Encomienda

Francisco Hernández Girón was a Spanish encomendero in the Viceroyalty of Peru who protested the New Laws in 1553. These laws, passed in 1542, gave certain rights to indigenous peoples and protected them against abuses. Drawing by Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala.

The encomienda (Spanish pronunciation: [eŋkoˈmjenda] ) was a Spanish labour system that rewarded conquerors with the labour of conquered non-Christian peoples. In theory, the conquerors provided the labourers with benefits, including military protection and education. The encomienda was first established in Spain following the Christian Reconquista, and it was applied on a much larger scale during the Spanish colonization of the Americas and the Spanish East Indies. Conquered peoples were considered vassals of the Spanish monarch. The Crown awarded an encomienda as a grant to a particular individual. In the conquest era of the early sixteenth century, the grants were considered a monopoly on the labour of particular groups of indigenous peoples, held in perpetuity by the grant holder, called the encomendero; starting from the New Laws of 1542, the encomienda ended upon the death of the encomendero, and was replaced by the repartimiento.[1][2]

Encomiendas devolved from their original Iberian form into a form of communal slavery. In the encomienda, the Spanish Crown granted a person a specified number of natives from a specific community but did not dictate which individuals in the community would have to provide their labour. Indigenous leaders were charged with mobilising the assessed tribute and labour. In turn, encomenderos were to ensure that the encomienda natives were given instruction in Catholicism and the Spanish language, to protect them from warring tribes or pirates; to suppress rebellion against Spaniards, and maintain infrastructure. The natives provided tributes in the form of metals, maize, wheat, pork, and other agricultural products.

With the ousting of Christopher Columbus in 1500, the Spanish Crown had him replaced with Francisco de Bobadilla.[3] Bobadilla was succeeded by a royal governor, Fray Nicolás de Ovando, who established the formal encomienda system.[4] In many cases natives were forced to do hard labour and subjected to extreme punishment and death if they resisted.[5] However, Queen Isabella I of Castile forbade slavery of the native population and deemed the indigenous to be "free vassals of the crown".[6] Various versions of the Laws of the Indies from 1512 onwards attempted to regulate the interactions between the settlers and natives. Both natives and Spaniards appealed to the Real Audiencias for relief under the encomienda system.

Encomiendas have often been characterized by the geographical displacement of the enslaved and breakup of communities and family units, but in New Spain, the encomienda ruled the free vassals of the crown through existing community hierarchies, and the natives remained in their settlements with their families.[7][page needed]

  1. ^ James Lockhart and Stuart Schwartz, Early Latin America. New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 138: «The encomienda in its early heyday granted a lifetime monopoly on the utilization of temporary Indian labor in a given area to one Spaniard, the encomendero. The succeeding repartimiento [...]»
  2. ^ Silvio Zavala (1984). "1. Evolución general". El servicio personal de los indios en la Nueva España: 1521–1550 (in Spanish). El Colegio de MéxicoEl Colegio Nacional (Mexico). p. 31. doi:10.2307/j.ctv26d9fg.5. ISBN 968-12-0253-8. Retrieved 13 August 2022. las Leyes Nuevas dadas en Barcelona el 20 de noviembre de 1542 […] abolieron la fa-cultad de proveer nuevas encomiendas en las Indias, y mandaron incorporar en la Corona las existentes a la muerte de sus poseedores
  3. ^ Noble, David Cook. "Nicolás de Ovando" in Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture, vol. 4, p. 254. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons 1996.
  4. ^ Ida Altman, et al., The Early History of Greater Mexico, Pearson, 2003, p. 47
  5. ^ Rodriguez, Junius P. (2007). Encyclopedia of Slave Resistance and Rebellion. Vol. 1. Abc-Clio, LLC. p. 184. ISBN 978-0-313-33272-2. Archived from the original on 2016-09-19. Retrieved 2016-03-27.
  6. ^ Ida Altman, et al., The Early History of Greater Mexico, Pearson, 2003, 143
  7. ^ Charles Gibson, The Aztecs Under Spanish Rule, Stanford, 1964.