Encomienda System

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ENCOMIENDA SYSTEM

ENCOMIENDA SYSTEM established social and racial relations as the basis for the economic and political order in the Spanish areas of the Americas. Derived from the Spanish verb encomendar (to entrust a mission for someone to fulfill), the mission of the encomienda was to care for and protect indigenous people by awarding part of their labor and produce to men who had served the crown—encomenderos. The encomendero was to indoctrinate his wards into the Catholic faith while acculturating them to European standards. In return, the encomendero was authorized to collect tribute and receive personal services from his wards.

The encomienda had its roots in the Spanish Reconquista (reconquest) of the Iberian Peninsula from the eighth to the fifteenth centuries. After the conquest of Granada in 1492, the Spanish crown parceled out lands as encomiendas to soldiers who were, in turn, to Christianize the Moors. Then, in 1499, a former governor of Granada introduced the encomienda to Hispaniola in the Americas, and soon all the participants in the conquests of the Caribbean, Mexico, Central America, and South America expected an encomienda as reward for their services to the crown. For example, in Mexico in 1522, the conquistador Hernán Cortés directed that his encomenderos were to receive tribute and household services from the conquered Indians in their encomiendas in return for providing food, clothing, care, and religious instruction to the Indians. Women and boys under the age of twelve were exempt from personal service and Indians were only to serve for twenty days, with at least thirty days between service requirements.

Royal fears of the encomenderos' feudal power and continuing conflict between groups of conquerors in Guatemala and particularly Peru, led to the end of personal service to the encomenderos in 1546 under the New Laws of the Indies. Encomenderos were still allowed to collect tribute from their grants but could pass them on only to the next generation. Population decline among the Indians in the later sixteenth century further weakened the encomienda by reducing the amount of Indian labor available, which prevented the encomienda from producing enough to satisfy the economic and social aspirations of the encomenderos.

Encomiendas often became a trap for early settlers, resulting in a third generation reduced to penury. However, in some central areas of the Spanish empire, especially Mexico and Peru, an encomienda sometimes became the basis for a family fortune. Some encomenderos in these regions permitted the Indians of their encomienda to sell their produce in the market reduced by population decline, accepting instead the Indians' tribute in gold currency. Encomenderos then invested this capital in other enterprises, land above all, contributing to the rise of great estates in the seventeenth century. In peripheral parts of the empire such as Paraguay, Chile, and Colombia, the encomienda survived in some fashion until the end of the colonial period. In what is now the United States, in New Mexico, Juan de Oñate granted over sixty encomiendas to reward his men and provide for military defense around 1600. These far northern encomiendas did not survive the 1680 revolt of the Pueblo Indians. By helping to establish race and ethnicity as the primary determinants of economic and political power, the encomienda system had long-reaching effects in the history of the Americas.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Calero, Luis F. Chiefdoms Under Siege: Spain's Rule and Native Adaptation in the Southern Colombian Andes, 1535–1700. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1997.

Kramer, Wendy. Encomienda Politics in Early Colonial Guatemala, 1524–1544: Dividing the Spoils. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1994.

Ramírez, Susan E. Provincial Patriarchs: Land Tenure and the Economics of Power in Colonial Peru. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1986.

Simpson, Lesley Byrd. The Encomienda in New Spain: The Beginning of Spanish Mexico. Rev. ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966.

Lance R.Blyth