At last, a comparative book on the settlement policies imposed by Viceroy Francisco de Toledo in the early 1570s is available for colonial Andean specialists. Akira Saito and Claudia Rosas Laura's introduction provides readers with an understanding of the importance and complexity of reducciones (forced resettlement) of the native peoples of Spanish South America, and the impact on the subjected.
The first two chapters provide a fitting foundation. Jeremy Mumford presents a convincing overview of Toledo's rationale for the imposition of forced settlement of Andeans and points to variations in implementation, results and native resistance. Luis Miguel Glave probes the role of inspectors in various regions as they set up each reducción and laid out its structure in conjunction with (or without) native leaders. Juan de Matienzo receives special attention as he played a critical role in directing the programme at various points of time and place. Both authors note variations of resistance to forced resettlement. Glave finds some Spanish officials resisted along with native leaders. Both rightly stress regional variations in the longevity of the reducciones. Some were abandoned almost as quickly as they were founded; others persisted into the late colonial period.
In the paired chapter on the central coast, Tetsuya Amino probes two native districts of Lima. In the Jesuit-administered settlement of El Cercado on the edge of the city, many residents were members of the native elite who migrated to the capital from neighbouring districts. Religious instruction was a major aim. Across the Rímac River was the barrio of San Lazaro, a settlement of fishermen, yanaconas (servants) and migrants from elsewhere in the viceroyalty. Amino notes that the role of the confraternities and adoration of the Virgin of Copacabana were important in the formation of identity, as he observes in his close study of church records. Teresa Vergara Ormeño, in her examination of the native resettlement policies close to Lima, indicates that Toledo was not the originator of the policy. One might argue that it developed during the Spanish Reconquista of the Iberian Peninsula, then was extended to the Canary Islands. Vergara traces the beginning of the process in the Lima valley to Viceroy Andrés Hurtado de Mendoza (1556–60), who had already congregated Indians in New Spain. Her analysis of control and disputes over land, water and labour, and her systematic comparison of the nearby towns in the Rímac and Lurín river valleys is significant. The nearer to the urban centre, the more fragmented the populations, thanks to native depopulation, migration to urban centres and variations in occupation and status.
The northern coastal valleys of Peru were arguably the earliest and most impacted by the Spanish presence. Based on archaeological and historical evidence, Parker VanValkenburgh examines settlement changes and material culture during the early years of Spanish occupation in the Zaña and Chamán valleys located between Trujillo and Piura. Based on site excavations, satellite imaging and documentary evidence, he traces the rise and fall of settlements in the valleys. Alejandro Diez Hurtado examines the changes into the eighteenth century. His study of the ‘creation’ of Catacaos, Sechura and Colán in Piura is document-based as he probes the demographic transformations along this section of the north coast. He carefully analyses the population size of villages; the number and percentages of Indian and Spanish males, females, children and deaths, based on parish registers; the languages and social structure; and the process of Christianisation from patronyms.
Documentary evidence for the central highlands is extensive, and Marina Zuloaga Rada makes excellent use of it as she investigates the Huaylas reducciones in the first two centuries after conquest. Her review of the theoretical foundations of Andean reducciones extends to the ancient Mediterranean, especially the Roman Conquest and the foundation of cities among ‘barbarians’ for control and the making of good citizens. That policy was adopted in Spain during the Reconquista, and in the early Caribbean, the Yucatán and Mexico. Early efforts were largely under the direction of friars, many with the idea of establishing a Christian utopia, but the state took control by the mid-sixteenth century in New Spain, a trend that was common in all locales. In Peru continuous transformations were taking place in Toledo's reducciones. Some failed while others gained strength. Nozomi Mizota examines stability and change in the seventeenth-century Huamanga region from the time of Pedro de la Gasca through to Toledo's more systematic reducciones. Rapid breakdown of the reducciones tended to occur in places where mita (forced labour) in the mines was required. The multiplicity of ethnicities and the impact of duality in the region were complicating factors for founding and maintaining the settlements. There was constant change as some villages disappeared and others were created, as the author points out, ‘in agreement with local exigencies’ (p. 361). Mizota's analysis of demographic data from Bishop Francisco Verdugo's 1624–5 inspection of the Huamanga diocese is excellent.
In the southern highlands Steven Wernke focuses on the reducciones of the upper Colca valley, part of a joint project initiated by William Denevan's interdisciplinary team, and one of many works on the valley's past. Wernke's archaeological training, coupled with ethno-historical research, results in a series of outstanding works, including this contribution. Through painstaking examination of surface remains, he and his team helped re-configure the settlement pattern of several important residential clusters (hamlets) that were occupied from prior to the Spanish rule until the late 1560s, when they were abandoned during Toledo's resettlement process. Two of his examples are: Uyu Uyu (Yanque Viejo), whose residents were moved to Yanque on the opposite side of the Colca River; and, at a higher elevation upriver, the Toledo reducción of Santa Cruz de Tuti (Mawchu Llacta), that persisted until the middle of the nineteenth century. Not far away, a new republican Tuti nearer the river was formed. The abandoned Tuti provided Wernke and his team with an opportunity to conduct research.
Elizabeth Penry's chapter on the value and pitfalls of using colonial lawsuits regarding native settlements is valuable. She points out that, although in the La Paz region the Toledo reducciones fared poorly, by the end of the first half of the seventeenth century there was an increasing number of towns with annexes of 50 or so residents, each with its own chapel and confraternity. Town life had become ingrained, even if residency was only for part of the year. Penry argues that those creating new annexes had a substantial voice in their choices, thanks to the Spanish institution of town councils, a break from native hereditary leadership. Community members gained the power to debate and make their own decisions. Increasing numbers of forasteros (outsiders) left their own reducción to escape tribute and mita service. The new towns resembled those organised by Toledo, with a similar political structure, church, patron saint and confraternities, and spatial configuration.
The remaining five chapters deal with the mission reducciones on the frontiers of Amazonia, Paraguay and Chile. The chronology covers primarily the early seventeenth to late eighteenth centuries when the Jesuits were expelled. Roberto Tomichá Charupá examines the political nature of the creation and the social impact of the Chiquitano settlements in an area of the eastern lowlands of Bolivia. He, like Penry, argues that Toledo's political system brought annual cabildo (council) elections with a degree of freedom of self-government on the frontiers. Much of the implementation was carried out by the Jesuits, whose view of the indigenous was influenced by Father José de Acosta. He considered the Indians barbarians who could ultimately become civilised, but first they had to be fully Christianised. Following an overview of the failures of early settlements administered via the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Tomichá Charupá shifts to Moxos (1682) and Chiquitos (1691–1767). The vast frontier included some 50 different languages and, given the complexity, distances and rather modest Jesuit documentation, and their expulsion in 1767, it is difficult to measure the impact. Saito provides an excellent detailed analysis of the parcialidades (townships) in the Moxos Jesuit missions. After a compelling historiographical review of work on Moxos, she zeroes in on the challenges of the project. She points out the value of baptismal records to tease out the nature of the parcialidad, a word many Andean specialists compare to saya or ayllu. For a period of time, many of the Fathers kept careful records of births with separate registers for each parcialidad, permitting detailed analysis. Saito uses these, which also include the parcialidad relationship for each parent, making it possible to provide tentative answers to the complexity of the social and political organisation.
Guillermo Wilde examines the Paraguayan Jesuit missions with a focus on chieftainship, territoriality and historical memory. After briefly discussing the size and placement of the Guaraní missions, the author provides the background of Jesuit activities, noting the nature of that experience under Toledo in Peru. Wilde notes the Jesuits’ internal arguments regarding their role, which was largely educative or apostolic. This internal debate was similar to that of the religious orders in earlier decades. Wilde recognises the Franciscans were in Paraguay earlier, and foundations, including linguistic, had already been formed. The Jesuits, through the actions of General Claudio Aquaviva (1581–1615), established a firm footing in the region thanks to contacts in the Spanish Court and Papacy. By the second decade of the seventeenth century, they held a major missional presence in the dioceses of Paraguay, Buenos Aires and Santiago de Chile. There was substantial relocation of Jesuit mission settlements in the seventeenth century that continued into the next, with concomitant demographic decline caused by disease and conflict with ‘pagans’ on the frontiers, attacks from the Brazilian bandeirantes (slave hunters) and, by the 1750s, the boundary conflict between Spain and Portugal. Wilde's examination of chieftainship and succession is based on the Jesuit padrones (census records). Jesuits’ collaboration with the caciques was the most efficacious way to administer their missions. The Jesuit ideal was not a ‘democratic’ structure of pueblos de indios (Indian towns) with their annual elections of cabildo officials, but rather a top-down administration. However, the author points to a simultaneous process towards heterogeneity via migrations, the rise and fall of cacicazgos (territories run by a cacique), and an increasingly varied artisanal economy with its own interests. Kazuhisa Takeda provides a similar approach to Wilde's as he examines the sociocultural impact of the Guaraní Jesuit missions. Also using the padrones, he documents a clear stabilisation of the cacicazgos within the Jesuit settlements that took place in 1735.
In a final chapter Rodrigo Moreno Jeria evaluates the Jesuit ‘dreams of settlement’ of the Huilliches, Chonos, Puelches and Poyas in Chile's far south. The Jesuit presence in central Chile came in 1595 at a time when Mercedarians, Dominicans and Franciscans had already begun evangelisation in the south. The Mapuche uprising in 1598 almost wiped the slate clean of the Spanish presence between the Biobío River and Osorno in the south. After setting up a base in Santiago de Chile the Jesuits moved into the far south, beyond the Mapuche threat, and established their positions in the early seventeenth century. What, one may ask, was their interest in this region? Perhaps it was related to the rising threat of French, Dutch and English heretics as they initiated incursions into the Spanish and Portuguese presence in the Pacific, a situation in which indigenous ‘allies’ would be critical, as in Spanish Florida. Around 1608 they began their settlements based from the city of Castro in the Chiloé island archipelago. The original plan was to follow Toledo's model, with Acosta's view of the nature of the Amerindians; in this case the results would be far from the original concept. The Huilliches lived in small scattered groups on the island and others in the archipelago. Survival was based on sea resources and small-scale farming. They had already been missionised by Franciscans and Mercedarians, and were distributed by encomiendas. It was largely a subsistence economy for both Spaniards and Huilliches, and the relationship between the two was strong compared to many other regions. Regarding the Chonos and the other ethnicities, the results of Jesuit attempts were largely frustrated. Regarding the Huilliches, there is a chronological gap in Moreno Jeria's text from 1622 to 1660, perhaps related to the absence of Jesuit sources, although there was an inspection of the region by a Franciscan bishop during the 1620s that provides data on improvements that were taking place, if only for a brief period.
As a whole, this text should be mandatory for anyone interested in the Spanish colonial settlement policy in the Americas. The efforts of the editors, contributors and those institutions providing support for the research and publication deserve recognition for their excellent results. Much new investigation will be stimulated by the unanswered questions that remain.
