Mendoza y Luna, Juan Manuel de

Juan Manuel de Mendoza y Luna (marquis of Montesclaros), viceroy of Peru (1608–1615). Facing a sharp decline in state revenues, Montesclaros sought to rejuvenate the silver and mercury mining industries and increase remittances to Spain. His main efforts were directed at increasing Indian tribute and labor. The first viceroy to attempt radical changes in the Toledo resettlement system, Montesclaros proposed that Indian migrants be forced to pay taxes and participate in the state labor system. More important, Montesclaros tried to end the colonial practice of issuing licenses to those who employed yanaconas, Indians who effectively escaped state demands. Montesclaros also denounced the crown's policy of selling juros, annuities that depended on colonial revenues both as security for the purchasers' investments and as the source of interest payments. Although the sale of juros was halted in 1615, Montesclaros left office that same year still awaiting crown approval of his policies on Indian labor, which had been bitterly contested by Peru's agricultural and mining elites. His successor, the prince of Esquilache, would reverse most of the Montesclaros program.

See alsoPeru: From the Conquest Through Independence .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Kenneth J. Andrien, Crisis and Decline: The Viceroyalty of Peru in the Seventeenth Century (1985), esp. pp. 135-136.

Ann M. Wightman, Indigenous Migration and Social Change: The Forasteros of Cuzco, 1570–1720 (1990), esp. pp. 24-27.

Additional Bibliography

Drinot, Paulo and Leo Garofalo. Más allá de la dominación y resisténcia: Estudios de la historia peruana, siglos XVI-XX. Lima: IEP, 2005.

Escobar Gamboa, Mauro. El tabaco en el Perú colonial, 1752–1796. Lima, Peru: Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, 2004.

Guibovich Pérez, Pedro. Censura, libros e inquisición en el Perú colonial, 1570–1754. Sevilla, Spain: CSIC, 2003.

                                   Ann M. Wightman