A compendium of the scattered, mostly printed data on 506 colonial Mexican encomenderos, Robert Himmerich’s book will be of considerable value to those who study the first half of the sixteenth century and those interested in the transfer of individuals, classes, and institutions to Spanish America. Part 1 considers these encomenderos as a group, “because the wealth generated by the encomenderos served as the engine that drove the society,” and again, “those controlling the Indians in reality dominated all aspects of society” (p. 3).
Among the factors at play Himmerich distinguishes two: the political pressure from the crown, which sought to restrict the encomienda, and the demographic collapse of the native American populations. To these, in an excellent summary, he adds factors created by the encomenderos themselves. To preexisting rank, prestige, and influence they added a hierarchy based on time of arrival. Leading the way were the “first conquerors,” those with Cortés at Cozumel and Veracruz; then the conquerors, those present at the fall of Tenochtitlán (mostly Narváez veterans); pobladores antiguos, veterans of the Indies who moved to Mexico before approximately 1531; and pobladores, the thousands who arrived by about 1550. Antiguedad, then, was a predominant factor.
Himmerich’s findings as to gender, class, and regional origins contain few surprises. Andalusians received fewer encomiendas than their large numbers would suggest. Many of them belonged to the despised sailor and merchant classes and reached the islands early, became established, and stayed. In chapter 3 Himmerich analyzes the geographic and demographic distribution of the first cities. Mexico City dominated, with 48 percent of all encomenderos. Other cities were placed to take advantage of the subject native population, with the encomienda as the main early the between city and country and the encomenderos as the elite.
The encomienda class had many inherent instabilities, however. A quarter of the encomienda was inherited by a son, 5 percent by a daughter, and only about 45 percent stayed in the family. This gave officialdom an entrée and helped it to play a powerful brokering role between the encomenderos and the crown. Encomenderos sought to consolidate power by intermarriage, cliques, and group solidarity. Spanish regionalism played less of a role than one might expect. Mexican encomenderos were more strictly supervised than their Peruvian counterparts, and less wealthy. Perhaps as a result, the Mexican experience was notably less turbulent.
Part 2, a compendium of 506 biographies, provides the raw material on which part 1 is based. The book’s main flaw, as Himmerich acknowledges, is its lack of analysis of the business and economy of the encomienda, a lack he attributes to the paucity of primary documentation. “To spend years in a low-yield search for individual facts is less significant than to publish a compilation and analysis of the vast amount already worked” (p. 304). Perhaps so. But masses of low-yield data create new data banks, and these could tell us much about the encomienda economy beyond what José Miranda and others have already provided. Himmerich was right to stop, compile, and publish, but his story will be much more complete when he returns to the archives to study the encomienda itself.
