urban social stratification in colonial chile

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Urban Social Stratification in Colonial ChileAuthor(s): Mario GóngoraSource: The Hispanic American Historical Review, Vol. 55, No. 3 (Aug., 1975), pp. 421-448Published by: Duke University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2512374 .

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Urban Social

Stratification in

Colonial Chile

MARIO

GONGORA*

N this article

I

would like to

throw some light

on

the

colonial

cities

of Chile

by

showing how the popula-

tion

was

distributed and layered socially, and the

extent to which, after the

Spanish Conquest,

Old World social

strata

were

repeated or

modified in the New. I

believe that a clear

understanding of these aspects of social history

and historical sociol-

ogy

will add something to our knowledge of

urbanism in

Spanish

America. The general outline of this subject

is fairly well known;

however, every historian

knows that such panoramic studies, when

contrasted

again and again, are verified and

refined, and

eventually

even radically modified. To do this demands constant research,

which

enables the historian to approach more

closely the reality

of

the

past. By examining

the morphology of

colonial social strata as

meticulously as we examine the ingredients of

their collective

psy-

chology,

we

uncover not only a specific

historical moment but also

a

long-term historical

phenomenon.

The

Chilean cities on which this study

concentrates are

naturally

those

for

which we have

sufficiently abundant documentary records:

primarily Santiago, and the northern town of

La Serena. The latter

lived from the small-scale placer mining of gold, and from some

production of

silver and

copper at the very time-the seventeenth

century-when

the

remainder

of

Chile was

becoming

a

fundamentally

pastoral

and agrarian country. In addition,

I

have

included the

three

towns of Cuyo

(Mendoza, San Juan, San

Luis), Chillan

in

the

southern

center, and Castro on the southern island

of Chiloe. This

latter group of cities

yields sketchy records,

but some knowledge

is

possible

nonetheless.

As

for

seventeenth-century

records for the

*

This article by the distinguished Chilean historian was presented at the

1971 conference on Comparative Issues and Problems

of

Urbanization

in

Latin

America, organized

at the University

of Wisconsin-Milwaukee by its

Language

and Area Center

for

Latin America.

The

Center was translator.







422 HAHR

I

AUGUST

I

MARIO GONGORA

Biobio frontier, Cautln,

Valdivia, and Osorno, they have been destroyed

by war and earthquake. By

concentrating on the first-named cities,

we can fashion a sharp

enough touchstone to use for further analogies

and contrasts, some of which

will be mentioned later.

The

Urbani

and

Rural Spanish Population

The

first problem that

arises when considering urban strata

is

that during its first centuries a city in the Indies was not

legally

separated from the territory in which it was jurisdictionally set.

To

be

sure,

the

Castilian city also sometimes had quite large jurisdic-

tional districts; i.e., Seville covered a territory that was larger than

the present province of that name,1 and this fact was very impor-

tant for the supply of the

town. But the Castilian jurisdictional

district

included many lay

and ecclesiastical manors

and

the men

who

were their subjects. In addition, there were districts,

settlements,

and villages with their own councils that always possessed some de-

gree

of

jurisdictional

autonomy from the city. Hence, in the Euro-

pean city it is always

possible to differentiate legally and

politically

between those

who were

subject

to the

municipal powers

and were

inhabitants of the city, and

those who inhabited smaller settlements

or were manorial peasants.

In

the Indies, by

contrast, the land was more jurisdictionally

empty. 2 At the level

of

ordinary justice and administration,

the

authority of the king had

been delegated to the

cities,

which

were

the

fundamental nuclei of

settlement and institutional organization.

Seiiorios (manors) can be

found only in exceptional cases, and none

ever achieved anything like

the importance of that

of

Hernan

Cortes.

The

only areas subject to a separate legal order-and each with a

distinct magistracy-were the Indian villages, with their corregidores,

protectores, administradores,

doctrineros (priests), small cabildos-

which

were nonexistent in

Chile-and, finally,

their

caciques,

rem-

nants of

an ancient

seigneurial structure that was constantly

being

weakened.

The

result of

this lack

of

other

institutionally defined

nuclei of

Spanish

settlement is

that until the eighteenth century the registers

do

not

distinguish

between inhabitants who

normally

lived

in

towns,

and those

who

normally

lived

in

the

countryside.

1.

Ramon Carande, Sevilla,

fortaleza y mercado, in Anuario de

Historia

del

Derecho Espanol,

II, (Madrid, 1925), 233-401.

2.

Richard Morse,

Latin American Cities: Aspects of

Function

and

Struc-

ture, in

Comparative Studies in Society and

History, 4:4 (July 1962), 473-493.







URBAN SOCIAL

STRATIFICATION

IN COLONIAL CHILE

423

Let us consider Santiago. Founded in 1541, it was said

to have

possessed in 1544 no more

than about six houses, the rest being

shacks; but already the governor

had his house with two solares

(plots of land) on the square.

By 1547 there was a two-floored

house on the opposite side

of the square. Meanwhile, the

cabildo

was granting land for buildings

and small farms. It has been calcu-

lated that by 1559 the city of Santiago included some 40

blocks,

which by 1580 had increased

threefold to 120. By this time there

were new squares, the cathedral and convents had been built,

there

were several mills, etc.3

In addition to the land for buildings, vineyard blocks

and

small

farms (chacaras) had been apportioned in all directions. Although

they varied in size, according to the official position of the beneficiary,

generally speaking we can say that these tracts

measured a few

tens of varas wide (1 vara

=

approximately 25 feet) by a few

hundred long, to a maximum of 400 or 500. It was stated

in a

court case of the 1550s that these concessions could be

made

by

the

cities within a radius

of

four

leagues.

This does not mean that

jurisdiction,

in

the fullest

sense of

the

word,

ended

there. While

the common lands were situated close

in to the city site, the pasture grounds, meadows, and woodlands

could

be situated farther away.

In

the court

case mentioned above,

the

woodlands were six leagues distant.4 However,

the area within

which land

could be granted

for estancias and for cultivation only

by

the

governor

continued

under the

lawful

jurisdiction

of

the

cabildo.

Only

the

Indian villages

were

exempt; they

were

placed

under the

jurisdiction of the teniente asesor letrado (legal

advisor

of the

governor) or under

the audiencia.

This

legal framework,

based

on

the

city, began

to

change slowly.

The control of the

Chilean

corregimientos

over

rural

areas

originally

only

covered

indigenous

inhabitants

organized

into

villages (see

the

famous Tasa de

Gamboa,

1580). But,

from 1593

we note that

they

were

given jurisdiction

over

Spaniards, mestizos,

mulattoes,

and

Negroes

who

committed

crimes

against Indians,

or who lived

in

villages

and

farms;

to them also accrued the function

of the

alcaldes

mayores

de

minas

(chief

inspectors

of

mines). They

were thus

exempted

from the

jurisdiction

of

the

towns,

and

these measures

at first produced protest and opposition from the latter. But the

3.

Tom'as

Thayer

Ojeda, Santiago durante el siglo XVI, in Anales de

la

Universidad de Chile,

Tomo CXVI (Santiago,

1905), 1-82, 297-414, 475-517.

4.

Mario Congora,

Encomenderos

y

estancieros

(Santiago, 1970), p. 10.







424

HAHR

I

AUGUST

I

MARIO

GONGORA

decision of the governors

was upheld, and at the beginning

of

the

seventeenth century the corregidores were officially

designated

justicias mayores (chief

justices), alcaldes mayores de minas

and,

somewhat later, capitanes a guerra (war commanders). Appeals

against their verdicts

were made directly before the tribunal of

the

governor's lieutenant

or the audiencia.5 The city continued

to

be the

basic unit of

settlement, but already the jurisdictional

di-

vision was less coherent.

Meanwhile, Spanish rural settlement was increasing.

For

exam-

ple, in the Quillota

Valley, beside the Santiago-Valparaiso road,

there were sufficient

small and large landowners surrounding a

Franciscan convent for a notary's office to be established there in

1629. In the same year another appeared in Colchagua, so the

in-

habitants of both these

localities no longer needed to go to the

capital to transact their

registration formalities. Those

former

doctrinas (Indian

parishes), whose settlements of natives

had

be-

come depopulated, were remodelled into rural curatos (parishes).

A

document signed by

the notary of the cabildo, in 1639, asserts

that, according to the

register of the royal tithes, the city possessed

no more than 350

inhabitants; but, of these, some 100 lived on

the estancias that came within its jurisdictional territory, thus in-

dicating that both areas were still considered to be a single unit.

This

territory was about

80 leagues long (from the River Choapa

to Maule) by 20 wide

(from the Cordillera to the Ocean). Apart

from

the 100 rural inhabitants we should not forget all those Spaniards

(legally speaking, that is,

creoles as well) who

lived

in

the country-

side as overseers,

foremen,

young vagrants or vagabonds, but who

could not

be classified as

vecinos (head

of

households).

If

the registers before

the eighteenth century do not differentiate

between

vecinos

living

in

the cities

and

those

living

in

the

country,

it is

because of the

fundamental realities and basic concepts of the

time.

Fernand Braudel

has spoken, in passing,

in

his

Civilisation

materielle, of a revival of the antique city, open to its surrounding

territory.7 But, leaving aside

the

obvious

differences

in their

splendor,

such cities never

completely ceased to exist

in

the Mediterranean

5. Actas del Cabildo de Sa-ntiago, June 18 and July 30,

1593; May 13,

1594; July 12, 1603; June 18, 1604, in Coleccion de Historiadores de Chile y

documentos relativos a la historia nacional (Santiago, 1861-1919), XX and XXI.

6.

Mario Gongora, Incumplimiento de una ley en 1639, Bolettn de

la

Academia Chilena

de

la Historia, 76 (1967), 61-96.

7.

Fernand Braudel, Civilisation

AMaterielle

t Capitalisme

(Paris, 1967), p.

401.







URBAN

SOCIAL STRATIFICATION IN

COLONIAL CHILE

425

world.

Luis

de Valdeavellano

has shown, in his typology of

Spanish

cities,

the

existence of agrarian

and fortified cities, not

at

all

bourgeois '

n

the mercantile sense

of Northern Europe and North-

ern Spain, but with the privileges

and rights of a city. This

was

the dominant type on the central plain of Spain, from the Duero

to

the

Guardiana.8 Max Weber has classified as a

constant social

structure what he calls towns of farmers (Ackerbiirgerstadt),

dis-

tinct from the village because of the presence of

a

market and

specific urban industries, but where

a considerable proportion of the

citizens are farmers.9

In the Chilean case, as in the Indies in general, the small suburban

farms (chacaras)-the concession of which date from immediately

after the

foundation and that

later enter into every

form

of civil

contract-were an essential ingredient of the urban unit. Too,

it

should not be forgotten that

behind their houses many properties

possessed gardens with acequias (irrigation channels). There

are

innumerable references to these

in the notarial documentation

of

transactions in Santiago. According

to the chronicler Ovalle, par-

ticularly abundant were gardens and vineyards in the western

region of the city site. Several

houses, with shops opening onto

the streets, sold not only wine-as was the custom in Madrid and

France-but also bread, candles,

fat,

and bacon. Not until 1637

(during the years when the Royal

Exchequer,

hard-pressed

by

the

costs of the Thirty Years' War, began to tighten up the previously

lax fiscal system of America),

did such shops become taxed and

controlled.10

All

the important inhabitants

of Santiago owned principal

houses within the city site, a chdcara

on

the outskirts,

and

one

or

more estancias in the rural territory.

These represent, as it were,

an

organic unit of family fortune,

and their presence is very well

revealed to us in wills and inventories.

In the most notable cases,

during

the

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,

the

value

of

estancias

and

farms

was

increased

by

the addition of

a

chapel,

in

which

religious

services

were

occasionally

held for

the local

popu-

lation.

However,

this

scheme

begins

to

change during

the

eighteenth

century,

due to the constant increase

in

ruralization. Proof

of

this

8.

Luis Garcla de Valdeavellano, Sobre los

Burgos y

los

Burguieses

de la

Espaiia Medieval,

(Madrid, 1960).

9.

Max Weber, Wirtschaft und

Gesellschaft (Tubingen,

1925),

II,

738-739.

10. Gongora,

Encomenderos, p. 107.







426

LIHAHR

| AUGUST |ARIO

GONGORA

is found in the lists of

inhabitants. We

possess one from

Chillan

for

the year 1737, and those

of Mendoza

and La Serena for 1739,

listing first the

vecinos of

the city site and, second,

people living

in various

valleys or country

areas-no longer merely

Indians, but

also Spanish

people or

mestizos, more or less

undifferentiated. It

is true that the unit of

jurisdiction was

kept, but the sources no

longer

recorded the city as a unitary whole.

Lists now

appeared that

sometimes consisted

exclusively of the

rural population. There is

an

exceptionally rich one from Colchagua

for the year

1743. That

of

Chillan

for the year

1737 carefully

registered the Spanish

hacendados

who owned a

house in the city even if

they owned

estancias as well, and then it listed the hacendados who lived out-

side the city in

their estancias, thus clearly

marking off

two

groups.1-

The

policy for

new

settlement that was promoted

by bishops

and

governors

during the

eighteenth century tended to restore

the

primacy of

urban settlement. In Chile, as

in many other

provinces,

there

now appeared

innumerable villages and

many

cities

with all

kinds of

privileges to attract

settlers. But since such urban

develop-

ments

were

generally

constructed

on

donated land

in the midst

of

a

complex

of large properties, the

components of

the city

site

did not usually comply with urban requirements (often having to

change

their

location), and the lands for

communal

use

could

not

be

of the

same size

as

they

had

been in

the

sixteenth

century.

Above

all,

the

rural

population adapted badly to

the new lifestyle.

In the

whole

of

central Chile, the

great

landowners preferred to continue

living

in

their

country houses, thus

depriving the new

nuclei of a

possible

commercial stimulus.

A population of small

property owners,

shopkeepers, and artisans

could only-with

difficulty-serve as

a

counterweight

to the current trend of

ruralization.

One

relatively important exception,

at

least in

its

conception,

was Los

Angeles,

a

frontier

village

founded

in

1739.

The

instructions

received

by

Pedro

de

Cordoba

y Figueroa,

a soldier

and

chronicler

charged

with

the

supervision

of its

foundation,

foresaw the distribu-

tion of

a

complete

area of

31,901

cuadras

(blocks), including

the

city site,

suburban

farms of

4

to 6

cuadras

each,

estancias, pasture

grounds,

and common land.

The

estancias varied

in

size

between

200

and

600

cuadras, according

to the rank of each of the

71

founders.

The owners were subject to the duty of keeping arms and horses and

11. Padron of

Chill'an,

Archivo

Nacional, Santiago (hereafter cited as ANS),

Real Audiencia 2755, pp. 18 and 24;

padron

of

La Serena, ANS, Real Audiencia

666, p. 2; padron of Mendoza, ANS,

Real Audiencia 2836, p. 1.







U:RBAN

SOCIAL

STRATIFICATION

IN

COLONIAL

CHILE

427

of

presenting

themselves

at the barracks in

urgent

need.

Military

obligation

featured as a

condition

in contracts of

bargain

and

sale.12

In

this

modest way

reappeared,

on the

Araucanian

frontier,

some-

thing

of the old

concept of

the city as a

union of

warriors-cultivators-

cattle owners.13

Evidently the

sixteenth-century

concept of

the city in the

Indies

had

been modified

in

good measure by

the

tendency towards rural

settlement.

The minutes of

the

Santiago

cabildo

record the

tenmporary

absence of

regidores who left

seasonally

for their

rural

properties.

We

find a

similar

observation in

the Memoria

de

gobierno

of

the

Viceroy La Palata,

in

Lima, when he

left office in 1690.

But,

even

so, the structural foundation was never completely lost, despite the

double

assault of

both a rural

society and

a state with

basic

concepts

defined in

terms of

territory, as

is particularly

noticeable

with

the

institution of

the

intendencias at

the end

of the

eighteenth

century.

Urban

Social

Strata: The

Aristocracy

Our

fundamental purpose

here is to

identify the

strata which

we

consider to be

basic

to the colonial

city:

the

aristocrats, the

merchants,

the artisans and

poor

Spaniards, and

the urban free

castes.

For reasons, mainly of lack of space, it is necessary to leave aside

the

ecclesiastical

hierarchy

with all its

significant divisions.

While

the

bishop,

as well

as the

governor

and oidores of the

audiencia

were

essentially

superimposed, as exceptional

dignitaries, on

the

social

strata,

the

secular clergy,

particularly at its

highest level

(the canons),

actually

formed part of the

local

aristocracy,

as,

in many

cases,

did

the

urban parish

priests. The

rural

priest was very much absorbed

into

the

society in which he

lived. The

religious

orders, on the

other

hand, were a

unique

force, possessing

very

much their own

char-

acteristics,

and a social

analysis of

them would

require

another study.

We shall

begin, as is

customary,

with the

aristocracy,

the

stratum that

constituted the

very nerve

center

of the city

and

on

which docu-

mentation is

most

abundant.

An

opening

observation: American

stratification derived,

as did

that

in

ancient and

medieval Europe,

from

military

stratification.

Social

institutions

have

sacred and

military

origins. Spanish

cities

had

classified

their

inhabitants as

caballeros

(gentlemen)

and

peones

(footsoldiers), whereas the cities of the Indies placed at the summit

the

encomenderos-so

often

inaccurately

named

vecinos

in

the

docu-

12.

ANS,

Capitania

General 689,

no. 8045.

13. James

Lockhart,

Spanish

Peru,

1532-1560

(Madison,

1968),

chapter 2.







428

HAHR

I

AUGUST

I

MARIO GONGORA

mentation, despite the clarity of the reales cedulas in this

respect.

Encomenderos were subject to qualified

military

service with

their

horses. Beneath these were the

simple moradores or inhabitants,

and lower still were the soldados (soldiers), a military group forming

a sort

of urban populace from the time of the Conquest. In

the

sixteenth century these soldiers,

who lived on the hospitality of the

encomenderos and rich inhabitants, received soldadas or salaries, paid

by their patrons or by the royal

exchequer. We find this sort of

soldier in Chile until the first years of the seventeenth century, when

the Crown created a permanent

army and established it on the

frontiers. This group can then no

longer be considered urban as

such; but the soldiers or mozos de soldada of the decades immediately

following the Conquest were such a group, even though they were

not houseowning inhabitants. The

peruleros (soldiers from Peru),

who participated in the

sixteenth-century Peruvian civil wars, can

be found

during these years, not

only in Chilean cities but also

throughout Spanish America.

Groups that originally consisted of warriors eventually lost such

a

character and with time became

a social group. Just as the

men

who

had been medieval knights increasingly during the four-

teenth and fifteenth centuries attempted to limit their duty to

present themselves for militaiy

service and demanded an ever-higher

standard of wealth as a minimal

reward, just so the Chilean en-

comenderos, who, until 1600 had

been summoned over and over

again to attend expeditions to the

south, during the last decades

of the

century resisted such

calls-sometimes violently. The feudal

charactelistics of the encomienda

increasingly lost their meaning, and

the creation, about

1601,

of a

permanent

army

on

the

frontier

re-

duced

them

to a theoretical

obligation.

But it was

precisely during

this period

that the

Militias

(or companfas

del

nutmero)

were

in-

troduced

into

the

Indies, arriving

in Lima

in 1596 and in Chile

a

little

after

1608. Earmarked

for service

in the

defense of

the land

against Indians,

or

against

attacks

by

corsairs and

pirates, they proved

insignificant as a military force; but they

did constitute

a

new

body

of

officers, implying

the creation of

new

urban

military

ranks

that

were

sought

after

by

citizens

of

every

stratum.

Promotion to

lieu-

tenant captain, sergeant major,

or maestro de

campo (field

com-

mander), signified a social distinction, even though the holders of

these offices

might

no

longer

be

in

service

but

retired. At the

other

extreme,

the soldiers of the militia

were

principally

men

of

lower or

lowest

rank,

as is

clearly proved by

the

enrollments

of







URBAN SOCIAL

STRATIFICATION

IN

COLONIAL

CHILE 429

various provinces from the seventeenth to the

nineteenth

centuries.

Thus, the social ranks, through

an inverse process to the original

one, were once again invested

with military roles. This constitutes

a revealing testament to the

perpetuation of medieval notions.

As

yet there did not exist, even

among merchants and artisans,

a purely

civic sphere of interest, which was to play such a significant

part

in

the nineteenth and twentieth

centuries.

The composition of the aristocracy

can be approached quantita-

tively by studying the proportion

of encomenderos to the total Spanish

population. James Lockhart14

has shown

in

the case of Peru the

gradual progress between 1532

and 1560 from the nonselective grant

of encomienda as a reward to all those Spaniards who had come

to

the Peruvian coast and

were interested

in

obtaining one, to the

aristocratic institution

of the years of the first Viceroy Caniete (1556-

1560).

Towards

the end

of this

period

the

criteria

for

assignment

was

the

length

of

stay

in

Peru, nobility of origin, and participation

in military actions during the

years of Pizarro and the civil

wars.

By about 1560 encomiendas

were no longer given to artisans,

who

had been previously able to

hold them. One can estimate

roughly

that by about 1540 the encomenderos of Peru, Quito, and Alto

Peru

numbered approximately 500, a figure which was not subsequently

surpassed; the total number

of Spaniards there in 1545

must have

been between

4,000

and

5,000;

a

decade

later, about 8,000.

The

proportion of encomenderos

at the end of the period that we might

call

that

of the

Conquest

(1555-1560)

would thus

be '116

of the

Spanish population. Naturally,

the

proportion would vary

with each

city, depending

on

the

number

of

tributary

Indians.

Cuzco,

where

200

conquistadores

arrived with Almagro

in

1534, produced

such a

reward for 80 or 90 participants. Quito, in 1569, possessed a ratio

of

50

encomenderos to 250

Spaniards, which

is

still

a high percentage

of

1

in

5.

On the other hand,

the

figure given by Lopez de

Velasco,

and used

in

a

recent

estimate,15

indicates that

only

1

in

66,

or 30

of

the

2,000 Spaniards,

were

encomenderos

by

the

period

1570-1580.

The

Chilean case

is

quite

distinct. It shows

an important evolu-

tion

from

the

Santiago

of

the

sixteenth

century

to

that

of the seven-

teenth

century:

14. Ibid., passim.

15. Jorge

Enrique Hardoy and

Carmen Aranovich, Urbanizacion en America

Hisp'anicaentre

1580

y 1630,

Boletin

del

Centro de

Investigaciones Historicas

y Esteticas, II (1969),

9-89.







430

I-IAHR

I

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I

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GONGORA

By about 1570-1580, Santiago had some 375 householders;

the encomenderos numbered 27, that is,

almost 1 in 14

(not

counting the encomiendas of yanaconas, insignificant from

the

social point of view). By 1655 the number of houses was 516;

the

encomenderos with

more than 6 Indians

(the others were

not even registered for the purposes of a military convocation)

numbered 164; that is to say, a little less

than

1

in

3.16

These figures show a significant change

in

the social standing

of

the encomenderos. Immediately

after the

Conquest they were

a truly aristocratic group

that

emerged

from

the

first nonselective

encomienda (in 1546 Pedro de Valdivia reduced the original 60

encomenderos

to

only 32). They controlled

the

personal service

of

several

tens of thousands of

tributary

Indians

who populated

the

city territory, although

we cannot

have

much

confidence

in

the

figure of 60,000 Indians given

for

the inital period by a soldier who

wrote

in

1598.

About 1570

the

encomenderos

controlled

%

of the

gold extracted

from

the

placers; however,

their

productivity began

a steep decline

in

the following decade, coinciding with

the

great

epidemics

of the

years immediately

after 1590.

On

the

other hand, by

1655 the

mining economy

in

the whole

of central Chile had given way to a pastoral economy, based on

the

exportation

of

tallow, hides,

and other

products derived from

cattle raising,

destined for

Lima and

for the

recently created (1645)

garrison

of

Valdivia,

which

was

also

an

important

consumer

of

flour from central

Chile.

Since cattle raising

required very little

labor, the indigenous population-already considerably diminished-

was distributed

among

a

larger

number

of

Spaniards.,

through

the

use of diverse legal expedients (orders

to

quit, partial encomiendas,

etc.).

The encomienda

alone

thus

no

longer

guaranteed

an

aristo-

cratic position, and we thus find individuals from a more varied

social range

in

the

list

of

1655.

The decisive factor

in

achieving

aristocratic

status became the association of

an

encomienda

with an

estancias

made

powerful by

its

extent

and

proximity

to the

Santiago-

Valparaiso

road.

In

addition,

the

encomienda

was

not the

only

means

of

acquiring labor;

to it

were

added the

enslavement

in

war of

the

Araucanian

Indians,

black

slavery,

the

pinning

of the Indians

to

the estancias

through

verbal

or

written

agreements that implied

the

granting

of the use of a

parcel

of land and a

salary paid

in

clothing, or the hiring of Indians to an encomendero. The lack of

complete registers prevents

all

estimation of the

number of Indians

16. Gongora,

Encomenderos,

pp.

102

ff., 138

ff.







URBAN SOCIAL

STRATIFICATION

IN COLONIAL CHILE

431

who were encomendados by about 1655;

but it is

enough

to know

that the individual encomiendas oscillated between 6

and 50 tribu-

tary Indians

in

the decades around that date.

The

smallest en-

comiendas, which were

not

even included

in

the

registration,

were

given to residents of no special distinction, to widows and spinsters

of

great families, to

retired

officers of the army of Arauco,

etc.

On

the

other hand, La Serena, which continued to

live from

gold

panning and newly discovered silver and copper deposits, conserved

for a longer period the

structure in

which

encomenderos constituted

a

more clearly defined aristocratic group. They totalled

12 in

1623,

out of a total of 90 inhabitants recorded about 1630 by Vazquez

de Espinosa: that is, a proportion of 1 in 7. The encomiendas were

here relatively more populated than in Santiago, and the income

from mining allowed those who profited from it to possess smithies

and

ore-crushers. They owned small ships for commerce with

Peru

and

also

estancias for cattle within the district of the city.17

It would appear that the case of Santiago is not exceptional and

is repeated in other cities with a farming economy. Comparison

with

Tunja

is illustrative. This

New Granada city possessed

476

houses

in

1623 (inhabited by 3,300 Spaniards) and 161 encomenderos,

that is, a ratio of almost exactly 1 in

3.18

We could thus tentatively

suggest that a mining economy based on placers-the oldest form

of

large-scale production

in

the Indies-tended to preserve the status

of the

encomenderos as a superior group; and that, on the other

hand,

an

economy based on estancias, cereal farms, and vineyards

tended to

form a

landowning

aristocratic

class,

in which

the pos-

session of encomiendas was not the only decisive factor.

The

status of encomendero had been absorbed, in the agrarian

central

Chile

of

the seventeenth century, by a class of owners

(Besitzerklasse) -to use the terminology of Max Weber-in which

a

combination of

diverse

factors

played a part

in

the achievement

of

power.

First

of all,

the

powerful had to have influence with the

governors, who were

the

incarnation of the state. For the encomienda

and

the

grant

of

land

were a kind of

prebend, distributed by the

state as a

reward to

the

conquistador

or

to the settler. In my judg-

ment,

this

prebendary nature of personal fortune, this dependence

on

the

state,

constitutes

one of

the historical

elements of longest

duration in the Hispanic American aristocracies.

17. Ibid., pp. 40-41.

18. Vicenta Cortes Alonso, Tunja y

sus

vecinos, in Revista de

Indias,

Anio 25 (1965), 155-207.







432

HAHR

I

AUGUST

I

MARIO GONGORA

Secondly, sufficient wealth was necessary to acquire

and exploit

suburban farms and estancias, once the initial phase

of grants was

over and the regime of buying and selling had begun. The possession

of principal houses, furniture, and clothes appropriate

to rank-at

a time when imported household goods commanded such high

prices-suggests the requirement for cash. Given the traditional

poverty of Chile (due to the low export prices

imposed by Lima),

a good part of this cash was acquired on credit, through mortgages

on which annual interest payments (censos) were made to merchant

capitalists, convents, or the lenders of the sesmos de indios.19

The profits from the export market on shipments to Peru and the

garrisons of the south were increased by some landowners through

enterprises

that

were truly

mercantile:

importation

of clothes from

Peru, expeditions to Cuyo,

Tucuman,

etc. The highest-ranked en-

comendero-landowner

of the

mid-century, a

certain

Lisperguer, ap-

pears under the name of an intermediary

in

the register of merchants,

so

as

not to belittle his

status.

His

brother

lived in Lima and traded

with

Chile,

in

partnership

with

a merchant

living

in

Santiago.

In

the

port

of

Valparaiso

in

1566 there were

encomenderos

who

main-

tained

not

only warehouses but

also stores.20

However, we would prefer to call this a trading rather than

a mercantile element

within

the

aristocracy.

Just

as the

Conquests

were

authentic war

enterprises

for

spoils

and

domination,

so the

successors to

the

conquistadores

often undertook

enterprises such as:

contracting

for the collection

of

the

tithes; supplying

garrisons with

flour,

dried

meat,

or

arcabuz rope; buying official positions, to which

accrued

the

right

of

receiving dues;

etc.

All

this is well

documented

in Chilean research,21

and

also

corresponds

to

general

trends of Euro-

pean society

in the monarchical

age.22

In

Andalusia,

for

example,

it is

an even

older

feature

of

nobility,

both

high

and

low.23

However,

the

urban aristocracy also had to maintain the status

and ostentation

appropriate

to

noble

life.

Nobility

of

origin, genuine

or

fictitious,

derived

from

descendance

from

either

the

conquistadores,

19. Sesmos (le

indios came from the one-sixth part of mining

income that

belonged

to those Indians

who

had

been encomendados

in

Chile.

20. Benjamln

Vicufna Mackenna,

Historia

de

Valparaiso (Santiago, 1869);

ANS, Escribanos de

Santiago, fs. 290, 334,

and 434v.

21. Gongora, Encomenderos, chapter 2.

22. Otto Brunner, Neue Wege der

Verfassungs-und

Sozialgeschichte

(Got-

tingen, 1968), pp.

271-273.

23. Richard Kenetzke, Forschungsprobleme

zur Geschichte der wirtschaft-

lichen BeWtigung

des

Adels

in

Spanien, (Homenaje

a Ramon

Carande)

(Madrid,

1963).







URBAN

SOCIAL STRATIFICATION

IN COLONIAL CHILE

433

the

first settlers, or the

Spanish nobility: it

demanded a complete set

of

values held in social esteem, a certain

decorum and an ethos,

genuine

or conv7entional,

corresponding to the social model of the

gentleman. In addition, it

involved a class of urban patricians,

not

merely a nobility. It

implied a certain level of participation in

urban

life, the discharge of the office of

corregidor, alcalde,

regidor,

and the other civic

functions, or the duties of

an officer in the

urban

militia. There was a colonial

cut1suis

hoonorum,

which involved

holding these positions.

What

degree

of social

mobility

can be

observed

in

this land-

owning

and urban class? War was the great

channel of mobility

in

the Middle Ages. We need only recall the German

mninisteriales

and

the

caballeria villana of

Castile. As we have

seen,

the original en-

comenderos

of the Indies

derived from the Conquest. Once this

had finished, social mobility

came about

through other channels

opened by the imperial

bureaucracy and a

society in the process

of

becomning aristocratic.

The favor of the governor was the source

of

all grants, military posts,

ranks

in

the

militia

and corregimientos.

Ecclesiastical

posts-bishoprics, archbishopiics,

canonries,

the

regular

prelacies-provided

an

embellishment

to an

aristocratic group. The

higher ranks of the bureaucracy of the audiencia were open to Creoles,

at least

outside

the

provinces

of

their

origin.

The

chief means of

ascent,

however, continued to

be

through

marriage

into

great families.

One

document,

the

genealogical

difficulties of

which

permit only

a

rough

approximation, allows

us

to say that

among

the

164 en-

comenderos

of

Santiago

in

1655,

59

names derived from

Santiago

encomenderos

of the

previous

century, through paternal

or

maternal

lineage.

The

majority, 105,

represent,

in diverse

ways,

an ascendant

group;

they

came

from

provincial

cities or from

Spain itself,

or

fron

families

of the

capital

that

had not arrived n the sixteenth

century.

There

is

no

special

difference in

poweIr

or

prestige

between

new

and old families within this

scheme,

save for those

encomenderos

who

were

exceptionally

low in

rank

and who

certainly

never

came

from old families.

But downward

mobility

can also

be

traced in

some cases

amongst

these latter.

Provincial

honors and

marital

alliances

contributed

considerably

towards

leveling

the

members of

this

urban

and

landowning upper

class.

The registers of the provincial cities in the first half of the

eighteenth

century-we

have none

for

Santiago-give

us

a

glimpse

of the strata

in

these more modest societies.

Nearly

all

these

registers

derive

from

the measure ordered

by

the crown from

1737

to

1739

to







434 HAHIR

I

AUGUST

I

MARIO GONGORA

obtain a voluntary contribution after

the burning down of

the

royal palace in Madrid, a fiscal objective that naturally casts serious

doubts on the veracity of the declarations referring to the personal

fortunes of the citizens in question.

Mendoza, a well-registered city, gives

us the following results: 11

vecinos declared

more

than 10,000 pesos worth

of

possessions; they

all

carry

Don

before

their

names, 7

have the rank of maestros de

campo in

the militias

and

1

that of sargento

mayor; they all possessed

houses

in

the city, and had vineyards,

slaves, carretas (long, narrow

carts), suburban farms, estancias;

one

of

them declared 30,000 pesos,

and

two

26,000 pesos.

Of

the

other

vecinos, 85 declared property

worth from 1,000 to 10,000 pesos, and 51 less than 1,000. Amongst

the latter were mixed

both

those

who

carried

Don

with

their

name

and

those who

did not.

Vineyards and

parts

of

vineyards

form the

patrimony

most

commonly declared by all the categories.

Almost

certainly

there

were

other

inhabitants with

less than

1,000 pesos,

but

the

registration

clerks

must

have considered

listing

them

pointless

for

the fiscal purposes

of

the operation.

Within the urban militias-

made

up

of a total

of

266

soldiers,

in

addition to a few

officers

in

regular service-there figured a company

from the nobility, with

one captain, one lieutenant, one second lieutenant and 32 soldiers,

all classified

as

Don.

Such

offices,

as

well

as those

of

councillor

and

of

corregimiento, constituted the honors associated with

social

standing

in this

aristocracy

of

winegrowers

and owners-of-carts

for

the

trade

in

wine with Buenos Aires.

The 1739

register

of

La

Serena,

more detailed but lacking the total

amount

collected

in

cash, is less serviceable

for an overall analysis.

In

any case, its big difference with the

previous case-and with all

Chilean cities of the eighteenth century-is that the encomienda

continued to be powerful. One encomienda there included 80 to

90

tributary Indians,

an

unthinkable

figure in central Chile, even

in

the

previous century.

In

addition,

there were estancieros and

trapicheros (owners

of

ore-crushers)

who were

also

powerful,

as

is

evidenced by

their

using black slave

labor. Silver mines, smelters,

copper smithies, vineyards, mills,

ore-crishers, subu-urbanarms, and

estancias,

constituted the

objects of

local fortune, a situation that

shows no important structural differences from the city as it was

during

the

previous century.

The

continuation of mining and the

encomienda preserved

the

urban

structure

unaltered. The proudly

titled

vecinos

feudatarios

and

the

mounted

militia

company, called







URBAN SOCIAL

STRATIFICATION

IN COLONIAL CHILE

435

Guzmanes, together with

the

cabildo, preserved

the

honorary

distinctions.24

In summary then, in Chile we can distinguish two types of towns

of encomnenderos, general throughout the sixteenth

century. First,

the La Serena type was characterized by greater provincial

isolation,

a lower political and administrative level, and the

survival of the

mining encomienda, with a small group of old-established

families

at the summit of the local aristocracy. Secondly, the Santiago type,

was one

in

which the significance of the encomienda was subse-

quently supplanted by that of the great properties

and of the political

career

in

honors among the urban patricians. This resulted in

forma-

tion of a larger and more varied aristocracy, one, whose power did

not derive from a single factor, but arose rather

from the accumula-

tion of all the sources of power, wealth, and prestige.

In a town

of

this

type, the encomiendas themselves were smaller

and more nu-

merous than

in

the first

type, due to

the

predominance of a pastoral

economy.

In

terms of historical sociology, in the

La Serena type

of

town noble

status

and

the

aristocratic class tend to

coincide, while

in the Santiago type the fundamental reality is a landowning

class,

where

the

noble

element

of

status is

supplanted by

the

prestige

in-

herent in the possession of land and official posts.

Up

to

what point

these

types

of

aristocracy

can be generalized is

something that would require a greater abundance

of specific data

than that

which

I

presently possess.

No

fruitful

comparisons

can

be

drawn

with

port towns (such

as

Buenos

Aires),

with their

mercantile

patricians, mining

towns

and

villages (such

as

Zacatecas

or

Durango)

that did not possess encomiendas,

or

those towns of

the Caribbean

that

were highly dependent

for commerce on the

fleets

and that lived

on

black slave labor,

after the extinction

or

freeing

from

service of

the Indians who

had been encomendados.25

Comparison

of systems

of stratification would require

a certain

similarity of economic con-

stitution,

or

rather,

of

population

structure.

A

comparison

could

be

drawn

between

Chilean cities and those of New Granada.

Tunja,

for

example,

an

agrarian city exporting

to

Cartajena, possessed

a

resi-

24. Padron

of Mendoza,

ANS, Real

Audiencia

2836,

pieza

1;

padr6n

of

La Serena,

ANS,

Real Audiencia 666, pieza

2.

25. On Buenos Aires, see Jose Luis Moreno, La estructura social y demogr4fica

de

Buenos

Aires en

el

aiio

1778

(Rosario, 1965);

on Zacatecas,

see

Hardoy and

Aranovich,

Urbanizacion

en

America ;

on Durango,

see Woodrow Borah,

Fran-

cisco

de

Urdifiola's Census

of

the

Spanish

Settlements in

Nueva

Vizcaya,

1604,

HAHR,

35:3 (Aug.

1955),

398-402; on Cuba,

see

Ramiro Guerra y

S'anchez,

et al., Historia

de la Nacion Cubana (Habana,

1952),

I.







436

IiAHIR

I

AUGUST

I

MARIO

GONGORA

dential center inhabited mainly by encomenderos; but their number,

proportionally large in comparison with the total number of citizens-

as we have already said-implies that there were considerable dif-

ferences in status among them, as was the case in the city of Santiago

de Chile. Such differences were reflected in the differing numbers

of

tributary Indians held and in

the differences in agricultural wealth.

The data on encomenderos refer

to 1623 for

Tunja26

and to

1655

for

Santiago, but they must reflect

characteristics of long duration.

The

landowning aristocracy

was stronger than in the

initial

scheme

(the vecino-encomendero). It

derived its strength from an economic

development,

which

could

not be controlled within

the

model

of

an

institution for medieval warfare, and ended by dominating social

and urban organization. Unfortunately, it

is

not possible,

on the

basis

of

existing literature, to amplify on these approximations

and

contrasts.

The Merchants

From the

point

of view of

social regard and esteem,

French

merchants at

the

beginning

of

the seventeenth century, according

to

their fellow

countryman

Charles

Loyseau,

are

in

the lowest social

rank

of those

considered as gentlemen, being thought

of

as

honorable

men,

or honest

persons,

and

bourgeois

of

the Cities:

qualities

that

are

attributed

neither to farmers,

neither

to bailiffs,

nor

to artisans,

and

even

less still to

laborers,

who

are considered to be base

per-

sons. 27

Something

similar

could

be said

of

Spain and the

Indies.

The

merchants constitute an

intermediary class, not despised

at all,

but

neither

a class that

was

aspiring

to social or

political supremacy,

working

instead

in

an

agreed

symbiosis

with

the

aristocracy

and,

thence, with the political and ecclesiastical powers.

In the West this acquisitive

class (Erwerbsklasse) (to use the

terminology

of Max

Weber)

always

had

two chief occupations:

exchange,

and

merchandising

as

specific to

the

great merchants.

Lower down were the

shopkeeping

merchants

and the tratantes

(dealers).

In

the Indies

also,

there

were a

few

deposit

and loan

bankers, as

has

been

shown

in

Lima

98

but

they

were

of

no great

26. Cortes Alonso,

Tunja y sus vecinos. In Tunja

the

encomendados

varied between 80 and 2,000; in seventeenth-century Santiago, Chile they never

rose above 80; in

La

Serena,

never

above 100.

27. Quoted

by H. Lapeyre,

Une

famille

de marchands: les

Ruiz

(Paris, 1955),

p.

116.

28. Guillermo Lohmann

Villena,

Banca y credito en la

Amrnica Espafiola.

Historia, 8

(Santiago, 1969),

289-307.







URBAN

SOCIAL

STRATIFICATION IN COLONIAL CILE

437

social significance because

the system of

loans was fully developed

through

censos and

commercial loans.

Importing and exporting

were the

fundamental merchandising

activities

of the merchants

of the Indies and almost

always both

activities were

combined in

the same persons. In

contrast

with

Spain

and

Mexico, the

great

merchant of Lima also possessed a

shop, usually

on the

Plaza

de Armas or in the streets

around

it,

and there was

a

special

commercial area of town.

The Lima

merchants of the sixteenth

century-studied by

Lock-

hart29-usually worked on a basis of

family ties; the

son did not

immediately abandon the

business. In

the sixteenth century the

merchants were not specialized: in addition to the importation of

clothing (a

word which in reality covered

innumerable lesser

manu-

factured

goods), they

traded in horses

and black slaves; they lent

money at higher rates of

interest than

those of the tax contracts; they

insured

remittances of

money to the Peninsula; and

they invested in

companies of

the most diverse nature,

generally those

that repre-

sented short-term

investments. The Lima

merchant was characterized

by

his lack

of

interest in

investing

in

land; he sometimes

even

lived

in a rented house.

Neither was he

interested in obtaining en-

comiendas. The merchant group in Peru-which organized itself

into a

consulado or

merchant guild at the beginning

of the seven-

teenth

century-included both

independent merchants and, agents

of

the

commercial houses

of Seville.

The

Chilean merchants

were

certainly both importers and ex-

porters: they

imported

clothing, sugar, tobacco; they

exported tallow,

hides,

or

wheat. They

received these products from the landowners

in

exchange

for

manufactured products. Their financial

transactions

resulted in their acquiring

the right to

ship the agricultural products

that were

deposited

in

the warehouses

of Valparaiso

(or

in

the

lesser

ports, respectively).

There, was

also a trade in mules to

Alto

Peru, and in

manufactured products to

northeast

Argentina in ex-

change

for

Negro slaves who had

entered

through

Buenos

Aires.

This lack of

specialization is

more

noticeable

than in

Lima, be-

cause

in

Chile the

merchant

liked

to

invest

in

land.

It

is

true

that

Alonso

del

Campo y Lantadilla, the most

powerful Chilean

merchant

by

about

1590-1630, possessed

luxurious houses and

vineyards,

but

no land; he invested large sums in the form of censos. But it is

a

unique

case.

There

are

numerous references

in

wills and

contracts

to

merchants who

possessed

suburban

farms and

vineyards

near the

29.

Lockhart, Spanish

Peru, chapter

5.







438

HAHR

I

AUGUST

I

MARIO

GONGORA

city site, and

estancias in

widely varying parts of

the country.30 In

the city,

they possessed a

shop, annexes, and a

yard, sometimes

all

on the same square; some constructed rooms for rent in the patio.

In

other cases they

owned tanneries,

mills, etc. The characteristics

of an

agricultural economy pervaded.

Their

landowning certainly did not

impede

multiple activities of

a

more truly mercantile

nature. They

occasionally undertook varied

business with

ships'

masters and pilots; for the trade with

Lima

they

formed

companies

amongst themselves, or with other

Spaniards,

and

occasionally

with the

secular clergy; they lent risk

money (at

10

percent) to

other merchants; they

bought ships or shares in

ships;

they contracted for the collection of the royal tithes, and later also

other taxes, singly or in

company.3'

We

are

here

more

interested in

characterizing their features as a

group within

the social hierarchy, than

in describing

their economic

activities. It

is notable, of course, that

they generally

were not Creoles

native to the

land in which they

operated. In the

vast majority of

cases, they came from the

Peninsula. There were

also a few

Italians

and

Levantines, and, in the

mid-seventeenth

century, various Portu-

guese. They

were not

encomenderos, except in the

very first years

of the Conquest, when Valdivia wanted to give Indians to a few

merchants

to whom he

owed

money,

or

whom

he

wanted

to attract

to the

new

land. However, there are insufficient

monographs

on

this

subject

for us to be able to speak with

certainty

of

merchant

families; during the sixteenth

and seventeenth

centuries,

when

such

families

actually did reside in

Chile,

there is no evidence to

suggest

that

several successive

generations

dedicated themselves to com-

merce.

It

was not that the

merchant group lacked

a

corporate

sense.

They would sometimes

appear

at the cabildo

to

defend

their

interests.

In

1580,

at

the

cabildo

abierto, they

blocked

the

arguments

of

the

encomenderos

on

matters

concerning

the

royal

quintos,

and obtained

the

support

of

the

governor.

In

1642,

and

during

the

following

years,

on

the matter

of the Union

de

Armas, they negotiated and

made

30.

On Alonso del

Campo y

Lantadilla, see

G6ngora,

Encomenderos, pp.

94-95. On

the lands

of merchants

in

the

period

1580-1600,

ANS, Escribanos

de Santiago 3, fs. 371; 4, fs. 168, 172, 175v., 189v.; 7, fs. 216; 8, fs. 120, etc.;

Real

Audiencia

2319,

p.

1

(1611); Real

Audiencia 1179,

p.

1

(1641,

Pedro del

Portillo en

Quillota); Jesuitas

122,

fs.

52-54 (1641,

comerciante

italiano Nicolas

Otavio en

Quillota);

and

Escribanos de

Santiago 217, fs. 198v.

(1651, Otavio).

31. Loan and company contracts

abound

in ANS,

Escribanos de

Santiago.

On

the contracting for the

diezmos,

see

Congora,

Encomenderos, p.

87 ff.







URBAN

SOCIAL STRATIFICATION

IN COLONIAL CHILE

439

contracts as a group on an

equal basis

with the vecinos. From 1577

on,

election to the cabildo

was open

to distinguished

merchants,

and

various important

merchants could

be

regidores.32

Concerning

the upward mobility

of the merchants, the

docu-

mentation of

Santiago provides some

interesting

facts. There are

cases

of artisans

who

became merchants (a

tailor, at

the

end of

the

sixteenth century); of

merchants

who became

notaries and

founded

dynasties of

notaries, lawyers, and

landowners (the

Toro

Mazote family,

from the end of the

sixteenth

century and throughout

the

following

century). Alonso del

Campo y Lantadilla

succeeded

in

marrying his daughter to

the son of

an oidor; he had

bought the

office of alguacilazgo

mayor,

the chief law-enforcement office, and

after

his

resignation the

office was filled by the two successive

husbands of his daughter,

the second of

whom was an active

trades-

man

who

then

assigned to

another merchant the direct

management

of

his

shop, without

abandoning

successful merchant

enterprise on

the Buenos

Aires route. He

sent

clothes from Chile and

imported

cattle

for his

own

large estancia near

Santiago.33

In

this case, the

title

of Councillor

worked

very favorably for his

social

prestige and

distinction, since

it gave him a seat in

the cabildo.

Acquisition of offices gave a powerful stimulus to the process

of

aristocratization in the

merchant

group. Some such offices were

modest

in

rank

but presumably

handsome profits

accrued to such

of

their

possessors as

the Tesorero

de la Santa

Cruzada.

This

office

was filled

exclusively by

traders during the first half of the

seven-

teenth

century.

In

the

same

way, the ranks in

the

militia

acted

as

a

means

of

ennoblement, and in 1615

the Compantfa del

Comercio

was

organized in

Santiago.

Among

49

retired

captains

in the

militia

of

the capital in

1655, 17 or 18

were or had been

merchants.

Social

mobility was evidence by

the

rise

of simple

shop

em-

ployees

and

agents

to

the status of merchants of

importance.

Martln

de

Briones,

an

employee

of

Del Campo

in

the

1590s, received

authorization to

do some

retailing,

and then to take

merchandise

to sell in

Lima.

He

had become

an

important

merchant 20

years

later.34

Sumptuous domestic circumstances and the number

of black

slaves

were

another indicator

of rank.

One

example appeared

in

the

house

32.

Gongora, Encomenderos,

pp. 71-77.

33. Ibid., p. 101.

Note

also

the case

of

a tailor

(Martin

Garcia) who rose

to

become a merchant, p. 80.

34. ANS,

Escribanos de

Santiago,

8,

fs.

241 (1593); and 9, fs. 354

(1597).







440 ITAHR

I

AUGUST

I

MARIO

GONGORA

of Alonso

del

Campo, which included 16 male

and female

slaves,

plus many

paintings,

rugs,

and

books-rarities in the

Chile of

1630.

The

merchant of Chile and of the Indies-as of Spain, according

to

Henri Lapeyre-was characterized by a marked

piety.35

Several

founded chaplaincies and the

beforemnentioned

Del Campo

dedicated

the greater part

of his fortune to a

foundation of the

Order

of

Santa

Clara. Two

merchants we know of, Pedro

del

Portillo and

Domingo

de

Madureyra,

gave one-half, or all, of their

personal

wealth

to the

Jesuits. At the

end of the sixteenth century, we find merchants who

served as

administrators and treasurers of

the City hospital; later

they were

treasurers of convents. The

tratantes, who were dedicated

to short-distance trade in the produce of the land, were men of

little social significance-hardly greater

than that of grocers and

innkeepers. One such person, who made

his will in 1636, listed as

possessions only

40 square varas of land, one mulatto slave, and

two

earthenware jars; he

remainied

in debt for

interest on censos.36

The

merchants

of Chile were subject

to

continual

instability.

In the sixteenth century this was as a

result of the war, which bled

their

resources

by required assistance to

the soldiers.

In

the

seven-

teenth and eighteenth centuries, the cause

was a struggle with the

merchants of Lina, who imposed upon them low prices for tallow

and

wheat. Jn

the seventeenth century,

noticeably,

there

were many

merchants who were legally dispossessed

or went bankrupt.

The registers that we possess of the

provincial cities for the

first half of the

eighteenth

century-specifically La Serena, in 1738-

give us a picture of some merchants who

possessed no more than

a

shop. They

owned no suburban farms or estancias, and were

highly dependent on the trade with

Santiago.

In

Mendoza, for

that

same

year, only

six general stores were mentioned; they belonged

to

people of

small to medium fortunes (from 200 to 2,000 pesos).

The fact that

four of them carry Don

before their name, makes

us

wonder

whether they were actually merchants or really property

owners.

The

observation of Eisenstadt, that in

the historic-bureaucratic

empires the

distinction between wealth and prestige is of a structural

nature,37 s moderately well confirmed

in

the

Chilean

case. Moder-

ately

because the

merchant

was not

actually

the

object

of

open

dis-

35. Lapeyre, Une famille, p.

116.

36. ANS, Escribanos de Santiago, 177B, fs. 111.

37. S. N. Eisenstadt, The Political Systems of Empires (New York, 1963),

pp.

82-86.







URBAN

SOCIAL SIRATIFICATION IN COLONIAL CHILE

441

respect-as were the medieval Jewish

moneylenders-and

because

the cursus honorum

was open to them

through the channels we have

indicated. But the thesis is verified in

the sense that such honors

were

part

of

an

aristocratic, as

opposed to mercantile

or

bourgeois,

society. And at the

same time,

through a paradox which was very

much a

charactelistic

of the society

of the

Indies-as it

was

of

Andalucla-a good part of the

lucrative businesses and

enterprises

was

in

the hands of

rich landowners-a very few of

whom, however,

figured through an

intermediary in

the commercial registers of

the

city. The urban

patricians of

Buenos Aires present, perhaps, the

principal relative exception. Even

though they were possessors of

estancias, they dedicated themselves mainly to commerce and did

not

intend, says Concolorcorvo, to

found mayorazgos.38

Latvyers and Professionals

Although the

members of the intermediary group of

lawyers and

professionals were

extremely few in

number

in

Chile,

their

place

in

society

is

of

interest. At the summit were the lawyers.

Some of

them, members (by

birth) of the Creole aristocratic

class, had been

to

the

universities

of

Limnaor Charcas and later

were

able

to

study

in Santiago itself. Others had been able to make connections easily

with the

aristocracy,

through business and marriage.

In

any case,

law

was considered a distinguished

profession.

Lawyers and mer-

chants

gave social consistency to the

category of moradores, which

was in

fact more a

nominal than a real group. From the

beginning,

lawyers were important in the

Conquest, not only as

advisors and

men of

good judgement but also as

staff

to

Governors, delegates,

and

corregidores;

from

1609, with the definitive installation

of

the

Audiencia, they

increased

in

number

and importance. They could

be elected

regidores

and alcaldes as

from

1577. The

inmportance

of their

kind

of intellectual-legal

schooling to the history

(we might

call this

social-ititellectual, rather than

merely

intellectual

history)

of the

Colony and

of

the

Republic is

already

well known.39

Socially

inferior to

them were the

notaries, whose

wills

throughout

the sixteenth

and seventeenth

centuries often

reveal

what

were

really

extremely

modest fortunes.

There

is one

important

exception

in the

mid-seventeenth

century;

Manuel de

Toro

Mazote,

a

public notary

and also notary to the cabildo (the most important of the public

38.

Biblioteca de

atitores

espaiioles, Vol. CXXII (Madrid, 1959),

p. 281.

39.

Javier Gonzalez

Echefiique, Los

estudios juridicos y

la

abogacia en el

Reino

de

Chile

(Santiago, 1954).







442

HAHR

I

AUGUST

I

MARIO

GONGORA

notaries usually did combine both

functions), possessor of a great

fortune in

land, and associate in mercantile enterprises. In the

case

of Lima, Lockhart detects the ubiquity of notaries and the wide

variety of their original social positions; but in Peru they were

evidently much more numerous

and enjoyed greater opportunities

than in

Chile.40 Inferior to the

notaries were the solicitors.

Of the few

doctors practising in

the medical faculty of

the

Uni-

versity, it could not be said that they formed a social group. Surgeons

were

considered artisans.

Spanish

Ar-tisan-s

The artisans of the sixteenth century occupied a social position

that was higher than in recent

centuries. This occurred because of

the

general lack of social differentiation at the time of the Conquest.

Artisans went to war, received small

encomiendas, made and received

loans, and undertook a variety of

occasional mercantile businesses.

Above all, they possessed a house, a suburban farm, and a small

piece

of

land near the city, which they acquired not merely by grant

but

also

through judicious buying and selling. On such property

they often took out a mortgage in

the form of censo de indios or

censo de convento, to obtain money in extraordinary circumstances.

The

craftsmen used by them

received clothes or money as

salary,

either

by terms of an asiento

(contract)-in the case of Spaniards

or

free

Indians, Negroes, and

mestizos-or by apprenticeship, an

arrangement for young men of any

ethnic origin.

A master

craftsman

could

buy native or Negro slaves, consequently artisans, even those

of

the

poorest sort, usually had

one. We witness

on

one occasion,

through the evidence given at a

criminal trial about a conversation

in

a tailor's back room, that the tailor was in the company of Negro

craftsmen

and

boys.41

But these

master artisans

in

the more

ordinary crafts (carpenters,

cobblers, tailors, jug-makers, etc.)

suffered from the

competition

of

artisans included in the encomiendas. Some

of

the

latter,

near to

the

city,

could

dedicate some

of

their time to

free work.

Subsequently

master artisans

also

faced competition from

the importation

of

prod-

40. Lockhart, Spanish Peru, p. 68

ff.

41. Artisans' lands from 1560-1600, in ANS, Escribanos de Santiago 2, fs.

6 (1564); 3, fs. 190, 261, 408 (1586-1587); 5, fs. 188 (1590); 7, fs. 354v. and

356v. (1591), etc. Alvaro Jara, Los asientos de trabajo y la provision de mano

de

obra para los no-encomenderos

en

la ciudad de Santiago 1586-1600 (Santiago,

1959). Roland Mellafe, La introduccio'n

de

la esclavitud negra en Chile (Santiago,

1959), pp. 137-156. Gongora, Encomenderos, p. 80.







URBAN SOCIAL STRATIFICATION IN COLONIAL

CHILE

443

ucts, not

merely from

Spain but from the other

provinces of the

Indies.42

It is not

surprising then,

that in the mid-seventeenth

century, the

position of the artisans was

much less prosperous. They

usually

still

had their own

house, but we find that, in

general, land

is no longer

mentioned. Listed in wills

are personal possessions,

usually

no more

than the tools

of the craft,

and amounts of money

earned

for

work

undertaken

and not yet paid for. (This

downward

mobility would

later be accentuated in the

eighteenth

century, by passage of the

Free

Trade

Law of 1778.) On the other

hand, in the city

of La Serena,

which

in

1610-1630 continued to

preserve more

archaic features,

artisans-merchants-property owners, possessed solares planted with

olive

trees. This was

particularly true for

the coppersmiths,

the

most

important

artisans of the city. These

craftsmen made the

pans

neces-

sary for

mining, as well as

for the vineyards.43 As late as

1738,

there

still

remained

in La Serena a few

craftsmen who owned solares and

small

pieces

of land with a few

cattle-the remnants of

a

less

com-

partmentalized society.

An indicator of the

slight social

esteem in which the artisans

were

held

in

the

seventeenth and

eighteenth centuries, can be found

in the enrollment records of the militia, a faithful reflection of the

whole

spectrum of degrees

of social esteem.

As we have already

said, aristocrats and

merchants filled the

highest ranks

of

officers

(certainly field

master and

sergeant major were posts filled

only by

aristocrats).

But the

soldiers of the militia-as they

appear

in

a

1655

list that

specifies

occupations-were craftsmen

and

master

craftsmen

in

a

proportion

of more

than

2:3

(49

of

the

73

soldiers

of a

company

in

Santiago).

The other soldiers

included

two mer-

chants,

one

doctor, 11

undefined

inhabitants, and 15

men

without

a craft. The

militia was

extremely inefficient, the greater

part of

the

members,

as an official

of that time declared,

avoiding service

because

while

so

occupied, they

were

unable to

earn

the

sustenance

for

their

families.

As was

true for the Old Regime in

Europe, to

rank

as an

officer was prestigious, to be

a soldier was

precisely the

opposite.44

42.

Gongora, Encomenderos, p. 35.

43. Calderero Gabriel de Robledo, in ANS, Notarios de La Serena, 6, fs.

50v., and

various other

entries. Also see the will

(1672) of

Antonio Cuello, who

owned

a

house, a

shop,

a

quarter

interest

in

a

solar,

and one-half

an

estancia,

ANS,

Notarios de La

Serena, 5; and the

reference to P.

Rangel, an artisan

and

merchant

from La

Serena,

in

ANS, Escribanos

de

Santiago, 146,

fs.

324v.

44. Gongora,

Encomenderos, p.

101.







444

HAHR

I

AUGUST

I

MAIO

GONGORA

The

artisans formed guilds, and some of these-particularly the

more important ones,

such as the silversmiths-possessed statutes;

but the monopoly of the guild was challenged, particularly in the

sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Nonetheless, the cabildos

at-

tempted to impose an

examination and name inspectors charged with

visiting all the craft workshops to ensure that personal and industrial

rules were being observed. The guilds, in any event, had much less

significance in the Indies than in the Old World, and they never

had any political

importance. However they were almost certainly

of

social and

charitable significance. The work of Manuel Carrera

Stampa shows us

that in Mexico the social development of the

artisans' guilds was much richer and more ramified.

Poor-

Spaniards

The archetypal

poor Spaniard of the sixteenth century was

basically

the

soldier.

He certainly had nothing to

do with the future

soldier of the permanent army. Rather his role was with the partici-

pants in the enterprise

of conquest or late expeditions, who had not

settled as

houseowning inhabitants or

r

eceived rewards after the

Conquest. Soldiers

were extremely numerous in Peru because

of

the considerable influx of the 1530s and 1540s; they fought in the

civil wars and later dispersed throughout the other provinces of the

Indies. In Chile

they were numerous because of the forces that

came from Spain or Peru on several occasions during the sixteenth

century, hoping to win

definitively the Araucanian war. Such soldiers

lived on the military

hospitality of the encomnenderos, sharing their

homes

and meals.

During an expedition they were paid a salary by

the

encomendero or,

in many other cases, by the royal exchequer.

They were militarily equipped by the latter or by the encomendero.

Considered the scum

of the Spanish population of that century, they

disappeared with the

founding of

a

permanent army around 1600,

when

the soldier

class established itself on the frontier. But

their

incursions for the

purpose of equipping themselves with horses during

the

winter

continued

to be the

terror

of both the

cities and the Indian

settlements.

Other

types

of

poor

Spaniards

were

servants, orphans, poor

rela-

tions, and guests

who lived

under

the

roofs of

powerful

families.

Wills often mention, in regard to charitable bequests, this numerous

population, many of

whom were

illegitimate

sons maintained

for

a

considerable period

until

they

married.

Throughout

Colonial his-

tory

the

proportion

of

illegitimate

sons was

very high,

and a

large







URBAN SOCIAL

STRATIFICATION IN COLONIAL CHILE 445

number of them were mestizos.

Many of these dependents

often

served on lands

owned by the family, while others

lived

in

the

city. During the seventeenth

century the gangs

recruited to help

the army

in

extraordinary circumstances

were

made up of young

vagrants

of the countryside and city, and were

from

this

stratum.

Such lads, together

with deserters and Negro cimarrones

(runaway

slaves), made

up the rural vagrants

and the urban unemployed,

so

notorious in the

great capitals at

the end of the colonial period

in

Chile.

Cuadrilleros (foremen of labor

gangs), miners and their foremllen

in

the sixteenth

century, foremen of the estancias in

the seventeenth

and eighteenth centuries, administrators of the Indian settlements,

cattle farmers without property

who associated themselves with

the

owners of land to form companies

for the raising

of cattle,45 poor

cattle farmers who asked for land

on loan-all these

forms of humanity

whom we call poor Spaniards, and who were

often mestizos-

formed

an extremely interesting stratum

from

the social

point of view.

They could be

compared with army officers who had

come up fromn

the ranks.

Sometimes

they in their turn became owners

of estancias

of

intermediate

or little value. But,

in

any case, they

belonged to

the rural, more than to the urban, environment. They formed the

nucleus of the property owners

in the most remote

and ruralized

regions

of Chile.

Indians and Urban Castes

In the case of Mexico

City,

the

Spaniards

inhabited some

13

large blocks, within which the only

Indians were

master craftsmen

or

those employed

in

domestic

service.46

However, the large in-

digenous population

that settled

there after

Cortes

lived

in

com-

munities

that

had

magistrates

of their own.

In

the two most im-

portant

of

these communities, San Juan Moyotla

and Santiago

Tlatelolco,

the magistrates had jurisdiction

over neighboring

estancias

and their

indigenous

inhabitants.

However,

this order of things,

which was

so much

a

part

of the idea of the

twvo republics

of

the

sixteenth century, was soon overcome by infractions

and

cross-

breeding

of

every sort,

with the result that the parishes of 1770

in-

45. Jean Borde and Mario Gongora,

Evolucion de la propiedad en el Valle

del

Puanque (Santiago, 1956), I, 51-52. Mario

Gongora,

Origen

de

los 'inquilinos'

del Valle Central (Santiago, 1960), p.

33 ff.

46. Eduardo Baez Maclas, Planes y Censos de la Ciudad de

Mexico

1753,

Boletin del Archivo General de la Nacion, 2d series, VII,

1-2,

(Mexico, 1966),

407-484.







446

HAHR

I

AUGUST

I

MARIO

GONGORA

cluded parishioners

of all races.47 The indigenous artisans established

themselves

in

neighborhoods,

as they had done before Spanish domi-

nation, and they now

practiced all or almost all the European crafts,

organizing themselves into guilds, with

their own system of

ap-

prenticeship and examinations-or,

as was the dominating tendency,

incorporating themselves

as craftsmen into the examination system

of the Spanish guilds.

In sixteenth-century Peru, some domestic servants lived in

the

houses of the Spaniards. Others lived in

shacks on the periphery

of

Lima. In

contrast with the case in Mexico

City, the indigenous

artisans did not quickly acquire the European

crafts and techniques,

and their adjustment to the Spanish guild system was inadequate and

slow. In 1555, the surviving Indians in

La Habana were liberated

from slavery and the

encomienda. Those living

on the periphery of

La Habana were

concentrated in the settlement

of Guanabacoa, near

the

city.

Service

was left

entirely to

the Negroes. The activity on

the arrival of the twice-yearly fleets, provided

Negro slaves with some

earnings, through

free occasional work that they could easily

hide

from their masters, and which also gave

them the possibility

of

buying

their

freedom.48

In Santiago de Chile, the resident Indians could be encomendados

who

were, with great

infrequency,

rotated in service. They resided

in houses

as

domestic

servants

(page boys,

Indian

women,

and

chinas,

who served

as

domestics, etc.)

or

on

the

neighboring

suburban farms

(in a

form of

agrarian

servicio personal

rendered by the Indian

settlements in the sixteenth

century). But,

in

those same

positions,

they could

also

be yanaconas, permanently

in

service, without being

rotated.

There

was

also

a

mass

of

free Indians

and Negroes-the

latter came, above

all,

from

Peru,

as

companions

of

the conquerors

or of

churchmen;

nor was

there

any

lack

of

Indians from

Paraguay,

Tucum'an,

Beliches

from

the south of

Chile,

etc.

They

were

fre-

quently

small

urban

property

owners

with

a

plot

of

land

and

some-

times

a

suburban

farm.

The area

in

which

the latter

settled,

by

preference,

was

that of

Chimba,

to

the

north of the

city, separated

from it

by

the

Mapocho

river.

The

notarial

registers

and the acts

of the

cabildo

preserved

for us

many

traces of this stratum:

con-

47.

Charles

Gibson,

The Aztecs uinder

Spanish

Rule (Stanford,

1964),

pp.

397-402.

48.

For

Peru, see

Lockhart,

Spanish

Perut, chapters

10 and

11. Ann

Twinam,

Service

Havana 1555-1600,

unpublished

manuscript

provided

by

Richard

Morse,

to whom

I owe this

information.







URBAN SOCIAL STRATIFICATION

IN

COLONIAL

CHILE

447

cessions

of privileges

to them, titles for plots

of land bought

and

sold, taxes

they paid, records of

where they worked as apprentices

or craftsmen,

and their wills. A

will dated

1564,

belonging to

a

Peruvian

Indian woman

servant of the Bishop,

shows us a

suburban

farm worked

in

common by 13 Indian

men and women

of various

ages who

were relations or friends

of the testator, and,

in addition,

by

10

other Chilean

yanaconas.

She also left

one-half

of

a

suburban

farm, situated

in

Chimba, to the above

13 Indians.49

The entire mass

of free castes subsisted

from the sale of small

agrarian production

in

the urban

market, or

else from some form

of artisanal

or wage-

earning employment.

Negro and mulatto slaves, or emancipated ex-slaves (horros or

freed ones ),

served in the houses

of the

Spaniards or on plots

of land

at

the

periphery

of the city,

working for their master

if they

were slaves, or for their

own account

if they were free, living

in shacks

they

themselves constructed next

to the fields,

as happened fre-

quently

in Lima. Or

Negroes, freed or enslaved,

could be

artisanal

craftsmen

or master

craftsmen in any of the

crafts, earning

for

themselves

or for their master, according to

the case. The

owner

of

such

slave craftsmen was usually

a master of

the same craft, either

Spanish or Negro. Colored carpenters, cobblers, jug-makers, and,

above

all,

colored masons, can be

found frequently in Santiago.

Free mestizos-that

is,

sons

of an Indiai-

woman who

had

not

been erncomendada-were

in the same economic

situLation as

the

other castes

mentioned

above,

and

they

also

figured

as craftsmen

in

contracts;

but

this

was

with

less

frequency

than

Negroes

and Indians.

The

militia,

as

we

have

noted,

was

a

very

accurate

reflection

of

the

social hierarchy

within

the

Indies,

and

often

included free

Negroes

and

mulattoes

(pardos),

organized

in

separate companies

with

their

own

officers.

In

Santiago

these

companies

were

organized

in

1643,

when

a Dutch

attack

was feared.

Such

companies

were called

up

in

times of danger

and served

as

escorts

to

large expeditions

in

search

of cattle

to supply

the

army.

We

again

find

companies

of

pardos

and

also

of

Indians-which

is more

exceptional-in

Mendoza

in

1738,

in the

register

already

mentioned. The officers of the

Santiago

company

of

pardos argued

forcefully,

in

1690, that

their services

justified

their

opposition

to the

payment

of

a tribute.

In many other

American cities, we find members of the militia who came from the

castes;

so

much

so that

in

the

Jujuy register

of 1778

they

have one

49. ANS, Escribanos de Santiago 2, fs. 64 (Ines Conzalez,

1564).







448

IIAHR | AUGUST

I

MARIO

GONGORA

identity:

those

who are registered as mestizos and mulattos are

soldiers. 50

Principal Conclusions

1)

The

State

in

the sixteenth-century Indies

was

based on

comr-

plete cities, that is, virtual republics that incorporate as a unit the

city site and its surrounding territory. The gradual ruralization of

settlement provoked the later formation of territorial jurisdictions,

which became increasingly independent, and the concept of the State

itself gradually became territorialized.

2) With reference to the urban aristocracy, in Chile, and prob-

ably

in

many

other

regions,

two

types

of

urban

society

can

be

distinguished: one,

when the

economy

was

principally

based

on

mining, was more archaic, with a ruling class of encomnenderos; he

other

type

of

city

had

an

aristocracy

formed

by

all

landowners

(not

only encomenderos,

and

in

a looser

formation, based on class),

when

the

economy

was

agricultural.

To this

source

of

aristocratic

status was added,

in

the

capital, the

social

and political importance

of the

honor

derived

from

being a councillor, which influenced

the

overall situation.

3)

The

Chilean aristocracy

was

always open to mercantile

enter-

prise

and

profitable

business

(contracting

for

taxes,

making

of

loans,

etc.)

that

complemented

its

agrarian base.

Its members were

not

rentiers

who

collected Indian

tribute,

but

rather

they exploited

their

lands, using them to provide produce for the international or for

the

urban

market.

4) The war was, originally, a source of urban stratification; later,

and inversely, the militia reflected a social stratification that had

already

taken

place.

5) There were

cities in

which the merchant invested

in

land,

and

there

were others

in

which he

invested almost

exclusively

in

mercantile concerns and the

granting

of

credits.

6)

All the social

strata

accepted

the

superiority

of noble values

and

aspired

to

participate

in them.

50.

Beatriz Rasini,

Estructura demografica

de

Jujuy,

in Ame'rica

Colonial.

Poblacion y economia (Rosario, 1965), p. 125.

urban social stratification in colonial chile

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