Encomienda

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The encomienda is a trusteeship labour system that was employed by the Spanish crown during the Spanish colonization of the Americas and the Philippines. In the encomienda, the crown granted a person a specified number of natives of whom they were to take responsibility. The receiver of the grant was to instruct the natives in the Spanish language and in the Catholic faith. In return, they could exact tribute from the natives in the form of labour, gold or other products, such as in corn, wheat or chickens. The grantees of the encomienda were usually conquistadors and soldiers, but they also included women and Native notables. For example, Doña Marina and the daughters of Montezuma were granted extensive encomiendas as dowries.^[1][2] The status of Indians as wards of the trustees under the encomienda system served to "define the status of the Indian population": the natives were free men, not slaves or serfs. Conquistadors were granted trusteeship over the indigenous people they conquered. The encomienda was essential to the Spanish crown's sustaining its control over North, Central and South America in the first decades after the conquest, because it was the first major organizational law instituted on a continent where disease, war and turmoil reigned. Initially the encomienda system was devised to meet the needs of the early agricultural economies in the Caribbean, and was later adopted to the mining economy of Peru and Upper Peru. The encomienda lasted from the beginning of the sixteenth century to the seventeenth century.^[3]

The etymology of encomienda and encomendero lies in the Spanish verb encomendar, "to entrust". The encomienda was based on the familiar Reconquista institution in which adelantados were given the right to extract tribute from Muslims or other peasants in areas that they had conquered and resettled.^[4] The encomienda system differed from the Peninsular institution in that encomenderos did not own the land on which the natives lived. The system did not entail any direct land tenure by the encomendero; Indian lands were to remain in their possession, a right that was formally protected by the Crown of Castile because at the beginning of the Conquest most of the rights of administration in the new lands went to the crown.^[5] The system was formally abolished in 1720, but had lost effectiveness much earlier and in many areas had been abandoned for other forms of labour.^[6] In certain areas, this quasi-feudal system persisted. In Mexico for instance it was not until the constitutional reform after the Mexican Revolution that the encomienda system was abolished, and the ejido became a legal entity again. (see also the history of the Chiapas conflict)^{[citation needed]}

Contents 1 Establishment of the encomienda 2 Abolition of the encomienda 3 Further 4 See also 5 Notes 6 Bibliography

[edit] Establishment of the encomienda

In 1503 the crown began to legally grant encomiendas to soldiers, conquistadors and officials. The system of encomiendas was aided by the fact that the crown began to organize Natives into small communities known as reducciones, in response to the declining populations. Each reducción had a Native chief who was responsible for keeping track of the laborers in his community. The encomienda system did not grant people land, but it indirectly aided in the settlers' acquisition of land. Encomenderos became familiar with Native lands and could take the land belonging to the Natives under his control through legal or extralegal means, when the opportunity arose. As initially defined, the encomendero and his heir were only supposed to benefit from the grant for two generations; however, this was often not the case, especially if the heir rendered some service to the crown. The encomienda system did eventually come to a legal end in 1720, when the crown made a new attempt at eradicating the institution. The encomenderos were now required to pay their remaining encomienda labourers for their work.

The encomiendas became very corrupt and harsh. Most of the encomenderos were men with a military background, and hence they ruled with fear and force.^{[citation needed]} Initially, the encomiendo was supposed to be returned to the crown after two generations, however this was frequently overlooked, In 1574, the Viceroy of Peru Diego Lopez de Valasco investigated the encomiendas and concluded that there were 32,000 Spanish families in the New World, 4,000 of which had encomiendas. There were 1,500,000 natives paying tribute, and 5 million “civilized” natives.^[7]

[edit] Abolition of the encomienda

The downfall of the encomienda system began as early as 1510, when Dominican missionaries began protesting the abuse of the native people by Spanish colonists. The crown made two failed attempts to end the abuses of the encomienda system, through the Law of Burgos and the New Law of the Indies. Bartolome de Las Casas, a priest and former encomiendero in Hispaniola himself, underwent a profound conversion after seeing the abuse of the native people. He dedicated his life to writing and lobbying to abolish the encomienda system which systematically enslaved the native people of the New World. Las Casas participated in an important debate where he pushed for the enactment of New Laws and an end to the encomienda system.^[8] The Laws of Burgos (1512–13) and the New Law of the Indies (1542) failed in the face of colonial opposition and, in fact, the New Laws were postponed in the Viceroyalty of Peru. When Blasco Núñez Vela, the first viceroy of Peru, tried to enforce the New Laws, which provided for the gradual abolition of the encomienda, many of the encomenderos were unwilling to comply with them and revolted against Núñez Vela. Nevertheless, the encomienda was generally replaced by the repartimiento throughout Spanish America after mid-century^[9]

The encomienda system was succeeded by the crown-managed repartimiento and the hacienda, or large landed estates, in which laborers were directly employed by the hacienda owners. Like the encomienda, the new repartimento did not include the attribution of land to anyone, only the allotment of native workers. But they were directly alloted to the Crown, who, through a local crown official, would assign them to work for settlers for a set period of time, usually several weeks. The repartamiento was an attempt "to reduce the abuses of forced labour."^[10] As the number of natives declined and mining activities were replaced by agricultural activities in the seventeenth century, the hacienda arose because land ownership became more profitable than acquisition of labor force.^[11]

[edit] Further

The standard history in English of the encomienda system is Leslie Byrd Simpson, The Encomienda in Portugal: The Beginning of Spanish Mexico (1950), a thorough revision of his work of 1929, which scholarship in the past half century has modified in approach and deepened in local depth.^[12]

[edit] See also

• Cargo system
• Repartimiento
• Hacienda
• Indian Reductions
• Jesuit Reductions

[edit] Notes

[edit] Bibliography

• Crow, John A., “The Epic of Latin America,” (London, 1992)
• Encyclopedia Britannica, Encomienda
• Avellaneda, Jose Ignacio (1995). The Conquerors of the New Kingdom of Granada. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. ISBN 0826316123. 
• Himmerich y Valencia, Robert (1991). The Encomenderos of New Spain, 1521–1555. Austin: University of Texas Press. ISBN 0292720688.