The “Dueño de Indios”: Thoughts on the Consequences of the Shifting Bases of Power of the “Curaca de los Viejos Antiguos” under the Spanish in Sixteenth-Century Peru

Amοng the documents copied into the records of the residencia of the judge of Lima’s Real Audiencia and visitor to the northern provinces of Peru, Dr. Gregorio González de Cuenca, is the transcript of the judicial proceedings against don Juan, cacique¹ of the Indian community of Collique. In these 1566 proceedings, the Indian witnesses distinguished between old-style and new-style chieftains. Don Juan was described by contemporaries as a “cacique like the ancients or old ones who used to rule the valleys whom their Indian subjects feared.” The paramount lord of Túcume,² a curaca who himself was identified as a chieftain “in the ancient mold (de los viejos antiguos),” declared that don Juan was worthy of the respect of his Indian subjects, like those chieftains of times past and very unlike those who were being elevated to the position by their Spanish overlords.³

This essay uses primary sources, some written by Indian scribes, to examine, in an exploratory way, the role of the curaca during the first 40 years or so after the Spanish invasion and conquest. Using contracts, petitions, court cases, and other local-level documentation, in combination with the writings of the chroniclers, administrative reviews, records of visitas, censuses, and other Spanish viceregal documentation, I will compare the old-style curaca and his function in the local political economy with the new-style curaca who became the agent of the Spanish colonial system. Unlike several studies of the Mexican indigenous elite which stress continuity,⁴ this discussion highlights the rapidity of institutional change during these years. It also, of necessity, touches on the ideological bases of legitimacy of the curaca and the articulation of one curaca and another. Finally, the discussion has important implications for the understanding of indigenous settlement patterns (“territorialidad salpicada”) and the interdependence between polities on the coast and in the highlands.

To be a Chief or the Concept of “Good Government,” Circa 1532

To be a chief or paramount lord “de los viejos antiguos” in the first half of the sixteenth century on the North Coast⁵ of Peru (see Map I) meant that don Juan and others of his origin and generation controlled thousands of Indian subjects and managed the lands and the natural resources they used to support themselves. Their subjects knew them, first and foremost, as leaders of men, dueños de indios.”⁶ Curacas enjoyed recognized power over the life and death of their Indians. As arbitrator of local justice, the curaca decided guilt or innocence. If a commoner were guilty of a minor infraction, the curaca determined the means of torture or other punishment. If guilty of a grave offense, the curaca could take the subject’s life.⁷

Dr. Cuenca, the Spanish career bureaucrat charged with visiting and inspecting the northern part of the Peruvian viceroyalty in 1566-67,⁸ tried and executed don Juan ostensibly because he had tortured and killed two of his pages for making love to a favorite mistress. In contrast to areas under stricter Inca control, where a curaca had been supposed to get Inca permission to inflict capital punishment on his subjects, local North Coast indigenous society accepted don Juan’s judgment and his sentencing of the two. According to an Indian witness and page to don Juan, the curaca had told the two

This statement indicates a tacit recognition of the right of a curaca to take the life of his subjects. And this was not the first time: don Juan had resorted to the death penalty several times in the past. During his reign, he had purportedly already executed eight to ten subjects for unspecified misconduct.⁹

But, in general, the curaca probably exercised this power carefully and favored leniency, because his own power and prestige were equated with the number of his subjects. Many authors have commented on the fact that the rank and status of a native leader were correlated with the size of the population he controlled. Phelipe Guamán Poma de Ayala, the early seventeenth-century Indian chronicler, says that each ranked official had to have a certain number of Indian tributaries to achieve and maintain his status in the Inca’s decimal system of administration. An official’s status and reputation directly and positively correlated with the number of his subjects, increasing as the numbers grew and vice versa. This principle reinforces and expands the Spanish chronicler Bernabé Cobo’s classic definition of native wealth. According to Cobo, a rich man is the individual with a large family that could help him fulfill his tribute service obligations faster than the man with a small family. Although the context of Cobo’s statement refers to a commoner, the same definition undoubtedly applied to the native elite.¹⁰

On the North Coast, as well as other areas of Peru studied by Nathan Wachtel, rank and position were directly correlated with the number of subjects of a lord. The native households under the curaca of Jayanca still numbered over 1,000 eight years after the first direct contact with Europeans. His second-in-command went by and answered to the title of conozeque, which translated as lord of 1,000 Indians. Other lesser lords (principales, mandones, and mandoncillos) had charge over successively smaller numbers of households. In the 1560s, principales of coastal communities might hold sway over a hundred households. Mandoncillos might have as few as 5.¹¹

It is essential, however, to separate the curaca’s señorío (seigniory) and mando (command), his position and hegemony over human resources, from a territorial base. That a distinction was made is clear from testimony concerning the lord of a group of fishermen of Jayanca. Two of four key native witnesses distinguished clearly between the señorío, parcialidad (part of a whole, i.e., of a group or Indian community) or principalazgo (principality), and lands. The office of curaca, then, had both a demographic dimension and a physical, natural resource dimension.

The territorial extent of an early lord’s domain is still imperfectly understood and, as suggested above, often confused with the essential relationship of ruler and lord to subject. It is, therefore, difficult to be precise as to the specific area(s) controlled by a curaca. According to the oral traditions written down by early observers, the Inca or his agents and surveyors divided and marked a lord’s domain when the coast was incorporated into the empire (between 1462 and 1470).¹² Poma de Ayala says the Inca divided the highlands from the coast; and Fray Martín de Murúa elaborates, saying that the Inca delegated, entrusted, and assigned land and other resources to a curaca and his followers.¹³

That this demarcation had been carried out on the North Coast is evident from a petition brought before Dr. Cuenca by the cacique of Moro (a town in the modern valley of Pacasmayo), asking that the lands held by him and his counterparts of Jequetepeque, Chérrepe, and Chepén be confirmed “according to the plan (traça) devised by the said ancient caciques and Indians of said communities.’’ He reiterates the need to restore the boundary markers “constructed in the time of the Inca who established them.”¹⁴

Further evidence that the territorial domain of a curaca was indeed known and bounded comes from a viceregal decree, dated December 6, 1567, of Licenciado Lope de Castro, regarding the founding of the Spanish town of Santiago de Miraflores in the valley of Saña. It locates the boundary between the valleys, and by extension the lords, of Pacasmayo and Saña, “on the sandy plains that exist between the valleys of Saña and Pacasmayo … according to how the ancient Indians … had them divided ….¹⁵ These demarcations seem to have been an administrative convention, designed to keep the peace and to order and structure relations between neighboring lords. Poma de Ayala says of the distribution of lands that “thus were disputes avoided.”¹⁶

These quotes do not necessarily mean that the territorial dimension of a chiefdom was one compact unit, just that each lord was delegated control of specific resources, including lands scattered along the length of a valley and in different ecological zones. Use, whether direct or indirect, however, seems a better criterion for establishing “ownership,” which, as will be shown below, did not have the same connotation as today’s Western concept of private property.¹⁷ Dry lands, forests, natural pastures, and other such resources certainly fell within the lord’s domain thus defined. Like the Indians of Canta, farther to the south, studied by María Rostworowski de Diez Canseco, the Indians of the North Coast told early Spaniards that irrigation water “belonged” to the curacas too. Several explained to Dr. Cuenca that if they opened a ditch and cleaned and maintained the canal, the products harvested from lands irrigated with the water, and by extension the land itself, were theirs.¹⁸

Theoretically, therefore, rights to land depended ultimately on the delegated authority of the Inca. Water rights on the coast, though also ultimately dependent on the Inca, were more immediately dependent on the lord who controlled the headwaters of the river or canal that ran through the coast to the sea. Augusto D. León Barandiarán, in his book Mitos, leyendas y tradiciones lambayecanas, states that before the Spanish conquest, the curaca of Jayanca “bought” the ravine of Canchachalá and the water it channeled toward the coast from the lord of Penachí with “gifts” or “payments” of salt, chile peppers, and cloth. Sebastián de la Gama, a visitor to Jayanca in 1540, reports much the same relationship.

Once the water reached the coast, however, the curaca controlled it. A sentence of a court case between the lords of Jayanca and Pácora over irrigation water in the late 1530s, appealed before the Audiencia of Panama, gave the lords the right and power to name the native officials who oversaw distribution. It ordered that

These officials were to give the curaca of Jayanca ten days of water to irrigate his corn fields, and those planted for his encomendero, lesser lords, and Indian subjects. The lord of Pácora and his followers were allotted eight. On the coast, then, the curaca disposed and distributed the water as he saw fit.²⁰

Control of the water gave the curaca control over irrigated agricultural land. In a now insect-eaten and incomplete notarial register of the Indian cabildo of Lambayeque, a native scribe recorded the oral testimony of old men to the effect that the lands that those born in Lambayeque still held in 1607 had been given and assigned to them (“q[ue] les fueron repartidas y señaladas”) by the “caciques antiguos” of the town. Again, they declared that the lands “belonged” to the lords. They had been passed down in some cases, according to the Indian witnesses, through as many as ten generations.²¹

The curaca entrusted these lands to the lesser lords under him, who in turn entrusted them to subordinates further down the hierarchical community power structure until individual heads of households actually received parcels. In the land register of Lambayeque, quoted above, one entry says, regarding the lands called Colluçi, that they “belonged” to the heirs of the principal Chum, because

These statements show that, in return for access to resources, the users customarily gave the lord a percentage of the produce. Thus, the lesser lord called “Chum” paid “rent” (for lack of a better Spanish word or English equivalent) to the principal Collocçi. So, too, the lord of Ferreñafe would not let a subordinate plant on his lands without paying him tribute “as has always been done by the Indians to this day”. And the lords of Jayanca divided and subdivided the lands among their subjects in return for an annual “terrasgo” (land tax or rent).²³ Irrigation water, as noted above, was also “owned” and subject to “rental” payment. The curaca of Jayanca, for example, “made his Indians [subjects] buy water and did not want to give it to them without their paying him in good gold.”²⁴

The interpretation of the words “terrasgo,” “rent,” “tribute,” and “payment” in the above passages must be understood in terms of labor service. (The payment in “buen oro” expected by the curaca of Jayanca in 1539 was probably a Spanish idea and imposition.) María Rostworowski, to whom we are indebted increasingly for information on early native society, tells us that the father of Efquen Zula (who became principal of the community of Reque) had been a subject (feudatario) of the curaca of Callanca,” and it was his obligation to bring his people to work on the traditional lands of the curaca of Callanca.”²⁵ So, too, in Jayanca the lesser lord apportioned lands that were to be tilled for the curaca in recognition of his hegemony. It was stated that

The goods (corn, pepper, and cloth) mentioned in the passages quoted above as payment for irrigation water resulted from planting and cultivating these two crops and cotton and weaving the latter into cloth. Labor input was how the tribute obligations were originally assigned and measured. The payment in “buen oro” expected by the curaca of Jayanca in 1539 was probably a Spanish idea and imposition.²⁶

Curacas also gave the use of some of these resources to subjects of other lords. In addition to the many references of curacas renting land to subjects of other lords, we have the 1540 instructions that Pizarro gave Diego Verdejo, an encomendero and the person he entrusted with conducting a visit or inspection tour of the North Coast. In these instructions, Pizarro asked Verdejo to find out, among many other things, “what [how many] foreign immigrant (advenediros) Indians[,] subjects of other cacique[s][,] and foreigners (mitimaes) they [the curacas] have [in their jurisdiction].”²⁷

The practice of allowing outsiders, or “foreigners,” to use lands probably benefited both parties. One curaca got the use of resources he might not ordinarily control, and the proprietary lord received part of the produce from the incoming users as rent. This practice also explains how a preconquest curaca of Jayanca could have his subjects working two days’ distance away on land belonging to the lord and community of Túcume. It also suggests that señorío defined as the relationship between ruler and subordinates did not necessarily have to correspond to the territorial jurisdiction of a lord as established for administrative purposes by the Inca. In other words, that the social frontiers of a curacazgo as defined by allegiance or loyalty were not necessarily coincident with territorial boundaries and control.²⁸

The obligations of the commoners to their lord did not end with cultivating a piece of land for him. They also helped him to fulfill his responsibilities to the Inca and to maintain the rest of the community. Thus, they worked to open new canals and to keep the existing ones open and free of debris. They followed their lords to service and man the inns (tambos) and to maintain the roads. They joined their curaca, as ceremonial leader, to clean, plant, cultivate, weed, harvest, deliver, and store the commodities from the lands of the state and the gods.²⁹

To recruit the labor he needed for these tasks, the curaca personally visited the lesser lords and their subjects, wherever they lived. Don Juan Collique, on trial for his life for killing his two pages in 1566, insisted to Dr. Cuenca on his need to go “to see the towns by the sea.” Sometimes this entailed traveling long distances and making frequent stops. The existing early censuses and the toponyms of the settlements under the various lords show clearly that a curaca’s subjects were spread out in hamlets. In 1540, the subjects of the curaca of Jayanca lived in about 250 settlements scattered over a two-league radius from his administrative center. In other valleys, villages and hamlets—that recognized the same lord—might be one, two, and sometimes several leagues away. One curaca declared that he had Indians “in a district of over 30 leagues from the sea to [the highlands of] Cajamarca.”³⁰ Other curacas with known groups of subjects living at great distances from them included Copez (Copis), who lived on the coastal plain and had some principales that lived next to the Guambos in the Cajamarca highlands; the curaca of Controilico, “who lives on the coastal plains with another [subject] principal [Penachí] in the highlands”; and the curaca of Saña with subjects living in nine towns in Cajamarca.³¹

A curaca who went to visit distant subjects would be accompanied by suitable pomp and circumstance. Rostworowski describes how the coastal curacas, when they left on these trips, were accompanied by “a great ostentatious show (gran aparato) of people.” Two to three hundred bearers sometimes carried the chief’s hammock or litter and supplies. In addition, trumpeters came along to play and announce his approach; and there were jesters or buffoons to amuse and entertain the retinue.³²

Another characteristic of these visits was chicha (maize beer) drinking and banquets. Wherever the curaca stopped “all had to drink of his chicha,” according to the notable Indian defender Bartolomé de Las Casas. Fray Buenaventura Salinas y Córdova wrote that when the curaca of Tumbes received Pizarro and his men, “he offered them a banquet under a lean-to.” Poma de Ayala speaks of an indigenous “law” of mercifulness or loving-kindness (“ley de misericordia”) that predated the Incas, whereby “all ate in the public plaza. …” And, he adds, “in every community and town they observed this law.”³³

It was precisely for the festivities, the banquets, the beer, the occasional gifts of clothing, beads, and fine alpaca slippers, and, more importantly, access to land, water, and other natural resources that the commoners and their lesser lords labored and participated in communal tasks under the curaca’s direction, even if it meant leaving their homes and traveling some distance away. In one account, the principales and Indians living three leagues away responded and agreed to the curaca’s request “to obey him and do what he asks.” Another Indian had to travel two leagues to see the curaca “to obey him and do what he orders … in the public works projects.”³⁴

Without those incentives, the Indians would not obey. Cristóbal Payco, principal of the community of Jequetepeque and town of Lloco, asked for permission to provide chicha to the workers on community projects, explaining that

The cacique principal of Moro and others reiterated and confirmed this statement for their communities as well.³⁵

Thus, for the use of the resources, beer, banquets, and other ceremonies and festivities, and exchanges, the commoners worked and produced a surplus, which the curaca could use to fulfill his obligations, to reinforce these relationships, and to build his reputation. The curaca was the kingpin and prime mover of the entire redistributive exchange system on a regional level, as shown schematically below in Figure 1. On his organizational, motivational, and administrative skills rested his largesse and hospitality, and ultimately his reputation as a great man and leader. His generosity was a measure of his success and the strength, productivity, and prosperity of his people.³⁶

The obligations between ruler and ruled were reinforcing and mutually dependent. The better the curacas organization, coordination, and direction, the greater the productivity, the larger the surplus, the more abundant the feasts, and more frequent and richer the gifts, the higher the standard of living of the populace, and the larger the community could grow. The curaca delegated authority to the lesser lords to aid him in organizing the communal labor force and in redistributing goods. The more the curaca gave away, the greater his subjects’ obligations to reciprocate with labor service, and the easier it was to “request” aid and manipulate, coax, and cajole them into obeying his commands. The more they produced, the higher the standard of living of the community as a whole, and the more likely the curaca could attract others to his ranks. For serving the Inca well, a curaca often received gifts of women who would eventually enable him to expand his immediate household by having more oilspring and to increase his own productivity. A relatively prosperous community would encourage subjects of other lords to marry into his service and embolden others to ask the curaca for protection or help in return for labor service.³⁷

Theoretically, it follows that a curaca’s power and reputation could expand, subject to the approval of the Inca and the limits of the natural resources under his control, like an uncoiling spring, as shown diagrammatically in Figure 2.

Indeed, the ability of the curacas to facilitate the functioning of the economic system was perhaps the most important support of his rank and position. Ability to maintain or improve the well-being of his community as a criterion for succession to high office and legitimacy is established clearly by early testimonies. In the sixteenth-century court battles over the political leadership of north coastal Indian communities, witnesses agree that birthright alone was not sufficient to ensure succession to the office of curaca. In the early sixteenth century, a curaca was chosen from among several contenders by the incumbent curaca or a council of principal persons. Candidates for the office of curaca in Reque were “able and sufficient, capable and kind.” In Catacaos, too, a chieftain’s sons did not necessarily inherit office. If capable sons existed, the curaca might choose “the one who had the best judgment.” If no sons survived to adulthood or seemed worthy, the curaca might choose another able Indian

Up and down the coast, Indians agreed that one needed “a lot of understanding to govern the cacicazgo.”³⁸

Santillán, in summarizing the succession principle on a kingdomwide level, also defines “ability,” “understanding,” and “sufficiency”

The key phrase of Santillán that explains the object of a lord’s “capability” is “conserve his dominion.” “His dominion” referred to his subjects, without whom the natural resources he controlled were of little use.³⁹

Martín de Murúa observes in a similar vein that

The curacas of the coast saw themselves in exactly these terms: “we are caciques and we have Indians to command and visit.” Their subjects, the people, and their sheer numbers were an index and source of their wealth, power, and reputation, as noted above.⁴⁰

Poma de Ayala further states that population growth was rewarded in late prehistoric times and provided opportunities for upward mobility. He tells us that a common man could become a principal simply by having children, for his status increased positively with the size of his family. If he had five children, he received jurisdiction over them and was named a lesser lord: “little overseer” (mandoncillo). If he had 10 children, he was granted the status of mandón or overseer. If he had 30 to 50 children, he could found a community and be given land in his own right. Biologically, to accomplish the latter, a man would have had to have several wives, which we know to have been possible and customary for the elite in northern Peru and elsewhere.⁴¹

Rostworowski found that on the North Coast, as numbers grew, communities divided and separated; and each segment chose a leader, subject to the approval of the Inca. The manuscript of Castro and Ortega y Morejón discusses the periodic censuses that the Inca ordered taken and states that “as the people multiplied they made [new] lords.” Although the accomplishment of great mobility in one lifetime was probably rare, the reward structure existed. In these cases, wealth and mobility rested on achievement, defined as population growth and, by extension, good management and “institutionalized generosity,” to use a phrase favored by Murra.⁴²

If the curaca failed to live up to his subjects’ expectations, he was removed by rebellion and murder. Rostworowski recounts the oral traditions of the North Coast that tell how curacas were removed if they did not provide for the well-being of the community. In one instance, Fempellec, a lord of Lambayeque, decided to move an idol from its temple. This angered the gods, who sent 30 days of rain, followed by a year of sterility and hunger. Fempellec was blamed for the disaster and drowned by the priests. Likewise, curacas could be removed from office if they did not provide food for public banquets in the plazas or if they failed to be just, i.e., if they violated the principles of “good government.” Without this “institutionalized generosity,” the entire community was “in danger of losing everything. ”⁴³

The curaca redistributed goods, then, as much for the material benefit of his people as for his own self-interest. Perishable foodstuffs could not be stored and accumulated indefinitely, given the technology of the day. There was a limit on the cloth he could personally or ritualistically use. There was no value in hoarding, so he invested his surplus in goodwill by giving it away. Although renowned as rich men, the last wills and testaments of early curacas show they died materially poor, judged by Spanish standards. Most mentioned houses, cattle, beads, cloth, and occasionally one or more silver or wooden drinking mugs (cocos). Few, however, had all these goods.⁴⁴

The curaca was truly the “dueño de indios,” with life and death power over them. But he had no reason to kill or to restrict or withold the use of resources. It was to his advantage to share. By so doing, he enhanced his reputation as a good and generous and able provider, reinforced his legitimacy in the eyes of his people, and thus secured as his reward a place in the collective and selective memory. He would be celebrated in songs, become a revered ancestor, and thus achieve immortality.⁴⁵

Socioeconomic Disarticulation and Collapse to 1572-73, or Why the Indians Stopped Singing Songs in Praise of Their Curacas

The Spanish invasion and conquest, which the curacas were powerless to stop, fundamentally and quickly changed the circumstances within which a curaca acted, and in so doing changed the nature and function of the office and destroyed the basic premise on which the curaca’s power rested. Thereafter, he was no longer identified as the guarantor of the well-being of his people. In the course of less than 40 years, those who were invested with high office became first and foremost, though sometimes ambivalently, accomplices and functionaries of the Spanish colonial state.

Several factors—all acting to destroy the functional balance between curaca and subjects—operated simultaneously. The first, and perhaps best documented, was the demographic collapse. The populations of both coast and highlands had already been decimated by disease that spread from Mesoamerica into South America years before Francisco Pizarro’s first voyage down the coast in 1529. The chroniclers tell us that Huayna Capac died of a strange illness (assumed by many to have been either smallpox or measles) in Quito in 1524-25. Some scholars estimate that the population had fallen by 50 percent before the arrival of the Spanish. Table I, below, shows that it continued to drop dramatically through the sixteenth century.

Depopulation is also certainly evident in the town-to-town census of Jayanca in 1540. On Tuesday, July 27, 1540, the visitor arrived at a town where 12 of the 20 dwellings had collapsed. Farther along his route, he noted another where only 8, less than half the original number, remained standing. During the next two days he visited several more settlements with “demolished” and “fallen” dwellings and passed many “ruined towns.”⁴⁶ Not all the evidence of population collapse can be attributed to disease. In 1543, the Indian officials of Conchucos (in the hinterland of Trujillo) assured the visitor Cristóbal Ponce de León that some of their number had been killed fighting or forced to go to places far away (such as los Bracamoros, Quito, Chachapoyas, and Cuzco). Pedro de Cieza de León, on the road between San Miguel de Piura and Trujillo in 1548, also noted that the wars had reduced the numbers of Indians.⁴⁷

The second major factor that affected the power of the curaca was the granting of encomiendas, which gave a Spaniard the right to appropriate the labor of Indians of specific communities in return for his protection and religious instruction. As I have shown in more detail elsewhere, the Spanish did not respect indigenous administrative units when they distributed the Indians in encomiendas. Pizarro, perhaps pressured by the number of his followers who sought grants, frequently divided the subjects of one curaca between two or more Spaniards. In 1536, for example, he divided the Indians of Túcume between Juan Roldán and Juan de Osorno. Pacasmayo was divided into four encomiendas: Chérrepe, Moro, Chepén, and Jequetepeque. Fray Domingo de Santo Tomás also remarked on this phenomenon in 1550, when he noted that the Spanish often divided a province into as many as three or four encomiendas.⁴⁸

This division often led to rank inflation. Lesser lords, convinced that the Spanish did not understand the preconquest power structure, seized the opportunity to make themselves “curacas” in their own right of newly created encomiendas. They adopted the titles, insignias (duo [throne or seat], vara [staff of office]), and privileges (being carried in a litter) originally reserved for the paramount chief alone. In so doing, they quickly outnumbered the “old-style” curacas and immensely complicated the task of delimiting and defining the original curacazgos as of 1532.⁴⁹ Moreover, such dismembering of the curaca’s demographic unit reduced his economic base. Fewer people occupied and worked proportionately fewer resources. And, without coercion, they could not produce the same amount of goods and services as when they numbered several times as many.

The most serious crisis, for the old-style curacas who still lived and who recognized that their base and position ultimately rested on their subjects, came during the 1560s, when the Spanish began to settle the northern coastal valleys systematically. The first of a series of events designed to permanently attract Spaniards to the area was the founding of a Spanish town in the Valley of Saña in 1563. The king’s agent chose the site of the inn at the customary ford in the river for the settlement. He then segregated the Indian residents of the valley to one side of the river with the Spanish occupying the other; each of the 40 or so Spanish vecinos of the new town was given 40 fanegadas (approximately 115 hectares) of land on which to begin farming. The establishment of Saña coincided with a marked expansion in agriculture and cattle raising in the surrounding valleys.⁵⁰

Next, a series of reducciones, entailing the concentration of scattered hamlets into nucleated towns, greatly altered the indigenous settlement pattern and thus facilitated the expansion of the Spanish agricultural sector. Scholars are increasingly becoming aware that Viceroy Francisco de Toledo was not the first to carry out reducciones in Peru. In the North the first systematic reducciones of which we have note were ordered by Dr. Cuenca, whose public pronouncements advertised and justified the procedure as beneficial to the Indians. Concentration would facilitate their conversion and do them no harm, he stated emphatically. They need not fear moving far from their ancestral homes and lands, he continued, because he would reassign them lands close to their new settlements. Cuenca therefore ordered the scattered subjects of one lord after another to move to several centralized locations.⁵¹

In fact, however, concentration often benefited the Spaniards more than the Indians. A nucleated population facilitated conversion and also tax collection and control. Indian communities were reassigned lands close to their new settlements, as promised, but these sites were often in the lower parts of the coastal valleys, near the sea. The lands given them, then, were usually inferior to the ones they lost, because of a high water table, problems of salination, and fog and cloud cover which effectively reduced the growing season. Furthermore, the lands tended to be contiguous, in one or a few parcels. This often meant the loss of access to a range of scattered ecological niches and the variety of products these had provided the curaca and his people.

Thus, a hidden agenda of the reducciones was to open up land that was coveted by the Spanish. Cuenca had ordered that no new estancias be established near Indian settlements because of the potential damage cattle could do to the Indians’ unfenced crops. Concentration, therefore, was essential if additional ranches were to be established. Moving clusters consisting of one or two families into larger settlements opened a great deal of the best land in the northern coastal valleys to cattle raising and, later, cultivation of such cash crops as wheat and sugar cane.⁵²

Contemporaries, both encomenderos and the Indians themselves, realized that the reducciones were not in their best interest. One encomendero complained that the reducciones ordered by Dr. Cuenca removed Indians to “sickly” (swampy?) terrain where 200 Indians succumbed. One group of fishermen was resettled two leagues inland. They abandoned their new homes, scattered, and wandered about, until allowed to reestablish themselves on the sea coast where they had lived previously. In 1572, six years after it was begun by Dr. Cuenca, the process was completed under Viceroy Toledo. The known results of the reducciones on the North Coast are summarized in the table below.⁵³

Only a hint of the widespread changes occurring during this time can be provided by the references summarized above. There were about 55 named towns in 15 encomiendas created by the Spanish by the mid-1570s. Even when compared, for example, to the original visit of Jayanca in 1540, which lists some 250 hamlets and towns in that one community, this is an inadequate reminder of the changes that must have taken place within the first few decades of the Spanish conquest, many of them even before the systematic settlement of the northern coastal valleys. Regardless of the effect of individual moves on the Indians, the overall result was the same. Over time, there remained fewer and fewer Indian towns.⁵⁴

But the undermining of a curaca’s traditional power did not end with the disarticulation of the encomiendas or the concentration of Indians into reducciones. Curacas suffered a further reduction of authority when Cuenca publicized and implemented several decrees that, among other things, restricted the travels of the lords, by prohibiting them from riding horses and, further, prohibited them from providing maize beer to their subjects. The lords protested these measures and petitioned to be exempted in return for a fee. The curacas argued, first, that they were loyal subjects, and they implied accordingly that the Spanish did not have to fear that they would use the horses to mount a rebellion as Indians in the highlands had done. Second, they argued that without horses they could not visit their Indian subjects. If they could not travel they would lose contact with their people, especially those who still lived far from their administrative center. And, more importantly, if they lacked the ability to provide subjects with maize beer, the latter would not work. Because the curacas, individually and as a group, were quickly becoming the brokers and intermediaries between the Spanish and the Indian masses, approved or chosen precisely for their ability to get the Indians to produce tribute goods, the curacas’ petitions for exemption from these decrees were usually successful. But the damage was already done.⁵⁵

Furthermore, curacas complained that Dr. Cuenca increased the tribute the commoners had to pay, while listing the young, the old, the dead, and those who had fled as tribute payers to increase the number of individuals liable to contribute to the support of the Spanish. In the community of Lambayeque, for example, Cuenca increased the tribute due to the encomendero from 1,500 pieces of cloth to 2,500 per year and raised the quotas of silver to 1,000 pesos, of fanegas (each approximately 1.5 bushels) of corn to 3,000, and of chickens to 4,000. This was “much more than they used to give.”⁵⁶

At the same time, Dr. Cuenca cut the personal services the curacas could expect from their subjects and hence their support. They complained that their income had dropped to the point that they were reduced to living at the level of commoners. The curacas could not fulfill their obligations, and consequently several complained that their authority was being undermined. The lords were in danger of being “lowly esteemed and not obeyed by the rest of their subject Indians.” Don Juan claimed that Cuenca’s allocation to him and his peers was so low that “the caciques principales are like commoners, who no longer want to obey them like they used to.” The lord of Túcume similarly complained that the Indians did not obey him as they did in the time of the Incas.⁵⁷

The old-style curacas who tried to explain the traditional system to Dr. Cuenca and the Spanish became a threat to the evolving administrative structure and its ends. Outspokenness and defiance provoked the Spanish and hastened a curaca’s removal. It may have been don Juan’s defense of his traditional rights and those of his community, located as it was in one of the most fertile of the north coastal valleys and the heart of new settlement, that provoked Dr. Cuenca’s wrath and hastened the curaca’s execution.⁵⁸

Increasingly, the Spanish appointed curacas and lords who would carry out their instructions and best serve them. Francisco Pizarro began the practice; and, later, encomenderos continued to impose anyone they wished as curaca—“not the person that should have succeeded according to the Indians’ rights and privileges (fueros) and customs.” Poma de Ayala confirms this, saying, “they made a poor, tax-paying commoner paramount lord.” ⁵⁹

In general, if the cacique did not deliver the required goods to the Spanish, he was replaced, regardless of circumstances, by one who would. Thus, in Pácora, don Cristóbal’s lands were “rented” out to Indians from Jayanca by the encomendero, who received cloth and other goods from them in return. Don Cristóbal complained that he, therefore, could not pay tribute nor fulfill his obligations to his people. In response his encomendero, who also happened to be an authority of a nearby Spanish town, replaced him with a boy, who presumably would cooperate.⁶⁰

As this practice spread, commoners were asked to work for lords chosen not according to their ancient custom but by fiat of the encomendero or local Spanish authority. They were asked to obey, not to guarantee the security and well-being of their community, but to support a growing number of Spaniards. Over time, the encomendero increased his exactions, appropriating more and more of a community’s surplus. The exchange was uneven and skewed to the benefit of the Spaniards. The cost to the encomendero of religious instruction was a small fraction of the total tribute the Indians gave him. And often, especially in these early years, the encomendero failed to provide any catechism at all.

Before 1532, most goods produced by tribute labor recirculated through redistribution. Few were “lost” to ritual burning or ceremonials. Even time spent producing goods for the Inca was compensated with gifts of luxury items and commodities that were unavailable locally. After the Spanish conquest, in contrast, more and more labor was directed to producing large quantities that were siphoned out of the indigenous economy to supply a growing market demand in the Spanish sector. As this process continued, the aura of the good and able native leader diminished and with it the reason to respect, obey, remember, and praise him.

The colonial cacique was increasingly squeezed, to an extent unparalleled under the Inca. Caught between the well-being of his subjects and the demands of the Spanish, he sacrificed, in some instances reluctantly, the former. As exactions increased, the curaca, to remain a curaca, began to mistreat his subjects, and the level of recalcitrance, discontent, and resistance on their part rose accordingly. Frustrations grew because they had no effective recourse against the spiraling demands of the colonial system which were transmitted and interpreted through the curaca.⁶¹

One response was to rebel and, as in the past, remove the leader. Records from the end of the sixteenth century tell us how Xancol Chumbi, cacique of Reque, surrendered to the Spanish in 1532 and became their agent. Rostworowski recounts that his excessive subservience to the foreigners forced him to demand from the Indians under his charge a higher amount of tribute than they were accustomed to giving under the Inca. The Indians of Reque came to hate their curaca, whose death came about because of this chain of circumstances and the fact that he had not been chosen according to their customs, but instead appointed and imposed by the encomendero. Lacking legitimacy in the minds of his subjects, Xancol Chumbi was murdered by two Indians of his community.⁶² Edeco, who had been a lesser lord (principal of the cooks) under Xancol Chumbi, was elected curaca soon thereafter. Edeco himself, however, did not last more than a few months, because “he showed himself to be incapable of exercising his responsibility and was deposed.”⁶³

Over time, such action became less possible, for the curacas installed by the Spanish were also supported by them. The Spanish, vastly outnumbered by the Indians, could not countenance disobedience and severely punished any trace of insubordination to their will, not only as a punishment to those who would dare it but as a warning to others not to try. Furthermore, even if one curaca was removed from office, another would be quickly imposed by the Spanish. Hope of change through this traditional means seemed in vain.⁶⁴

Increased tribute exaction; increased pressure from their lords, whom they no longer saw as legitimate, to meet production quotas; and the associated mistreatment and abuse (i.e., “bad government”), also caused commoners to flee in great numbers. Because this was an individual or family response to a deteriorating situation and could be accomplished apparently with relative ease, it became the favored alternative.⁶⁵

The local manuscript record is thus full of complaints from curacas of subjects who have left their service and fled. In about 1566, the Indians of Pácora fled to Túcume and other places to avoid weaving 600 pieces of cloth per year, which they considered too much, given their rapidly dwindling numbers. Chuyen, an Indian woman married to Lloren who was from Saña, had “fled and [they] are now with don Gonzalo, principal of Collique.” Pedro Mollipe, a principal of Túcume, claimed 12 to 15 subjects who had fled to the valley of Motupe. There were Indians from the province of Cajamarca and parcialidad of Chontal in Chuspo and Collique.⁶⁶ One Spaniard described the situation in 1558, saying

By 1558, the frequency of these movements led to a major meeting of the curacas of the North Coast to resolve their claims. In attendance were the curacas of the communities of Sinto, Túcume, Ferreñafe, Lambayeque, Collique, Chuspo, and Saña. At this meeting, the curacas agreed to return escapees to the jurisdiction of their original curaca. Thus, the curaca of Reque got Indians from the lords of Collique, Chuspo, and Lambayeque. The lord of Chuspo received Indians from Lambayeque, Túcume, Sinto, and Reque. The lord of Ferreñafe recovered Indians who had earlier fled to Raco, Reque, and Chuspo. The lord of Sinto recovered subjects from the lords of Lambayeque, Collique, Ferreñafe, and Chuspo. The presiding Spanish judge (alcalde ordinario) then ordered the Indians of Sinto to remain there and deliver their tribute to the encomendero of Sinto, and prohibited curacas from the nearby communities of Ferreñafe, Túcume, Chuspo, Lambayeque, Collique, and Raco from luring them away or encouraging them to leave.⁶⁸

But, despite the above order and another that read “that no cacique have another’s Indians (indios agenos) …,” Indians continued to leave their original communities. Petitions to Dr. Cuenca indicate that in 1566, there were many disputes among curacas and principales for the control

of Indians, with encomenderos often taking part, to claim that particular Indians “belonged to their principales.” When these absent subjects were located, they lived on land and presumably under the protection of another lord. Thus, the curaca of Callanca found his principal, Lanpe, residing in Lambayeque. When questioned by the authorities, however, Lanpe declared that he was from Lambayeque. The matter was settled when the curaca of Lambayeque admitted that Lanpe was from Callanca.⁶⁹

Records of this dispute and others, though often incomplete, seem puzzling on two counts. On the one hand, the vehemence, asserted with confidence, with which two lords both claimed the subjects is surprising, if one assumes that one lord is lying. On the other, neither lords nor subjects, as in the case of Lanpe, seem to clearly understand or know to whom they rightly owed service. This confusion may be traced back to the fact that before the conquest one subject owed allegiance to more than one lord. A commoner cultivated lands for both a lesser lord and the curaca. After the conquest and the dismemberment of the original units, former subordinate lords became curacas in their own right. Since a commoner had previously served both, both claimed him. Both had rights.⁷⁰

The example of Lanpe also illustrates another facet of the migration phenomenon, that is, that some of the Indians who fled were encouraged to do so, as competition between curacas for subjects increased. As early as 1539, Jayanque, the curaca of Jayanca, “was served by the Indians of others,” and he continued to “usurp” them for a decade or more thereafter. The lord of Túcume was known to have taken an entire town from the lord of Ferreñafe. Two years later, the same lord complained that a principal took 16 of his subjects. In 1566, the cacique of Ferreñafe tried to get Indians from don Diego Mochumí in Túcume; and don Martín curaca principal of Lambayeque accused don Antonio, curaca of Sinto, of enticing several principales and their Indians to leave Lambayeque. An informant alleged that “caciques go around taking Indians from other communities.”⁷¹

Enticements, or pull factors, included access to land, such as Lanpe was given in Lambayeque, since it was established custom that curacas could rent land and provide irrigation water to subjects of lords other than their own. In addition to land, Indians were offered other rewards for moving. Cuenca stated

Others insisted that the usurping lord “worked and gave food to poor Indians.” Some Indians preferred another lord and stayed “because the Indian or cacique where they stay gives them chicha or clothes in order to avail himself of their work.”⁷²

Those who left were promised a better situation. As a consequence, then, we find Indians who had fled mistreatment and exploitation by their curacas, living in the settlements of other lords and being censused there, not where they were born. Because of the different rates of tribute assessed by the Spanish and the differential rates of sickness and disease, it was possible to move and find a better personal situation.⁷³ Curacas likewise took advantage of natural disasters that destroyed the irrigation system and of the disorientation and dispersion following the death of a lord to recruit the subjects of another. Curacas attracted them when “they did not have a cacique and they wandered about lost like those who do not have anyone to look out for them (como no tienen quien buelva por ellos).”⁷⁴

Once settled, however, they did not stay.

To establish order, Dr. Cuenca decreed that the Indians should return to their birthplaces.⁷⁵

The North Coast was not the only area where Indians were leaving their places of origin and fleeing to another. Poma de Ayala tells us that the phenomenon was occurring elsewhere in Peru. They flee, he says, as if they had no regrets to live in a different town. Steve Stern reports a similar situation in Ayacucho.⁷⁶ Among the reasons given for the wave of “runaway Indians” (indios cimarrones de sus pueblos) was excessive tribute exaction, which Poma de Ayala blamed, with some exaggeration, on the abuses of multiple lords:

And he reminds his readers that when Indians have enough land to subsist and enough to eat, they remain in their towns. These statements suggest that the North Coast situation was generalized and a common one in the central and southern highlands, as well.⁷⁷

The problem of migration was in sharp contrast to the usual situation before 1532 under Inca overlordship, when, at least theoretically, the Indians had to remain in their place of origin. Santillán maintains that they could not move from one province and town to another without permission. Murúa notes that the bridges and fords of rivers were watched so that “neither a runaway nor an absent Indian could pass from one town to another and they were safe in their towns and kin groups (parcialidades).” Both Santillán and Murúa list the punishments—from torture to death— meted out to those who left without authorization.⁷⁸

The reason for competition and increasing disputes between curacas over subjects was precisely the importance of numbers. Declining numbers, even given a stable and diversified resource base, meant a proportionate decline in productivity. A curaca’s power, wealth, and reputation suffered accordingly. Having more subjects meant more labor service and, therefore, a better chance of meeting tribute obligations. In the 1560s the Indians were already falling behind on tribute payments, precisely because they were so few. Also, Cuenca reassigned and distributed land according to the number of a curaca’s Indians.⁷⁹

Numbers of subjects and what they could produce were so important to these lords, caught between the increasing demands of the encomenderos and the declining population and resource base of their communities, that they reached the extreme of denying their own subjects access to resources in order to attract others who would give them a better return. Thus,

It should be pointed out, ironically, that this floating population— or what Poma de Ayala termed “absent and runaway Indians, become yanaconas”—in the middle and late sixteenth century did not enjoy the same status and exercise the same role that their predecessors had under the Inca. Santillán observes that the Inca chose yanaconas from each valley or province from the best, most able people, most of them children of curacas. He made them autonomous of the curacas so they could do his bidding. Sometimes, he made them curacas in his domains. The Spanish, Santillán goes on to say, broke that order: “everyone has become yanacona without regulation or limit.”⁸¹ They were ultimately reduced to the status of landless servants or retainers, who became the genesis of a mobile native work force that, over time, would come increasingly under the control of the Spanish. Those who remained in the rural areas, living on haciendas and estancias, continued to be called yanaconas. Those who moved to Spanish cities or Indian towns became known as forasteros.⁸²

Summary and Conclusions

In some peripheral areas of colonial Latin America, scholars have emphasized the survival of native culture and institutions. Nancy Farriss, in her recent study of Yucatán, states that the Spanish and Mayan worlds remained largely separate; much of the contact was fleeting and indirect; and, therefore, acculturation and change were slow. Native leaders cooperated, if they wished to remain in power, but few, except for the first generations in the sixteenth century, assimilated into Spanish society. Tradition, she implies, triumphed, in the sense that it survived. William Taylor also emphasizes the continuity of a cacique’s rank of prestige and authority, at least to 1650, rather than change, although his work, unlike Farriss’s, traces a colonial cacique who quickly became highly acculturated, and therefore better able to defend his office, rank, and wealth within the Spanish institutional structure. Both of these well-known authors treat the subject structurally and from an etic or outsider’s point of view. Their long-term analysis finds that the office and the personnel filling the office continue.⁸³

On the North Coast of Peru, in particular, and as the chroniclers’ statements suggest, throughout Peru, in general, the rapidity of change must be recognized.⁸⁴ The institutional transformations outlined above took place for the most part within four decades, and certainly within five, of the conquest. This suggests that the reorganization credited to Viceroy Toledo was already late and that many of the traditions on which he based his plans were already fundamentally different from what they had been a half century before.

By the 1570s, the concept, role, and basis of legitimacy of the curaca had been altered. The old-style, preconquest curaca, although obliged to support the Inca state with some of the labor of his people,⁸⁵ filled, on the local level, a primarily redistributive function. His legitimacy was based on his ability to effect “good government.” Achievement meant looking after the well-being of his demographic trust. Under his management, society remained relatively stable or grew, because the people, on the whole, supported him.

The new-style, postconquest curaca's role, in contrast, during this early period of transition was riddled with inconsistencies and contradictions. Increasingly, his purpose became one of siphoning off surplus for the Spaniards. Achievement was still a criterion for office holding, but the definition of the word had changed. Achievement, defined by the Spanish, implied mobilizing the community to produce, but less and less for the Indians’ own benefit. A colonial curaca’s jurisdiction became concentrated in a core area by the combined effects of population decline, disarticulation caused by the establishment of the encomienda, reducciones and their attendant land reassignments, and limitations on travel and hospitality, which may explain why some lords lost control over subjects living at a distance. The curaca became, in the eyes of his people, only a dim shadow of his former institutional self. Although sometimes lip-service attention was paid to genealogy and noble blood, a curaca's legitimacy became tantamount to the support of the encomendero.⁸⁶ Mistreatment of his subjects, resulting almost inevitably from his new role, bred mistrust, eroded the curaca’s traditional basis of authority, and made the society an unstable and unhappy one.

Karen Spalding describes the colonial curaca’s alliance with the Spanish as a new basis of prestige that also opened avenues for opportunistic lords to amass considerable personal fortunes. Her research found that they did this by appropriating community lands and renting or selling them as their own. Colonial curacas on the North Coast did this, too. They also, as early as 1556, entered into contracts with Spaniards to establish mixed farms. Some began to emulate their Spanish masters, spending significant proportions of their dwindling resources on imported cloth to enable them to dress in peninsular fashion. They developed a taste for wine, eschewing chicha. They began to acquire horses and ploughs to more easily work the land. They became dissatisfied with their wooden drinking beakers or mugs, preferring costlier goblets made of silver and even gold.⁸⁷

Some curacas did, then, especially in the long run, increase their wealth, power, and prestige under the Spanish. But it should be emphasized that only some accomplished this, and that it took them more than four decades. Furthermore, it should be pointed out that they thus gained prestige in the eyes of the Spanish, not in the eyes of their former followers, as the expressions of awe and respect for the “curacas de los viejos antiguos” showed. Reciprocity had been the proverbial cement holding a community together. Once the bond was broken, Indians either rebelled, a possibility of dwindling importance as the colonial regime became more firmly established, or eventually fled. Thus, though the office continued—and the personnel changed or survived depending on the degree of collaboration with the Spanish—the traditional basis of a lord’s legitimacy, reputation, and support diminished. In the short run and from an emic or insider’s perspective, the essence of the position had radically changed.

Finally, we cannot lose sight of the fact that the coastal curacazgos did not exist in a vacuum. They were dependent on the lords of the highlands for water, and, perhaps, in other ways. This suggests that the economy and society of the coast cannot be clearly and completely understood without also studying the situation in the mountains and the contact and interaction between the people of the two regions.