Indian reductions in the Andes

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Indian reductions in the Andes (Spanish: reducciones de indios) were settlements in the former Inca Empire created by Spanish authorities and populated by the forcible relocation of indigenous Andean populations, called "Indians" by the Spanish and "Andeans" by some modern scholars. The purpose of the Spanish Empire was to gather native populations into centers called "Indian reductions" (reducciones de indios), to Christianize, tax, and govern them to comply with Spanish customs and economic interests.

Beginning in 1569, the viceroy Francisco de Toledo presided over the resettlement of about 1.4 million native people into approximately 840 reductions.^[1] The resettlement was carried out in the Royal Audiences of Lima and Charcas, modern day Peru and Bolivia, roughly speaking. The native populations, who had adapted to a way of life suitable to the many microclimates throughout the Andes, experienced immense hardship in the transition to life in these new settlements. Despite the hardships, they preserved by their own agency aspects of native Andean culture and life in the reductions reflected a complex hybrid of forced Spanish values and those preserved from the older native communities.