hassket, our suffering with the taxco tribute

"Our Suffering with the Taxco Tribute": Involuntary Mine Labor and Indigenous Society inCentral New SpainAuthor(s): Robert S. HaskettSource: The Hispanic American Historical Review, Vol. 71, No. 3 (Aug., 1991), pp. 447-475Published by: Duke University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2515879 .Accessed: 27/05/2011 20:13

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"Our Suffering with the Taxco Tribute": Involuntary Mine Labor and Indigenous Society in Central New Spain

ROBERT S. HASKETT

A L T H O U G H the Spanish invaders of Mesoamerica were seeking gold, it was silver that made New Spain a populous central area of colonialism. Large-scale sil-

ver extraction began after 1550, and, by the end of the sixteenth century, bullion (some of it gold but most silver) represented 8o percent of early Mexico's total exports. The industry would have its ups and downs, but by independence the colony had produced 300 million marks of silver, equivalent to about two and a half billion ounces.' While the best known and most thoroughly studied source of this precious metal is the Mexican North, New Spain also had significant silver mining centers at its heart. Important among them was Taxco, usually ranked fourth or fifth in overall output; in 1590 its refiners used more mercury than their counterparts anywhere else, including Zacatecas. It was in Taxco that the celebrated don Jose de la Borda, known in the eighteenth century as "the first miner of the world," made his fortune at Chontalpa, a silver mine that produced over two million pesos during its most productive years in the eighteenth century.2

Unlike the northern Mexican mines, Taxco was located in a thickly

i. D. A. Brading, Miners and Merchants in Bourbon Mexico, 1763-1810 (Cambridge, 1971), 6; Richard L. Garner, "Silver Production and Entrepreneurial Structure in 18th- Century Mexico," Jahrbuch far Geschichte von Staat, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft Latein- amnerikas, 17 (1980), 157. For instance, after a period of reduced output the eighteenth century saw an overall production increase of 300 percent.

2. On mercury use, see Silvio Zavala, El servicio personal de los indios en la Nueva Espaiia, 3 vols. (Mexico City, 1984-87), III, 320. On Borda, see Brading, Miners and Mer- chants, 13. The other classic study of the northern mines is Peter J. Bakewell, Silver Mining and Society in Colonial Mexico: Zacatecas, 1546-1700 (Cambridge, 1971). For a discussion of central areas, see James Lockhart and Stuart B. Schwartz, Early Latin America: A History of Colonial Spanish America and Brazil (New York, 1983), 59.

448 | HAHR I AUGUST I ROBERT S. HASKETT

populated region whose sedentary indigenous peoples were familiar with various forms of tribute in labor and kind. The demographic situation was similar to that found in the mining regions of colonial Peru, where the rigors of mine labor have become quite familiar. The same subject has received little attention in studies of central New Spain's mining system, yet analysis of Taxco's impact on surrounding native communities can deepen our understanding of the ways in which the silver industry acted on the fabric of indigenous society across the hemisphere.3

Even though Taxco's native peoples lacked the mining skills of their preconquest Andean counterparts, Mexican mine owners were able to use various forms of involuntary tribute labor. This obligation, eventually in- volving people from a wide surrounding area, had a profound effect on Indian workers, their families, and their towns. The regular movement of laborers to and from the mines increased contact among Indians from many different regions and between them and a variety of non-Indians. Tributary mine workers became intermediaries of a sort, linking their communities with the outside world and facilitating a certain amount of cultural exchange. Yet as in Peru, the Indians usually benefited least from the exchange, giving far more in time, labor, and lives than they ever received in return. Because involuntary mine labor became a hated burden, Indians from affected towns engaged singly or collectively in what histo- rian Steve J. Stern has called "resistive adaptation" as they tried various means, legal and illegal, peaceful and violent, to win exemption from the labor draftt' The extensive records produced during their struggles expose the tensions created by the mining draft as well as the techniques used to fight it. The Indian perspective of the issues at stake, which revolved around family and community integrity and preserving local control of the municipality's own human resources, leaps forcefully from the documents.

3. The principal sources for the present study are found in Mexico's Archivo General de la Naci6n and Spain's Archivo de Indias (hereafter AGN and AGI). Whenever possible, Nahuatl-language records were used to recover the Indian perspective, and the search for more such vital documents continues. For Peru see the work of Bakewell, Millers of the Red Mountain: Indian Labor in Potosi, 1545-1650 (Albuquerque, 1984); Jeffrey A. Cole, "An Abolitionism Born of Frustration: The Conde de Lenios and the Potosi Mita, 1667-73," HAHR, 63:2 (May 1983), 307-333, and The Potosi Mita, 1573-1700: Compulsory Indian Labor in the Andes (Stanford, 1985); and Steve J. Stern, Peru's Indian Peoples and the Chlal- lenge of Spanish Conquest: Huamanga to 1640 (Madison, 1982). A suggestive comparative study of mining in Mexico and Peru is Brading and Harry E. Cross, "Colonial Silver Mining: Mexico and Peru," HAHR, 52:4 (November 1972), 545-579.

4. Stern, "New Approaches to the Study of Peasant Rebellion," in Resistance, Rebel- lion, and Consciousness in the Andean Peasant World, z8th to 20th Centuries, ed. Stern (Madison, 1987), 11.

OUR SUFFERING WITH THE TAXCO TRIBUTE 449

Prehispanic Tlachco and Early Colonial Taxco

Tlachco, the "place of the ball court" (tlachtli, ball game, plus -co, a locative), was originally the capital of a Chontal-speaking region (also in- habited by some Mazateca) of twelve altepetl (city-states). In the fifteenth century the region was conquered by forces of the expanding Mexica empire under Moctezuma I, who subordinated the local population and established a military governor and garrison at Tlachco. Sixteenth-century Spanish penetration of the Tlachco region came as a result of expeditions led by the conquerors Juan de Cabra and Juan de Salcedo, dispatched to locate the sources of Mexica gold and silver. At first all they found was copper, known to have been exploited in some fashion before the conquest and used by the local inhabitants as a kind of currency. Copper ore, along with some iron, was reportedly being extracted and smelted as early as 1524. Spaniards were soon actively exploiting gold placers in the area as well, though this boom was disappointingly short-lived. Luckily for the first miners, silver was an enticingly noticeable by-product of gold extraction.5

Such were the humble beginnings of silver mining, which would prove to be Taxco's major economic reason for being for the rest of the colonial era and beyond. The first important silver strikes occurred in 1534 and continued into the 1540s, by which time deep deposits reportedly were being worked. The initial "bonanza" came in 1542 at mines held by Luis de Castillo, who rather conveniently held the office of alcalde mayor of Taxco at the time. Legend has it, however, that the original dis- coverer was actually an Indian charcoal maker named Miguel Jose, who while engaged in his daily activities found threads of silver on the ground. Miguel searched diligently for more, and he finally found a vein so rich that by 1700 it was said to have produced millions of pesos' worth of silver. Of course it was not Miguel who benefited, but rather the alcalde mayor Castillo and other Iberian miners; this is the first recorded instance of an Indian losing out to Spanish interests in the Taxco mining region.6

5. As a tributary province, Tlachco and its hinterland had to send to Tenochtitldn a certain amount of cotton clothing, bolts of cloth, and maize, which was grown in specially designated fields. See Peter Gerhard, A Guide to the Historical Geography of New Spain (Cambridge, 1972), 252; Francisco del Paso y Troncoso, ed., "Relaci6n de las minas de Taxco," Relaciones geogrdficas de Mexico (Mexico City, 1979), 276; and Manuel Toussaint, Tasco (Mexico City, 1931), 9-15. Perhaps the altepetl had been a source for the copper used by the peoples of central Mexico for ceremonial weapons, etc. See Carlos Prieto, Mining in the New World (New York, 1973), 21, 154; Toussaint, Tasco, 23. For silver as a by-product, see Peggy Liss, Mexico Under Spain (Chicago, 1975), i86; similar conditions existed at early Sultepec and Zumpango.

6. On silver strikes, see Prieto, Mining in the New World, 21; Toussaint, Tasco, 26. On the 1542 strike, see Modesto Bargall6, La itineria y la inetalurgia en la America Espa-


Located at i,8oo meters among oak forests in a dramatic mountain- ous setting, the area of the silver strikes enjoyed a temperate and dry climate. Similar to Peru's Potosi, mining activity centered on a mountain, known as Huizteco, shot through with ore-bearing veins running from the southwest to the northeast. Booming silver production here had many important implications for the indigenous population of the surrounding region, as well as for the whole of central New Spain. Since the mines themselves were located at a distance of two leagues or more fiom the original Tlachco, the altepetl relinquished much of its centrality and importance. Renamed "Taxco el viejo," it suffered some population loss as its citizens were drawn to the three reales de minas established after 1534. In 1569, the year a detailed report of the region was compiled for the Catholic church, the majority of the region's 4,000 Nahuatl- and Chontal-speaking tributaries and their families still resided in the original Taxco, as well as in five other self-governing Indian communities, Hueyiz- taca, Atzalan, Tenango, Acamixtiahuaca, and Tlamacazapan.] But by 1599 Taxco el viejo was described as being in some decadence, and though it remained a cabecera it was overshadowed by the other, more populous Indian communities in the surrounding area.

Meanwhile, the three reales, Teteltzingo (modern-day Taxco de Alar- con), Cantarranas, and Tenango, had become the most important centers of population, commerce, and colonial bureaucracy in the region. As of 1569, Teteltzingo was the seat of an alcalde mayor and the focus of religious administration for the entire mining complex. The Spanish population of the three reales totalled 92 male heads of household. There were also some 516 black slaves of both sexes, 905 indigenous males above the age of twelve known as indios de cuadrilla (a term used interchangeably with naboria [dependent], but referring specifically to Indians living as part of cuadrilla labor gangs), and in Teteltzingo alone 6o6 male tributaries over twelve. Some of the indios de cuadrilla had been part of a stream of indigenous migrants from other regions. Following classic patterns noted in New Spain's north, they seem to have lived together in their own bar- rios. The cabecera of Tenango, for instance, had two districts populated by Tarascan immigrants who made their living supplying charcoal and firewood to the mines. Because of the mines' burgeoning human population and booming silver production, further administrative consolidation occurred in 1570, when the three reales were combined into one, the Real

nola durante la 6poca colonial (Mexico City, 1955), 56-58, 94, 211. On Miguel, see J. R. Southworth, The Mines of Mexico (Liverpool, 1905), 122.

7. On Huizteco, see Southworth, Mines of Mexico, 120-121. All references to the 1569 report can be found in Alonso de Mont6far, Descripci6n del Arzobispado de Mexico hecha en 1570 (Mexico City, 1897), 170-184.


y Minas de Taxco. By 1580 the number of Indian cabeceras under the control of Taxco's alcalde mayor had reached twelve. This was the form that the reales of Taxco would maintain for most of the colonial era.8

Labor in the Sixteenth-Century Reales de Taxco

Hernando Cortes controlled most of the early mining in the Taxco area. The first shaft exploited in his name, known as the Socavon del Real, was reportedly large enough for a mounted rider to enter. The most productive Cortes mine, however, was a complex held in the Real de Cantarranas, in 1568 consisting of houses for workers, a church, and three mills, one of them water powered. The Cortes labor force was made up almost entirely of Indians. An unknown number were brought in from the Toluca Valley, possibly encomienda Indians from the Marquesado holdings in the region, perhaps naborias working for wages, or both. Cortes, along with other early miners, also exploited the labor of Indian slaves, who toiled in gangs ranging from 28 to ioo individuals of both sexes. In fact, the buying and selling of Indian slaves for use in Taxco and elsewhere was not uncommon into the late 1540s. The records of the notary archives of Mexico City are full of references to Spaniards trading in indigenous lives. In 1528, for example, Anton Carmona, who had mining interests in Taxco, purchased ioo Indian slaves of both sexes from another Spaniard of Oaxaca.9

As far as a Cortes hacienda de minas and a mine known as Guaytepetl were concerned, an inventory of July 1549 lists a cuadrilla of 8 African and 114 male and female Indian slaves. Thirty-six of the Indians were from towns in the center of the colony, with Mexico City, Tlaxcala, Texcoco, and the Puebla region all making significant contributions. Another 30 were from the Taxco area itself. Sixteen came from the South, Tabasco and Oaxaca; 13 from Veracruz (especially Panuco); 5 from the North, Colima and Hidalgo; and 3 from Guatemala. While women outnumbered men (66 to 48), because of the presence of many unmarried females, the ma-

8. Toussaint, Tasco, 27, 32; Paso y Troncoso, "Relaci6n," 266. For a description of cuadrilla organization, see Bakewell, Silver Mining and Society, 125.

9. On the Socav6n del Real, see Southworth, Mines of Mexico, 121; the shaft was still in existence in 1905 and had reached a length of 650 meters. On Cantarranas, see Zavala, El servicio personal, II, 192. On labor gangs, see Jean-Pierre Berthe, "Las minas de oro del Marqu6s del Valle en Tehuantepec, 1540-1547," Historia Mexicana, 8:1 (July-Sept. 1958), 122-123; Liss, Mexico Under Spain, 187. On slave transactions, see A. Millares Carlo and J. I. Mantec6n, Indice y extractos de los protocolos del Archivo de Notarias de Mexico, D. F., 2 vols. (Mexico City, 1945-46), I, 296, and especially 352, the case of Servdn Be- jarano, sometime mine owner of Taxco, selling 1oo Indian slaves to another Spaniard in 1528. For comparison consult Zavala, El servicio personal, I, 203-204, who records that Gaspar de Soria of Mexico City sold Crist6bal de Cisneros a number of Indian and black slaves, along with mining equipment and mining rights, for 2,500 pesos in September 1536.

452 IHAHR I AUGUST R ROBERT S. HASKETT

TABLE 1: Places of Origin of Married Indian Slaves

Pair from same town (13 couples total)

Izhuatlan PAnuco M6xico Texcoco Oaxaca Tutultepec (8 couples)

Pair from different towns (24 couples total, males' towns listed first)

Chalco and Texcoco Tecamuztian and Tuzapan Chinantla and Texcoco Teneztiquapac and PAnnuco Chinantla and Tutultepec Tetlan and Iz6car Chinantla and Oaxaca Texcoco and Cuernavaca Guatemala and CulhuacAin Texcoco and Xalatlaco Guatemala and Tlaxcala Tlaxcala and M6xico M6xico and ZacatlAn Tlaxcala and Ochicoztla Oaxaca and Colima Tlaxcala and PAnuco Oaxaca and Meztitldn Tlaxcala and Texcoco Oaxaca and PAnuco Tonalk and Cuautitkin Oaxaca and Texcoco ZacatlAn and Iz6car Tacacula and AcatlAn ZacatlAn and Texcoco

Sources: See note Lo.

jority of slaves were married couples (74 people or 37 couples). In 13 cases husbands and wives were from the same place of origin, but more often spouses came from different towns and regions, indicating marriage after they had been brought together in the slave cuadrilla (see Table i).1o

The early end of warfare in central Mexico had theoretically brought a halt to the practice of enslaving indigenous people in "just war." It is possible that a few of the Indian slaves held by Cortes and being bought, sold, and traded by other miners and merchants in Mexico City were sur- vivors from an earlier time of conflict. But only a handful of the marques's human chattel were from regions, such as Central America, where "just war" still applied. What unfortunate combination of circumstances led to the loss of freedom of the majority of the Taxco slaves?

Charles Gibson has suggested that, by extension, the "just war" con- cept was interpreted to imply that "all the native inhabitants of the Valley [of Mexico] had been captured in war." He reports, for instance, that Cor-

io. Inventory of the Cort6s hacienda de nw-inas in AGN, Hospital de Jesu's (hereafter HJ), leg. 129, exp. 4, fols. 1002v-1007v (copy located in Tulane University, Latin America Library, France V. Scholes Collection). For locations of the slaves' places of origin see CUsar Macazaga Ordofio, Nombres geogrdficos de Mexico (Mexico City, 1979), and Francisco Gonzalez de Cossio, ed., El libro de las tasaciones de pueblos de la Niieva Espaiio, siglo XVI (Mexico City, 1952). Berthe, "Las minas de oro," 126, noted that in 1548 100 Indian slaves from the failing Cort6s gold mines in Tehuantepec were transferred to Taxco. The 1549 slave inventory does not support his contention that all of them were natives of Tehuantepec.


tes branded and sold Indians of Texcoco into slavery; perhaps some of the Texcocan slaves of Taxco had been among these unfortunates. Moreover, the idea that all conquered people were war captives led to a blurring of distinctions between the encomienda and outright slavery. In the first encomienda generation, it was not unknown for encomenderos to rent their Indians to miners, even though the rental of indigenous people to others had been legally banned in 1528. In 1536, a Mexico City merchant who also had mining interests in Taxco, Juan Fernandez, secured the services of forty Indians for a year of labor at the mines for 550 pesos from an encomendero of Tequipaque named Francisco de Zamora. Evidence from Mexico City's notary archives indicates that other early Taxco miners were similarly involved in the illegal rental of encomienda Indians. Spaniards also expropriated surviving preconquest Indian slaves from their indigenous masters. Though Indians had been forbidden to hold other Indians as slaves soon after the Spanish invasion, the institution survived into the i55os at Texcoco, Culhuacan, and elsewhere. Furthermore, just as Indian criminals sentenced to obraje labor were considered slaves, it does not stretch the imagination too far to think that at least some of the Taxco slaves, including Martin Cayntl, a principal (noble) of Mexico City, were criminals sentenced to mine labor. Such sentences were indeed meted out in the Cuernavaca region as late as the eighteenth century."

Mine labor was evolving after the silver strikes of 1532, even though Indian slaves were still common. However, as in the northern mining complex, which had initially employed some enslaved Chichimeca in the mines, by the mid-iL5os the use of Indian slave labor in the central Mexi- can mines had ceased. Although probably in part a result of high slave mortality, this development-now that conquest was complete in all but the farthest reaches of the emerging colonial empire-corresponded with the end of Indian slavery in most regions. Black slaves, once in the mli- nority in places such as Taxco, were employed as replacements for their indigenous counterparts, and their presence grew accordingly.'2

But Africans were costly, and in Taxco, at least, they did not replace

ii. Charles Gibson, The Aztecs Under Spanish Rule (Stanford, 1964), 77-78. Oil rental, see Zavala, El servicio personal, I, 281, 203-204; for other miners involved in similar rental transactions in the middle 1530s, see Millares Carlo and Mantec6n, indice y extractos, II, 30, 131. See 1725 sentencing of ringleaders of TepoztlAn rioting in AGN, Civil, vol. .6o8, exp. 10, and Gibson, Aztecs, 154, 244.

12. Bakewell, Silver Mining and Society, 122; Berthe, "Las minas de oro," 126; Zavala, Tributos y servicios personales de indios para Hernan Cortes y su familiar (extractos de docunentos del siglo XVI) (Mexico City, 1984), 283-289. For comparison, see William L. Sherman, "Some Aspects of Forced Labor in Chiapas (Sixteenth Century)," in El trabajo y los trabajadores en la historia de Mexico, Elsa Cecilia Frost et al., comps. (Mexico City, 1979), 192-195, and Forced Native Labor inl Sixteenth Century Central America (Lincoln, 1979), 158-159.


indigenous mine labor. Black slaves were joined by large numbers of nabo- rHas and local tributaries in every facet of mining. By 1576, 2,300 naborHas were residing in Taxco, outnumbering the African slave population of 6oo and dwarfing the 150 Spanish heads of household of the reales.13 Tribu- tary Indians in the immediate Taxco region supplied a good deal of labor, as well. Those indigenous citizens not employed in mining itself supplied charcoal, firewood, and fodder for the horses and other animals used in the reales.14

The Indians of the Taxco area were a good source of mine labor because they were not primarily agriculturalists, in part because of the difficult, rough, and dry terrain, in part owing to the demands of the mines; it fell to others to meet Taxco's subsistence needs. Some mining entrepreneurs, such as Anton de Carmona in the 1530s, were also involved in supplying food for the Taxco reales.15 However, food earmarked for slaves and other workers seems to have come principally in the form of tribute collected directly fiom communities held in encomienda in the surrounding region. It is probable that for every Indian miner or slave working in the reales, the efforts of five other Indians were needed to supply the required amount of food, clothing, and other essentials.16 The weekly allotments of goods supplied by means of the encomienda varied with the nature of the local economy. Many were traditional prehispanic tribute items, such as beans, aji, chia, copal, pottery jars, salt, and above all maize. Items of native clothing and cotton cloth were standard, too. Thus in 1541, Tolucan Indi- ans held by Cortes in what amounted to an encomienda were obliged to send the conqueror's mayordomo 24,000 cacao beans and 300 fanegas of maize to Taxco and Sultepec "for the slaves of the marques." Clothing for slaves came from the same type of source; in 1539, Cuernavaca, which also owed tribute to Cortes, sent eight loads of clothing for his Taxco Indian slaves. 17

Much of the cacao bean tribute was used to pay for the services of tamemnes, Indian bearers who continued to perform the same kinds of tasks as had their preconquest forerunners. In 1542, for instance, the town of Tlaltenango was obligated to Cort's for the provision of 24,000 beans to pay for the services of goo tamemes "who take flour to Taxco." Tameme labor was crucial to the opening and supply of mines in Taxco because of the poor state of the trails in and out of the mountains. The

13. Zavala, El servicio personal, III, 300. 14. Descripci6n del Arzobispado, 171-184. 15. Millares Carlo and Mantec6n, indice y extractos, II, 34. 16. Liss, Mexico Under Spain, 187; these figures were developed in the study of the

Tehuantepec mines. 17. Zavala, El servicio personal, I, 225-226.


narrow and eroded paths were unsafe for mule trains, even had large numbers of such animals been available. Early postconquest tamerne service had proved so onerous that in 1528 an order was issued limiting porters serving encomenderos to carrying tribute goods only within an orbit of twenty leagues of their homes. Encomenderos constantly violated these strictures, however, by forcing their charges to carry tribute goods well beyond the limits of their encomienda grants. Bowing to reality, in 1533 the royal authorities modified the tamemne law to allow the use of paid Indian porters if no other form of transport was available and if the Indians were willing to serve voluntarily; the former (if not the latter) was true of the Taxco mines. Under this new law tamnernes could only be asked to carry a maximum of two arrobas and were to be paid according to the weight carried. The regulations did not end abuses, but the use of tarnemes to carry ore from mining regions for shipment to Spain was on the way out by the midsixteenth century everywhere in New Spain, mainly as a result of the increasing number of draft animals available and the decreasing number of Indians. The tarnerne tribute came to an end in Taxco in 1549.18

As early as the 1530s black and Indian slaves, naborias, and the local tributary population of the reales and the six nearby cabeceras had proved unequal to the task of supplying Taxco with adequate inexpensive, unskilled mine labor. Accordingly, at least nineteen other Indian communities began to send labor, as well as food, to Taxco. Though some of these were in the greater Taxco region itself, six were in Michoacan (Cuzamala, Jacona, Tarimbaro, Taimeo, Zinapecuaro, and Araro) and three were in the Toluca Valley (Coatepec, Metepec, and Tepemaxalco). They were required to send levies of workers to the mining operations of their encomenderos at varying intervals, usually every thirty days. A good example is provided by the pueblo of Taimeo, in the corregimiento of Yete- comal in Michoacan. As of 1548, every thirty days Taimeo's encomendero demanded twenty indios de servicio to be dispatched to Taxco, along with two principales and a nahuatlato (interpreter). Each group of workers had to bring five cargas of beans, a certain amount of chili, five large pottery jars, five pairs of alpargatas, five cakes of salt, and ten shallow basins used to wash ore. Such legal service could weigh heavily on the communities involved, but there also is some evidence that miners of Taxco were able to coerce involuntary labor and services from other Indians outside the law, though the exact mechanisms of this system remain to be discovered.

18. Ibid. Zavala notes that Toluca was obligated to dispatch 20,000 beans to pay the "Indian commoners who take the wood which they cut to the mines of Taxco and Sultepec, with which the ingenios are built"; on maximum loads, 125, 146; on the demise of tmeinze tribute, 165-166.


People from Xochimilco, for instance, had been sent to Taxco to work as woodcutters in this type of extralegal arrangement.'9

Repartimiento Mine Labor

The nature of mine labor changed again by the midsixteenth century. By the early 1550S the encomienda had ceased to be an effective source of mine workers. In part, the institution was fading in importance because of competing demands for access to Indian labor by a growing number of nonencomnenderos. But epidemic disease and the resulting demographic decline was the main culprit, and Taxco was not exempt. Major outbreaks in 1544-45 and 1576-77 left only 200 encomienda Indians in the area. In the face of this drastic decline, and at least partially in response to pleas from affected communities to have their tribute obligations adjusted, many of the original towns supplying encomienda labor drafts to the reales were given exemptions. Moreover, the amount of tribute in goods owed to encomenderos by these communities was first reduced, then commuted to fixed quotas of cash and maize.20

Other forms of coercive work were also harder to obtain because of the changing general demographic situation and official action. In April 1551, Viceroy Velasco attacked the problem of illegal forced labor by issu- ing orders prohibiting miners from compelling free Indians to work at Taxco as woodcutters for the refineries. Towns such as Xochimilco stood to benefit, but similar practices continued, prompting another royal de- cree in 1552 that all involuntary contributions of food, fodder, and fuel to the mines of New Spain were to cease. Combined with the end of Indian slavery and the failure of the encomienda to supply adequate amounts of labor and goods, these regulations caused an uproar among New Spain's mine owners, who claimed that they would soon lack sufficient food for their workers and fuel to run their refineries.2'

Some of the slack in labor was undoubtedly taken up by a growing naboria population. As in Peru, however, such free wage labor was probably too expensive to use in a variety of heavy, unskilled, and often dangerous tasks. Another similarity between the reales of Taxco and the

19. Gonzalez de Cossio, Tasaciones de los pueblos, scattered entries, 163-556. It is not completely clear that all encoimienda service to Taxco was for encomenderos who had mining operations there, though many did. In other cases encomienda Indians may have been supplying goods and labor to nonencomendero mine owners for a fee. The Tainleo encomienda was held jointly by Gaspar Ddvila and the unnamed wife and children of Francisco Rodrigues, of Zacatula (ibid., 316). On Xochimilco, see Zavala, El servicio personal, II, 161.

20. On the epidemics, see Zavala, El servicio personal, III, 300; and Paso y Troncoso, "Relaci6n," 265. On tribute reductions, see Gonzalez de Cossio, Tasaciones de los pueblos, 163-166.

21. Zavala, El servicio personal, II, 161, 202.


TABLE 2: Population of the Cuernavaca Jurisdiction Figures for the 4-percent Rule

Year Tributary population Per week Per year

1588 8,1o8.o 324.32 16,864.64 1644 5,313.0 212.52 11,051.04

1692 5,079.0 203.16 10,564-32 1710 5,628.5 225.14 11,707.28 1721 6,498.5 259.4 13,488.8

Note: None of these figures reflect exemptions given to various tributaries for age, church service, etc. Sources: 1588, Biblioteca Nacional, Fondo Reservado, Fondo Franciscano, leg. 89, exp. 1376; 1644, 1692, Jos6 Miranda, "La poblaci6n indigent de M6xico en el siglo XVII," His- toria Mexicana, 12:2 (Oct.-Dec. 1962), 182-189; 1710, AGN, HJ, vol. 50, exp. 6, fol. 4r; 1721, AGN, HJ, vol. 50, exp. 6, fol. 88r (maize tribute records).

highlands of Peru worked in the miners' favor: Taxco was situated within the range of sedentary Indian population. In Peru, this meant that the mita, a tribute labor system of prehispanic origin molded to the needs of the Spanish economy, provided mining centers such as Potosi with large numbers of workers beginning in the second half of the sixteenth century. In Taxco and other central Mexican reales, mine owners could tap the repartimniento, a government-controlled draft tribute labor system that had begun to replace the encomienda as a source of involuntary workers in the 1550s. Many of the repartimiento workers employed at Taxco came from the adjacent Marquesado jurisdiction of Cuernavaca, though some originated in areas north of the mines and from towns within the greater hinterland of Taxco itself. In 1588, under a rule that communities were to provide 4 percent of their tributary population per week for distribution to various private and public enterprises by royal officials overseeing the repartimiento, the Cuernavaca jurisdiction had the potential to send a weekly levy of 324 workers, or a yearly total of 16,864 tribute laborers. By 1721, after a period of demographic decline followed by slow recovery, the region could still potentially muster 259 tributaries a week, or 13,488 per year (see Table 2). While these gross figures do not take into account holiday periods and include an unknown number of people who would have been exempted from the repartimiento, the Cuernavaca jurisdiction was clearly an attractive source of involuntary mine labor.22

22. On the mita, see Cole, The Potosi Mita, 17-18; free workers at Potosi demanded high wages for such work or refused to do it outright. Also, Cole, "Abolitionism," 307. For comparison to labor in New Spain's northern mines, see Bakewell, Silver Mining and Soci- ety, 124-125. The 4-percent rule was in place by 1587 and reaffirmed in 1590; Zavala, El servicio personal, III, 366, 373. For a concise description of repartimiento recruitmnent and distribution, see Gibson, Spain in America (New York, 1966), 143.


The conditions of service for individual tributaries in New Spain's mine repartimiento were closely controlled, at least on paper, and somewhat less onerous than in the mita of Peru, which from the beginning required longer terms of service and forced regions to send much larger levies of workers. The Recopilacion de Leyes is full of laws intended to govern every possible aspect of Indian repartimiento mine labor. Aside from the 4-percent rule, the more important regulations stipulated that only towns twenty leagues or closer to the mines were liable for the mine repartimiento and that workers could not be taken from one type of climate to another, a practice thought to pose a serious health hazard. Members of the nobility, certain high-level town officers, and church functionaries such as cantores were exempt from the levy. One or a few "pious and good" town officers were to accompany workers, who were to be paid a daily wage of one, and later two, reals for their labor and for travel time. Once in the mines, they were to be treated well, worked only in the daytime and on the surface, not in the shafts, and encouraged to hear mass. Adequate housing and access to agricultural land were to be made available. Any evidence that mine repartimiento labor endangered the livelihood of the Indians involved was supposed to lead to their exemption from the obligation.23

The actual labor performed by repartimiento workers is seldom spelled out in detail. Many seem to have been employed to carry bags of ore out of shafts (perhaps skirting regulations against labor underground since they were not actually digging ore). Others performed heavy unskilled tasks on the surface, and still others labored in the haciendas de minas, or refineries, often alongside higher-skilled black slaves. Short-term repartimiento workers were hard to train in the complexities of smelting and, along with wage-earning refinery workers, suffered a high death toll as a result of lead poisoning (lead-laced smoke, a by-product of smelting,

23. New Spain's government had apparently heard distressing reports from Peru, where from one-third to three-quarters of mita workers were employed in dangerous labor in the mine shafts themselves. See Cole, The Potosi Mita, 9, 12, 23-24; and Bakewell, Miners of the Red Mountain, 141-142. Repartimiento regulations have been compiled from a variety of sources, including AGI, Patronato Real, leg. 238, no. 4, ramo 2, fol. ir (New Spain, late sixteenth century); AGN, Civil, vol. 16o8, exp. 10, fols. 43r, 71r-83v (Cuernavaca jurisdiction, 1725); AGN, HJ, leg. 208, exp. 210 (Ticuman, Cuernavaca, 1732); AGN, Indios, vol. 4, exp. 768, fol. 221V (Iguala, 1590), vol. 29, exp. 15, fol. 20, exp. 144, fol. 124, and exp. 167, fols. 140v-141r (San Gaspar Coatlan, 1684, San Lorenzo, Cuernavaca, 1686); and Roberto Moreno, "R6gimen de trabajo en la mineria del siglo XVIII," in El trabajo y los trabajadores en la historia de Mexico, 251-252. See also an order of 1590 that repartirniento workers could labor only from sunrise to sunset and that they could not work in the shafts, and another of June 9, 1599, setting repartimiento pay at one real a day, while the Indian alguaciles who brought workers to the mines were to receive one real for every eight Indian workers; Zavala, El servicio personal, III, 373, 389.


was inhaled by workers). For these reasons, the repartimiento quickly fell out of use in smelting, which in any event was being overshadowed by another technique better suited to the typically low-grade Mexican ores, the well-known "patio process." Employed at Taxco in at least twenty- eight refineries by 1563, it produced an easily processed amalgam of silver and mercury after the latter had been stirred by workers, including at least some repartimiento workers, into a slurry of mud formed from crushed ore and then heaped in vats or in a large, stone-paved yard (the "patio").24

The Impact of Repartimiento Service

Repartimiento service in Taxco (known as the tlachcotequitl within the indigenous communities) had both positive and negative aspects as far as the Indians of the Cuernavaca region were concerned. On the positive side, the mines and their growing permanent and temporary populations continued to demand a wide variety of goods. With the demise of the encomienda, it was increasingly left to individual producers and estates to meet this need. Indian citizens of the Cuernavaca jurisdiction, including tributaries subject to repartimiento, town officers, and their wives, were actively involved in the resulting trade, selling items of clothing, fruit, and other foodstuffs in the reales.25 An unknown number of ambitious repartimiento workers and sometimes whole families, eager to earn more money than was possible if they stayed at home and perhaps to escape tribute obligations altogether, chose to relocate permanently in the mines as naborias. There they joined a growing community of migrants from

24. Tributaries from Jonacat6pec and Xantelelco worked in the shafts, 1619 (AGN, Indios, vol. 7, exp. 361, fol. 174r); repartimiento workers labored in refineries, Apaztla and Izeateopan, Zacualpan, 1735 (AGN, Indios, vol. 54, fols. loir-lo2r). And see Cole, "Abo- litionism," 309. Descriptions of the patio process, which also used a certain amount of salt and in which human stirrers were not replaced by animals until the late eighteenth century, can be found in Bakewell, Silver Mining and Society, 139-141; Alan Probert, -Bartolom6 de Medina: The Patio Process and the Sixteenth Century Silver Crisis," Journal of the West, January 1969, pp. 91-96, 104; Elias Trabulse, "Aspectos de la tecnologia ininera en Nueva Espafia a finales del siglo XVIII," Historia Mexicana, 30:3 (Jan.-Mar. 1981), 346; and Zavala, "La amalgama en la mineria de Nueva Espafia," Historia Mexicana, 11:3 (Jan.-Mar. 1962), 416-421. Taxco consumed a good deal of mercury, a costly, scarce commodity distributed under royal monopoly. In 1590 1,171 quintales, 50 libras, valued at over 209,000 pesos, was used, the highest amount of any of New Spain's mining centers in that year (Zavala, El servicio personal, III, 320).

25. See scattered information, such as evidence that the town of Mayanald had its obligation to send maize to Taxco limited by the viceroy in 1590, in AGN, Indios, vol. 3, exp. 38, fol. 9 and other volumes and expedientes of this same ramio. Town officers from Tepoztlhn sold clothing, some of it made by their wives, 1725 (AGN, Civil, vol. 16o8, exp. 10, fols. 135r-141r); people of Coatlan, Cuernavaca jurisdiction, customarily traveled to Taxco to sell sugar cane, 1591 (AGN, Indios, vol. 3, exp. 488, fol. 133v).

460 I HAHR I AUGUST I ROBERT S. HASKETT

Malinalco, Acapulco, the Toluca Valley, Michoacin, and Oaxaca, and from other reales such as Sultepec, Temascaltepec, and Pachuca.26

Most such material benefits were enjoyed by individuals, not their communities. On balance, the impact of the mines and involuntary mine labor on the indigenous people of the Cuernavaca jurisdiction was negative. Communities lost productive citizens when they decided to remain in the reales. Even if repartimiento workers returned home, towns at least temporarily lost potential tribute payers and workers for local community projects. Many families found themselves without any adult males during crucial periods of the agricultural calendar, leaving them hard-pressed to produce enough food for sustenance. Wives of absent workers contracted debts in order to pay the monetary tribute, for supplies, and for other expenses. Marital discord is reported to have resulted when husbands returned from the mines without the necessary sums to pay off these debts. Unscrupulous Indian town officers, local Spanish officials, and even priests sometimes took advantage of women whose husbands were away in Taxco. In 1631, twelve women of Cuernavaca complained in a Nahuatl-language petition that the Franciscan friar Nicolhs de Origuen "puts us [in the homes of Spaniards] when our spouses have gone to Taxco.... We work as slaves; we are locked up." Cuernavaca's indigenous governor, don Juan de Hinojosa, as well as thefiscal, the chief secular aid to the priest, were also said to have benefited in this way.27

Municipal leaders and local indigenous citizens viewed the problem not only in legal and material terms, but in a moral light as well. Absent tributaries and their dependents were regarded as "runaways," weaken- ing the fabric of the town and threatening its substance and survival, for a municipality without a firm population base ceased to be a recog- nized, legal, and self-governing pueblo. Surprisingly harsh punishment was sometimes meted out to would-be "runaways" by town councils, at times, it seems, at the behest of remaining family members. According to a Nahuatl-language roster of prisoners in Cuernavaca's jail in 1607, "Catalina Cenahuatl of Otlipan [was jailed] because she left, she ran away to Taxco. She did wrong in her calpulli [district], for her mother did

26. Genealogical Society of Utah Library Microfilm Roll 691934, Archivo de Parroquia de Santa Prisca, Taxco: Defunciones, leg. 1, fols. ir-132r, 1700-1733. For typical Indian miners' wages in the northern Mexican mines, see Bakewell, Silver Mining and Society, 125; they included a monetary component and the pepena, "a bagful of high quality ore suitable for smelting which mineworkers were permitted to collect for themselves once they had fulfilled the day's tequio [quota]."

27. Reports of marital discord in Tepoztldn and Oaxtepec related to the Taxco repartimiento, 1725 (AGN, Civil, vol. 1659, exp. 6, fol. 14r); female petitioners of Cuernavaca complained about the wrongdoing of fray Nicolks de Origuen, 1631 (AGN, HJ, leg. 59, exp. 3, fols. 15r-15v, 17r-i8v, 23r).


not know of it." Perhaps even more unfortunate was Angelina Coxcahua, jailed in place of her husband, afiscal, because he "did not come back [from Taxco."28

Such problems were especially acute in the populous central and east- ern regions of the Cuernavaca jurisdiction, which would normally have been beyond the legally specified limit of twenty leagues. But the labor needs of the silver mines and the influence of the mine owners overrode these legal niceties; though around thirty leagues from Taxco, Oaxtepec and Tepoztlan were compelled to send labor drafts from the later sixteenth century to the end of the 1720S. The negotiation of long distances, bad roads, and dangerous rivers (raging torrents that could sweep away un- lucky travelers during the rainy season) added days of travel time to either end of repartimiento workers' sojourns. As in Peru, this led to a situation in which the absences of repartimiento groups overlapped, meaning the effective loss of twice as many people from the community as legally specified.29

The repartimiento was a burden on the local population in another way, especially in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century eras of continued indigenous demographic decline. Since quotas were set every five years, at best, population loss or epidemics could drastically reduce the actual number of workers available for the drafts in a short time. Yet unless it was specially adjusted, the 4-percent quota remained unchanged, forcing people to serve longer terms than required or to work repeatedly in the mines throughout the year. Once again, the community and individual families were losers, as productive males were absent for long periods.

That towns sending repartimiento drafts to Taxco were not usually exempted from other forms of labor obligations could increase the tensions within a community whose human resources were thus spread thin. In the 1570S Cuernavaca's sujeto of Itzteyuca was sending weekly levies of workers to a local sugar mill. At least some of these people were given the additional duty of transporting sugar and molasses to Taxco. In 1590, the tributaries of Cuernavaca's sujeto of Guauhchichinold balked when the villa's governor tried to dispatch 6 workers per week to a local Spanish estate at the same time the guardian of the monastery of Tlaquiltenango wanted access to 2 workers per week, all of this on top of their obligation to send workers to Taxco. A classic case of this sort involved the town of Yautepec a year earlier. It dispatched its weekly quota of io8 tributaries to

28. "Here is made manifest all the criminals who are arrested and jailed," Nahuatl record from Cuernavaca, about 1607 (AGN, HJ, leg. 210, exp. 71).

29. See Oaxtepec and Tepoztldn v. the Taxco repartimiento, 1725 (AGN, Civil, vol. 1659, exp. 6, fols. 16r-17v). For similar problems in other areas, see Sherman, Forced Native Labor, 340, and Stern, Peru's Indian Peoples, 87-88.


several enterprises, including 2o workers to the mines of Taxco, 15 to the mines of Cuautla, 68 to the Cortes ingenio of Tlatenango, 6 to a labrador named Anton Ubias, 6 to the hospital in Oaxtepec, 6 to a wheat estate, and 6 to a mill belonging to the marques in Cuautla Amilpas.30

Town officers responsible for fulfilling weekly repartimiento quotas often found themselves in a double bind. If they failed to provide enough workers they could be punished by the colonial authorities. This led town notables, such as a quartet of officers from Cuernavaca's Tlapalan district in 1607, to seek expanded sources of labor for the mining draft. The Tlapa- lan notables tried to maintain their own exemptions (nobles did not have to serve in the repartimiento) even while removing those of others, in this case church workers, including a butcher "so that he does the Taxco tribute, which he never carries out."3'

While this sort of self-serving maneuvering might swell the numbers of available tributaries, it was almost guaranteed to result in poor relations (and, as will be seen below, violent confrontation) between Indian govern- ments, the governed, and even local Spaniards anxious to maintain their own access to Indian workers. By 1607 officers of Otlipan, another Cuer- navacan district, who had been jailed at one point for failure to comply with the repartimiento quota, succeeded in gaining the kind of permission to draft church workers that had been sought by their colleagues in Tlapalan. The resulting situation was not a happy one for the district, its leaders, or its people. When a friar discovered that a church cook had allowed his younger brother, still a child, to be sent to Taxco, the en- raged cleric "hit [the cook], he whipped him repeatedly, he spun him around." At the same time, other church workers, cantors, and the like were being protected by the religious, prompting the district officers to request that an investigation be made to see if "they [cantors and others] are able to sing or read or play musical instruments." The petitioners re- ferred to all of this as "our suffering with the Taxco tribute." Clearly, the visibility of town officers as enforcers of repartimiento regulations, and their occasional corruption or use of coercion, created internal conflict in many communities.32

30. For multiple service in Itzteyuca, 1576, see Zavala, Tributos y servicios personages, 341; for the same in Guauhchichinola, 1590, see AGN, Indios, vol. 4, exp. 489, fol. 149r; and for Yautepec see Zavala, El servicio personal, III, 509-510. A similar situation existed in 1583 when the town of Izuco (in the modern state of Guerrero), the source for some of the Cort6s Indian slaves, complained that it had to send repartimiento workers for public building construction in Iguala, more than five leagues away, to the mines of Taxco, and to work on their own public buildings. They also had to work their crops to feed themselves and pay their tribute (Zavala, El servicio personal, III, 771).

31. Four nobles of Tlapalan, Cuernavaca, to the Gobernador del Estado, about 1607 (a Nahuatl petition, AGN, HJ, leg. 210, exp. 46, fol. 1r).

32. Officers of Otlipan to the chief administrator of the Cortes estate, about 1607 (a


In the mines themselves repartimiento workers found that they were not always "treated well" in accordance with the law, a dispiriting reality also found in the mines of colonial Peru. The precise quality of their treatment, of course, depended on such things as the pressures of production and the personalities of individual mine owners and cuadrilla supervisors. In general, however, repartimiento workers experienced what can only be described as brutal and dehumanizing treatment, some of it intentional, some of it a by-product of the conditions of mine labor. And workers were rarely given the housing required by law, much less provided with access to agricultural land.33

Testimony by a curate of Oaxtepec in 1725 is especially revealing as far as repartimiento laboring conditions are concerned; most of what he described had been true from the beginning. After hearing numerous complaints from his Indian parishioners and witnessing the results first hand, he reported that whippings and other forms of corporal punishment were common, not only in the mines themselves but on the road as well, because the low-level Spanish officials sent to urge workers along the roads to the mines were notoriously liberal in their use of the lash. Workers were hardly ever paid for travel time. At the reales they did not receive any wages until the so-called dia de raya which marked the end of their terms of service. This forced them to maintain themselves with their own money and provisions (called by the Indians itcatl), a very real hardship, since prices at the mines tended to be inflated. Moreover, once pay was finally received it was generally one and a half reals instead of the required two. That is, if it was ever received at all, for the curate alleged that following unofficial policy the guardarninas, or mine labor supervisors, tried to scare off workers before the arrival of the dia de raya and the disburs- ing of pay. Witnesses reported that workers injured in the mines were dismissed before receiving their money or in other cases forced to work despite their injuries as long as possible before the dia de raya and their dismissal.34

Nahuatl petition, AGN, HJ, leg. 210, exp. 28, fol. 1r). For similar problems in Peru, see Cole, "Abolitionism," 310-312.

33. For specific descriptions of the poor conditions facing mita labor in Peru, see Cole, The Potosi Mita, 24-25, 30-31; and Stern, Peru's Indian Peoples, 84-88. See AGN, Civil, exp. 100, fols. 71r-83v, for a complaint regarding housing from Tetelilla, 1725.

34. The curate of Oaxtepec to the colonial authorities, 1725 (AGN, Civil, vol. 1659, exp. 6, fols. 16r-17v). For earlier references to mistreatment and poor laboring conditions in the mines, see AGN, Indios, vol. 6, 2d part, exp. 647, fol. 147r (Hueyxtaca, modern Guerrero, 1592); and Indios, vol. 3, exp. 560, fol. 133v, and vol. 6, exp. 1039, fol. 281r (Nocht6pec, 1591, and Cuitlapan, 1591, both modern Guerrero): various forms of illegal service were required, including forcing women to work in refineries. For earlier complaints that workers were not being paid, see AGN, Indios, vol. 5, exp. 63, fol. 87r, and exp. 704, fol. 260v (Teticpac, modern Guerrero, 1590-91). Stern, Peru's Indian Peoples, 86, speaks of similar problems connected with mita pay, or the lack of it.


Most sinister and damaging were the effects of the often onerous, un- familiar, and physically dangerous work expected of repartimiento labor. Death records from Taxco, though not particularly forthcoming, sometimes relate that it was not possible to administer the last rites to Indian mine workers when they had died in an accident or cave-in. Despite regulations to the contrary, workers from areas of the Cuernavaca jurisdiction that had a radically different climate from Taxco labored in the mines, which could reportedly result in sickness. In addition, ore from Taxco's mines contained sulfur and other toxic substances. These noxious ingredi- ents were encountered by tributaries forced to carry ore out of the shafts, as well as while laboring around ore crushers on the surface. Anyone working in the shafts and refineries would have risked inhaling dust, which could lead to silicosis, pneumonia, and other respiratory ailments.35

Mercury poisoning, of course, represented the worst hazard in refineries. Although refinery owners and government officials continually downplayed its adverse effects, they were painfully clear to the workers themselves and to their supporters (although they often incorrectly attrib- uted illness to differences in climate). According to the curate of Oaxtepec, tributaries who waded through what he called "aguas metdlicas," which may refer to the mercury-laced slurry of the patios, suffered everything from pain to complete loss of movement and feeling in their legs. Others experienced lung damage, developed terrible headaches, or suffered from sudden nosebleeds. All of these are classic symptoms of mercury poisoning, which could end in death or at least crippling for life.36

The upshot was that a large number of repartimiento workers returned home with little or no pay, some having spent more in the mines than they earned, others ejected on a pretext before the dia de raya had arrived. These were the lucky ones. Others came home injured from mining acci- dents, from mishaps on the road, from mistreatment received at the hands of labor supervisors, or suffering the effects of mercury poisoning. The latter were too ill to work their own fields for some time and lingered in a nether world of failing health, unable to feed their own families or earn enough to pay their tribute. Some returned home only to succumb to the poisoning, to suffer and die before their grief-stricken relatives.

35. For death records, see Genealogical Society of Utah Library Microfilm Roll 691934, Archivo de Parroquia de Santa Prisca, Taxco: Defunciones, leg. 1, fols. 11-1321, 1700-1733. For reports of "aguas metdlicas" see AGN, Civil, vol. 1659, exp. 6 (Oaxtepec, 1725). See also Alvaro L6pez Miramontes, Las minas de Nueva Espaha en 1753 (Mexico City, 1975), 30; and Bakewell, Miners of the Red Mountain, 149-150.

36. Curate of Oaxtepec to the colonial authorities (AGN, Civil, vol. 1659, exp. 6, fol. 16r-17v). Stern, Peru's Indian Peoples, 85, speaks of similar health hazards in the mines of Peru.


Repartimiento Resistance

The poor conditions of labor and the tensions placed on family and community set off resistance almost as soon as the Taxco repartimiento was instituted. Some towns simply refused to send the required workers. A larger number brought suit to gain more control over the drafts, claiming that their communities were beyond the legal geographic limit of service to the mines or that repartimiento officials were forcing reserved people, including town officers, to join the drafts. In 1587 the town of Alahuiztlan, populated by "indios salineros" important for the supply of this critical ele- ment in the refining process, won exemption from the Taxco labor draft. But the majority of such suits, most of them preserved in abbreviated form in the Indios collection of the Archivo General de la Nacion in Mexico City, centered around arguments that a given town in the Cuernavaca or Taxco region was being compelled to send workers in excess of the legal 4-percent limit.37

There apparently was enough truth in most of these petitions to prompt directives that the juez repartidor of Taxco (official in charge of repartimiento collection and assignment) was to cease demanding excessive numbers of workers and refrain from forcing reserved people to participate in the repartimniento. But the widespread instances of "resistive adaptation" through the manipulation of the colonial court system or by means of various forms of extralegal evasion actually brought the affected towns only limited relief (that is, if the legal strictures were enforced at all). They were able to reduce their obligations but not end them. Nonetheless, the spread of repartimiento resistance in central Mexico by the end of the sixteenth century alarmed New Spain's mine owners.

They responded with a massive lawsuit intended among other things to preserve or even to strengthen the mine repartimiento, a case that finally made it to the Council of the Indies and king in Spain. In i6oo don Alonso de Ofiate, the chief procurador acting for the mine owners, claimed that the principal problem affecting the mines and refineries was a lack of workers. Contrasting the situation in Potosi, which he alleged was amply supplied with thousands of workers thanks to rigorous crown

37. Officers of Taxco el viejo were accused of keeping workers back, 1591 (AGN, Indios, vol. 5, exp. 739, fol. 267r). For suits not citing the 4-percent rule, see Zavala, El seravicio personal, III, 366, 373. Also, petitioners from Acarnixtla, modern Guerrero, claimed that it was more than 20 leagues from the mines, 1590 (AGN, Indios, vol. 4, exp. 270, fol. 92r); town councils of Tenango, 1591, and Iguala, 1590, modern Guerrero, asserted that reserved people were being compelled to give repartimiento service at Taxco (AGN, Indios, vol. 3, exp. 327, fol. 75, and vol. 4, exp. 768, fol. 221v). For good examples of the suits citing the 4-percent rule from the town of Tecpantzingo, Cuernavaca, in 1590, see AGN, Indios, vol. 4, exp. 809, fol. 221; from Pilcayo, modern Guerrero, in 1591, see AGN, Indios, vol. 3, exps. 559 and 561, fols. 133v-134r.


decrees and labor enforcement, the miners of central Mexico could rely on only i6oo tributaries per week. This situation existed because of the distance limit imposed on the New Spain repartimiento and could also be laid at the door of the Indians themselves, who had an unfortunate pro- pensity to move away from the mining region to avoid the repartimiento. More sinister, perhaps, was the tendency of town officers to "hide" potential workers from Spanish officials during census periods. According to the procurador, if left to themselves the Indians would do no construc- tive work at all because they were naturally "vice-ridden" and drunkards, and they hated all forms of labor. To counter these difficulties, the mine owners requested that the crown make all Indian communities liable to the mine repartimiento no matter how far they were from the mining areas, that the weekly quota of workers be increased, and that Indians be congregated in the reales rather than in traditional indigenous communities. Since everyone knew that mine labor was not physically harmful in any way, the repartimiento laborers, their families, and their communities could only benefit from the extra money earned at the mines. Moreover, they would come into sustained contact with the Catholic faith by being compelled to attend mass regularly.38

The ethnocentric and self-serving arguments of the mine owners failed to win the requested concessions. But the importance of silver mining to the imperial economy and the influence of the miners did sway the crown to elaborate on the regulations concerning repartimiento mine labor; many of the pertinent regulatory statutes seem to have assumed their final form just after the turn of the seventeenth century. On the local scene, if the existing documentary record is any reflection, mine owners and local Spanish officers were apparently encouraged to enforce and often exceed existing regulations with more vigor than before.

From the Indian standpoint nothing had improved. If the miners had failed to expand the repartimiento obligation, they had prompted government officials to give existing regulations more teeth. Repartimiento workers and their communities continued to be exposed to the rigors of mine labor, which bore no resemblance to the rosy misrepresentations contained in the mine owners' suit. In the face of this situation, the efforts of the Cuernavaca jurisdiction's Indians to evade the repartimiento, ad- mittedly better preserved in documentary form than before, increased. The forms repartimiento resistance assumed say as much about the internal tensions created by the obligation as they do about the antipathy of Cuernavaca's indigenous citizens toward the Taxco tribute.

38. Don Alonso de Ofiate on behalf of the mine owners of New Spain to the crown, June 14, 16oo, followed by witness testimony (AGI, Audiencia de M6xico, leg. 258, fols. 176v-178r, 231r-235v).


Individual responses were as varied as they were creative. Some people threatened with participation in the draft, who had been living for years as Indians, suddenly claimed to be mestizos and therefore exempt. This was true in 1607 of Cristobal de la Cruz, who traveled from Cuernavaca to Taxco selling flowers but who had suddenly been forced into the mine repartimiento. In a spirited Nahuatl petition (which perhaps puts his ethnic claims in doubt) the self-professed son of a Spaniard alleged that he had been illegally forced to go to Taxco for three months and that, since other Spaniards "know who my father is, they make fun of me when I meet them." Whether or not Cristobal was able to end his "shameful" obligation is unknown. The status-conscious indigenous nobility were especially threatened by a not dissimilar strategy employed by other repartimiento evaders. A Nahuatl petition dated 1607 from notables of Cuernavaca's Analco district claimed that many young commoners "do not make the Taxco repartimiento. ... They just live in idleness and pretend to be nobles. They have multiplied us on the census record." Some of these people were apparently dependents (or perhaps illegitimate offspring) of two authentic members of the elite, who were protecting them from the labor drafts.39

If such ploys succeeded, they would not only upset the social and ethnic balance of the Indian communities but diminish the pool of available tributaries as well, making it even more difficult for town officers to supply their Spanish overlords with the required levies of workers. Many councils already risked censure for this reason, because tributaries (or alleged tributaries) and their families continued to embrace the traditional expedient of fleeing from affected municipalities. Nahuatl petitions from officers, including those not necessarily addressed directly to the issue of the mine labor drafts, asked, "And who will pay the Taxco tribute when the commoners have run away?"40 Such complaints continued into the

39. Crist6bal de la Cruz to the chief administrator of the Marquesado del Valle, about 1607 (a Nahuatl petition, AGN, HJ, leg. 210, exp. 31, fol. ir). Cole, The Potosi Mita, 34-35, uncovered the use of this same kind of ploy in Peru. Petitioners from Analco, Cuernavaca, to the Gobernador del Estado, 1607 (a Nahuatl document, AGN, HJ, leg. 210, exp. 47, fol. ir). Similar anxiety that commoners would become socially mobile because of the colonial system, in this case because they could buy their way into the nobility from profits in the cochineal trade, is evidenced in an extract from the cabildo minutes of Tlaxcala, March 3, 1553, in The Tlaxcalan Actas: A Compendium of the Records of the Cabildo of Tlaxcala (1545-1627), trans. and ed. James Lockhart, Frances Berdan, and Arthur J. 0. Anderson (Salt Lake City, 1986), 79-84.

40. Petitioners from Jojutla, Teocaltzingo, Nexpa, Tetecala, Tlaquiltenango, and several other communities to the Gobernador del Estado, 1619 (AGN, HJ, leg. 266, exp. 6, fol. 41r). Similar sentiments can be found in a Nahuatl petition from ten women of Cuernavaca, who in 1630 complained that because of the Taxco repartimiento and an objectionable priest "many of your vassals will run away and your tribute will be lost" (AGN, HJ, leg. 59, exp. 3, fol. 15).


1720S. Officers of Oaxtepec, Tepoztlin, and their sujetos spoke of many families who had left the jurisdiction to avoid the Taxco repartimiento. Even though flight uprooted the migrants from their known world, leaving those who remained behind to take up the slack, it was probably one of the most effective methods of avoiding the Taxco duty.4'

Some unscrupulous officers exploited for their own gain the desire of commoners to escape the labor draft, souring internal community relations in the process. In early eighteenth-century Cuernavaca, a juez named don Hip6lito Mendez and don Melchor de Hinojosa, the villa's governor, charged all those wishing to be exempted from the labor draft a twenty- real fee.42 Though apparently following a tradition dating from at least the early seventeenth century, this pair so overstepped the bounds of expected behavior that the matter was taken to court by political rivals. Testimony collected at the time alleged that the officers used some of the money to hire substitutes and pocketed the rest. The fee system clearly favored individuals who could afford the assessment. Less well-off tributaries who managed to pay such fees had to scrape together the money at a cost to their own and their families' ability to meet other obligations.

The litigation that exposed the Cuernavaca fee scam points once again to social divisiveness created by the mine repartimiento and efforts to evade this hated labor draft. But if schism and social conflict marked some of the efforts to evade the Taxco labor tribute, others were models of cooperation. Town councils that managed to preserve a united front and to appear to act in the common good were in the best position to fight the repartimiento. They had the resources to hire lawyers, and many council members were well versed in the manipulation of the law and the court system to their own benefit.43 As in the sixteenth century, when census takers or repartidores arrived, sympathetic town officers anxious to preserve their municipalities' demographic integrity, to avoid conflicts with their subjects, and undoubtedly to retain their own access to tribute labor, hid repartimiento evaders. The people of Tlaydcac, supported by their local town council, attempted to reduce their quota to nothing by appoint- ing nearly all male tributaries to the exempt post of cantor. It is not clear how long they had carried on with this ploy before it was discovered in

41. Petitioners from Tepoztlan and its sujetos, including Xocotitlan, 1725 (AGN, Civil, vol. i6o8, exp. io); petitioners from Oaxtepec and TepoztlAn to the authorities, 1725 (AGN, Civil, vol. 1659, exp. 6, fols. 1r-5v, 16r-L7v). Flight was a common form of resistance in Peru as well; see Cole, The Potosi Mita, 26.

42. The Marquesado v. don Hip6lito Mendez and don Melchor de Hinojosa, 1716 (AGN, Criminal, vol. 39, exp. 26, fols. 523v-5281, 5351-540r). Similar abuses at the hands of Andean kurakas have been identified by Cole, "Abolitionism," 311.

43. Indians fighting the mita in Peru used similar tactics. See Stern, Pei-uI's Indian Peoples, 1 i7ff


1725, but it may have been a factor in their ability to win exemption from the repartimiento in the midseventeenth century.44

Some of the traditional arguments used in the sixteenth century continued to be employed by councils as they turned to the court system for redress, especially those alleging harmful climatic differences and distances between the town in question and the mines that exceeded the twenty-league limit. Certain communities that really were far beyond the limit, such as Yecapixtla, Huautla, and Tlayacac, won complete exemption from the Taxco repartimiento in the midseventeenth century.45 The invocation of the 4-percent rule also continued to serve some towns well into the early eighteenth century; many municipalities won a reduction of their obligation, a growing number even total exemption, when their populations were found to be smaller than they were represented as being in the current census.46

Official litigants still argued that the Taxco repartimiento was harmful to subsistence and livelihood because their tributaries were already involved in other forms of tribute service. Two town elders from Cuernavaca in or around 1607 asserted in a Nahuatl-language petition to the gobernador del estado (chief administrative officer of the Cort6s estate) that their community was involved in unspecified "services to Spaniards, . . . the Taxco labor tribute, the church service tribute [teopantequitl], and [other] repartimiento service." Such claims were often quite true. By the early seventeenth century, many towns of the Cuernavaca jurisdiction were sending levies of workers to the desagiie project in the basin of Mexico. Communities along the highway to the port of Acapulco were obliged to give food, shelter, and bearers to convoys of settlers, convicts, and groups of military on their way to the Philippines. Still other towns were obligated to send some workers to the mines of Taxco and others to the mines of the Reales de Cuautla in the royal jurisdiction of Amilpas

44. Investigation of Tlaydcac, 1725 (AGN, Civil, vol. i6o8, exp. 1o). 45. On Yecapixtla, Huautla, and Tlaydcac, see AGN, Civil, vol. i6o8, exp. 10, fol. 431.

For comparison, see Linda Newson, "Silver Mining in Colonial Honduras," Revista de His- toria de Amnerica, 97 (Jan.-June 1984), 6o-6i, who reports that in Honduras, where the legal repartimiento quota was 25 percent of the adult male tributary population, men from towns beyond the twenty-league limit also resisted by flight or through what Spaniards identified as "insubordination and laziness." This problem was said to be increasing in the eighteenth century, and some miners began paying Indian workers cash advances to keep them coming.

46. For records of repartimiento reductions, see AGN, Indios, vol. ii, exp. 25, fol. 191 (Mazatepec, 1638), and exp. 311, fol. 253v (Coatlan, 1639). For total exemption, see AGN, Indios, vol. ii, fol. 146r (Guauxintlan, 1639), vol. 29, exp. 59, fols. 65r-66v (Chalcatzingo, 1685), exp. 283, fols. 233r-234r (Alpuyeca, Santa Ana Mazeala, Santiago Guchuso, all exempted between 1656 and 1663), exp. 285, fol. 235 (Quaxomulco and Huichilac, 1687), exp. 288, fols. 236v-237r (Amacuzac, 1687); AGN, Civil, vol. i6o8, exp. 10, fol. 105 (Tlaydcac, 1725). All of the ploys discussed in this paragraph were used by litigants in Peru; see Stern, Peru's Indian Peoples, 117.


that split the Cuernavaca Marquesado holdings almost in two. Cuernavaca itself led the effort to be relieved of at least some of these obligations and succeeded in receiving a modest reduction from the authorities.47

The most effective and therefore most popular argument was some- thing of an innovation. It invoked regulations excusing towns from mine repartimiento duty if their churches were in need of attention. Town after town alleged that its church had been ruined in an earthquake or was otherwise in need of extensive repair. This vital work, of course, would require the services of all available tributaries, and towns asked for an exemption from the mine repartimiento for the period of time required for the church repair or rebuilding. In fact, exemptions of from one to four years' duration were granted, and in some cases town councils successfully won nearly indefinite extensions by claiming that the work had not yet been completed when the initial exemption expired. Indian litigants in such cases were often supported by local curates, Marquesado officials, and even local estate owners, none of whom were overly anxious to see large numbers of potential workers removed from the area. Moreover, many churches were indeed in need of repair.48

Crisis in the 1720S

A major slump in silver production at Taxco beginning in the second half of the seventeenth century must have reduced the reales' labor needs and undoubtedly helped Indian communities win exemption or at least a reduction of their repartimiento obligations.49 Even so, the mines of Taxco needed some draft labor during this period, and towns with large populations or those within the twenty-league limit continued to be compelled to send workers despite their efforts to evade the obligation. Yet the successes of towns that had won exemption spurred on others, and

47. The elders Juan Huitznahuatl and Francisco Tlayollotlatl to the Gobernador del Estado, about 1607 (AGN, HJ, leg. 210, exp. 50, fol. ir). See information about the obligations of Cuernavaca and its sujetos, 1641 (AGN, Indios, vol. 13, exp. 179, fols. 163v-L65r). For similar cases see a Nahuatl petition from Cuernavaca, 1607, requesting a reduction of tribute duties because the villa's tributaries must give such a large variety of such service (AGN, HJ, leg. 210, exp. 50); and a i6i8 complaint from Tlaltizapan, Ticuman, and Iztoluca that they must send workers to the mines of Taxco and Cuautla at the same time (AGN, Indios, vol. 7, exp. 298, fol. 144r).

48. The AGN collections Indios and Hospital de Jesus have many examples of such cases. Tlaltizapan, Ticuman, and Iztoluca won a reduction of their Taxco obligations for one year to work on their churches, i6i8 (AGN, Indios, vol. 7, exp. 298, fol. 144r); Coatlhn won a four-year exemption, 1684 (AGN, Indios, vol. 29, exp. 15, fols. i8, 20); and a late example from Ticuman, 1732 (AGN, HJ, leg. 208, exp. 220). Stern, Peru's Indian Peoples, 120, finds a similar willingness of local Spaniards to protect their access to labor by aiding Indians in their struggle for exemption from the mita.

49. Brading, Miners and Merchants, 9.


by the early eighteenth century antirepartimiento litigation had reached a crescendo. This climax coincided with renewed efforts by the mine owners of Taxco, who seem to have been experiencing a mild recovery, to secure larger numbers of repartimiento workers. As far as the mine owners were concerned, this meant the revocation of exemptions and more rigorous enforcement of the labor draft. By the 1720S, the conflict between Cuernavaca's Indian municipalities and the mine owners had reached a crisis point.

The catalyst was a 1724 petition to the viceroy from the powerful Taxco mine owner don Francisco de la Borda. He claimed that the towns of the Cuernavaca jurisdiction, in particular Tepoztlhn and its siJetos, were actively evading their repartimiento obligations, which had been renewed late in 1723 when a viceregal order revoked all exemptions in the face of increasing labor demands in the mines. Despite bitter complaints from the councils of the affected towns, some of which had refused to comply, de la Borda's petitioning finally resulted in an order for a new census from which the correct 4-percent calculations could be derived. In so doing, de la Borda and the authorities had unwittingly opened a Pandora's box of discontent and litigation.50 The process began innocently enough in the spring of 1725, when investigators found that the towns of Guaxomulco and Huichilac were too far away from Taxco and recommended that they be exempted from the repartimiento.

The councils of other towns now realized that they, too, could use the spreading investigation to their advantage. Petitioners came forward in increasing numbers to claim that they were too far from the mines, were situated in climates radically different from Taxco's, were forced to neglect their churches because of the repartimiento, or were spread thin trying to comply with a variety of tribute and service obligations, of which the Taxco repartimiento was the most demanding and unjust. Spanish officials methodically worked through the morass of claims on a case-by-case basis, sustaining the obligation of some, reducing that of others, and completely exempting still others. Unfortunately for the peace of the region, they decided that Tepoztlin's assertions were not valid, even though the villa was just beyond the legal limit for the mining draft. They had probably come to this decision because, unlike some of the exempted towns, Tepoztlin and its sujetos still represented one of the more populous municipalities of the region and therefore one of the best sources for mine labor. But the Spaniards had overlooked the fact that Tepoztldn's ruling elite and the

50. Viceroy's revocation, December 1723 (AGN, Civil, 1505, exp. 3, fols. 27v-31v). The massive and informative de la Borda case, with data running from 1602 through 1729, has already provided much important information for this study (AGN, Civil, vol. i6o8, exp. io).


body of its commoners had been riven in two since 1691 by a virulent struggle between factions within the ruling elite opposing and supporting the repartimiento obligation.

The prorepartimiento faction had traditionally been headed by the powerful Rojas family, a clan that regularly supplied Tepoztlin with some of its most influential and controversial indigenous governors. The Rojases and their allies had a history of compelling workers to go to Taxco by re- sorting to various forms of coercion, the most objectionable of which was to jail tributaries on the eve of their scheduled departure for the mines to ensure their participation. They were known to charge tributaries a twenty-real fee for exemption, much as their colleagues in Cuernavaca had done. A Rojas ally, the governor don Nicolds Cortes, had been accused in 1711 of receiving cash kickbacks from Taxco's mine owners for supplying repartimiento workers. The opposing faction was fighting against the demands of outside forces, for more access to power on the local level, and for an end to the abuses of the Rojas clan. It was an explosive situation that may have led to the murder of the governor don Nicolds Cort6s (he was thrown into a ravine) and finally erupted in a series of riots in the fall of 1725.51

As of late 1720 the crisis momentarily seemed to have been defused when a Rojas governor, perhaps tired of the endless political strife in the villa, won an exemption for Tepoztlin on the basis of the dire need of repair of one of its principal churches. This interlude of peace ended with the viceroy's revocation of the exemption in 1723 and the renewed pres- sure to supply workers that followed. Tepoztlin was unable to supply the required workers because the rival faction successfully incited tributaries to refuse to go to the mines. Litigation mounted on both sides until August 1725, when then governor don Nicolhs de Rojas reverted to type. Apparently emboldened by the presence of an armed recaudador de indios de Taxco, a Spanish official sent to escort the workers to the reales, on the night of August 15 he had all the liable tributaries arrested and lodged in the villa's jail pending their departure for the mines.

It was not to be, for after a day of unrest in town a crowd of perhaps fifty Indian men and women attacked the jail and freed the prisoners. The next day, several hundred women and men armed with rocks, cudgels, ma- chetes, and knives blocked the road between Tepoztlin and Cuernavaca. Others massed around the monastery, where terrified Spanish residents, most of the town council, and the recaudador de indios had taken refuge.

51. The evolution of the struggle in Tepoztldn can be traced through the following sources, as well as AGN, Civil, vol. i6o8, exp. 10: AGN, Indios, vol. 30, exp. 416, fols. 389v-39or (1691), exp. 439, fols. 40gr-41or (1691), exp. 450, fols. 421r-422r (1691), AGN, HJ, leg. 312, fols. lv-17r (1699), and AGN, HJ, vol. 85, exp. 21, fols. 4r-5r, 14r-1L5r (1711).


The Indians, "howling," playing trumpets, and beating drums to a back- ground of constantly ringing church bells, shouted insults at the captives, threatening death to the governor and to all Spaniards. When several friars came out of their sanctuary to quiet the crowd, they were met with jeers and insults and hastily beat a retreat. Word of the tumulto had been taken to the teniente (local assistant of the alcalde mayor of Cuernavaca), who led a relief column of ill-equipped Spaniards to the rescue. Just outside town they were repulsed by a shower of rocks hurled by a crowd of Indian women. A reinforced rescue force found that the rioters had melted away and that an uneasy calm prevailed. No arrests were made.

The calm was not to last. Apparently under the mistaken notion that the crisis had passed, the recaudador returned to Tepoztldn in early Sep- tember to lead a group of workers to Taxco. Once again rioting broke out, following a pattern almost exactly like that of the August disturbance. This time the authorities attempted to take sterner measures. Accepting the (probably true) Rojas claim that the rioters had been led by members of the rival, antirepartimiento faction, the Spanish officials arrested four male ringleaders and one female "instigator." Thinking that they had finally solved the problem, they dispatched the hapless recaudador to Tepoz- tlan one more time on September 24, where his presence again ignited a tumult led by the wives of the men arrested earlier in the month. This time two wooden buildings next to the villa's municipal hall were burned and some ornaments were stolen from the sacristy of the monastery, allegedly to be sold to pay for more antirepartimiento litigation. Once again the rioters had melted away by the time rescue forces arrived. A few arrests were made.52

As was often the case with tumnultos, the Tepoztecan rioting ended in anticlimax. As a last resort, violence did not succeed where civil disobe- dience and litigation had failed. Although all of the so-called ringleaders were released after a year in jail, the villa's obligation to send workers was neither ended nor reduced. Some of the former prisoners continued to fight the repartimiento through legal channels until 1729, at which point the Cuernavaca jurisdiction records of repartimiento resistance dry up. Whether or not the various towns of the region had finally won exemption awaits further research, though the middle of the eighteenth century was another period of decline for the Taxco mines. When they entered their biggest boom period in history following 1770, towns in the vicinity of Taxco, and not in the Cuernavaca jurisdiction, seem to have been liable for the mine repartimiento.

52. For a masterful discussion of turnultos and violence in Mexico's Indian commluni- ties, see William B. Taylor, Drinking, Homicide, and Rebellion in Colonial Mexican Villages (Stanford, 1979).

474 |HAHR I AUGUST I ROBERT S. HASKETT

The Impact of Involuntary Labor

It is perhaps unjust to view every Hispanic innovation as an unwelcome in- trusion into indigenous life. Indians of Cuernavaca and elsewhere eagerly adopted an array of Spanish material goods, and some, such as those who sold a variety of products in the reales de Taxco, wholeheartedly embraced the expanding colonial money economy. Others saw the opportunities for moving into the Spanish world, including wage labor in places like Taxco, as a way to escape the obligations of tributary life in their home communities. Other aspects of the Hispanic regime were indeed viewed as dangerous intrusions, and the mine repartimiento was one of them. The need to supply far-flung and alien enterprises with involuntary labor threatened the already tenuous autonomy of micro-patriotic Nahua communities in the Cuernavaca jurisdiction and elsewhere. By the later colonial period, resistance to the draft had become so ingrained in the local psyche that Nahuatl-language primordial titles written in this era (land tenure descriptions and local histories) often included references to mythical grants of exemption from the Taxco repartimiento as rewards for early aid to Cortes and help in establishing the Catholic church.53

Much remains to be discovered about mine work and labor recruit- ment in Taxco. For instance, yet to be established are the extent to which miners bribed or cajoled Indian town officers into cooperation and the extent of conflicts of interest among Spanish officials charged with the regulation of such things as the repartimiento. Establishing the exact pro- portion of involuntary labor in relation to other forms will require deeper inquiry into the internal records of the reales themselves.

But whether or not involuntary labor was ever the dominant form in the mines themselves, the obligation to work in the complexes of Taxco and other central Mexican reales touched the heartland of indigenous society far more directly and much more profoundly than did the labor needs of mines in the North. Indian slavery, the encomienda and other early forms of tribute labor, and finally the repartimiento took indigenous males away from their families, homes, and fields for extended periods of time. All too often the only returns from the dangerous labor were impoverishment, ill health, and even death. Families lost productive members and suffered from a diminished capacity to sustain themselves. Predatory town elites were sometimes encouraged to profiteer at the expense of the people they

53. See Bibliotheque Nationale de Paris, Manuscrit mexicain 291, municipal codex of Cuernavaca, which includes this kind of information on fol. 1. Though it purports to date from the sixteenth century, orthographic analysis points to an origin in the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century; in any event, conquest-era references to a labor obligation in Taxco are anachronistic.


were supposed to protect. Town officers, in turn, risked losing their own material wealth through fines and confiscation when they were unable to fulfill other municipal tribute obligations because of the debilitating effects of the tlachcotequitl. Though claims that a large number of commoners were trying to pass themselves off as nobles may well be exaggerated, elite petitioners' alarmist language on this subject embodied the fear that the mine repartimiento controversy would give plebeians an incentive to upset the fragile social status quo. All of the tensions that arose in con- nection with the repartimiento within families, between tributaries and their rulers, between Indian officers and Spanish interests, and within the ruling elites of Indian society could result in conflicts with the potential to rend the fabric of community life.

It is no wonder that as in colonial Peru resistance to involuntary mine labor was endemic. In their desperation to evade the onerous Taxco repartimiento, individuals and town councils learned to manipulate the twists and turns of labor law. If their cause was obviously just and if they received the support of enough local Spaniards, their legal maneuverings could succeed. But in the final analysis success was dependent on external forces, such as the power of individual mine owners, the self-interest of colonial officials, and above all the timing of boom and bust cycles in Taxco and elsewhere. When the demand for labor was high in this strategic industry, nothing the Indians could do was of much avail. Many decided that all that was left to them were the barren paths of violence or flight from their place of birth. It is testimony to the resilience of the human spirit that so many of the Cuernavaca jurisdiction's Indian citizens chose to fight on against the repartimiento in the face of repeated failure or retreat. The silver industry was assuredly the motor of the colonial economy, but for the Indians of the Taxco hinterland it often proved an engine of destruction.

hassket, our suffering with the taxco tribute

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