth century, the female population increased faster (3.0) than the

male one (2.3) thereafter. Barring fluctuations over time, the figures

available do show a more even sex ratio.

Emigration to Lima from various parts of the Peruvian viceroyalty

revealed the reverse. Based on the 1613 census, of those emigrating

Indian males (934) greatly outnumbered females (423). Males

constituted a vast majority of Indian migrants in the ten-to-29 year oldage group (837 men and 314 women), and single men (533) were far

more numerous than single Indian women (90) in the 18-to-50 year old

group.30 Such gender gaps did not necessarily remain a constant. Three

eighteenth century censuses of the city of Lima revealed changing,

though tighter sex ratios among the Indians than those in the 1613

census:31

Male Female Total Sex Ratio

1613 934 423 1357 2.211700 1277 1506 2783 .84

1790 2190 1722 3912 1.27

1792 2390 1952 4342 1.22

The Spanish scholar, Prez Cant, gives three reasons for the


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undercounting of males in the 1700 census. Since the census was

conducted for military purposes, men might have evaded it. Great

numbers of women were counted in the nunneries, possibly revealing

a lack of eligible men. Finally, the chroniclers noted the unusual

number of single women as a scourge on the city.32 The sex ratios in

both the city and the hinterlands nonetheless stabilized in the eighteenth

century. The increase in the numbers of Indian women undoubtedly

improved the fertility rates and brought about a more stable family

structure.

Migration certainly promoted the Indians' demographic survival.

According to the 1613 census of Lima's Indian population (excluding

the Indian barrio of the Cercado), all were migrants except for the 49Indians who claimed Lima as their birthplace. They emigrated from all

across Peru, with the northern and central regions supplying the bulk of

migrants. Many became long-term residents which consequently, along

with valley-born residents, assured Indians a place in Lima's economy

and society. The 1613 census reveals that 37 percent(636) of the total

male and female population in the ten-to-50 year old age group (1732)

claimed to have been residing in the city five or more years.33 Parish

records of the Cercado indicated that the proportion of males bom there

increased significantly from 11 percent in 1575-1610 (numbering 16 of139) to 33 percent (numbering 18 of 54) in 1650-1686,)while females

bom in the valley held fairly steady at 22 percent (numbering 27 of

124) and 28 percent (numbering 16 of 56) respectively.34 One of the

censuses that distinguished the always strongforasterocontingent in the

mid-eighteenth century for the eight "pueblos" (Cercado, Late,

Magadelena, Lurigancho, Carabayllo, Surco, Lurin, and Callao) and

three "anexos o pueblos pequenas" (Bellavista, Miraflores, Chorrillos)

in the province of the Cercado (see Map 1.2) gave these numbers:

foraster os (340), originarios (290), caciques (6), exempt(119),

muchachosor adolescents (293) and women (1,070) totaling 2,118.35

The effort to ferret out originariosto pay full tribute may have forced

some from that group into hiding and thus resulted in an undercounting

and the divergence from the 1784 census; the latter counted 20 caciques

with a total Indian population of 5,488. Regardless of its accuracy, the

census is revealing of theforasteropresence. Having more of them than

locals, if that is the case, no doubt forced some sort of accommodation

and blurring of lines between, and even mixture of the two groups.Many of the Indian migrants by choice made the Lima valley their

permanent home and would contribute to social reproduction. Although


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the colonial authorities originally intended the Cercado to house Indians

temporarily while they fulfilled mitaduties in Lima, many chose to stay

beyond the required time because of the higher wages offered to free

laborers.36 Some even came with the intention of not returning to their

homeland. In the mid-seventeenth century, about 20 Yauyos from the

extremities of the valley of Late expressed their desire to the Viceroy to

live in the Cercado. Two Yauyosprincipalesexplained that they had

difficulty meeting tribute demands because some of their own had fled

and that many youths lacked Christian instruction.37 They evidently

believed the Jesuits who administered the faith in the Cercado could

give them what they needed. To abandon one's homeland is telling of

the desperate straits that many Indians faced in the provinces. TheYauyos had the good fortune to come as a group with theirprincipales

who might desire to continue their leadership functions in Lima.

The opportunity to acquire land, to practice a trade, to be employed,

and to marry encouraged individual migrants to settle in the area. Of

the 1173 Indian men between the ages of ten and 50 years-old in the

1613 census of the city's Indian population, 641 (or 55 percent) were

learning or practicing a trade as tailors, shoemakers, silk weavers,

hatters, button makers, chair makers, mat makers, masons,embroiderers, blacksmiths, carpenters, hosier, and makers of musical

instruments. Indian women were either household servants or without

a designated occupation. Others only resided in the Cercado or in Lima.

Accordingly, the census noted that 69 Indian residents of the city

worked on Spanish-owned suburban plots of land, and 59 fishermen

resided in Lima but earned their livelihood outside the city.38 A mid

seventeenth century visita described the Indian inhabitants of the

Cercado as primarily agricultural laborers who seasonally worked andlived on chacrasowned by Lima's Spanish residents. It further revealed

some of them as tenant farmers in the valley of Late, while others had

permanently settled there.39 Rental agreements in the late sixteenth and

early seventeenth century involved Indian migrants, all residents of the

Cercado and Lima proper, as leasers and lessees of rural holdings in the

Lima area.40 A few migrants with nonurban pursuits and interests

eventually exchanged their urban residences for rural ones. A migrant

from Sana, though having grown up in Lima, claimed that at the time

of the 1613 census he lived in Lurigancho where he had land and also

earned wages as a farm laborer.41 The flow of migration directed to

Lima, then, partially moved out into the countryside or the seashore

where migrants worked alongside the valley-born. Such movement


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forged connections between Lima and its countryside.

Late seventeenth and eighteenth century documents reaffirm that

Lima proper continued to appeal to Indian migrants. A city-widecensus listing their origins, as did the 1613 census, is not extant for the

later period, but marriage records (1672-1688) from the Cercado and a

1683 census of the parish of San Marcelo (see Map 1.3) depict the

viceregal capital as a continuing focus of migration for greater Peru.42

The 1683 census, like that of 1613, revealed the predominance of male

migrants. Males (111) outnumbered females (53), and only seven of the

former came from the Lima area. Of the 24 men noted as having

occupations, all were craftsmen, except for a servant, a fisherman, and

a farm laborer. Unlike the 1613 census, the one in 1683 was not a

house-to-house count; the authorities simply gathered the Indians at the

church of San Marcelo to make a distinction between tributary and non

tributary groups.43 A good number, though, offered much needed skills.

Labor contracts in the 1700s suggest that Lima drew on migrant

labor to fill apprenticeships in the apparel trades, as it had in the early

1600s; they came from as far north as Cajamarca and south to Cuzco.44

Historian Marcel Haitin found that from 1790 to 1810, "Indians

constituted the most important group of migrants to Lima from theinterior."45 Late colonial Lima, as in an earlier period, attracted Indians

who subsequently fulfilled a productive role in the city's economy.

Marriage and stable work pursuits acted to integrate the migrants into

the valley bom population throughout the seventeenth century. Based

on a 1647 visitaof Surquillo, forasterosaccounted for eight of its 39

Indian inhabitants and five were married.46 Outsiders and the valley

bom even founded pueblos. In the early 1600s, migrant fishermen,

together with some locals, founded San Pedro de Quilcay, a fishingvillage in the Pachacamac valley. Many of theseforasterosmarried

local women.47 Furthermore, Indians themselves made such

observations. The Indian cabildoof Magdalena observed in 1691 that

its forasteros married with originarios and fully participated in

communal obligations and activities.48 Even in the city and the

Cercado, resident male migrants married the valley-born.49 Work and

marriage consequently integrated manyforasteros into local Indian

families and communities.

The need to associate with one's own can also be seen in the

migrants' desire to maintain connections with their home communities.

This sense of provincial attachment might have influenced Lima's more

permanent Indian residents to sustain some sort of ethnic bloc. Wills,


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the 1613 census, and other documents from the seventeenth and

eighteenth centuries reveal that Indian migrants from nearby provinces,

both women and men, preserved their homeland ties by retaining

landholding rights, paying tribute, and periodically journeying back and

forth to visit relatives or loved-ones. These migrants provided extra

income and/or resources for families and fellow community members

who stayed behind.50 In this way, migration promoted community

survival in the provinces, and the carrying of one's cultural baggage

might have given Lima its indigenous aspects.

Other Indian migrants, however, became detached from theircommunities of origin and incorporated into the Spanish world,

sometimes by choice but most often by coercion. Many Indians became

victims of the policy of enslaving those who resisted conquest. The

peripheral areas of the Spanish empireinitially Central America, then

Chile and later the East Indiesprovided the main source of Indian

slaves. Even Indians not engaging in hostilities became vulnerable to

abductions for the demand for labor could not be satisfied by the slave

and free wage market, or by the state-sponsored mita de plaza. Manyof the abductions involved orphaned or abandoned children and

adolescents who would then be raised and eventually serve in Spanish

households, which included Spanish bureaucrats and priests, or be

apprenticed in Lima's artisan shops. They came from as far away as

Trujillo and as close as Huaylas and Yauyos. Even where not explicitly

stated, those contracted for apprenticeships were most often very young

and far from home, with no mention of parents or guardians. The

situation suggests that they could have been raised by their Spanishemployers or by others until they reached a working or contractual age.

This displacement among Indians and their dependency on Spaniards

often spelled their total hispanization and inclusion in a captive

workforce.51

Migration patterns in the 1613 census reveal the extent to which

Indians had already entered the Spanish world before coming to Lima.

According to the census, over a quarter of all migrants had come

directly from Spanish provincial cities to Lima. Males (361) who

outnumbered females (120) by three to one overwhelmingly engaged in

the trades.52 Their close association with Spaniards and Spanish culture

would no doubt continue in Lima.

Despite numerous Indians being lost to the Spanish world, other

forasteros were integrated into an identifiable valley-wide Indian

"community." The obvious consequence of this immigration was ethnic



25/39


implosion. The influx of immigrants into the Lima valley continued a

pre-Hispanic pattern of highland to coastal migration, though the

colonial variety proved to be many times more massive with few

migrants traveling in groups. Consequently, the multi-ethnicity of the

valley increased to such an extreme as to make pre-Hispanic ethnic

groups indistinguishable. They gradually lost their separate identities.

For example, the 20 or so highland Yauyos who came to the Cercado

together with their curaca seemed to have disappeared from the

historical record after their 1653 suit to claim their traditional lots in the

Indian barrio.53 Even non-ethnicyanaconas lost their way. They

traveled with Pizarro as his military auxiliaries and settled in the city of

Lima, but they failed to appear in any document after the 1550s.54 The

only group with a durable identity seemed to be the Caaris whose

separate militia company greeted the new Viceroy, Count of Lemos, in

1667.55 Nonetheless, people generally lost their roots and either

identified with their conquerors or, on the other hand, became

incorporated into or identified with the new ethnic label assigned to

them by the conquering, more domineering ethnic group-the Spaniards.

Emigration from the provinces to Lima certainly enriched the

multiethnic flavor of the valley, but the marriage of those bom in the

valley to migrants stifled provincial identity. Outsiders of whateverstation or ethnic background were efficaciously integrated into the

developing, newly-founded "Indian" society of Lima. (Appendixes 1-4

show the extent to which outsiders married into the valley's native

nobility.) Migrants married other migrants of different provinces, too,

thus further diluting the ethnic pool. At first glance, the colonial reality

of hispanization and of ethnic implosion appears similar to the

Incanization and the spreading of Quechua as the lingua franca

underway at the time of the Spanish invasion.56 But, of course,

epidemic diseases and individualized, geographical mobility definitivelywore down any sense of linkage to pre-Hispanic ethnicity.

A Matter of Integration: Three Lawsuits

Indian depopulation in the valley from early on certainly quickened

the pace for the acceptance of forasteros, although not always

guaranteed and at times tenuous.57 Three lawsuits reveal how Indians

integrated other Indians and the conflicts that sometimes arose. This

micro-level examination also indicates the ways that Indians

reorganized themselves into identifiable social networks and seemedonly concerned with forastero-originario distinctions when other


26/39


interests were at stake.

Francisco Pizarro brought to Lima in 1537 a group ofyanaconas

who had acted with distinction as military auxiliaries against Inca

armies. Lima's curacas,don Gonzalo and his brother Guachinamo,

attempted to tie Pizarro'syanaconas to reciprocal arrangements that

would have virtually converted them into tribute payers. At some point,

Guachinamo "loaned" the yanaconas about 11 hectares of land

(chacras)to cultivate with the understanding that they would, in return,

contribute labor towards communal activities, like the repair andcleaning of irrigation canals. These tasks would assist the curacas'

people in paying their tribute, an arrangement that reflected a long

tradition in the valley of dealing with outsiders. Yet the population

losses by then also could have motivated Lima's curacas to seek

additional labor since much of their power and prestige depended on it.

Don Gonzalo soon discovered that colonial realities made pre-

Hispanic ways of integrating outsiders risky. The loaned Chuntay

chacrawas located in the colonial parish of San Sebastian on the banks

of the Rimac River (see Map 1.3). Don Gonzalo had claimed Chuntay

as pertaining to his domain since Inca times. Theyanaconas,however,

later opted to obtain a merced, a land grant, from Lima's cabildo,

thereby seeking to acquire title to the very land which the curacahad

merely given them in usufruct. Theyanaconashad the cabildoand

Pizarro on their side of the lawsuit, while the pre-Hispanic formulas that

made up don Gonzalos argument carried little weight in a Spanish

courtroom. Under the protection of Pizarro and headed by their

principal,Limayalli, theyanaconashad no desire to become subjects

of Lima's curacas.58 Don Gonzalo then resorted to force by sending 20

of his people to attack theyanaconaswhile they cultivated their fields.

That failing, don Gonzalo apparently came to terms with them by

donating five hectares of land to Limayalli's daughter in 1560.59 This

suggests a dowry, an imported device that might have served as a gift

would have in pre-Hispanic times to integrate incoming Indians,

especially political leaders, into the local society now that reciprocal

arrangements were no longer viable. The donation certainly alienatedproperty, though it might be considered an adaptative strategy on the

part of don Gonzalo to forge new social networks. In any event, the

attempt to manage labor in the old way had to yield to or incorporate

European notions of land ownership. From very early on, therefore, the


27/39


pre-Hispanic way of acquiring and retaining manpower became

outdated, and only through the adoption of the new concept of property

could land be controlled. Land would now have value even withoutlabor.

Of course, social integration proceeded, though it did not always

guarantee acceptance. In a 1617 suit, the outsiders claimed the same

rights to land as the original inhabitants. Such a claim indicates that a

certain amount of accommodation and merging between the two groups

had already developed, which implies that in everyday life the terms,

forasteroand originario,held little meaning except from the viewpoint

of fiscally concerned, Spanish bureaucrats.

Both Francisco Huerta and Domingo Garca de Jess came from theLambayeque region in northern Peru. As residents respectively of Lima

and the Cercado, they disputed ownership of three hectares of land in

Late. It had been adjudicated in the 1590s to Francisco Chumbipoma,

an originario,who passed it down to his daughter, Juana Huacha; her

son, Juan Francisco, then inherited it. The son's premature demise left

ownership of the land an open question. Huerta argued that his father,

Gaspar Barro, was the brother of Huacha's husband, Pedro Cosquin,

thus making Huerta first cousin to Juan Francisco and eligible to claimthe land. Despite this rather weak claim, Huerta insisted that he had the

same rights to land as the original inhabitants of Late, perhaps a

consensus that had been reached earlier in contrast to remoter locations.

Domingo Garcia and his witnesses cast doubt on Huerta's kinship links

by asserting that Huerta and Cosquin were merely "great friends." He

then argued persuasively that his own Late-born wife, Juana Catalina,

was Juan Francisco's aunt based on her"prima hermana"(cousin-sister)

relationship with the deceased Juana Huacha.60 Although only related

through marriage, the combined kin terms perhaps drew from Andean

usage and from the simple fact that both Juanas were originariosof

Late and therefore "sisters."

However, witnesses on Domingo's side stated that his wife's father,

Juan Quispe, could claim two different birthplacesTrujillo and Late.

This may mean that his ancestors had been relocated by the Incas from

Trujillo to the Lima area but memory of their origins had not been

forgotten. The mother's side being originarios mattered more and

possibly accounted for the community support behind Domingo. Hiswitnesses, all Indian residents in Late (four Late-born and four from

Lambayeque), contrasted to the four outsidersa mestizo, a black, and

two Indian residents of the Cercadosupporting Huerta's claim.


28/39


Domingo had better connections and kinship credentials and, in the end,

he retained possession of the land in the name of his wife, Juana

Catalina.61 His witnesses' consensus on his wife's lineage marked hisbetter integration into, or perhaps even his stronger influence over

residents in Late. On the other hand, Huerta never made any mention

of marital ties to a local woman. He had the shortcomings of those

Indians not fully integrated into the community's political and social

institutions.

By the early seventeenth century, if not earlier, the forastero-

originario dichotomy showed signs of blurring in Late. This trend

continued to the extent that by the 1790s Indian migrants, some married

to mixed bloods, even served on the cabildo.62 Forasterosbecame a

^fact of life in Lima, barely distinguishable from the originarios.

However, lines were not so blurred as to prevent forasteros from

becoming scapegoats at times, despite having longstanding service and

residence in a newly adopted community. Sometimes targeted because

of jealousy and politics rather than any scramble for resources, even

those who married into Indian nobility did not remain unscathed.

In 1736, the community of Surco's interim curaca,don Juan Snchez

Tantachumbi argued against the community's renting of two tambostoaforastero, don Sebastian Davin Puchuluan. This outsider and his

wife of 30 years, doa Petroila Tantachumbi, described themselves as

principales. Puchuluan emphasized his marriage into that noble family,

the Tantachumbis (see Appendix 1), and, although he was a tribute

payer of Colan, Piura (north coast, Peru), his rental payments

contributed to Surco's expenses, including tribute and religious festivals.

Thus, his argument rested on his marriage ties, long-term residency in

Surco, and his indirect support for community affairs, all of which gavehim the same rights as originarios,63 Don Juan retorted that the rights

to renting communal property resided only in the valley bom, even

questioning doa Petroila's character because she had married

someone of "low station," a "bastard son."64 Eventually one of Surco's

own received the right to rent the tamboswith the financial backing of

a Spaniard.65

Puchuluan's legal representation of the Tantachumbi family against

don Juan's own rights to the curacasgo in 1732 may have truly

motivated don Juan to file suit.66 Don Juan only had kinship links with

lower echelon chiefs of Surco,67 and perhaps resented this outsider and

"bastard son" achieving such prominence in the community and

marrying into an impeccable noble lineage. Rivalry over resources


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provided a less likely possibility than did revenge and political ambition

because the community would benefit no matter who rented the tambo.

Puchuluan and the family he represented got in the way of don Juan'splans. The basis of this originario-forasterorivalry, therefore, did not

always reside in economic issues, but sometimes, as in this case, in the

political and personal.

All three litigation cases reflect the difficulties inherent to any

process of integration. Of course, without migration the Indian

population of the Lima valley would have been barely recognizable

from other hispanized, nonwhite groups. The cases also indicated

changes over time and in the larger society. Pre-Hispanic reciprocalarrangements already had broken down by the mid-sixteenth century,

and the seventeenth century case clearly reveals that someforasteros

had become integrated into the local milieu through various means,

such as residency, marriage, friendship, property ownership, or

economic enterprise. Social reproduction thus ensued, especially when

the Indians themselves assumed an important role in shaping the criteria

for the acceptance or rejection of outsiders. Consequently, social

networks constructed upon commonly accepted criteria often excluded

those deemed unworthy outsiders-not necessarily forasteros. Owing

to the special conditions of the Lima valley, the termforasterobecame

somewhat politicized and flexible in its application, in contrast to its

more fiscal and distinct nature in the highlands. In short, to be an

outsider held no particular disadvantage.

Indian Labor and Enterprise

While social integration and reproduction went on, colonial policy

and the growth of the market economy brought Indians in close touch

with the dominant culture. Many were thereby lost to it, but others

found a niche in the colonial economy which set them apart from non-

Indians and maintained their ethnic integrity.

* * * * *

The colonial policy of resettling Indians into Spanish-built towns or

reduccioneshad a disruptive effect on all Indians. Originating in the

Antilles, the Spaniards later applied the policy on the mainland.Spanish officials wished to congregate dispersed and depopulated

Indian villages into larger settlements, thereby facilitating taxation, the

use of manpower, and evangelization.68 Relocation in the Lima valley

forced the reduced numbers of Indians to vacate most of their pre-


30/39


Hispanic territories. The ayllus making up the various curacasgos

subsequently reconstituted by around 1570 in the newly-built

reducciones (see Table 1.2). The "abandoned" lands became thus

opened to European settlement. The Inca's relocation policy was more

selective, while the Spaniards sought to reorder much of indigenous

space. In fact, the removal of don Gonzalo's people to the town of

Magdalena got underway even earlier as indicated by his 1564 letter to

the King describing how the Spaniards usurped his people's lands

without compensation to build the city of Lima. He unsuccessfully

requested an exemption from the tribute as compensation.69The removal did not mean that Lima would remain Spanish. In the

early seventeenth century, the Indian chronicler, Guamn Poma, gave

a vivid, though unflattering description of Lima's Indian residents:

Indians absent and cimarronesturnedyanaconas, tradesmen, mitayos,

low class Indians, tribute payers; they dress like Spaniards, in shirt

collars and carrying swords. Here is a world upside down. When

Indians see their fellow villagers leave, they soon follow, and so

nobody pays the tribute, nor serve in the mines; there are many Indian

whores, carrying their mestizo and mulatto children, all with skirts, high

shoes, and hair nets; though they are married they go around with

Spaniards and Blacks. Others neither want to marry an Indian nor leave

the city, for they prefer whoring.70

Guamn Pomas Indians were cultural orphans, their world irreparably

shattered. This contrasts with the assessment given by a Spanish

official who placed much value on Indian labor and did not see a "worldupside down, but one that suited him and the Indians he described.

Speaking before Lima's cabildoin 1603, the alguacil mayor,Francisco

Severino de Torres, opposed the relocation of Indians from the barrio

of San Lzaro to the Cercado (see Map 1.3). This had been initiated in

1590 in accordance with the laws of residential segregation which

sought to keep Indians away from the 'mal ejemplo'(bad example) of

non-Indians.

Many of them (Indians) who have trades and are master craftsmen have

been forced against their will to leave the city, abandoning their homes

and shops. It has caused much disruption, especially to those with a

useful trade...and much too worthy to be taken away from their work.

If they were to leave, the colony would lack the products of their labor,

and such products would sell dearly from now on.71


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Perhaps both had an agenda. Conscious of his Andean roots, Guamn

Poma believed that Indians should remain in their homelands and not

be corrupted by life in a "Spanish" city. De Torres saw the Indians as

contributing productively to the urban economy and implied hiswillingness to ignore the segregationist laws. To be sure, Lima never

lost its Indian residents. Already in the 1550s Indians worked in

Spanish artisan shops.72 The 1613 street by street count of its Indian

population, excluding the Cercado, indicates that the Indians lived and

worked throughout the city. Above all, they did not congregate in any

one neighborhood or street, though large numbers were found in the

barrio of San Lzaro, the southern and eastern fringes of the city and

around the central plaza. Even in these areas, one could find Spanish,

mestizo, and mulatto residents. In fact, the construction boom at the

very beginning of the seventeenth century presaged the movement of

Spaniards to neighborhoods once exclusively nonwhite or Indian. Set

aside for Indian fishermen in the late 1530s, San Lzaro contained a

population of 500 Spaniards by the 1630s. Indian apprentices and

journeymen often lived adjacent to or in the back of Spanish workshops

or in Spanish households, and they usually rented space from Spaniards.

Indian domestic servants, both men and women, invariably lived in

Spanish homes.73 As a result, Lima became ethnically and racially

mixed.

Such inter-ethnic and inter-cultural contact sometimes left one's

ethnic status an open question. While the vast majority of Indians in the

1613 census identified themselves as Indian, some asserted other

identities, or were subject to the whim of the census taker. In some

instances, despite claims of being a mestizo, the census taker noted that

he/she dressed like an Indian or the mestizo who looked Indian but

dresses like a Spaniard.74 Whether intentional or not, ethnic confusion

continued in the census as indicated by the following examples: the one

who claimed to be a mestizo but had a mestizo father and an Indian

mother; though described as an Indian, another stated to the census

taker he was the son of a mestizo; the "criollo indio" was told by his

mother and brother that he is a mestizo; and, a shoemaker emphatically

asserts that as a mestizo he has no cacique,but he dresses in th e"hbito

de indio" (Indian way) because he is poor.75 This fluidity and

equivocation reflected the prejudice pervasive in the larger society, as

well as a measure of uncertainty or pretension.

On the other hand, numerous Indians expressed certainty about theirethnicity despite their involvement in the market economy, or proximity


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to non-Indians. As will be shown, it often transcended the Hispanic-

style, socioeconomic differentiation emerging among the Indians in the

Lima valley. Some economic activities and institutions even bolsteredsuch ethnic ties. No doubt, the demand for Indian labor contributed to

the process of bringing Indians closer to Spanish society, but not all

were entirely lost in it.

In the early years, the encomienda, or a grant of Indian labor,

predominated, then the corregimiento partially took it over by the

second half of the sixteenth century. The encomenderoas the grantee

used the labor on his many different enterprises. Eventually the Spanish

Crown and laws disallowed the most extreme abuses of the system,

namely, not paying for the labor. The encomenderos' wills in the

sixteenth century implied some sort of wrongdoing or abuse when they

left bequests to help pay their charges' tribute and thereby relieve their

guilty consciences.76 Subsequently, beginning with the 1549 cdula

targeting the encomiendas,the Crown established a state-run labor draft

system, the corregimiento, and made labor available to all Spanish

colonists in need of it. In Lima Viceroy Conde de Nieva (1561-1564)

implemented the mita de plazaand later Viceroy Francisco de Toledo

(1569-1581) codified it and increased the number of mitayosfrom 200to 1200. Consequently, the always-minority group of encomenderos

lost their monopoly over Indian labor and instead became mere

pensioners of the Crown.77

Put in charge of Indian affairs and of the Indians of the

corregimiento, the corregidores behaved no better than the

encomenderos and exploited the Indian labor to benefit themselves

materially. The corregidoresalso became responsible by the end of the

sixteenth century for rounding up and placing Indian debtors, criminals,orphans, and vagabonds in the service of Lima's Spanish residents.78

Meanwhile, the curacas whose control over Indian labor did not

completely cease circumvented the encomienda and corregimiento

systems. In the first two or three generations, the curacasused their

authority to provide labor to Spaniards compensated variously in maize,

cloth, food, tools, or pesos.79 As commercial agriculture grew,

especially wheat and sugar, so did the demand for labor. Continuing

depopulation made the state-requisitioning of mitayos inadequate to fillthe valley's labor needs completely. In 1624 a mere 60 Indians from the

Lima area were assigned to 25 chacras, and Spanish landowners

( hacendados)complained in the late seventeenth century that many

of those Indians allotted to them did not stick around for more than a


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day or left within a week.80 Still, the nearby highlands continued to

provide mitayos. In addition to farm work, the corregidordrafted them

to do such tasks as maintaining the canals that provided irrigation anddrinking water to the city, building roads and bridges, keeping the city

clean, and domestic service. The demand and competition for mitayos

inevitably prompted abuses. Some of the valley's Spanish hacendados

did not hesitate to seize mitayoson the road before they reached the

plaza of the Cercado, thus depriving others of their fair share. Some

Spaniards provided no food or failed to pay their mitayos. More often

than not money went to the curacaor to another official (e.g. the Indian

alcaldeof the Cercado), who then parceled out the mitaworkers. After

being informed by Spanish residents that Indians could not do mitaservice in Lima andin their home communities, the viceroy and the

protector de indios in the 1590s exempted Indians from such service

back home if they lived in the Cercado for more than five years, though

their curacas could collect tribute from them.81 This is certainly a

recognition of a defacto situation as has been shown; that is, for

whatever reason many Indians made Lima their home.

Although forced labor continued to be used, a free wage, Indian labor

market seriously arose toward the end of the sixteenth and certainly intothe seventeenth centuries. Yet wages constituted only part of such labor

arrangements. In nineteen, one-year contracts dated 1577 to 1602

twelve migrant and seven valley-born Indians agreed to work for

Spanish farmers. The terms of seven contracts involved a combination

of wages, food, clothing, and usufruct rights to land, while the

remaining primarily called for wages. The higher wages (from 22 to

180 pesos annually), compared to those for agricultural work in

provincial Huamanga (12 to 24 pesos), suggest the growing reliance on

and perhaps scarcity of Indian agricultural workers in the valley.82 On

one Spanish landowners 1618 payroll, 38 Indians were paid four reales

daily plus food for harvesting wheat in Carabayllo, more than the one

or two realesand possibly some food under the forced labor draft.83

Slavery also became increasingly important in the same time frame.

In fact, Lima heavily depended on it, as did other coastal farming

areas.84 By the end of the colonial period the importation of African

slaves had been much restricted: the vast majority of them (13,669)

lived and worked in the city of Lima, while a smaller number (4,212)in Lima's countryside.85 Despite the widespread presence of Africans,

Indian workers could be found in Spanish artisan shops, households,

and obrajesand in the rural hinterland doing farm work on a contractual


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basis. Noticeably in the late colonial period they resided on the

haciendas that had begun to appear in the early 1600s.86 No doubt some

hacendados recruited workers from the surrounding communities.87Hence, the free labor market came to dominate: to be sure, the use of

coercion was always an option.

Higher wages in the Lima area attracted many Indians whose

growing involvement in the market economy contributed to their

ladinization or assimilation of Spanish language and culture. Of the 40

percent of Indians (685) under a work contract in the first decade of the

seventeenth century, 92 percent of that number claimed to be ladinos.

Many Indians achieved ladinostatus while in Lima; those who made no

ladino claim in their first contract often indicated, after signing a

contract for an additional year, that they had learned some Spanish.

Since Spaniards did most of the hiring, the Indians had an economic

motive for hispanization, which then undoubtedly eased their adaptation

to an urban environment.88 So many of the valley's Indians became

evidently assimilated that the term "ladino" appeared less frequently in

the documents after the mid-1600s to distinguish one Indian group from

another. In only one of the 22 apprenticeship contracts from the

eighteenth century did the Indian note his ladinostatus. Of the sevenIndians giving their ages as between 12 and 19 years old, two were

apprenticed to Indian masters, and all received room and board without

pay.89 Learning a trade was to be a step towards earning a living wage,

being independent, and aspiring to master status.

Apart from earning wages, numerous Indians, both men and women,

imbibed the entrepreneurial spirit and practiced it. They accumulated

wealthas well as debtsand made their niche in the market economy.

One ladinocloth merchant of the Cercado in 1621 still owed 480 pesosof a 984 peso debt to an encomenderowho sold him on credit 80 pieces

of cloth obtained as tribute.90 An early seventeenth century Spanish

chronicler described the Indian residents of the Cercado, many of them

migrants, as "rich and ladinos" owning 80 slaves altogether.91 The

sample of 123 wills (see Appendix 6) reveals a more moderate profile

of slaveholding, though pointing to an interesting difference: each of the

six female and two male migrants owned one slave, while only one man

and a women bom in the valley owned slaves. Small-scale farmers andthe women who sold fruits, vegetables, and poultry in Limas

marketplace (sometimes called the tianquiz) numbered among the

Cercado's residents. Based on his 1611 will, Pedro Mango, who

claimed the Cercado as his birthplace, cultivated peanuts, sweet


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potatoes, com, and beans on his scattered farm holdings. One hectare

he rented from an Indian of Late, and owed two Indians wages for

working his land. Among the male and female migrant residents, some

engaged in raising garden crops and fruits, such as figs, guava, oranges,

lemons, peaches, andpacay(a legume) inside the Cercado's walls. Julio

Gutierres of Huarochiri stated in his 1687 will that he earned 60

pataconasyearly from the production of his fruit trees. In that same

year, another Cercado resident, don Julio Tanta of Huamantanga,

indicated owning an unspecified number of vicuas in the pastures of

Pachacamac.92 The Cercado especially served as one of Limas

connections with the hinterland.

Almost exclusively Indian women made and marketed a traditionalitem, chicha,from their homes. Most purchased the maize; a few raised

their own in partnership with their husbands. Women also dominated

street hawking; while some husbands actually went to the highlands to

bring, for example, the maize and potatoes they had cultivated for their

wives to sell in Lima. Some of the Cercado's prosperous residents even

owned the mules that hauled their goods to the city.93 In the 1660s, four

Indians and two mestizos hauled coca leaves, another traditional item,

from the highlands on mule back to sell illegally in Lima. They claimed

to have been doing it for years.94

Indian inhabitants outside the walls of the Cercado, most of them

valley bom, also participated in the market economy throughout the

colonial period. Like the migrants, they took advantage of the

increasing urban demand for the same kind of garden crops noted

previously; they also grew eggplants, cucumbers, and fruits, but more

commonly maize and beans. They were sharecroppers and tenants,

small-scale producers, and pastoralists; some Indians rented out their

small holdings to neighboring Spanish hacendados,or even to otherIndians.95 One Miguel Cocssi of Surco mentioned in his 1596 will that

he had worked for doa Juana Llacsa, the wife of Surco's principal

"irrigating her cultivated maize chacra and for said service she has

given me afanegaof maize and lands in which I have cultivated maize

and yucca."96 Those of noble birth, too, did not hesitate to join the

capitalist fray. The curaca,don Juan Casapacsi of Magdalena, tried his

hand at viticulture and wheat farming.97(A discussion of landownership

among the Indians in the next chapter may be considered as part of this

discussion of agrarian enterprise.)

Perhaps such economic activities hardly distinguished them from

those engaged in by many non-Indians. Nevertheless, Spanish


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hacendadosin the late seventeenth century noted that while they grow

wheat, Indians predominately specialize in garden crops.98 Some

evidence

Documents

Charney Introduction