Historical understanding of indigenous Andean societies has greatly benefitted in recent years from the publication and analysis of a number of colonial documents (especially visitas) containing testimony collected from Indian witnesses. Following in this tradition, the book under review makes available the record of an interrogation in 1690 of 106 Indian leaders from the sixteen altiplano provinces that were subject to the Potosí mita. The questions were concerned with certain abuses practiced by the curacas and corregidores de indios in the communities from which the witnesses came. The transcript of the testimony occupies the second half of the book, following a valuable introductory study by Sánchez Albornoz. As the author points out, the impartiality of this document is suspect (the questions asked seem to have been aimed at discrediting the recently completed census of the Duke of La Palata), and the information provided must be used with some caution. Nevertheless, he argues convincingly that the Indian witnesses were in a position to provide accurate information, and that their answers throw considerable light on the nature of Indian society in the late seventeenth century.
As interpreted by Sánchez Albornoz, this document tends to confirm the view that the seventeenth century saw a progressive decline of the indigenous Andean communities under the combined demands of the mita, the Spanish treasury, the local Spanish officials, and the curacas. There are some fascinating new details, however. The witnesses make it clear, for instance, that the burdens imposed on the communities were far from being borne equally by all of their members. Wealthy Indians could purchase exemption from the mita and could often avoid the exactions of the corregidores and the curacas. Some, in fact, were ultimately able to gain admission for their descendents into the Spanish landholding class. The demands that the rich thus escaped fell all the more heavily on the poor, whose only recourse was often to flee from their native communities, swelling the population of forasteros, Indians who did not have tribute or labor obligations in the communities where they lived. But forasteros were not completely free unless they managed to avoid the attention of the ilacatas who were dispatched by the curacas to track them down and enforce the fulfillment or buying off of their community obligations. As lands were abandoned by fleeing Indians, the curacas frequently rented or sold them in order to acquire money with which to meet community tribute obligations, and the Spaniards who sometimes bought such lands could attract Indian peons merely by providing some protection against the ilacatas. This book, then, helps to fill in a picture that has been known only in outline and represents an important addition to the literature on Andean ethnohistory.
