This book consists of a series of discrete essays on Upper Peru during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Following a brief discussion of the bases of Andean and Hispanic society, the author analyzes the Upper Peruvian economy and its labor organization, native migratory patterns, Oruro’s mining economy and labor force, indigenous women coping with Spanish colonialism, and the frontier agricultural province of Pilaya y Paspaya. The thread that holds these essays together is the author’s tight focus on yanacona and forastero migration and the roles these groups played in Upper Peruvian society.
Through her essays, Zulawski clearly establishes the links between the silver and agricultural economies and between demographic patterns and economic change. She notes that in Upper Peru the encomienda quickly gave way to a system that included both paid forced labor (mita) and wage labor. With the introduction of the amalgamation process, however, silver production in Upper Peru began to require a larger labor force, which resulted in increased economic opportunities for members of non-mita communities. As a result, many workers abandoned their reducciones to go to Potosí, and later to Oruro, to seek their fortunes, in the process breaking some of the traditional Andean ties binding the altiplano to the valleys. Between 1543 and 1683, for example, Upper Peruvian communities lost an average of 41 percent of their original residents, although some communities, like Tarija, showed an increase in population during this same period. Migrants to the mining centers took jobs as ore carriers (apiri) or pickmen (barreteros). For the most part, forasteros became miners while yanaconas tended to become craftsmen. In Oruro, which had no mita allocation, an ore hauler initially earned five pesos a week; a pickman was paid eight pesos and could earn extra cash on the weekends as a kajcha (essentially a mineral thief), collecting ore and bringing it first to small grinding mills and then to small kilns for smelting. Wages and profits declined, however, as the rich surface ores were exhausted. The native workers survived by turning to the land for sustenance, affirming Zulawski’s argument that they “still operated according to age-old principles of ecological complementarity and communal reciprocity,” and that although the colonial economy was mercantile, “labor was not commodified” (p. 215). Challenging the views of Elinor Burkett on Indian women, Zulawski believes that Upper Peru women were more exploited than men. They were also abused in their roles as household servants, market women, and pulperas, but were able to survive with the help of neighborhood networks and family. In Pilaya y Paspaya, an agricultural province that attracted immigrants, Indians often owned property while forasteros usually rented the land they worked. Seasonal workers in this province may have been mitmaes who had completed their mita service. With the advent of wage labor, however, Zulawski believes that Pilaya y Paspaya began to manifest patterns that were distinct from those of Andean culture in general.
This is an excellent book. Although Zulawski’s Marxist framework seems a bit dated and, to this reviewer, unnecessarily jargonized, she is a careful researcher and an excellent scholar, sympathetic to the society and people she has studied. She is perceptive, asks excellent questions, and reinforces her opinions with solid evidence. This book takes its place alongside other recent studies, such as those by Ann Wightman and Karen Powers, that cast new light on the Andean people in the colonial epoch.
