The History of Capitalism in Mexico: Its Origins, 1521–1763 9780292766105

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The History of Capitalism in Mexico: Its Origins, 1521-1763

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r±Vlj Translations from Latin America Series

Institute of Latin American Studies University of Texas at Austin

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The History of Capitalism in Mexico: Its Origins, 1521-1763 By Enrique Semo Translated by Lidia Lozano

University of Texas Press, Austin

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Copyright © 1993 by the University of Texas Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First Edition, 1993 Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to Permissions, University of Texas Press, P.O. Box 7819, Austin, Texas 787137819 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Semo, Enrique. [Historia del capitalismo en Mexico. English] The history of capitalism in Mexico : its origins, 1521-1763 / by Enrique Semo; translated by Lidia Lozano. p. cm. — (Translations from Latin America series) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-292-73069-1. —ISBN 0-292-77669-1 (pbk.) 1. Mexico—Economic conditions—1540-1810. 2. Mexico—Social conditions—To 1810. 3. Capitalism—Mexico—History. 4. Working class— Mexico—History. I. Title. II. Series. HC135.S36513 1993 330.12'2'0972—dc20 92-45786 CIP ISBN 978-0-292-76610-5 (library e-book) ISBN 978-0-292-76611-2 (individual e-book)

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To Esther and Jacques, the immigrants

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Contents

Preface to the English Edition Acknowledgments Introduction 1. The Forces of Production

ix xxi xxiii 1

2. Tributary Despotism

23

3. Empire and the International Market

49

4. The Republica de los Espanoles (Structure)

67

5. The Repiiblica de los Espanoles (Labor)

105

6. The Dynamics of the System

135

Notes

159

Bibliography

179

Index

195

Tables 1. Congregated Population, 1602-1605 2. Royal Tribute, 1569-1770 3. Debts Incurred by Tlaxcala Haciendas and Ranchos (1712) 4. Distribution of Expenditures of the Caja Real of Mexico City, 1576-1650 5. Spanish America: Exports of Precious Metals to Spain by Private Sector and Exchange in Commodity Imports to America, 1561-1650 6. New Spain's Population

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33 43 97 138

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Preface to the English Edition

Forty years ago, a debate opened on the transition from feudalism to capitalism in Europe; its influence soon spread to other areas of historical research.1 In the mid-sixties, the debate started up again in an unexpected setting: Latin America. Taking up the issues of that first round, it now incorporated non-Marxist thinkers and new themes: dependence and the nature of Third World societies in their Latin American variant.2 A decade later, seeking a new synthesis, the European theme was reintroduced through seminal contributions by Pierre Philipe Rey (1973), Robert Brenner (1974), and Immanuel Wallerstein (1974). These contributions inspired a wave of polemical essays and historical studies that led to the development of a well-defined problematic, sustained by an abundant literature that is still growing.3 The History of Capitalism in Mexico was published in Spanish in 1973 and is part of that debate. It stirred considerable controversy in Mexico and was later adopted as a textbook by many teachers, running into more than twenty editions. During the two decades since its original publication, research both on theoretical questions addressed in it and on the economy and society of New Spain has advanced by leaps and bounds. Furthermore, events in the last ten years must lead us to reconsider our ideas on the origin and development of capitalism in the world and in Mexico. The incorporation of all these developments would require either changes in a text that, meanwhile, has acquired a personality and life of its own or, better still, the writing of a new book—and that is not the case here. Especially since, having reviewed the subsequent literature on the issues addressed in it, I can confirm that its central theses remain valid. I would rather develop them further, qualify them, and incorporate corrections inspired by the excellent monographical research published throughout this period than reject them or change the book's general approach. Perhaps the best service one can render the contemporary Englishspeaking reader is to attempt to situate correctly the position occupied

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by this work within the debate and to let readers decide for themselves the current relevance of its contribution. It would be impossible in this introduction to mention the many scholars from five continents who have contributed substantially to the theory of the transition from feudalism to capitalism, the nature of Third World societies, or the secular trends [longue duree) of the economic world system. I will therefore run the risk of defining somewhat schematically the three main trends that have emerged, leaving out significant variations within them. Supremacy of Relations of Production The first of these trends argues that the key to the rise and development of capitalism can be found in the relations of production and class struggle. What differentiates capitalism from earlier systems is the fact that its survival depends on the accumulation of capital, an increase in productivity, and a reduction in the value of goods. Its dynamic is based on the existence of free wage labor that results from the alienation of the laborer from the means of production and the transformation of labor power into a commodity. The transition from feudalism to capitalism in Europe was the outcome of a twofold process: the crisis of the seignorial system of extraction of the surplus through extraeconomic coercion and the failure of all attempts to consolidate peasant ownership of the land. This resulted in the emergence of a new social system of ownership that promoted continuous development of the forces of production. The influence of the development of the market and international trade on the transition from feudalism to capitalism depended entirely on the development of social relations linked to that process and the corresponding balance of class forces. Under diverse ownership structures and balances of powers, the expansion of trade had opposite effects, not only on the transformation of relations of production but also on long-term income distribution and the development of the forces of production. Articulation of Modes of Production While it accepts the preeminence of relations of production in the rise of capitalism, this trend questions whether the theory of transition in Europe can be applied indiscriminately to Third World countries. The emergence of capitalism in a social formation necessarily entails the destruction or transformation of precapitalist modes of production. Nevertheless, this process has not been the same in Europe and in Third World countries. Feudalism has a series of characteristics that favor the development of new relations, mainly the means of extraeconomic

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Preface to the English Edition

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coercion capable of transforming labor power into a commodity. However, other precapitalist modes of production prevalent in the Third World are highly resistant to this process such that obstacles can be overcome only through violence. Under these conditions, the coexistence of several modes of production within a single social formation persists for a prolonged historical period. The process that binds them together and, in the last instance, establishes the predominance of capitalism is called articulation. There are three stages: (1) A relation is initiated between the two modes of production in the sphere of circulation. Under these conditions, interaction with capitalism reinforces the precapitalist mode of production. (2) Capitalism takes root in the area of industrial production, subordinating precapitalist modes of production. (3) Precapitalist relations disappear even in agriculture, dissolved by the dynamics of the widespread growth of wage labor and the accumulation of capital. Before the industrial revolution in the nineteenth century, capitalism possessed the necessary strength only to subordinate and consolidate precapitalist modes of production in the Third World, not to destroy them. Only when the industrial revolution came to an end in Western Europe (even later in other variants) did the phase of destruction start. World System and Dependence The third position, developed as a critique of the two previous ones, maintains that it was the expansion of international trade that undermined the feudal system. The rise of the market and world trade in the sixteenth century marked the beginning of the modern history of capital. The foundation for the approach that focuses on the rise of wage labor as the power motive behind the transition to capitalism lies in the fact that most nineteenth-century liberal and Marxist thinkers adopted industrial England, where the urban proletariat prevailed, as the model for capitalist development. However, from the sixteenth century to the present day, this condition has been marginal within the economic world system. Seen as a whole, the latter appears as a combination of areas of wage and nonwage labor, of production for the market and for consumption, of transferable and nontransferable forms of property and capital. We must therefore ask ourselves whether that combination of "free" and "nonfree" is not in fact the normal condition of capitalism as a world system. Underdeveloped peripheral countries are as capitalist as those in the center. The causes of development and underdevelopment, of the predominance of free labor in some areas and of "nonfree" labor in others, are the same and must be sought in the dynamics of the capitalist world system. There is no "national" development. The only

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historically existing entities are the now virtually vanished minisystems (small self-sufficient and primitive units) and world systems. The object of study becomes the world system rather than society. The History of Capitalism in Mexico was written in 1970-1971. Dependence theory—as developed in major studies by F. H. Cardoso and Enzo Faletto (1969), Andre Gunder Frank (1967, 1969), Pablo Gonzalez Casanova (1970), Tulio Halperin Donghi (1969), Luis Vitale (1967), Theot6nio Dos Santos (1967), Rodolfo Stavenhagen (1968), and S. J. Stein and B. H. Stein (1970), to name but a few of the most distinguished contributions of an already abundant literature at the time, prevailed throughout Latin America. However, Laclau (1971), Assadourian (1973), Cardoso (1973), Rey (1973), Brenner (1974), and Wallerstein (1974) had yet to publish their influential studies. Dependence theory represents a contribution to contemporary social science in at least two fundamental aspects: it reminds us that all history is ultimately world history and that we cannot study capitalism if we neglect one of its fundamental aspects, namely, the international economy. However, conceived as an alternative to a modes of production and social formations (systems, in my book) approach, it poses insoluble problems. The History of Capitalism in Mexico was conceived as a reply to certain objections I had about dependence theory as it was then. Namely: (1) By defining feudalism as a closed system and capitalism as a market economy, the adherents of dependence theory and the economic world system did not provide a new definition of these concepts,- what they did was to change radically the object of social science study. While social relations of production constitute the object of study of the first two approaches, the central theme of this third approach is the rise, development, and consequences of the expansion of international economy. (2) From this starting point, all national or regional development in the Third World appears as an unavoidable consequence of the interaction of trends that national or regional forces cannot alter. Thus, the concepts of internal market and class are not significant for its study. Given that its capitalist and underdeveloped nature are invariable constants, five centuries of impressive development of relations of producion, social struggles, and internal revolutions represent mere chance episodes within a circular movement in which the end point is the same as the starting one. (3) Dependence appears to be infused with a mysterious force that inevitably spurs development at one end and underdevelopment at the other, determining once and for all the place of individual countries within the system. How can we explain, then, uneven development in those countries both in the "center" and at the "periphery" that persist in overstepping the dividing lines and being different from each other, frequently undermining the logic of dependence?

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I chose to develop these objections in a case study that would demonstrate the existence of powerful precapitalist formations in the early stages of Latin American history, their articulation with early capitalism, the emergence of original forms of transition, and the wide diversity of local class struggles and alliances that characterized these processes. I soon established that, given conditions in Mexico, an approach that centered on relations of production was necessary but not sufficient. The presence of precapitalist modes of production other than feudalism, the fact that capitalism was originally transplanted from Europe, and the peculiarities of a conquest characterized by strong drives to colonize and settle made it necessary to pay particular attention not only to violent changes in the forces of production but also to all political and cultural cataclysms that accompany the collapse of a civilization and the rise of a new one and that can hardly be synthesized under the rubric of "class struggle/' I thus reached a series of theoretical conclusions that concurred grosso modo with what would later be called the theory of articulation of modes of production. As early as May 1972,1 published an outline of my conclusions in an article, the main ideas of which might serve as an introduction to reading the text: During its first two centuries of existence, the economy of New Spain formed a heterogeneous system in which different modes of production coexisted, not separate from each other, but as an organic whole that gave each part its particular meaning. Its history manifested itself in changes in the relative importance of individual modes of production and transformations in relations between them. The combination, within this system, of tributary despotism, feudalism, and simple mercantile relations conferred a predominantly precapitalist character on the whole until the mid-eighteenth century. Capitalism, to the extent that it emerged in several sectors, was in an embryonic and subordinate state. The system was made up of two basic structures: the republica de los indios (despotic-tributary) and the republica de los espanoles (feudalcapitalist). The former consisted, on the one hand, of all the Indian communities and, on the other, of the encomenderos, the royal bureaucracy, and the ecclesiastical hierarchy. The surplus product from the communities took the form mainly of tribute in labor, kind, or money. The forces of production underwent some change, but they were not developed much more than in pre-Hispanic times. The latter emerged from the process of colonization and mestizaje. Its basic units were the estancia, thehacienda, the mill, the mine, the workshop, and the obraje. The income of the dominant classes derived from the surplus labor of Indian and African workers, granted in encomienda or distributed in repartimiento to Spanish properties as slaves, free-wage laborers, or

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peones, and from the commercial exploitation of communities and independent petty commodity producers. This was never a dual society. The necessary means for the basis of the economy of the lepublica de los espanoles were extracted from the Indian communities. The indissoluble relationship between these two structures translated in reality into an extremely rich variety of combinations, each with its own particular set of characteristics. Thus, in the North, mining and extensive cattle raising prevailed and peasant communities were weak. In the center, developed communities coexisted with sizable Spanish enterprises. In the South, the community remained strong and Spanish colonization advanced slowly. The apex of the system was one and the same: the Crown, the church, and the metropolitan and local dominant classes. When the Spaniards first arrived, the Indian communities were already integrated into a rather stable tributary system. The Aztec nobility lived outside the calpulli, and its privileges, whether through their function or inherited, were well established. Aware of this reality, the Crown conceived the possibility of preserving it. The vision of an empire based on tribute from countless communities, villages, small towns, and cities, self-governing but unconditionally loyal to the king, stemmed from the essence of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish absolutist state. Hence, at the beginning it simply tried to take the place left vacant by the collapse of the Aztec state. This policy coincided with the Crown's struggle against the nobility and the bourgeoisie to consolidate its own power in Spain. Having crushed the rebellion of the cortes and the cities in the same year that the conquest of Tenochtitlan was accomplished, Charles V and his successors went on to take advantage of every social and regional antagonism in order to consolidate their absolute power in the metropolis. In the colony, the Crown's objective was to curb the ambitions of the conquistadores and their descendants and to save Indian communities from destruction. However, demographic catastrophe, the success of silver mining, and pressure from settlers forced it to yield. Despite everything, the communities survived, not only because of Crown policy but also, chiefly, because of determined resistance by Indian peasants, who resorted to all possible forms of active and passive resistance, ranging from litigation, land seizures, and local rabbles to protracted wars to defend their way of life. Unlike the British in India, the Spaniards did not confine themselves to exploiting the native society. They emigrated and attempted to establish a civilization in the image and likeness of the one they had left behind in the metropolis, and they succeeded in some measure. From the very beginning, feudal and capitalist elements within the new society

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were articulated in such a way as to make the argument of feudalism versus capitalism, which concerned many Latin American scholars in the past, pointless and to direct our attention instead toward the problems of articulation and the particular forms of transition. Since the Conquest, New Spain had formed part of a much larger whole: the Spanish empire and, through it, the capitalist mercantile system of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which turned the colonies of the New World into an area of primitive accumulation of capital, trampling over anything that stood in the way. Mercantilist colonialism changed the way in which existing modes of production functioned, but it did not manage to make them capitalist either in Europe or in the colonies, because European capitalism at this time was in an embryonic stage. Relations between capitalist centers and Spanish America at that time were very different from those that would follow the industrial revolution or, later, the advent of imperialism. The mechanisms of exploitation operated mainly in the sphere of pillage, unequal trade, and intensive exploitation of forced laborers in mines and plantations, not in the expansion of industrial production and financial networks in the metropolis, as would be the case later. Furthermore, a considerable portion of the surpluses generated in the colonies were diluted in support of the last great European feudal empire. The landowning nobility was still the dominant class in Spain. The bourgeoisie, powerful in the early sixteenth century, declined and became feudalized during the seventeenth century. Under the Spanish colonial system, feudal stimuli were much stronger than under Dutch, English, and French colonialism, consolidated a century later.4 This was the essence of my argument, and I believe it is as valid today as then. The history of capitalism was first conceived as a three-volume study of capitalism in Mexico from its origins to the present day. Hence its original title in Spanish, Historia del capitalismo en Mexico. Los origenes 1521-1763. The second volume was to deal with the problems of transition (1763-1940), and the third was to be devoted to the study of contemporary Mexican capitalism. The scarcity of economic sources on the nineteenth century and other duties, not entirely of an academic nature, forced me to postpone a task that has now been diligently resumed. Meanwhile, research on the nineteenth century has advanced considerably, and I am convinced that the thesis on the articulation of modes of production can be applied to the study of the two later stages as fruitfully as it was to the first, without distorting what is already known about them. In the last fifteen years, a vast number of studies have been published that have contributed to a more detailed knowledge of the economy and society of the period analyzed in the book. These texts have made it

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possible to go considerably further in the study of mechanisms of survival and adaptation of Indian communities, labor relations, links between the economic and political realms, class and caste formation, and the integration of New Spain into the international economy of that period. As an example of the richness and diversity of their contributions and taking only those that deal directly with the period and issues studied in Histoha del capitalismo en Mexico, I will review some of them in the following pages, aware that the time will soon come for new theoretical syntheses, of which this book might be regarded as a worthy precursor. The theoretical debate has been enriched by research carried out by Victor M. Soria (1988), who further pursues the analysis of modes of production in colonial Mexico. He rightly emphasizes the social role played in their articulation by tribute, taxes, commercial and monetary circuits, and surplus extraction from the metropolis. It is regrettable that he could not fight the temptation to add a new mode of production (artisanal) to those already known. Bringing together the study of modes of production, the changing colonial relation, and agrarian crises, he argues that the history of the colony be divided into four periods, each marked by the outbreak of a crisis and by substantial changes in the articulation of modes of production. Leaving aside internal causes of development of the economy of New Spain, without however, denying their importance, Angel Palerm (1978) analyzes the economy's incorporation through silver into a system "increasingly dominated by capitalism." He explains, however, that it was not a free-market economy but a state-regulated and managed economy. Gunder Frank (1979) has studied the dynamics of New Spain's agriculture between 1521 and 1630. Having removed all aspects that might contradict his thesis— mainly those relating to Indian society, the natural economy, and precapitalist relations between the economic and political realms—he arrives at the anticipated conclusion: the Conquest over, Mexican agriculture became capitalist, and its entire development was determined by the dynamics of the market and accumulation on a global scale. Enrique Florescano (1984) has synthesized the history of the hacienda in New Spain. He argues that only after securing its own system of obtaining, keeping, and replacing laborers did the hacienda consolidate itself. That was the reason behind the hacendados' demand to abolish the repartimiento. The haciendas were set up to supply the market created by mining centers and large cities, but the hacendados always tried to be self-sufficient as far as their own internal consumption was concerned, in order to avoid the financial expense otherwise incurred if goods had to be obtained through the market. Ulises Beltran (1989) deals with the transformation of agrarian labor systems between

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1524 and 1640 and their effect on New Spain's economy. He argues that these changes were the result of fluctuations in the relative prices of goods and factors of production, in turn brought about by changes in population and market size. Carlos Sempat Assadourian (1973) maintains that in the early seventeenth century, Latin America was already divided into large economic spaces defined (1) around one or two dominant products that directed their growth outward and (2) by a degree of specialization and a division of labor suitable for these products, and that (3) the metropolis devised a system of direct control over each individual area, and (4) it hindered or prevented relations between areas. Jos6 Carlos Chiaramonte (1984) has traced the history of the concept of feudalism in Latin American thought since the mid-nineteenth century to the present day and ends with an analysis of the 1965 Puiggros (feudal colony) / Frank (capitalist colony) debate. He concludes that neither succeeds in substantiating his respective thesis in a satisfactory manner and that the problem has not been adequately researched. Ciro F. Cardoso and Hector P6rez Brignoli (1979) have criticized Wallerstein's thesis. They argue that, as regards production, Europe could not be considered capitalist since the end of the fifteenth century; the rise of capitalism in that continent was not a simple outcome of surplus transfer from the periphery; and the theory of a world economy cannot explain how the system determines the diversity of forms adopted by labor at an international level. The best summary to date of the debates on the subject is the one by Steve J. Stern (1988). He has criticized Wallerstein's theory and has shown that the latter's thesis on the three forms adopted by international labor does not provide an adequate explanation of labor relations in sugar and silver complexes, the two major colonial products. Wallerstein's reply and Stern's comments may well represent the beginning of a new stage of the debate at a higher level. Research on Indian society during the colony has flourished. Teresa Rojas (1988) has looked at Mesoamerican agrarian technology in the sixteenth century. Relying on sources that had not been adequately used before, she offers a much more complex, diversified, and accurate image than the one previously held. Mercedes Olivera (1978) has analyzed the community of settlers in the municipality of Tecali, southwest of the city of Puebla, between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries, and has found more continuities than ruptures. At the end of the sixteenth century, some eight thousand Indians of diverse ethnic origin formed a well-integrated and relatively autonomous unit. In political terms, they constituted a republica de los indios; in religious terms, they were members of the same parish of Santiago Tecali; in economic terms, they were self-sufficient and their common language was Nahuatl. Spanish, black, or mestizo settlements were small, and society was still divided

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into pillis (nobles) and macehuales [comuneros). Land ownership was determined by pre-Columbian traditions endorsed by the Spanish administration. Significantly, Nancy M. Farriss (1984) subtitled her book on the Mayas under the Spaniards, The Collective Enterprise of Survival In it, she argues that the Mayas managed to avoid the disintegration of their society largely because of their own resources, among which were their knowledge and strategies to assimilate and adapt to conquests, derived from a long pre-Hispanic history of foreign domination. She reminds us that the policies of Spanish colonialism must not be confused with the modernizing processes imposed after the second half of the nineteenth century, because the settlers were themselves premodern people. Marcello Carmagnani (1988) has studied the processes of reconstruction of Indian society in Oaxaca during the colonial period. He has uncovered systematic and concerted action by comuneros to strengthen the relation between households and communal forms, between cofradias and fraternities, and has found that their vitality contradicts the widespread image of an inert Indian world, eroded by the action of exclusively external forces. Maria Teresa Jarquin (1990) has analyzed political, religious, and economic development in Metepec in colonial times. She argues that the fusion of both cultures cannot be reduced to a mechanistic superimposition of Spanish on Indian culture, but, rather, to a complex process of reelaboration on both sides that gives rise to a new way of life. Jesus Ruvalcaba (1985) has analyzed the political economy of a community in the northern region of the Valley of Mexico during the sixteenth century (twenty-five thousand inhabitants at the end of the century). He asserts that, despite the introduction of the plow, the use of animal power, and new seeds and plants, production and the social structure that sustained it preserved the inhabitants' pre-Hispanic traits. Any changes that may have taken place came about mainly because of violent demographic shifts. The study of labor relations has been enriched by the authoritative study of Silvio Zavala (1985), which paints a vast fresco of labor conditions among Indians in the mid-sixteenth century. He describes in detail labor legislation and its relation to a reality governed by the encomienda and obligatory services. He reveals forms of coercion hidden behind free labor contract laws. He describes the complexity and diversity of social relations contained in tribute and obligatory services, as well as the struggles fought between the Crown and the ecclesiastical orders, on the one hand, who insist on laws being obeyed, and encomenderos and "all-powerful men," on the other, who are set on obstructing them. Woodrow Borah (1983) has studied the Indian court that operated in central Mexico between 1592 and 1820, regulating

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relations between Indians and Spaniards. Laws, petitions, and proceedings reveal a clash between differing Spanish and Indian conceptions regarding the norms that should govern relations between them. On the question of the rise of the dominant classes, one must mention Jose de la Pena (1983), who, drawing from sources unknown till now, has studied the rise of New Spain's oligarchy. He records the early presence of "all-powerful men" who still lived and thought in terms of the Castilian medieval world of the fifteenth century and their substitution by a network of families who controlled not only new agrarian activities, mining, and trade, but also cabildos, public works, the provisioning of cities, and land distribution. The source of church wealth in the sixteenth century has been researched by John Frederick Schwaller (1985), who describes in detail tithes, parish revenue, pious works, and alms, as well as the impact on them of fluctuations in production and agrarian prices, of demographic changes, and of the rise of the haciendas. Linda Greenow (1983) has analyzed credit and mortgages in Guadalajara in the eighteenth century. She reaffirms the central role of the church in this area, which controls the development of the economy as a whole and concludes that, as regards credits, the church did not operate as a corporative institution but as a set of private interests that clashed and intertwined. It would be impossible to mention here all the major studies that have revolutionized our knowledge of the origin of the hacienda. Other themes and approaches follow from studies like the one by Ross Hassig (1985), which deals with the provisioning of Tenochtitlan-Mexico before and after the Conquest. The author finds continuities and ruptures that furnish evidence of both the persistence of the Indian economy and the technical revolution introduced by the Spaniards. Tribute and earlier systems of transportation survived, but the introduction of new products, the expansion of the market, and the use of mule trains and wagons drastically altered the relation between the city and its hinterland. On the assumption that, for cultural and economic reasons, chroniclers were more interested in providing an account of rural areas and of religion than in urban conglomerations, Jos6 Luis Rojas (1986) has turned to alternative sources to demonstrate that the way of life of Tenoch titlan's inhabitants at the time of the arrival of the Spaniards was genuinely urban and very different from life in rural villages, and that this aspect has been neglected in research on pre-Hispanic society in its entirety. Cecilia Rabel (1985), who has studied tithes in one Guanajuato municipality, argues that they represent a little-used, basic indicator for analyzing secular trends in prices and the colony's economy in general. The study of forms of Indian peasant resistance has been given new

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impetus through such works as William Taylor's (1979), which deals with the social implications of criminality and rebellion in Mexican villages in the colonial period, and Friedrich Katz's (1988), which provides a comparison between peasant rebellions in the century prior to Cortes's arrival and those in colonial times. Katz concludes that, due to their military superiority, demographic catastrophe among the Indian population, and their methods of indoctrination, the Spaniards were more successful than the Aztecs in preventing them. The increase in the number of rebellions in the nineteenth century came about because these conditions no longer existed. John Coats worth (1988) has classified peasant rebellions, quantified their frequency, compared their patterns in different countries of the subcontinent, and arrived at the conclusion that in Mexico their frequency and scope grew after 1760, in response both to demographic and economic pressures and to the Bourbon reforms. Thanks to the diversity of such contributions, a new image has emerged of the enormously vast and highly diverse region called New Spain, of its many cultures and complex processes of fusion. It possesses a history profoundly influenced by events taking place several months' sailing away in Seville, Antwerp, or London, but in which the main actors were Indians, Spaniards, blacks, and mestizos who, with hatred and love, struggle and collaboration, ultimately merged to establish the bases for an entity not in the least imaginary, albeit very problematic, which is present-day Mexico.

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Acknowledgments

I have received a great deal of personal and intellectual help in the writing of this book. Most of the research was done during my tenure as visiting professor at Humboldt University in Berlin. The administrators of this institution and in particular the directors of the Institute of Contemporary History, Helmut Stocker and Gunter Rose, as well as the other contributors to the center, did their utmost to help me with my research. Friedrich Katz read parts of the manuscript, and our discussions were always full of encouragement and new ideas. An earlier version of this work was presented as a doctoral thesis at the same university. The members of the examining panel, Manfred Kossok, Johan Lorenz Schmidt (Radvanii), and Max Zeuske, submitted the manuscript to a meticulous analysis, and their written comments made possible a substantial improvement. In Mexico, Gast6n Garcia Cantii read the book carefully, while my conversations with Roger Bartra and Sergio de la Pena served to clarify many ideas. Some of the most valuable encouragement, criticism, and comments came from my seminars with UNAM postgraduate students. Of course, the responsibility for the errors and shortcomings of the book lies with the author alone. The help given by Ellen Wernicke from Humboldt University Library and Mr. Riedmann from the Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut was invaluable in enabling me to locate sources. The struggles waged by Mexican students, intellectuals, and workers in 1968 for the renewal of their country inspired this work and hastened its completion.

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Introduction

Advances in the study of so-called underdeveloped countries have shown once again that political economy is a science only so long as it is a historical science. The origin of both economic backwardness and development lies not in climate, race, or a set of various unrelated traits, but in the historical conditions of the evolution of each society. In posing anew the problem of development as a central theme, economic thinking has had to reinstate the comparative study of economic systems to the same level of importance that the classical economists attached to it. The questions that the present work attempts to answer have been prompted by the nature of contemporary Mexican society. The study of earlier economic systems enables us to clarify the origins of the present system. In this analysis, the history of Mexico is conceived as a succession of socioeconomic formations, each of which grows within the womb of a predecessor. The task of economic history is to analyze each of these systems and to construct models that will enable us to understand the laws of its evolution, that is, its rise, its apogee, and its decline. Research on the economic history of Mexico between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries is still incipient and the data used in this book are fragmentary. Often they serve to illustrate rather than to describe situations. The hypotheses put forward are meant to stimulate theoretical debate and to guide research rather than to establish definitive truths. Each socioeconomic formation constitutes a set of elements bound together by definite relations. The system cannot be explained in terms of its elements nor can it be reduced to the sum of its parts. On the contrary, it is the organic set of relations that confers on each element its specific meaning. Throughout four centuries of Mexican history, we can observe the long-lasting presence of a series of units of production—the agrarian community, the hacienda, the workshop, and so on—whose intrinsic traits survive. But their economic function, their relative importance,

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and the laws of their evolution depend wholly on the general system of which they form a part. In the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the community formed the productive base of a despotic-tributary structure. Today, the same community survives in some areas, but as an element subordinate to the development of Mexican capitalism. In the seventeenth century, the hacienda represented a great advance: the consolidation of private property and the substitution of communal methods of production by other, much more advanced modes. In the late nineteenth century, the hacienda's function was totally different: it had become the main obstacle to the development of a national market for commodities and labor. The same can be said of certain relationships, such as that of dependence. The phenomenon of dependence has existed since the sixteenth century, but its concrete function and relative importance have always been determined by the particular socioeconomic system in which it inheres. These units and relations, then, which survive in varying degrees, cannot form the basis for a study of socioeconomic formations. Only the comprehensive, total analysis of each concrete system will enable us to unravel the laws of evolution of its elements. It should be possible to formulate general principles about the economic history of Mexico that could be applied to all or most of its stages.1 However, the range of applicability of these laws is in inverse ratio to their scientific value. This argument is based on the notion that the most significant principles, thosenearest toreality, have a validity limited to the length and duration of each concrete socioeconomic formation. Economic history contributes to our understanding of the present not by formulating universal laws but by studying the laws of development and progression of concrete economic systems. This History of Capitalism in Mexico opens with the Conquest and concludes with the onset of the profound socioeconomic transformations that characterized the last fifty years of the colonial era. The period studied clearly represents the precapitalist phase of Mexican society. It involves a heterogeneous or pluriparticular2 system, encompassing several modes of production, whose operations are determined by the multiple uses for which their surplus production is designated: the greed of the Spanish treasury; primitive accumulation in Holland, France, and England; the expenditure of encomenderos, hacendados, and caciques-, the accumulation and transfer to Spain of financial fortunes by public officials. However, one thing is clear: the capitalist mode of production, insofar as it emerged in one or another sector, remained in a potential, embryonic state, subordinate to the dominant precapitalist relations. Three clearly defined modes of production can be identified from the beginning: tributary despotism, feudalism, and embryonic capitalism.

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Introduction

XXV

They did not exist independently, but, on the contrary, were integrated into an organic whole, a set of relations, an economic system that governed their behavior. Sometimes these modes revealed themselves in a specific phenomenon,- other times they figured as aspects of a phenomenon in which they combined with other modes. The entire system was formed by two fundamental structures: (1) the republica de los indios, or tributary despotism, and (2) the republica de los espaholes, in which feudalism and embryonic capitalism were inextricably entwined. Each structure formed a clearly defined and distinct organic whole. Yet, they were both integrated into an organic system by the close links between them. This was not a "dual society," but a single system with two structures. The despotic-tributary structure consisted of the indigenous communities on the one hand, and the royal bureaucracy and the church on the other. The main unit of production was the agrarian community. The laborer was a member of the community. Surplus production was expropriated in the form of tribute in labor, kind, or money. The republica de los espaholes arose from the process of colonization and mestizaje. Feudal elements, modified by embryonic capitalist elements, prevailed in its structure. The basic units were the estancia, the hacienda, the artisan workshop, the obraje (manufacture), and the mine. The income of the dominant classes came from the surplus labor of Indian encomienda or repartimiento workers, slaves, free wage-laborers, and peons, and from the commercial exploitation of the community and the petty producer. It took the form of rent and profit. The two structures were intertwined in reality, creating an extremely rich range of local combinations in which the elements of the system could be found at different levels of development and in greatly varied forms. Thus, mining and extensive cattle raising prevailed in the North, where the agrarian community barely existed; developed agrarian communities coexisted with sizable Spanish towns in the center,- while the traditional community prevailed in the South, often in isolation, since colonization was limited and mining only slightly developed. The economy of New Spain constituted a whole. The exploitation of the indigenous community provided the necessary resources for the emergence of the republica de los espaholes. Comuneros (members of the community) made up a majority of the labor force in its units of production. In the beginning, this exploitative relation took the form primarily of encomienda} later on, that of unequal trade mdrepartimiento. Indigenous economic activities, such as dyes, cacao production, and so forth, became directly tied to the international market, through the Spanish merchant. The viceregal bureaucrat was often an encomendero, a merchant, a

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mine and obraje owner. His was the dominant position within both the despotic-tributary structure and the republica de los espanolesj he appropriated a significant part of surplus production from both structures and used it in accordance with the opportunities and values prevailing in the Spanish empire as a whole. The apex of both economic structures was one and the same. New Spain's society was, in turn, part of a much larger whole: the colonial system of Europe's nascent capitalism. Through the Spanish empire, the big capitalist centers turned the New World colonies into an area of primitive accumulation, a source of gold and silver, a market for their products and a supplier of "colonial goods." Colonial exploitation penetrated every pore of society and changed despotic-tributary, feudal, and capitalist relations. Colonialism opposed any local development that might have endangered the interests of the metropolis: the Crown supported the tributary structure in order to curb the development of the local feudal-capitalist structure and changed its position only when faced with the latter's irreversible triumph. Seville's commercial monopoly, an agent for the big Dutch, French, English, and German trading houses, supported the monopoly of the consulate of Mexico City's merchants in order to impede the rise of a vigorous local middle bourgeoisie. The rise of capitalism between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries brought about capital accummulation in the metropolis and decapitalization and impoverishment in the colony as well as the rise of the working class in the former and the spread of slavery sans phrase in the latter. The rising bourgeoisie in Europe helped prevent the development of the bourgeoisie in America. There are some basic differences between the laws of development of those countries that led the capitalist revolution between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries and those that became dependent. One of them lies in the dialectic relationship between endogenous and exogenous factors. In the centers of capitalist development, internal factors were the most dynamic and those that determined the transformation of the entire system. This was not the case, however, in the dependent countries. Internal development there lagged behind the development of the international capitalist system and was often subordinate to the latter's evolution. However, in both cases, development was always the result of the dialectic relationship between endogenous and exogenous factors; neither of these by themselves could account for development. When studying concrete socioeconomic formations, we must hold to the analysis of all historical factors and their changingrelations. A unilateral approach will inevitably lead to schematization and dogma.

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Introduction

xxvii

The extraordinary heterogeneity of Mexican colonial society was the product of a set of factors: (1) the great leap from the indigenous world to the world of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century New Spain took place through conquest, the superposition of one economic structvire over another, of one social formation over another, rather than as the result of an internal process; (2) some sectors of the economy, now integrated into the international market, were revolutionized by New Spain's integration into the capitalist colonial system,- others, subjected to an intense process of exploitation, became depressed, and the rest stagnated in isolation,* (3) the early thriving of a money economy, of commercial and usurer's capital, which went along with colonialism, enabled the coexistence of highly heterogeneous economic structures that these elements bound together without greatly altering their mode of production. When studying the evolution of individual societies, the scheme of successive modes of production (primitive community-Asiatic mode of production-slavery-feudalism-capitalism) cannot be applied as a scheme of predetermined chronological stages, but rather as systems whose hierarchical relationship lies in the fact that the higher modes represent humankind's greater ascendancy over nature than the lower ones. This is so because: (1) most societies have not gone through every stage,- (2) the fate of these modes of production in the history of each individual society has been different: in some, they have reached their apogee and attained great stability; in others, they have had a fleeting and weak character that gave way to higher modes,- (3) the transition from one system to another can take at least two different roads: through the eruption of internal contradictions or, alternatively, through the conquest of one society by another and the complex fusion of a lower mode of production with a higher one; (4) the combinations of modes of production in the socioeconomic formations of different regions display fundamental divergences that preclude the application of a model of "slavery," "feudalism," or "capitalism," whose generalizations are based exclusively on the historical conditions prevalent in one part of the world; (5) as a result of the expansion of capitalism as a world system, the socioeconomic formation of the so-called underdeveloped countries has acquired an extraordinarily heterogeneous character, combining elements of different modes of production, from the most backward to contemporary capitalism. The attempt to subject the history of each country to the straitjacket scheme of five modes of production that succeed each other chronologically—each system growing in the womb of an earlier one and adopting the familiar cycle of rise, apogee, decline, and demise—is entirely futile. The combinations and the order in which modes of production succeed

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each other in the history of individual societies are not predetermined. As Roger Bartra comments, The concrete study of history offers us numerous examples of forms of transition (Asiatic mode of production), regressive development (capitalism in Latin America engenders feudal forms), coexistence of different modes of production (the primitive community with capitalism, as is the case in Mexico). Leaps over one or more periods (from the Asiatic mode of production to capitalism in Southeast Asia); from precapitalist forms to socialism (Mongolia), stagnant societies (certain regions of India), etc. etc.,... we find the universality of evolution in the direction, in the content of history, not in the various forms it adopts.3

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The History of Capitalism in Mexico: Its Origins, 1521-1763

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1. The Forces of Production

Mexico is a country with an unusually diverse geography. A range of physical conditions blend to bring about a great variety of climates, regions, and natural resources. These geographical contrasts have had a far from insignificant effect on the character of its heterogeneous and unequal social development, particularly in its initial stages. The mountains, a dominant factor in the physical profile of most of the country, have helped spread the population across a series of valleys and plateaus, dividedfromeach other by wild sierras that severely hinder communication. The hydrographic system consists of a series of rivers that are only partially or seasonally navigable,- furthermore, the larger ones flow in the sparsely populated areas of the South. The distribution of the population is also influenced by rainfall, which is insufficient and irregular,- vast areas are virtually arid, while others suffer from a constant excess of moisture. The bulk of the population is found in the temperate lands, and only with special incentives does it settle in the hot or cold regions. Ecologically speaking, the center of the system lies in the series of valleys that converge on the great Valley of Mexico. Most of the pre-Hispanic population was compressed into this valley, and it was there that the first Europeans, fleeing the heat and disease of the coastal areas, took refuge. At the time, the North, a much vaster area, was less populated. The South, hotter, was and still remains essentially indigenous. The agrarian community was best preserved there. The Indians When the Spanish arrived, Mexico was an ethnic mosaic of more than six hundred indigenous groups that were at very different stages of development. Eighty languages, comprising fifteen different linguistic groups, were spoken. Their diverse economies might be classified into two basic types: nomadic groups, engaged in gathering, hunting, and fishing, lived in the steppes and in the northern deserts; in the rest of the country, there

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The History of Capitalism in Mexico: Its Origins, 1521-1763

was a more concentrated population whose main occupation was sedentary (i.e., not migratory) agriculture. The geographic frontier between the two cultures has been established fairly clearly. It runs from a point in the Gulf of Mexico that today is the port of Tampico and follows the banks of the P&nuco southwest as far as those of the river Lerma. In the Northeast, the dividing line angles up to the center of Sinaloa and the town of Culiacan. This geographiceconomic frontier retained its significance throughout the colonial period and even later.1 The nomadic Indians were grouped into small bands constantly on the move, gathering seeds, roots, and fruit, hunting small rodents and deer with bows and arrows, and sometimes fishing at the edge of rivers and lakes. Their dwellings were rudimentary and temporary and were abandoned when fruit, roots, and local game became depleted. In the early sixteenth century, some of these groups roamed the border of the Aztec domains and exerted increasing pressure on sedentary villages, which were subjected to frequent raids. Some of the population among the farming cultures lived in large urban centers that might have dozens and even hundreds of thousands of inhabitants, but the vast majority were scattered in small rural hamlets such asrancherias or caserfos, about whose way of life we know less. Around 1500, there were two powerful states in central Mexico: the Aztec state in the East, and the Tarascan state in the West. Aztec power beyond the Valley was solely tributary. The Aztecs made no efforts as they expanded to impose their government, language, or religion on those they conquered, being satisfied with setting up military garrisons or representatives in charge of collecting the tribute. The power of the Tarascan state, the size and wealth of which were smaller, spread mainly over the area that today constitutes the state of Michoacan. Its structure, too, seems to have been different: the Tarascans created colonies with their own people in the conquered areas, thus spreading their linguistic and cultural influence. Mayan culture had flourished between A.D. 300 and 900 in the tropical forests of Guatemala, Tabasco, and Belize. But in the tenth century, this culture suffered a decline as yet unexplained, and the Maya survived under very precarious conditions in northern Yucatan. Around 1520, after a series of civil wars, there was a breaking up process that culminated in the formation of sixteen different "states." The agriculture of sedentary societies was based on a single cereal, corn, which constituted their basic foodstuff. Beans, with high protein value, squash, whose seeds contain oil, and chile, rich in vitamins, made up the daily diet to which were sometimes added tomatoes and avoca-

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3

The Forces of Production

dos, as well as melons, pineapple, and perhaps bananas (the autochthonous origin of the banana is still being debated today). The maguey supplied pulque and ixtle, a fiber with multiple uses. Cotton was grown in the lowlands and was used to make garments for the dominant classes. Cacao was the favorite drink, and it was so highly regarded that in some societies its beans were employed as currency. Animals for utilitarian purposes were very rare: only some of the more advanced groups raised turkeys and a type of small dog for consumption. In some regions, deer and roebuck were hunted, and in others there was fishing. There were no cattle and hence neither milk nor any of its byproducts. Unlike European and North American populations who combined cereals, meat, and milk in their diet, the Mesoamerican peasant fed—and to some extent still feeds—almost exclusively on plants, though some of these, seldom used in other parts of the world, were rich in proteins. We do not have a detailed knowledge of the systems of cultivation used. However, fragmentary evidence and descriptions, as well as the study of surviving indigenous groups, enable us to reconstruct some ancestral methods.2 The most widespread system, which supplied most of the corn, was milpa. It worked as follows: trees and brush covering a plot were cleared and piled up here and there. They were left to dry then were burned, such that the ash would cover the entire area, acting as a fertilizer. The same smallholding was cultivated for a period of two or three years (longer in some areas), after which time its yields began to drop. A new plot was then cleared and the same procedure was repeated for six, ten, and even twenty years, by which time the original plot, covered by brush, had regained its fertility and was ready to be used once again. The best seeds from the previous year's harvest were carefully selected for sowing. It was common to grow several plants such as corn, beans, and squash, in the same plot. Clavijero has left us a precise description of the method of sowing: The cultivator digs a small hole in the ground using the firehardened tip of a stick and throws one or two grains of corn in it from a basket which hangs from his left shoulder and covers it with some earth with his feet. He walks on and makes another hole at a certain distance which varies depending on the nature of the land, and he carries on in this manner in a straight line to the end of the field and back, following a line parallel to the first one. The lines are so straight that they seem to have been marked with string and the distance between plants is so even throughout that they seem to have been measured beforehand.3

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The History of Capitalism in Mexico: Its Origins, 1521-1763

The field required some attention between sowing and harvesting: children played an important part in the fight against pests and insects,there was weeding to be done, and those seeds that had not sprouted had to be replaced. Finally, the corn was harvested: the plant was held with one hand, and the cob was cut with the aid of a simple knife. Systems based on irrigation were used in the Mexico plateau and in some regions of the Pacific basin, making it possible to obtain three harvests a year. Recurrent floods were put to good use along the banks of some rivers, such as the Balsas. Elsewhere, there were systems of artificial irrigation that used water from rivers and lakes. However, these were local in character and never reached dimensions that might have merited a centralizing state organ.4 The sole exception was the cluster of irrigation agriculture around the lakes of the Valley of Mexico, which supplied vegetables, fruit, and possibly part of the corn consumed by the city of Tenochtitlan.5 Some were smallholdings completely surrounded by canals,- others were marshy subdivisions drained and propped up by a base of reeds. The chinampas were genuine floating gardens made up of alternate layers of reeds and soil. They were fertilized with slime and compost from the lake and abundantly watered with large wooden spoons. By the time of Nezahualcoyotl (1410-1472), weir and canal complexes and a large dam across Lake Texcoco had been built to protect Tenochtitlan from floods and to prevent salt water seeping into the lake on whose banks the chinampas flourished. While the milpa system—which provided most of the corn harvest— was, like all rain-fed systems, uncertain, it had high soil productivity since new land was opened up for cultivation on a regular basis. As Eric Wolf explains, "in Tepoztlan, a modern ndhuatl-speaking town in the state of Morelos, the harvests produced with the slash-and-clear system are, on average, twice the size of those obtained from tilling the soil year after year; in the area of today's totonacas, harvests yield 100 to 1 per seed sown, and the peasants can reap up to two harvests a year."6 However, this system required a vast expanse of land. Wolf continues: "Among the modern totonacas in the Gulf coast, a family of five members might require thirty acres (about 12 has.) to feed itself on the basis of the miZpa-forest rotation system, without decreasing yields. Among the Maya of Yucatan, a similar family might require as much as seventy-two acres (28.8 has.)."7 This method relied on the availability of large expanses of virgin lands to cope with population increase, and instead of promoting the growth of existing settlements, it favored their reproduction through the foundation of new villages; instead of giving rise to the concentration of people in large centers, it brought about their fragmentation. It is unlikely that a society like the one found in

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The Forces of Production

5

Tenochtitlan, with large urban centers and a sizable class of warriors, priests, and professional bureaucrats, would have developed solely on the basis of this kind of agriculture. The productivity of irrigated land in the Valley of Mexico was higher and more consistent. An estimate suggests that the chinampas were ten times more productive than rain-fed fields, but their size was normally a centidrea* Natural conditions in Mexico prevented the rise of large systems of irrigation like those in Egypt and Mesopotamia. Even under the relatively favorable conditions of the Valley of Mexico, Tenochtitlan had reached the point where, as Vaillant asserts, "it needed to secure additional supply sources or face death/'9 And this was achieved— temporarily—by increasing the tribute from conquered societies and the profits that tlatelolca merchants made from unequal trade with other ethnic groups. The prosperity of Valley society was made possible, fundamentally, by the systematic expropriation of other societies. Aztec crafts used gold, silver, copper, tin, zinc, and lead. Copper was frequently hardened with tin or zinc alloys, and in some artifacts it was mixed with lead and native gold.10 However, only some artisanal tools were made of copper or bronze; the vast majority of implements and weapons were made from wood and stone. Ceramics and textiles were the most widespread arts. The spindle used for spinning cotton and hard fibers was rudimentary and consisted of an earthenware disk, with a central hole through which was mounted a wooden shaft with grooves for the fibers. Weaving was done with a loom held at the waist, and the weaver's physical involvement greatly limited the width of the cloth.11 Textiles provide a good example of the factors that facilitated Indian integration into the conquerors' economy: the level attained by the indigenous population in this area allowed a smooth assimilation of Spanish technique. Peasant houses were built of adobe and were barely furnished. Richly appointed, sumptuous stone buildings were erected only in the cities and for the wealthy classes. The Indians were also familiar with the making of baked bricks used for large structures.12 Exchange had reached a significant level. The market occupied a central place in every town. It was meticulously organized in the larger ones and highly specialized in a few of them. Slaves were sold in Azcapotzalco, jewelry and feathers in Cholollan. Texcoco was the center for pottery, and Acolman traded in small dogs.13 Each commodity had to be sold in a certain place at a set price and its quality was subject to inspection. Nobody could buy or sell outside the marketplace, and disputes were aired before a tribunal. Although there was no currency, some commodities had acquired locally the character of a common standard; the most important among

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The History of Capitalism in Mexico: Its Origins, 1521-1763

these was cacao, which continued to perform this function well after the Conquest. Mexicans acquired gold from the southern regions, silver from Taxco and Zompanco, and copper from Zacatula and Michoacan. They also traded in obsidian and salt. They frequently obtained hides and animal feed from gathering-hunting tribes in exchange for agricultural produce. But the major exchange took place between the altiplano and the tierra caliente, which due to geographic and climatic characteristics produced very different commodities. The natural differences between the tierra caliente and the temperate region contributed to the creation of a phenomenon similar to the division of ancient societies in the Mediterranean basin into herders and farmers: the rise of established forms of exchange between towns featuring a natural specialization of economic activities. Although self-sufficiency was the rule, towns produced one or two items for exchange. Thus, ceramics from Cholula and cotton from Heuitlalpan could be bought in many markets.14 As the Aztec's military and political rule grew, so did trade. When the Spaniards arrived, a sector of the economy was already commercialized. But, because of limitations to the social division of labor and the private ownership of land, the absence of metallic currency and usury, merchants and commercial capital could not play a part equivalent to their role in ancient Greece. Trade within agrarian communities was insignificant, and merchants had little to do with the daily exchange that took place in the market. Commercial activity with profit as an end was limited to a few luxury or strategic products.15 In the early sixteenth century, the material culture of the Aztecs was in transition from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age. However, the forces of production differed significantly from the conditions that had prevailed in most European and Asian societies during that stage. Wheat, barley, rye, and rice were not grown. There were no cattle, nor any occupations related to this. The wheel was used for neither transport nor irrigation. The Aztecs were not familiar with the plow, which had been in existence since 10 B.C. Land transport was based exclusively on manpower, and there was no use of sail propulsion. These disadvantages were only partly counteracted by favorable natural conditions in semitropical regions and by the person/land ratio. Destruction and Technical Revolution The period of the Conquest and the first century of the colonial regime followed a dual pattern of cataclysmic destruction of the forces of production and profound technical revolution. The Iron Age, the wheel, and cattle came enveloped in blood, fire, and pillage.

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The Forces of Production

7

The destructive element manifested itself primarily in the unimaginable extermination of the Indian population. The excellent studies by L. B. Simpson and by W. Borah and S. F. Cook enable us to get a rough idea of the magnitude of this catastrophe. Their more recent estimates suggest that the population of central Mexico before Cortes's arrival was around twenty-five million inhabitants.16 Through war, the destruction of the old social and economic structure, and epidemics, the population dropped by 95 percent between 1519 and 1607. The following is an estimate of the change among the indigenous population:17 1532 1548 1568 1580 1595 1605

16,800,000 6,300,000 2,650,000 1,900,000 1,375,000 1,075,000

Even if the original population had been smaller (earlier estimates by the same scholars suggested a total of about eleven million), the magnitude of destruction is unprecedented in the history of humankind. Some authors have tried to explain the fall in population in terms of the effect of a natural phenomenon, namely, the successive epidemics of diseases introduced by the Spanish. It is true that epidemics were the principal direct cause of death among Indians. Torquemada reckoned that the mysterious illness that Indians called matlazdhuatl killed some eight hundred thousand people in 1545 and more than two million in 1576.18 Nevertheless, the close succession of epidemics and their virulent spread cannot be explained without taking into account the social and economic conditions created by the Conquest and the brutality of the initial process of primitive accumulation of capital.19 Zorita regarded economic spoliation as the major cause of death: 'This people like all Indians," he wrote, "are getting fewer and are dying out... they abandon their huts andhacendillas... roam about... or take to the h i l l s . . . and some have hanged themselves in despair, because of great affliction brought about by tributes and their collection,- and I found this out traveling around/' To substantiate his argument, he classified cases of extreme forced labor that accounted for high mortality rates: exorbitant tributes, mines, personal services, and a few commercial crops like cocoa and sugar. Motolinia and Mendieta shared his views. 20 At the end of his monumental work on the condition of the Aztecs during the colony, Charles Gibson concludes that "the black legend offers a gross but essentially accurate interpretation of relations between Spaniards and Indians."21

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The History of Capitalism in Mexico: Its Origins, 1521-1763

The new forms of exploitation fragmented the delicate organism of production, distribution, and supply of Indian villages in the central and coastal regions. The density of population in the humid areas before CortSs's arrival was so high that the ravages of the Conquest and the brutality of the initial exploitation were more than sufficient to upset the precarious balance that existed between the maximum exploitation of areas of intensive corn cultivation and population size. Studies by Lesley B. Simpson reveal the extremely harmful effects on the Indian milpas of the expansion of ganado mayor and ganado menor in the central region of the country. Damage to cornfields by herds—argues Chaunu—was immeasurable and the struggle unequal: livestock were Spanish, corn was Indian.22 The substitution of corn agriculture with cattle raising created the conditions to feed a meat-eating population, but it inevitably limited its density. Forced labor to which Indians were unaccustomed and ill-treatment in mines, fields, construction work, and roadways added to this. Indian production fell and famine became recurrent. A new kind of destitution became prevalent and gave rise to a situation in which physical disability and social privation contributed to the spread of new diseases. Slavery was undoubtedly one of the determining factors in the drop in Indian population. We know that systems of production based on slavery, both in ancient times as well as in the United States during the nineteenth century, depended over long periods on external sources to maintain the size of their working population. The slave family has no incentive to bear offspring who will themselves be slaves. Numerous cases were recorded during the early years of the colony of Indian groups who took deliberate steps to curb reproduction. Indian women would abandon their husbands in order to marry mestizo or Spanish men, and thus free their children from being subjected to the ill-treatment, tribute, and forced labor that befell Indians. In Mexico, as in seventeenth-century Europe, epidemics were as much a social as a biological phenomenon, an inevitable consequence following the disruption of systems of production and the intensification of exploitation. It is worth noting that the longest remission from epidemics in the sixteenth century came after the reforms of 1542, which aimed to regulate forced labor.23 The epidemics primarily affected the most exploited sector: while the Indian population declined, the number of white and mestizo inhabitants increased at a fast and steady rate. Hence the list of ten "plagues" that Fray Toribio de Benavente outlined as a cause of depopulation offers an unmethodical but truer picture of this process than the epidemic monism adopted by some contemporary authors.24 Motolinia's ten causes were: (1) disease, (2) death during the Conquest, (3) severe

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The Forces of Production

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starvation following the destruction of Tenochtitlan, (4) ill-treatment by encomenderos, (5) exorbitant tributes, (6) work in the mines, (7) the building of the city of Mexico with Indian forced labor, (8) the enslavement of untold Indians, (9) the exhausting journeys by encomienda and repartimiento Indians to travel to and work in the mines, and (10) the effect of "factions and divisions among the Spaniards." At the same time, the structuring of a set of forces of production at a much higher level than before was also taking place. Agriculture and Cattle Raising Agriculture was enhanced by the addition of numerous new plants. "Candolle tells that out of 247 plants grown in America, 199 originated in the old world, 45 in America, 1 in Australia." 25 Cortes's forces brought wheat with them, and by the mid-sixteenth century several types were grown: "white and yellow wheat, summer wheat, bread wheat, coarse, giant and hard wheat." 26 The water mill, of such importance for the making of flour, was introduced shortly after. The Spanish could not live without wheat. In the beginning, they tried to force Indians to grow it in their fields, but the attempt largely failed and the conquerors had to set up special farms to cultivate it. Sugar came to America from the Canary Islands. Cortes ordered it to be brought to Mexico, and it seems likely that he built the first mill in Tuxtla. At first, sugar was grown in small properties, but as demand increased, the mills became large enterprises requiring considerable investment. Flax and hemp were first planted between 1532 and 1535.27 Breeding of silkworms began around 1540, and within a few years mulberry cultivation had spread to large areas, from Puebla to central Oaxaca. Silk factories were set up later on in Mexico City, but the industry was banned at the end of the century, at the request of Spanish merchants who traded in Chinese silk, and by the beginning of the seventeenth century silk cultivation had virtually collapsed. Much later, too, came coffee, which was not grown before 1800. Vines and olive trees spread slowly because of colonial bans. As chocolate consumption gained popularity among the conquerors and, later, in Europe, the production of vanilla, a native plant, increased. It was first grown in the regions of Soconusco and Suchitepec, then in Oaxaca and Veracruz. It was not introduced into Papantla, today's center of vanilla production, until 1743. Until the late eighteenth century, all the vanilla consumed in Europe passed through the port of Veracruz.28 Vanilla was planted in February or August. The fruit ripened one to three years later. The harvest began in February or March and lasted till April

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The History of Capitalism in Mexico: Its Origins, 1521-1763

or May. Besides quality vanilla, there were others of lesser quality, called mestiza pompona, cimarrona, de tarro, de mono, and so on. The growth in dye production was very important. Dyes constituted the main export product of regions poor in mining, and a series of important manufacturing and commercial enterprises grew up around them. Because the fact is overlooked that textiles were the major European industry at the time and there was a significant international market for its raw materials—basically textile fibers and dyes—the importance of the link established between the world market and New Spain through dyes has often been underestimated. In fact, its relevance in the economy of New Spain was second only to that of silver.29 Indigo was introduced in New Spain around Mexico City and later on, in the late sixteenth century, in the tierras calientes of Oaxaca and Yucatan. Fifty years later, there were some hundred factories for indigo processing, equipped with boilers, water pumps drawn by animal power, wheels to mix the paste, and drying platforms.30 But cochineal or kermes was even more critical. Since it had already been produced on a large scale by the Aztecs, there was no need to set up new enterprises. As was the case with vanilla, manufacture continued under traditional methods and the Spaniards simply monopolized their marketing. The conquerors introduced crop rotation, the use of animal manure, the plow, and the hoe. The plows utilized in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had iron-covered tips and were pulled by oxen. The most characteristic one was called a two-part Egyptian plow, which merely turned over the soil. Heavy mattocks were used to build irrigation ditches,- wheat was sown by the handful. The wheel, applied to transport and to produce energy for mills and obrajes, joined draft animals. Oxcarts, litters drawn by mules, and carriages drawn by horses made their appearance. Nevertheless, with the exception of mining activities, the Spaniards brought only some of their techniques. Distances, trouble adapting to a new environment, the presence of an abundant cheap labor force, and the survival of communities greatly restricted the range of imported technical resources and their widespread use. Let us consider two examples. Although many immigrants were familiar with the various types of plows common in Europe, only the Andalusian model, of simpler construction, became widespread in New Spain. The same applied to fishing: only a very small number of the countless techniques prevalent in Spain were transferred to America. Some basic types of each kind of fishing tackle became prototypes of the relatively few forms that still survive today.31

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On the other hand, Indian techniques, which albeit more primitive did not rely on imported implements and were better adapted to the skills of laborers and local conditions of production, were commonly applied in the enterprises of the repiiblica de los espanoles. The arrival of livestock of all types and its prodigious reproduction in the Mexican countryside during the first fifty years of the colony had a decisive impact. Fattened with corn from Indian tribute, pigs multiplied so quickly that—in Chevalier's words—"the Spanish had meat when they were still wanting for bread."32 The same applied to cattle; in the early decades "herds doubled in number every 15 months."33 Cattle raising started in the valley of Toluca around 1538; twenty years later, there were some 150,000 cows and horses. Beef became the basis of the Spanish and mestizo diet. Cattle raising induced a genuine revolution in the economy of New Spain. Vast expanses of little value to agriculture became productive. As early as 1580, problems of conservation of pasturelands were being considered.34 Cattle migration trails crisscrossed the country in all directions. Hides were one of the first articles to be exported, and animal fat became the raw material for important new industries. The proliferation of mules and horses helped to link the different areas of the country and to lower transport costs considerably. Cattle and transport created the conditions for the emergence of two groups that would play a fundamental role in Mexican society: the cowboy and the muleteer. Mining From the very beginning, the focus of the conquerors was on mining precious metals. Indians had worked surface seams and deposits found in riverbeds. Cortes, having availed himself of a record of these centers from the tribute books of Moctezuma Xocoyotzin, wasted no time in working them. This kind of rudimentary mining continued to be practiced by adventurers who, equipped with primitive tools, traveled the country hoping to become rich overnight. But the more ambitious among the Spaniards and the Crown quickly set on a course to find and exploit systematically the richer and deeper ore deposits. The first sizable mine was discovered in 1532, and thereafter discoveries followed one another at an amazing rate: the Compostela mines, in New Galicia, in 1543; Cerro de la Bufa, in Zacatecas, in 1546; the Sultepec and Temascaltepec mines, in 1548; the Fresnillo mines, in 1553, and the Sombrerete mines, in Durango, in 1551. The deposits at La Luz, Mellado, and Veta Madre, from which came the phenomenal wealth of the famous La Valenciana mine, were discovered in 1548. The Spaniards knew little about mining. Virtually all the methods

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The History of Capitalism in Mexico: Its Origins, 1521-1763

they mastered were of German or Italian origin. In the sixteenth century, they frequently consulted both Georgius Agricola's work, De re metallica (1556), which summarized Saxon knowledge on the subject, and the study by V. Biringuccio entitled De pirotechnia, which did the same for Italian knowledge.35 Small deposits of ore in New Spain were worked through shallow adits or small vertical shafts. Major seams, on the other hand, required complex techniques. These deposits were worked through drifts dug at different levels, interconnected by passages called winzes (labores de chifldn). Drifts were generally very narrow, barely large enough for a laborer to get through. The tools used were fairly simple: picks, crowbars that weighed close to 35 and sometimes as much as 45 pounds each, chisels, hammers, and mallets. Every mine had its own forge to sharpen and repair implements. The use of gunpowder in mining was introduced in Hungary in 1627, but in New Spain it was applied only after 1703. In the 1830s, Zacatecas imported cartridges regularly. Laws required that shafts and drifts be kept in good condition. Their enforcement entailed frequent visits to the mines, which were a source of vital information on their actual state. Different types of reinforcements were used: the most common consisted of placing props against the weaker points of drift walls. Sills (zapatillas) were used for this purpose. Often the four walls in weak areas were cribbed, and the shaft then looked like a crate or boxlike structure [ademenes de cajdn, cajdn marqaeado). The entryway to drifts was covered with a roof to stop rain from coming in. Excess humidity often caused props and timber to rot, and they had to be replaced. The old practice of filling previously worked galleries with scrap was also followed. Ore was hauled to the surface by carriers (tenateros), who carried heavy sacks weighing more than 245 pounds on their backs while climbing crude "chicken ladders" [de gallinero). Inspectors were very adamant about the need to maintain these ladders in good condition. In the North, the ore was carried in rawhide bags (tenates, costales), while in the South, agave sacks were used. During the colonial period, pulleys and hoists were seldom used to bring the ore to the surface. Hand- or mule-powered whims were used to drain water from flooded drifts, but they were rarely used to hoist ore. This practice was introduced only in the late seventeenth century. Lighting in colonial mines came from wax candles, and huge quantities of wax were used for this purpose. The annual consumption of wax in Zacatecas around 1730 was more than 80 tons, and more than 3,300 pounds of wick were used. Drainage constituted one of the most serious problems faced by mining in New Spain. The situation was particularly critical in the

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mines around the central region where there was considerable rainfall. There were many complaints in the late sixteenth century of floods in Pachuca, Taxco, Zacualpan, Guanajuato, and Zacatecas. The most primitive drainage method was the use of carriers who hauled water to the surface in pails. The first water pump was introduced in Zacualpan around 1575. In 1600, a hand-powered windlass was in operation in Guanajuato for drainage purposes. Mule-drawn whims—used in Spain by 1571—were introduced only at the end of the seventeenth century. Ventilation was elementary. Small shafts (lumbreras or pozos) were bored through to the surface. The circulation of air by mechanical or hydraulic means was little used.36 To separate silver, the ore was smelted by fusion in several stone or clay ovens until pure silver was obtained.37 The amount of silver obtainable under such technical conditions would never have been sufficient to affect the well-known price revolution of the sixteenth century. In fact, the latter owed as much to a discovery that revolutionized mining techniques, namely, the "patio process," as to the wealth of New World ore deposits and the abundance of a cheap Indian labor force. To this day, the origin of this invention remains obscure. According to the petition sent to the authorities by the individual who introduced it, it seems that he had previously heard about this system from a German settled in Spain. H. R. Wagner refers to the existence of a German text, whose earliest known edition dates from 1524, in which there is a detailed description of this system for obtaining silver with quicksilver and salt. However, this method was not introduced in German mines. Its spread became possible only with the expansion of mining in Mexico, thanks to the endeavors of Bartolomi Medina. Bartolome Medina, a miner settled in Mexico since 1554, carried out a series of experiments in Purisima Grande, a silver smelting plant in Pachuca, which paved the way for the introduction of the "patio method"; this method made possible the extraction of both native silver and silver found mixed with other minerals. At the same time, it became possible to mine much baser ores. By replacing fusion, it solved the problem of fuel in those areas where forest reserves were inadequate or running out. The new method, which consisted of a series of chemical processes based on the use of quicksilver and salt and treatment with iron and later with magistral (copper sulfate), was so successful that it was not replaced by the more efficient method of cyanide hardening until the mid-nineteenth century. Humboldt wrote that the procedure disseminated by Medina had the great advantage of being simple. It did not require the erection of buildings; it needed no fuel, no machines, and a very small source of power. As long as the ground was even enough to set a surface, it was possible with quicksilver and a few mules to drive the arrastra (a circular

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ore-grinding mill with a horizontal pole pivoted at the center and several large rocks hanging from it by rawhide thongs) and extract silver from any poor quality ore through amalgamation by the patio process near the shaft from which it was mined, even in the middle of the desert. This procedure, however, had the disadvantage of being slow and wasting much quicksilver. Within a few years of its discovery, the "patio method" was being applied in Taxco, Zacualpan, Sultepec, Temascaltepec, Tlalpujahua, Mexico, Pachuca, Guanajuato, and Zacatecas. Significant improvements on the original method were carried out: ore mud was heated up to speed amalgamation, and in 1632, in Peru, Barba invented the cazo method (ore mud mixed with quicksilver and salt and heated up in copper cauldrons), which substantially raised productivity. There are documents that give us a fairly detailed idea of the requirements and cost of setting up a smelting plant in the early seventeenth century.38 As regards productivity in different types of silver plants using amalgamation in mid-sixteenth century, we know that "over 40 quintals of ore a day could be amalgamated by four people . . . at a waterpowered plant; 20 quintals by six people at a horse-powered plant; and 10 quintals by six people at a hand-operated one. In the 1600's, a handpowered plant in Taxco, with a labor force of nine Indians who crushed ore only in the daytime, stamped one thousand marcos of silver every year."39 Such an advance was not an isolated instance. It was preceded and paralleled by the enterprising inventiveness of many other colonists who, under difficult conditions, imported special tools, adapted original installations to new conditions, resolved problems of supply, and so forth. While the Crown stifled inventiveness and initiative in other sectors of the economy, it protected and encouraged both in mining. In 1575, Cristobal Iranzo introduced the water pump for draining mines. This piece of equipment, which consisted of a large manual pump operated by three men, was successfully tested in Zacualpan. Iranzo received a patent for fifteen years, and the pump was introduced in many mines that had ceased working because of flooding.40 Around 1600, Diego de Aviles was experimenting with an invention that reduced the amount of quicksilver needed to crush silver. The viceroy granted him Indians to carry out the work and ordered the local authorities to inform him in detail on the progress of the operations.41 Books by Alvaro Alonso Barba (1640), Berio de Montalbo (1643), Lorenzo de la Torre (1738), Juan de Ordonez (1758),42 Francisco Javier Gamboa (1761), among others, on the processes of amalgamation were published in Spanish America.

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In the sixteenth century, New Spain and Peru became the arena for great technical advances in silver processing, if not in its extraction. The simple introduction of new processing methods alone, suitable to Latin American conditions, opened the way to a sudden increase in global production of silver. The patio system was not introduced in Europe, because conditions there were different, but there is no doubt that as far as Latin America was concerned, this method was superior to all others employed at the time. Nevertheless, from the seventeenth century onward, techniques in New Spain began to lag substantially. Many significant innovations were introduced slowly into the process of production: thus, although the animal-powered whim (malacate) and the use of gunpowder were already known, their usage did not become widespread until the following century. 43 (The word malacate comes from the Nahuatl malacatl The Spanish equivalent at the time, devanadera, was less frequently used.) New forms of organization and division of labor, of bookkeeping and administration, emerged. In the mines, for example, there were very clearly demarcated functions, which had acquired special designation. The minero or capitdn "was in charge of distributing crowbars in workings... assigning piecework, duties or tasks for each twelve-hour shift." There was the herrero, who repaired working tools, especially picks and wedges,- the despachador, "who was responsible for tasks and work crews inside the mines"; the barretero, who carried out the actual extraction of ore,- the malacatero, who was in charge of operating the pieces of equipment so named; the faenero, "who helped with the same chore, clearing and removing soil from workings and galleries, surrounded by water, carrying waste and soil and climbing vents and paths"; the pedn, who "went up and down to supply barreteros with their needs and to haul piecework bags to the surface; the ateca or achicador who scooped water from the shafts, and who "given the hard nature of his chore, could only work a six-hour shift per day"; the ademador, who worked "both in the yard and underground, building and repairing pillars and sides"; the recogedor or rayador, "who gave each [laborer] on leaving the mine a small sheet of paper with [his] name, date and the rayador'§ signature." 44 Handicrafts The development of crafts encountered many more obstacles than did mining. There were bans on many activities. Furthermore, the expulsion of the Jews and the Moors had created optimum conditions in Spain for

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The History of Capitalism in Mexico: Its Origins, 1521-1763

local handicrafts in the first half of the sixteenth century, and few good artisans emigrated. For that reason, the standard of the colonists' handicrafts—with some exceptions, like the manufacture of silver items—was much lower than in Spain. Imported goods were sold more dearly and there was greater demand for them than for their native counterparts. Complaints and critical comments on the quality of certain products (e.g., ropes and candles) were common,- their metropolitan equivalents were thought to be far superior products. Mexican flour was inferior. In 1546, there was talk about the need to approximate metropolitan standards both in production methods, which were primitive, and in quality, which was low. Most Spanish sources concurred in pointing out the poor quality of many products from New Spain and rated Mexican handicrafts somewhere between Spanish and Peruvian crafts.45 Regardless of product quality, one must point out the emergence of dozens of new sectors with their respective tools and techniques, such as bakeries, tailoring, the manufacture of swords, and so on. The guilds that obtained most social prominence were those involved in the manufacture of luxury articles. Thus, despite repeated bans (1527 and 1554), jewelers and silversmiths flourished. By the end of the sixteenth century, theirs was the most important guild. Churches and convents were furnished with outstanding works by Mexican silversmiths, and moderately well-to-do people possessed silver cutlery, utensils, and even furniture from New Spain. Toward the end of the sixteenth century, many blacksmiths affected by the economic crisis in Spain emigrated to Puebla and other towns and raised the standard of production of lamps, locks, strips for trunks, utensils, and even weapons. At the same time, bells, railings, candlesticks, sculptures, and similar items were being cast in bronze. The manufacturing of saddles and related articles became very important. Contemporary authors corroborated the richness and high quality of Mexican harnesses. Sedan chairs and various kinds of wagons were also made.46 Manufacturers, most of them water-powered, were also set up. In the late seventeenth century, there were a large number of obrajes devoted to the manufacture of textiles, fitted out with equipment of every sort, horizontal looms and spinning wheels made in Spain. There were potteries in Puebla, forty-six in all in 1693. Glass was worked from very early on, and in 1743 Villa Sanchez wrote that, "while it cannot compete with Venetian glass, it is similar to French glass, extra thick, smooth, pure and very clear, and it is turned into pieces of exquisite workmanship."47

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Transport The Conquest linked the economy of New Spain to the international market through the ports of Veracruz and Acapulco. Fleets brought European and Asian goods and left full of "American" goods, particularly silver, gold, and dyes. Little by little, the colonists moved toward the northern and western regions of the country. Mining camps and centers of population multiplied. Mining and its concomitants, cattle raising and grain agriculture, penetrated areas controlled until then only by nomads. Supply caravans crossed the country, opening roads and founding halfway stations. Some conditioning work was carried out on the main thoroughfares joining Mexico City to major ports and mining centers. However, there were considerable natural obstacles, and even by contemporary standards roads were bad. Royal roads were rocky, they crossed ravines and climbed steep hills; bridges were few and far between, and many rivers— sometimes hazardous—had to be crossed in rafts. There were many secondary roads, too, whose condition was even more deplorable. In the early stages, Indian carriers remained the basic form of transport. Mule packs followed later, and eventually replaced them. Except along roads in the North, the use of carts and wagons wherever possible did not become widespread until the nineteenth century. The only way to transport commodities along most roads was on mule packs. The economic obstacle that this entailed remains to be properly assessed. In seventeenth-century Europe, a cart drawn by 4 to 6 horses could haul a minimum load of 1.5 tons; in flat areas, it might be as much as 3 to 4 tons. A mule, on the other hand, carried up to 330 pounds over flat terrain and only 200 to 220 in mountainous regions.48 Transport was extremely slow, and loads had to be reduced if greater speed was desired. Hence, a large number of animals were needed along roads in the central region. By the end of the eighteenth century, the Veracruz trade deployed 70,000 and Acapulco's 75,000. The number of beasts of burden used limited the supply of corn available for consumption and contributed considerably to the frequent famines that decimated the population. In the seventeenth century, the heavy wagons that traveled along northern roads sometimes needed a three- or four-month dry season to cover the distance between the capital of New Spain and the mines of Santa Barbara and Parral, and even longer to reach New Mexico. The major roads were those linking Mexico City with the ports of Veracruz and Acapulco, the one joining the capital to the mining centers of Guanajuato, Zacatecas, and Chihuahua, and the one to Guatemala via Oaxaca.49

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The History of Capitalism in Mexico: Its Origins, 1521-1763

We have seen that in the case of agriculture, cattle raising, manufacturing, and even trade, the most advanced Spanish techniques were either not transferred to America or suffered in the process of transference and adaptation. Furthermore, Spanish standards were inferior to those in more advanced capitalist centers. Spanish agriculture and even sheep farming lagged behind their Dutch or English counterparts. Peninsular manufacturing, despite the boom in the early sixteenth century, did not match French standards, then the most advanced. Despite many natural resources, there was virtually no mining in Spain. The economic history of New Spain began with a level of development of the forces of production that was clearly inferior to that of the more advanced capitalist countries. Yet, it is even more important to point out that, according to the available data, the process of qualitative innovation throughout the seventeenth century, in contrast to the transformation that took place during the first fifty years, was insignificant. As the white and mestizo population rose, new techniques became widespread and, above all, they were adapted to local conditions. The working population assimilated them and transformed itself as it applied them. But the invention of new tools, of new forms of labor and techniques, or, alternatively, the introduction of the latest ones from the Old World, was insignificant. We do not find in New Spain those processes within the sphere of production that paved the way for the industrial revolution in several European countries. Conditions in agriculture were not conducive to a rapid increase in productivity. Means of transport were unusually backward and costly. Techniques in handicrafts and in manufacturing lay dormant. Schools—to the extent that there were any—were scholastic and traditionalist. There was both a relative and an absolute shortage of capital, that is to say, there was more money in the hands of those who spent it on a conspicuous life-style than in the hands of those who were prepared to invest it. Labor was not free to move from agriculture to manufacturing. Nor did the wealth of Mexican silver deposits and the abundance of virgin land encourage the application of novel methods. The development of local markets was restrained by multiple institutional factors. Handicrafts and manufacturing were constrained within a rigid guild framework and a series of legal dispositions that stifled private initiative. Surplus in New Spain was extracted through colonial exploitation. All these factors curbed innovation and the adoption of European inventions in the Spanish sector of the economy. The natural environment of New Spain differed in many ways from the metropolitan one. Colonists had to adapt and find technical solutions to entirely new problems. Thus, occupations, techniques, and forms of organization peculiar to New Spain came into being.

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New Techniques and Indians The introduction of new techniques into the Indian communities was an uneven and, on the whole, slow process. Laws banned Indians from using horses, and the inability of communities to secure access to new pastures prevented the development of Indian livestock. There were caciques who had large herds,-50 there were also communal flocks of thousands of sheep and pigs. But these were of little economic consequence when compared to Spanish herds. Communities hardly shared in the remarkable development of this new sector of the economy. The Mediterranean hen alone among domesticated animals became widespread in communities. 51 The plow was introduced into communal lands slowly. With the constant decline in the land area available for communal labor and the absence of draft animals, the use of the hoe, as well as the traditional coa (pointed stick used for digging and sowing), was more productive. The need to introduce the plow driven by oxen was still an issue discussed in Veracruz and the South in the early nineteenth century. Although conditions were better in other regions, particularly in the Valley of Mexico, the use of the plow was by no means widespread, especially in the cultivation of traditional crops in which most comuneros were still engaged.52 Basic native handicrafts did not undergo major changes. Some arts like manuscript painting or the native manufacture of silver articles died out. Indian artisans accepted Spanish techniques in varying degrees. In the case of pottery, for example, they adopted the Spanish kiln, but the potter's wheel and certain glazing methods were introduced very slowly. To this day, many communities that produce for a local as well as national market continue to work with essentially pre-Hispanic techniques. Building materials and techniques also did not change. Indians continued living in one-room adobe houses—occasionally reinforced with stone at the corners—held by wooden posts and thatched roofs. Only caciques and chiefs began to build after the Spanish manner. The same applied to furniture used by the Indians. They still slept on grass mats and used the metate (traditional pre-Hispanic flat grinding stone), the comal (flat earthenware pan), and the molcajete (three-footed earthenware mortar) rather than the mill. A few baskets and brooms made up the remaining household goods. The candle, a European contribution, was increasingly used for lighting.53 Textiles were somewhat different: Indians gradually adopted the Spanish loom, which enabled them to weave wider cloths faster. However, the old techniques did not altogether vanish. While men used the

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The History of Capitalism in Mexico: Its Origins, 1521-1763

new loom, women continued weaving woolen and cotton sashes, ayates (loosely woven maguey cloths), bags, belts, cloths and ixtle, and maguey and agave products with traditional implements.54 It was in Spanish enterprises, in farms, mills, cattle-iaisinghaciendas, in mines and obrajes, in towns and missions that Indians learned to assimilate the new techniques and methods of labor organization. Endless complaints by Spaniards on the "idleness" of Indians, on their prodigality, their lack of acquisitive spirit, their "inexplicable" opposition to growing the crops the Spaniards wanted and to working in mines and obrajes, illustrate the barrier between the communal world of Indian laborers and that of their Spanish exploiters. That is why at the same time that the latter discussed the capacity of Indians to Uve as politically free beings, they deployed all conceivable forms of coercion to force Indians to accept the values and attitudes necessary for working and surviving in the emergent society. Even most well intentioned friars ended up thinking that, without exercising some form of coercion over the Indian laborers, the economy of the republica de los espaholes would collapse. By the end of the sixteenth century, there was virtually no activity in which Indians did not participate. The missionaries' and friars' teaching endeavors also contributed to their learning new techniques. Once again it was Pedro de Gante who set up technical schools . . . he took the initiative to introduce the teaching of arts and trades in the school attached to the chapel of San Jose de los Naturales. There he brought together adults and trained blacksmiths, carpenters, masons, tailors and shoemakers . . . The Franciscan chronicler Larrea boasts of the manual skills and artistic talent of the Tarascans educated by his order, who painted, engraved and manufactured furniture, bells, trumpets, sackbuts and even organs, all in w o o d . . . The Augustinians were particularly concerned with training good craftsmen. When their villages required essential qualified laborers, they sent Indians to be taught in Mexico City . . . In Tiripitio outside laborers were brought to train local Indians . . .Thus, Spanish laborers taught Indians the art of stonecutting which the latter executed so skillfully, that the pupils became as good as their masters . . . an elite of local craftsmen emerged, whose skills and talent were admired by Las Casas.55 But this was indeed an elite. (On the whole, Spanish artisans kept the secrets of their trade from Indians to prevent competition,- see Joaquin Garcia Icazbalceta, "La instrucci6n piiblica en la Ciudad de Mexico en el Siglo XVI.") Generally, new techniques were learned during daily

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work in the conquerors' enterprises where Indians were enslaved, whereas in the communities that held onto the milpa and the metate, Indians were free and their spiritual world remained alive. That is why Indians stubbornly refused to work in the new enterprises. Eventually, a very marked difference could be discerned between the levels of development of Indians working in the most advanced enterprises of the repiiblica de los espanoles on a permanent basis and those whose lives remained circumscribed by the traditional community: by the sixteenth century, Indian miners in the North and comuneros in the South lived in worlds separated by centuries of economic development. A factor that delayed the introduction of new techniques into the communities, and thereby their transformation, was their inability to respond to the colonists' demands. In the beginning, the communities were the main suppliers to cities and mining centers. But by the seventeenth century the haciendas began to replace them: "In the early 1590's, the growth of Spanish-owned estancias was such that, subject to the availability of an adequate labor force, they were in a position to supply the Spanish cities."56 Around 1603, the Spanish estancias in Tlajomulco and the Valley of Tlala supplied virtually the entire city of Guadalajara.57 A Mexico City council member observed that whereas fifty years earlier the city had been supplied by Indians, in 1630 Indian corn cultivation had been reduced to a condition of local subsistence and the city was supplied by wealthy Spaniards.58 For their part, Indian markets clearly reflected the communities' isolation. Few Spanish items were traded in them, the main ones being wheat, hens, and candles. The absence of European implements, hardware, glass, and clothing was remarkable.59 Two market systems, differing both in structure and in the range of objects exchanged, developed around these two forms of production. As the process intensified, communities retreated further into their local systems. A similar situation developed in relation to Indian crafts, particularly those aimed at the Spanish market. The state supported crafts, and religious orders promoted their growth. But Spanish artisans tried in every possible way within their reach to undermine their competitiveness. They interfered with Indian production, persecuting producers and confiscating their work; they became suppliers of raw materials to which Indians had no access, as well as retail sellers of Indian crafts bought at low prices. In the sixteenth century, writes Gibson, it seemed as if the Indians might succeed in organizing their own guilds to counteract Spanish ones; but, instead of two competitive guild systems, the final outcome was the subordination of many Indians to Spanish guilds, as apprentices or artisans working under a Spanish master.60 Thus, Indian crafts did not

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The History of Capitalism in Mexico: Its Origins, 1521-1763

assimilate European techniques and continued to be confined to some specific trades and to Indian markets. As for the forces of production, the first century of the colony signaled both the massive destruction of the indigenous population and the emergence of a new socioeconomic formation. On the ruins of a society at the threshold of the Copper Age rose a new one, whose forces of production corresponded to those prevalent on the Iberian peninsula during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This leap was the outcome of conquest. It resulted from the establishment of a colonial system rather than the struggle of Indian society with nature. The tools and the people who used them changed, not because of the internal dynamics of their society, but as a result of the latter's incorporation into a chain of colonial exploitation. Development occurred especially in those sectors and regions of interest to the metropolis and to the new local lords linked to it. A more backward society than the capitalist centers to which it was nonetheless directly linked, the colony of New Spain experienced the subordination of the internal progression of the development of its forces of production to those of international capitalism, which were infinitely more dynamic. From the standpoint of the forces of production, the phenomenon of conquest continually repeated itself: At each stage of its development and expansion, the metropolis encouraged the formation of technically advanced centers only in those branches and sectors where it needed them, while the rest of the country was left more or less untouched. Thus, the heterogeneous character of the economic base was periodically preserved and reproduced By the end of the sixteenth century, two basic levels of forces of production had become established in Mexico: one based on corn, maguey, beans, and chili, the other on wheat, sugarcane, cattle, and silver. The community retained pre-Hispanic methods and implements: the milpa system, the coa, the unity between agriculture and crafts. Spanish society applied the system of crop rotation, the plow, the wagon, and manure; crafts and agriculture became separate, manufacture flourished. Thus, within the sphere of the forces of production the basis was created for a heterogeneous society characterized by the existence of two structures of production, with a wide range of variants between them. As we shall see later on, these two structures were bound together within a single, functional, and historically rational system. Nevertheless, they constituted two clearly differentiated modes of production.

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2. Tributary Despotism The Aztec Tributary System Despite its violence, the Conquest did not destroy indigenous society. On the contrary, there was a continuity between precolonial and colonial society. The link between them was embodied in the survival of the agrarian community and the tributary system it supported. Such continuity was made possible by certain features shared by both Aztec society and the Spanish empire. Furthermore, the development of the economy of the repu Mica de los espanoles was not sufficiently dynamic to prevent the Crown and the church from salvaging and even restoring some of these affinities present in the Aztec despotic tributary system, which had been damaged by the Conquest. When the Spaniards arrived, indigenous societies, whose economies were already based on sedentary agriculture, had a collective system of land ownership. But, in those areas under Aztec or Tarascan control, and among the Tlaxcaltecas and the Maya, this was no longer a question of primitive communities: even when there was no private ownership of the land, exploitation occurred: the surplus product took the form of tribute that ended up in the hands of the state and its representatives. The cohesion of the agrarian community was based on common ownership of the land, on the direct union of agriculture and crafts, and on economic self-sufficiency. Each community was also a microcosm of complementary economic, political, religious, cultural, and military functions. The wild landscape and the enclosed nature of the world in which they lived accentuated the exclusive particularism of each community. "In virtually every province there exist great differences in every aspect of life," wrote Zorita, "and there are even many villages with two or three different languages."1 Continuous warfare represented another element of internal cohesion. The communities lived in constant distrust of one another, ready at all times to defend themselves or to attack.2 These social units revealed a remarkable cohesion and capacity for survival. They resisted the onslaught of conquest, depopulation, and the expan-

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The History of Capitalism in Mexico: Its Origins, 1521-1763

sion of large private properties, rising time and time again from their own ruins. Most land in the Aztec domains—whose social organization we know better than that of other societies—was the property of the state, and, through the state, of social units called calpulli. The way in which these two property rights were intertwined and superimposed varied. The calpulli was primarily a community of people who lived together, and it could include every inhabitant of a village or only some of them. The major cities were also divided into calpullis. The land—common property—was not transferable. It was available to members, but it did not belong to any one of them individually. Plots that were left uncultivated without good reason were given to other members, and an individual who left the calpulli would lose all rights to the land. Unlike communities in the Near East, there was no regular distribution of plots,the right to work them was passed from fathers to sons. This was undoubtedly a source of differences in levels of wealth.3 Alongside individual plots, there were some that were worked collectively, and their yield was used to pay tributes and to support the head of the calpulli.4 There were professional artisans, but their specialized work did not supply the community. Within the communal economy, crafts were not separate from agriculture. Peasants made their own rudimentary tools. The division of labor was reflected, on the other hand, in the presence of people who carried out administrative, educational, and religion-related functions.5 All members participated in the election of the head or calpullec. The office was not hereditary, though members of the calpullec's family were likely to be subsequently elected. Besides economic community, the calpulli also ensured military unity, since each community was organized into units with their own captain and colors. Their unity was also expressed through religion, with belief in one God, the Calputeona—a different one for each calpulli—who was worshipped in a local temple where ceremonies and communal festivities took place. We must be careful not to identify the calpulli with the agrarian community, which might have consisted of one or more calpullis.6 To this day, the nature of the calpulli remains the subject of heated discussion. Some scholars regard it as a lineage organization, based on family ties, with very strong egalitarian institutions. More recent research suggests that, while there was consciousness of a common familial origin, familial relations were not the basis of the calpullif and that, furthermore, social differentiation was considerably advanced.7 The first Spaniards observed unequivocal signs of relations based on exploitation and social stratification:

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The poor macehuales worked all day for their tribute and to feed them (the principales)} because a village with a thousand residents has one cacique and a hundred principales . . . and these people eat and drink and are idle at the expense of the poor peasants who carry the brunt of it all.8 The state and the dominant class received tribute from the calpullis. No community was exempt from this obligation, and the revenue of the Aztec state was very considerable. Basing his calculations on the Codice Mendocino, Cook estimated that the grain obtained annuallyfrom371 villages was sufficient to feed 361,641 people. The state also received 2,896,261 textile goods—blankets, wraps, skirts, and so on—every year, as well as 220,000 pounds of cotton. Furthermore, every conquered province had to send individuals to Mexico to perform a whole range of tasks. The great pyramid of Tenochtitlan and the impressive dam at Lake Texcoco were built with the tributary labor of thousands of men from many different places. All dues were paid in kind or labor.9 The greater part of the tribute came from defeated villages, but the Aztec calpullis also paid tribute. The tribute was imposed collectively, even though it did not affect all individuals equally. The shares assigned to merchants, artisans, and peasants were different. The amount of tribute paid by each village and community was proportional to its surplus product, and the more prosperous bore a greater burden than the rest.10 Exploitation under the Aztec social system was not based on the private ownership of land, as was the case under the slave or feudal systems, but, primarily, on the generalized enslavement of communities by the Aztec state and its military, bureaucratic, and religious representatives. The most important class contradiction was the one between the state and the communities. Cortes understood the situation very clearly and was able to unite many communities in his struggle against the Aztec state, whose parasitic nature had provoked much hate. The advanced autarchy and self-sufficiency of agrarian communities in the central region also help to explain, in part, the stability of Spanish rule, which in this area was accomplished within a period of five years: as in the ancient Orient, the communities accepted the substitution of one form of despotism by another insofar as the new one set itself up as protector of their survival—a. role that the king of Spain was very willing to accept. The members of the Aztec dominant class lived outside the calpulli) they were exempt from paying tribute and from the jurisdiction of judicial tribunals, and their children studied in special schools. Their privileges were largely attributes of their function. "The Aztec sover-

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The History of Capitalism in Mexico: Its Origins, 1521-1763

eign," in Soustelle's words, "was not surrounded by a hereditary court of nobles . . . but by a group of military or civil functionaries who enjoyed prerogatives inherent to their function."11 Nevertheless, on the eve of the Conquest, around Tenochtitlan at any rate, private ownership of land, a hereditary nobility, serfdom, and slavery, which shaped the community-state structure, had became more important. Nobles could even sell land, as long as it was sold to other nobles. A peasant who did not belong to a calpulli could settle on the property of a noble: he became a tlamatl living there with his family. In exchange, the owner of the land received a series of domestic services and the payment of a tribute separate from the calpulli's collective tribute. The nobility that owed its position to function became a hereditary nobility. As Katz explains, "its power was very great, although it did not equal that of the European nobility in ancient or medieval times; it did not as yet own all the land; it had not become a closed class."12 Aztec society was in a transitional state, and it is difficult to ascertain which trend would have prevailed: the one that would have led to the private ownership of land and to serfdom, or the one that resulted in the consolidation of the tributary exploitation of the community. The type of economy that developed on the basis of colonial private landed property was unknown in the pre-Hispanic world; but the relation between the Crown and the Indian communities represented a continuation of the tributary elements of precolonial society. The conception of an empire founded on the tribute paid by countless communities, villages, towns, and cities, independent as far as their internal system but subject unconditionally to a central power, emanated from the very essence of the sixteenth- and seventeeth-century Spanish state. The "Oriental" Political Facet of the Spanish Crown The Spanish state was clearly different from other European absolute monarchies, which in their attempt to weaken the feudal lords were forced to promote the growth of cities (capitalist centers) and to support the merchant class. The nature of the Spanish Crown's independent state power was different, and it rested on two solid pillars: its close identification with the church and the presence of a powerful royal bureaucracy. Both phenomena probably had their origins in the long process of reconquest.13 The church and the king had a common enemy in Islam. A solid alliance—paralleled only under oriental despotism, where the monarch was also the supreme head of the church—was forged in the fight against it. This state-religious unity was rounded off by Spanish nationalism. To

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be a Spaniard was both to support the king militarily in the struggle against the Moors and to uphold Catholic orthodoxy against Islam. During the Reconquest, lands seized from the Moors were distributed among feudal lords, but the Crown retained political power and administrative functions. A powerful bureaucracy of royal administrators and legislators began to consolidate itself from the thirteenth century. Its members, known as letrados (learned), gained experience and power through the administration of reconquered lands.14 Many Spanish nobles were gradually drawn into this growing royal bureaucracy. Their fueros (privileges and freedoms) ceased to be the outcome of independent feudal power and became, instead, royal mercedes (grants). The bureaucratic omnipresence of the Spanish state also manifested itself in an unparalleled flourishing of jurisprudence. Many studies were written on the abstract principles of government and administration, and an imposing body of laws and ordinances was created to regulate every aspect of public life. As a consequence of the Reconquest and the influx of American silver, the Crown was able to subdue the feudal lords without becoming dependent on the merchants. This gave it a profoundly conservative character at a time of rapid economic and social changes. According to Marx, The Spanish absolute monarchy, whose general resemblance to European absolute monarchies is only superficial, should be classified alongside the Asiatic forms of government. Spain, like Turkey, continued to be a conglomeration of badly administered republics, headed by a nominal sovereign . . . Oriental despotism assails municipal autonomy only when the latter defies its immediate interests, but it happily allows the survival of such institutions as long as these relieve it from performing certain tasks and save it the bother of a regular administration.15 This accounts for the fact that, unlike the British government— directly tied to the commercial bourgeoisie—the Spanish Crown did not perceive its possessions in America as colonies. The concept of colony or trading post did not figure in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish legislation, because the ruling dynasty regarded its vast American possessions as new kingdoms or tributary republics that would join the constellation of those already in existence in Spain and abroad, rather than as objects of colonial exploitation by Spain.16 In the case of colonial ventures undertaken by a more advanced capitalism, the state acted as protector and guardian of mercantile, banking, or manufacturing interests,- the Spanish Crown, on the other hand, conquered for itself.

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The History of Capitalism in Mexico: Its Origins, 1521-1763

Although the Conquest was an essentially private venture, the Spanish Crown soon imposed its hegemony. It defeated all attempts by colonists in New Spain and Peru to free themselves from its guardianship, and it consolidated its position as inherent owner of the lands, riches, and peoples of the New World. The king represented one more element among the various private interests that took part in the colonial venture. But throughout most of the sixteenth century, his influence was intrinsically different from that of private individuals. While the latter furthered the creation of a society based on private property, the Crown, relying on the concomitant presence of a strong and rigorously hierarchical bureaucracy in both cultures, aimed to create a despotictributary structure. Hence, it protected the Indian community, curbed feudal or bourgeois expansion by the colonists, and expanded the supremacy of the bureaucracy, whose authority derived from the king's grace and appointment, rather than from independently accumulated wealth and power. In a report on the tributary capacity of Mexican Indians, Rodrigo de Albornoz, the king's contador (auditor), wrote in 1525 that the people "from these parts are very reasonable and orderly and accustomed to contribute to Monctezuma and his lords just like Spanish peasants" (emphasis added).17 On the basis of this information, the ruling dynasty assumed that the more advanced American civilizations comprised economic systems that would maintain their rate of production and payment of tribute, as well as their internal administration, as long as the destructive greed of private conquerors could be restrained.18 The royal order of 1523 was an economic expression of this notion: Indians were to be asked "to give and pay us each year as much taxes and tribute as they have till now given and paid their so-called 'tecles' and lords."19 Working from tribute lists compiled for the Aztec state and from its own estimates, which suggested that pre-Hispanic tribute amounted to 30 percent of the total agricultural and artesanal product, the Crown was disposed to maintain the economic status quo. (Silver extraction was the sole exception. Both the Crown and private individuals agreed on the need to create and develop a new economic sector.) Thus, the Crown simply tried to take the place left vacant by the Aztec state. At the beginning, it opposed any colonists' initiative not under its control, which might have constituted a threat to the preservation of the tributary structure. The sovereign retained the inherent right to all conquered lands. Property had to originate—in the last instance—from a gracia or merced real [royal favor or grant). Legally, traditional Indian possessions were regarded as concessions from the Crown to the communities. The same applied to Indian labor for private enterprises; it could be obtained only through the viceregal

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authorities. Amid ambiguous and contradictory legislation, the state allocated itself the role of supreme and immediate arbitrator, "protector" of the Indians, and promoter of mining. Nevertheless, the conquistadores gradually seized the sources of wealth. In the latter half of the sixteenth century, the mines began to yield rich benefits. Spanish enterprises started paying taxes and providing "loans" that were far more substantial than the tribute from America. At the same time, the impact of depopulation brought about the decline of the old tributary structure. The Crown continued to protect the Indian communities, but it began to give in to pressure from colonists insofar as this pressure translated into fiscal revenues and the consolidation of royal power. Such economic policy was also in keeping with the Crown's clashes in Spain with feudal lords and with the bourgeoisie in its pursuit to consolidate its absolute power. Charles V and his successors took it upon themselves to weaken the strength of both cities and nobility. Having crushed the rebellion of the cortes and the cities the same year that Tenochtitlan was finally conquered, they took advantage of the hostility between nobles and citizens, between different regions, and between cities to consolidate their absolute hegemony. It is understandable, then, that the Crown with its ally the church should oppose the rise in the colonies of fiefdoms or capitalist centers that might challenge their sovereignty. The Crown tried to forge a "better" society than Spain's: a society in which all its members would depend politically and economically directly on the state rather than on some intermediary. The attempt failed, but its efforts served as a powerful check to the dissolution of the despotic-tributary structure. Colonists' interests were opposed to this policy. A few among them had aristocratic ambitions and wished to become a dominant class equal to Spain's. Others had set up economic units to produce the goods needed for the new towns and villages. All wanted to become rich quickly and demanded a free hand in the appropriation of the Indian labor force and of land. In order to secure both, they wanted to weaken or destroy the system of production based on the agrarian community. Thus, the Indian community found in the colonial system both self-interested protectors and greedy enemies. The Crown tenaciously pursued a policy that tended to perpetuate the division of colonial society into two distinctive sectors: the republica de indios and the reptiblica de los espanoles. In order to ensure this outcome, many steps were taken to differentiate the status of Indians, to enclose them in communities and to subject these communities directly to royal power. "Vagrants" were banned from living among Indians in 1536 and 1563,

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The History of Capitalism in Mexico: Its Origins, 1521-1763

black administrators, in 1540, and, later, administrators in general. Encomenderos were also bannedfrom livingamong their encomendados ( 1563), and fifteen years later similar measures were applied to mestizos, blacks, and mulattoes in general. In 1600, all Spaniards were included in the ban. In urban areas, Indians were segregated in special quarters.20 After some hesitation, Indians were declared free men and women, directly subordinate to the king, but they were banned from wearing European dress, carrying firearms, and riding horses. Indians were exempt from paying the alcabala (sales tax), one of the most burdensome taxes weighing on Spaniards, but they were forced to pay tribute, which weighed on them like a stigma. Many penal laws did not apply to them, but their right to individual property was restricted, and they were not allowed to contract a debt greater than five pesos. Indians could not join urban guilds, and there were significant restrictions on their freedom of movement. The Indigenous Community in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries This policy segregated Indians from Spaniards and mestizos, it contained and isolated Indian communities, and it limited the latter's activities to agriculture. One of the most salient efforts made by the Crown to preserve and reorganize these communities was the congregations or reducciones (settlements of converted Indians), which tended to gather the surviving Indian population into new towns and thus prevented their breaking up. The Crown wanted at all cost to concentrate Indians in settlements where economic and political control from the center could be exercised. Hence, it ordered the establishment of small Indian villages that would bring together peasants scattered in the hills. As early as 1512, the Laws of Burgos ordered the congregation of Indians in new, purposely built villages on the outskirts of Spanish towns, and the destruction of their old villages—that they might not be tempted to return to them.21 This violent redistribution of the population brought about further loss of life and gave rise to opposition, and Indians frequently abandoned their newly founded congregations to return to their homelands. Yet, it helped to anchor the community within the new tributary system, which was threatened by the rapid process of depopulation and the expansion of the economy. It was stipulated that previously held lands should not be taken away from indios congregados and the formation of organs of self-government was allowed, but the new villages could not befreelyabandoned to settle in others.22 In the new settlements, the state merged communitarian traditions from indigenous and Spanish peasant societies. Lands allocated to the

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village were called resguardo. Their exploitation was carefully regulated, and they were inalienable, unless special permission to sell them was obtained. By order of Viceroy Marques de Fakes, Indian villages were granted a fundo legal (a radius of some 550 yards from the church) for their houses and corrals; an ejido (one square league) for communally owned pastures, woods, and water; piopios, fields worked collectively, the produce from which went into the caja (community fund); tierras de repartimiento for individual cultivation, which were allocated on a yearly basis; and plots for individual use, which could be bequeathed but were inalienable.23 However, the law was often disregarded, and lands in the new communities continued to be distributed and worked according to pre-Hispanic customs. There were also new communal institutions, such as the cajas de comunidad, whose funds derived from the produce of collectively worked fields and donations, and acted as a form of insurance for the payment of tribute and for meeting welfare needs. Powerful indigenous and Spanish mechanisms worked to protect the corporate nature of the community; they served to channel accumulated wealth toward noneconomic aims, to prevent the differentiation and formation of social classes, and to safeguard social unity and collective property.24 One such mechanism was the cofradia, counterpart of the caja comun for religious activities. It was based on a collective fund composed of animals or lands and relied on contributions from its members and income from properties. "Many were the fiestas celebrated," writes Ernesto de la Torre, "and extended were the festivities, and communities became very involved in all this. Aside from helping the needy, all their efforts and their savings, often obtained through sacrifice and hard work, were allocated... to the celebration of fiestas."25 The cofradias had countless officials—positions that conferred prestige and authority—and they all had to help pay for activities and fiestas. The prioste, for example, bears all expenses related to the cofradia or hospital, which come to 7 pesos to set up the nativity scene, 6 pesos 6 reales for fireworks, 19 pesos for the fritters which he presents to the other locals at Christmas; 16 pesos for the carnival feast otpozole and tamales, 10 pesos 5 reales for wax for the altar, a pack of oranges at 4 reales, 4 pounds and a half of oro volador at one and a half, 23 pesos to feed the poor who play the apostles on Maundy Thursday and on Good Friday; a pound of wax and 10 reales to bring the holy oils for Easter; for the celebration of the Assumption of Our Lady he gives the priest 4 pesos for mass, 7 loaves of bread or 7 pesos,

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The History of Capitalism in Mexico: Its Origins, 1521-1763 four napkins at one peso, altar cloths at 12 reales, 2 reales' worth of beef, eight and a half in other kind, and a pound of wax for the altar, a further eight pounds 9 pesos of fireworks, one peso for the singers, another for the sextons, 10 reales and two hens for his delegate, he spends 37 pesos 2 reales for the locals' meal, and during the celebration of the Immaculate Conception he has similar obligations, plus 6 pesos for the sermon and 7 for a fire castle or tree for the festivities of Our Lady, 9 pesos for mass fees as well as 1 peso of alms for the mass which is celebrated whenever a tributaho, man or woman, passes away, 5 pesos for lamp oil and, he pays the priest and the notary 10 pesos to settle accounts, such that his expenditure amounts to some 300 pesos.26

The mayordomo incurred annual expenses of some two hundred pesos and so did the capitdn, the alferez, and so on. Competition for social prestige was such that the "official" would often go into debt, lose all his possessions, and be reduced to abject poverty. Thus, public office helped prevent the accumulation of private fortunes, imposing on the wealthiest individuals a degree of spending that had effective leveling-off consequences.27 Thus, the very elements that forged unity, internal democracy, and the continuity of the community reinforced its stagnation and its imperviousness to the forces of social transformation. The scope of this restructuring process was such that it would not be an exaggeration to argue that most of the communities that have played an important role in the Mexican economy throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries had their physical and social origins in colonial rather than precolonial times. Congregation projects had been carried out, particularly by mendicant orders, since the very beginning of the colony, but later this responsibility fell upon the civil authorities. It was a vast venture, and it affected the lives of hundreds of thousands of Indians.28 The most ambitious project was undertaken by the Count of Monterrey and completed by his successor, the Marquis of Montesclaros, between 1595 and 1606. Table 1 provides an estimate of the probable scope of the operation between 1602 and 1605. In Yucatan, for example, it is known that fourteen hamlets were brought together to form the town of San Miguel Popola; seven villages were concentrated in the site of Quizil and Sitepeche, the same number as in Quitelcam and Coluche,- four were congregated in Izmal, as many again formed the new Tibol6n, and three villages were brought together at the site of Chunchuchin.29 The Crown's policy also helped to preserve the division and particularism of the communities and to keep alive dissension among them.

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Tributary Despotism Table 1. Congregated Population, 1602-1605 Congregated Population Tributarios Individuals Percentage of total population Congregations founded

Estimate Minimum

Maximum

Probable

40,000 160,000

80,000 320,000

60,000 240,000

8 125

16 249

12 187

Source: Howard Cline, "Civil Congregations of the Indians in New Spain, 1598-1606/' Hispanic American Historical Review, pp. 349-369.

Clashes over land, water, and a variety of rights continued to pit one community against another, but disputes were now settled within the established legal framework rather than through arms. The dispute between the residents of the towns of Ixtlan and Guelatao, in Oaxaca, which lasted many years, is a good example. In the seventeenth century, Ixtlan claimed that the lands worked by Guelatao comuneros belonged to the town and that the comuneros were just terrazgueros (communal renters). The people of Guelatao argued that these lands had belonged to their ancestors. The lawsuit, which began in 1591, was brought before several authorities, and opposing private and bureaucratic interests were involved in it. The people of Ixtlan won the first suit and on September 11,1629, thegueitftenos signed a document in which they acknowledged their status as terrazgueros and undertook to pay an annual rent of six pesos to the people of Ixtlan and to provide for their church. The agreement included penalties for any resident of Guelatao who might quarrel with the people of Ixtlan over land issues. However, peace was broken again, and the trials reopened. In 1632, the case came before the viceroy, who gave his verdict. Due to certain legal irregularities in reaching this verdict, however, the dispute broke out once again. The case was eventually settled in 1727, when the people of Guelatao finally accepted their condition of terrazgueros and—according to the documents—at last complied regularly with their monetary and service obligations.30 The Comuneros' Struggle to Preserve Their Way of Life However, as Jose Miranda observed, "the main factor acting in defence of Indian property [was] neither legal means nor the Crown's protective policy, but the Indians themselves with their communities... Without

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The History of Capitalism in Mexico: Its Origins, 1521-1763

the strong unity which stemmed from their time old structure and without the resolute and forceful collective will to keep their own land . . . without such strength and determination by the Indians, the flow of the Spanish tide over Indian lands could not have been held back."31 The image of a passive community, resignedly submitting to the expansion of Spanish property and exploitation, which some historians have tried to create, does not reflect reality. No attempt as yet has been made to classify movements and types of resistance among peasants in New Spain. Not all of them can be interpreted directly as struggles to defend the community. Some focused on slavery; others were spontaneous responses to agricultural crises and starvation, to unbearable tax burdens, or to maltreatment in Spanish enterprises. Virtually all of them contained an element of Indian protest against the Spanish oppressor. Nevertheless, to the extent that they were partially or wholly successful, they all contributed to saving the indigenous community from extinction. In the beginning, many Indians preferred death or mass extinction to the devouring process of exploitation they were subjected to by the conquerors: systematic abortion and infanticide, as well as mass suicides, were recorded in several regions. In Michoacan, for example, it was said that a brujo (shaman) had driven a crowd of possessed Indians to commit suicide. Alonso de Zorita was familiar with many cases of Indians who would kill themselves to avoid the payment of intolerable tributes and he mentioned, too, countless abortions and general opposition to procreate among the Mixe and Chontal Indians. In western Mexico, Lebron de Quinones found that many Indian women had been ordered not to conceive, and that many shunned sexual contact and practiced abortion regularly in order to ensure the early extinction of their tribe.32 Armed rebellion was neither the only nor even the main form of resistance among New Spain's peasants. Indians defended themselves with every means within their power, devising endless ruses to outmaneuver and curb the violence to which they were subjected. Sometimes they would abandon their land and take refuge in regions inaccessible to Spaniards. On other occasions, they would resort to a variety of schemes to keep them away: they would seemingly extend the land sown, setting up genuine outposts of fields and buildings, and they would buy up the land close to the towns to stop Spaniards from settling. But, above all, they resorted to legal appeals before authorities at various levels. Local, viceregal, and even royal offices received endless complaints from Indians about their ill-treatment and the dispossession of their lands. These appeals laid the groundwork for protracted proceedings that lasted whole decades, even centuries.

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Indians also resorted to more drastic measures: they slaughtered any Spanish livestock that invaded their milpas, they burned down the conquerors' estancias and buildings, they destroyed their crops, and carried out raids on the haciendas. Such actions gave rise to veritable vendettas that set local Indians and Spaniards against one another for generations. Other times, they killed those vigilantes and officials who were particularly loathed, or they formed gangs of thieves that ransacked the property of wealthy Spaniards. The struggles of sedentary Indians to preserve their communities, dating from the earliest years of the colony, represent the embryonic origins of Mexican peasant movements. Forsaken by the majority of Indian nobles who aspired to become members of the conquerors7 dominant class and who took every opportunity available to them to increase their holdings by helping Spaniards, the comuneros sustained a struggle that through the centuries ceased to be a clash between conquered and conquerors, to become increasingly one between exploited and exploiters. Throughout the sixteenth century, there was a succession of rebellions in some of the regions more remote from the center: in Coatzacoalcos in 1523, in the province of the Panuco in 1543. The Mixes and the Zapotecs in the Oaxaca region rebelled during 1524-1528, and Spanish rule was threatened. The inhabitants in the Northwest of the country rose up in arms in 1530. There was another Indian uprising in New Galicia in 1538, and the great rebellion that shook the foundations of Spanish rule in that province broke out three years later, in 1541. This rebellion, which spread over a vast region encompassing the present-day states of Jalisco, Zacatecas, Michoacan, Aguascalientes, and Nayarit, was marked by the bloody defeats that the Indians inflicted on the Spaniards, before they themselves were crushed in Guadalajara.33 The valiant resistance offered by the Maya is also well known; its ardor was kept alive for several centuries. Rebellions carried on into the seventeenth century. The great Indian movement in Tehuantepec, which affected more than two hundred villages in that region and spread toward Oaxaca, took place in March 1660. The Indians succeeded in establishing an autonomous government that survived for a whole year. While the uprising was eventually crushed, its repercussions were felt in the province for many years to come. The agricultural crisis of 1691-1692 led to uprisings in Mexico City, which later spread to the countryside, as well as to the cities of Tlaxcala and Guadalajara. In the North of the country, there was a series of armed encounters with Indians, who refused to submit to the encomienda or mine work. These struggles helped to curb Spanish voracity, to restrain the more negative aspects of the encomienda and

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The History of Capitalism in Mexico: Its Origins, 1521-1763

the repartimiento, and to promote legislation favorable to the interests of Indian comuneros. It was within such a context that the remarkable phenomenon of the resurgence of the community, precisely when its dissolution seemed final, came about in Mexico, as it did in Peru, India, and other countries where the agrarian community has survived. Such was the case of the Otomi peoples in the Valley of the Mezquital, who, after the Spaniards ran them off their best lands, held onto the arid hillsides given to them, and were there able to multiply. Their numbers grew from four thousand in the mid-seventeenth century to twenty thousand by the end of the eighteenth century.34 The case of the Indians from Zuchitepec is very typical. This town, founded in 1368, had ten kin groups who were dispersed by the conquerors. In 1606, a few Indians requested, and were granted, the return of their lands. The lands remained peacefully in their possession until 1745, when one Francisco de la Cortera reported the matter. The judge, who had been bribed, put the lands up for auction and sold them to Cortera for 42,500 pesos. Some families fled to the mountains and others started a series of legal actions. Although the Crown intervened in favor of the community, Cortera continued to occupy the lands. The Indians succeeded in obtaining the intervention of the viceroy, who secured the restitution of seventy-nine acres, the return of those families who had fled, as well as compensation for the town. The Indians reopened proceedings to regain the remaining land, which continued over several generations. The quarrel was still going on in 1860, when the town of Zuchitepec took its case directly before President Juarez.35 Gradually, the protectors of the communities lost ground. The king was far away and the response to his orders was "obedezcase pero no se cumpla" ("obey but do not comply"). He also had to give preference to the increasingly more firmly established colonists who brought him important revenues. And the missionaries who had stood up to the brutal resistance of encomenderos and local authorities gave way to the institutionalized church. Indian rebellions were drowned in blood and the courts were biased. The communities' opposition to selling or giving up their lands weakened with the death of countless Indians and the relative abundance of unoccupied communal lands. In times of crisis, the sale of land was the last resort open to comuneros to buy food or fulfill their tributary obligations. The Spaniards took advantage of every weakness through fair or fraudalent buying, through all kinds of forcible seizures, through trading for ganado menor, or by monopolizing water sources to enclose the communities within an iron circle. This process was so forceful that by the latter half of the sixteenth century every Indian village in Anahuac was tightly enclosed by private properties.36

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As a consequence, most communities lost their independence and were forced to seek seasonal work on the haciendas or other Spanish properties, but this did not signal their end. Despite complex processes of dispersion, consolidation and restructuring, many communities survived. As Jos6 Miranda relates, According to the census carried out by Navarro and Noriega, in the central region of the country (intendencias of Mexico, Guadalajara, Puebla, Veracruz, Oaxaca, Valladolid, Guanajuato, San Luis Potosi and Zacatecas and gobierno of Tlaxcala) in 1810 there were some four thousand Indian villages where the greater part of the three million community Indians registered in these territories must have lived, since the number of Indian workers was relatively small; on the basis of incomplete data, obtained from other censuses, we do not think the latter amounted to more than five hundred thousand.37 Throughout its history, the indigenous community was subjected to different types of exploitation, though not all endangered its existence: for example, neither the relation of exploitation established between the community and the state-church unit and based on tribute, nor the one that developed between "urban centers" and their neighboring communities, exploited "colonially" through unequal exchange and monopoly, threatened its survival. Others, however, such as chattel slavery and the repartimiento, wherever these attained a high degree of intensity, and the expansion of the hacienda, wherever it seized lands and removed Indians from their community in order to reduce them to the condition oipeones acasillados, contributed to its weakening and paved the way for its breakup. Nevertheless, the final breakup did not come until the triumph and expansion in manufacturing and agriculture of capitalism as a mode of production. On this point, we should note the contrast between the fate met by the great pre-Hispanic urban concentrations and the agrarian communities. As early as the seventeenth century, the former had vanished altogether, while the latter survived. The calpullis farthest away from the large cities and the more important mining centers survived better than those closer to them.38 Tribute Sympathizers to the Crown consider the measures it adopted to protect the community as reflecting a policy inspired by "principles of social justice." But this is only seemingly so, since they neglect a very important element: tribute. The protection of communal property and

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The History of Capitalism in Mexico: Its Origins, 1521-1763

the extraction of tribute constituted two sides of the same relationship. The Crown protected the community in order to extract its surplus,rather, it had to protect the existence of the community in order to collect tribute. The surplus within the tributary structure took the form of tribute, which represented the major economic relationship between the community and the church-Crown unit. In essence, the relationship between master and slave, between feudal lord and serf, between Crown and indigenous community, is similar: the exploiter appropriates the surplus labor of the exploited. But the way in which this is done—the crucial aspect of the question—is very different in each instance. The slave master appropriates the entire product of the slave because the latter, for whom he provides the necessary minimum to survive, is his property; the feudal lord relies on land ownership and the relations of serfdom to appropriate the surplus of the serf without having total control over him. Within the framework of the despotictributary structure of New Spain, the Crown established a relation of exploitation with communities, not with individuals. The state, as a whole, confronted communities not just as sovereign, but' also as landowner (the possessions of the communities were mercedes reales, an inherent attribute of all property, etc.). Under these conditions, land rent and tax concurred within the same institution, namely, tribute. It is understandable that, just as the slave master protected the plantation and the conditions for his existence, and the feudal lord protected his fief, so the Crown tried to preserve the community and its raison d'etre, tribute. From the Crown's standpoint, the community made sense to the extent that it paid tribute. When the Spanish government became convinced that the capacity of Indians to pay tribute had declined and that collection costs were high, it shifted its support to private interests, from which it could obtain considerable taxes and substantial loans. As early as 1523, the emperor claimed for himself the right to collect tribute. In instructions to Cortes, dated that same year, he said: "It is just and reasonable that the said Indians of the said land should serve us and pay tribute in recognition of the duty and service which, as our subjects and vassals, they owe us."39 The Crown was opposed to justifying this payment in terms of compensation for political or religious services and insisted on making it quite clear that it was a question of a lord's natural right over his subjects. The Crown's plans clashed with the interests of the colonists who coveted both the seigneurial right to collect tribute and the income thus received. They claimed that the Indians had a low capacity to pay tribute and that the revenue was gathered in merchandise that for the most part could not be transported to Spain. The encomenderos proposed that the

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Crown give up its rights to collect tribute and tax Spanish enterprises instead. Under pressure from the colonists, who threatened to abandon the newly conquered lands, the king gave up his age-old rights. Thus began the distribution oiencomiendas, which conferred on beneficiaries the traditional right to collect tributes. Two kinds of tribute originated from that grant, and they should be clearly distinguished: tribute to private individuals (i.e., encomenderos) and tribute to the king. Some communities paid tribute to the former, others to the Crown, and some did so to both. The encomenderos' tribute was a mechanism to transfer surplus from the communities to Spanish enterprises. The royal tribute, on the other hand, established an economic bond of exploitation between Crown and community and constituted the sociopolitical foundation of the despotic-tributary relationship. A huge bureaucratic apparatus headed by the Contaduria Real de Tributos, a section of the Caja de Mexico, was set up to collect the royal tribute. It operated through the alcaldes mayores and the corregidores, who acted as tax agents, giving surety for their posts. Money was paid directly to these collectors. Tribute in kind, on the other hand, followed a more complex path since it was of use to the Crown only if it could be changed into money. This was done through public auctions, the highest bidder earning the right to the goods or services for a year. Notices of auctions were given one or two months in advance. Royal officials would sell tribute in kind this way and then hand the church the corresponding tithe. The system of auctions continued until the time when most tribute in kind was replaced by tribute in currency.40 For the first twenty years, the bulk of the tribute was appropriated by private individuals. In 1530, the audiencia banned Indians from handing over part of the tribute directly to officials and clerics "because the sovereign would pay the latter in proportion to their contribution. "41 But this arrangement did not work in practice. Lacking adequate means, the Crown had to urge officials to accept posts, even though they might not get paid "for the time being" and to compel Indians to maintain them, with the clarification that what was given would be taken from their future salaries.42 In time, the Crown consolidated its authority, lessening the power of the encomenderos and gaining control over officials. All Indians had to pay tribute. Comuneros, as well as "those working in mines, market gardens, estancias, obrajes, with wagons, mules, and all others engaged in other occupations, proportionate to their earnings . . . caciques and their first-born, alcaldes, singers and vergers in reducciones and women of all ages [being] exempt from such contribution."43 In 1574, all "free Black males and females, mulattoes and mulattas"

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The History of Capitalism in Mexico: Its Origins, 1521-1763

were ordered to pay tribute too.44 The order came into effect in 1580. Among Indians, married adults between twenty-five and fifty-five years old were "full" tributarios, while widowers and single men paid half. Early on, the royal tribute consisted almost entirely of produce and labor. Like the encomenderos' tribute, the most common product was corn, which was valued in measures or as the yield of a field of a particular size. Until the mid-sixteenth century, staples for the conquerors—beans, chile, hens, eggs, honey, fish, frogs, salt, wood, wax, firewood, grass, and coal—were very important. Cacao, partly used for consumption, partly for export, was also quite common. So were pottery and household earthenware. Less common were raw materials such as cotton, lime, silk, copper, tin, and tools that, as a general rule, were manufactured in Spanish enterprises.45 Under the second audiencia (1530) the amount of tribute was meticulously assessed in accordance with the paying capacity of communities. In the mid-sixteenth century, the Crown adopted some measures that considerably transformed the entire tribute system. Personal service as a form of tribute was banned, and the transport of tribute items was restricted to their delivery within the villages themselves. The variety included in early valuations was reduced to the payment of one or two articles produced in the village. Indians were allowed to pay tribute in currency, which favored them since prices reflected a steady upward trend. Between 1557 and 1563, a new census of villages was conducted, married men were classified as tributarios who had to pay full tribute, Indian single adult males, widowers, and widows were classified as medio tributarios, who paid half as much, and a single tribute quota was setup—one peso plus hali a fanega (one fanega = 1.58 bushels) of corn per tributario. Dates when the tribute was to be delivered were also fixed. The changefromtribute in kind to tribute in currency took place over an extended period of time. In 1600, it was apparently customary to pay seven reales and a hen. "But having learned from experience that the need to provide this fowl was burdensome, they [the Indians] were told by order of the viceroy . . . to pay one silver real instead, which covered the established value."46 Nevertheless, a considerable share of tribute continued to be paid in kind, because a circular issued in 1634 authorized those communities that could not pay in kind to do so in currency. It stipulated that nine reales should be paid for each fanega of corn and a similar amount for each "set of cotton clothing." As late as 1678, tribute was still paid in kind and produce was sold in public auctions just as it had been done since the beginning of the colony.47 The gradual change to tribute in currency had a twofold effect: it forced comuneros to work in Spanish enterprises and it furthered the integration of the community into the market economy. In order to pay

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their tribute in currency, Indians had to go to the marketplace as sellers of commodities that, inevitably, were either goods or labor. The form of tribute varied depending on the changing needs of the economy of the repiiblica de los espanoles: sometimes, the central power demanded that Indians pay in currency,- other times—for example, when supplies to cities were scarce—in kind. Thus, for example, the mining boom of 1535-1548 brought about a general process of substitution of tribute in kind for labor services, and the labor force grew rapidly, particularly in the mines. Services were almost always forced, in response to pressure from encomenderos and officials and caciques' corruption. When, in 1549, the king issued a decree banning the payment of tribute in labor, there followed a new wave of changes, this time from tribute in labor to tribute in currency.48 In place of services, the encomenderos forced Indians into wage labor on their properties.49 The mixed nature of tribute continued well into the eighteenth century. However, the significance of labor as a form of tribute declined drastically after the mid-sixteenth century. In the case of tribute in kind, the process was much slower and uneven, but throughout the colony's three centuries there was a steady trend to turn tribute into a monetary service.50 We cannot conclude this brief description without pointing out the fundamental difference between pre-Hispanic tribute and tribute paid to the Crown. While the former was directly consumed by the dominant classes of indigenous societies, the Spanish Crown as a colonial power, in order to export the surplus from the communities, had to change into in-demand commodities the bulk of products gathered. This metamorphosis of tribute into commodities was a manifestation of the new status of the despotic-tributary sector, which went from being the dominant mode of production to being a subordinate mode of production, integrated into a more highly advanced economic system. In the mid-eighteenth century, 795 out of the 1,181 villages in the census paid at a rate of 2 pesos, half a real; 236 paid between 1 peso, half a real, and 2 pesos per Indian; 150 paid between 2 pesos 1 real and 3 pesos.51 As well as royal tribute, comuneros paid 2.5 reales for "hospitals and ministers" and special levies were frequently imposed, such as 4 reales introduced at the end of the sixteenth century "because of pressing public needs."52 We know little of the total amount of royal tribute for the first half of the sixteenth century, but in 1569 royal tributes from 150 alcaldias mayores added up to 327,403 pesos (table 2). They amounted to only 256,112 pesos by 1600, and had reached their lowest point in the decade between 1660 and 1670, with an annual average of 189,921 pesos.53 Furthermore, if constant price increases are taken into account, we can

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infer that from the end of the sixteenth century to the beginning of the the eighteenth century, the value of royal tribute dropped drastically. Only with the increase in Indian population and the reorganization of the hacienda did it begin to rise once again. Around 1770, it had reached the equivalent amount for the sixteenth century, but it was probably much lower than its original real value. The decline in the capacity of communities to pay tribute was reflected both in tribute paid to the encomenderos and in royal tribute. In the sixteenth century, tribute was the Crown's major source of income. It had a very significant role right up to the early eighteenth century. It accounted for 14 to 17 percent of revenues of the Real Hacienda (royal treasury) and it was the most substantial item from a single source. From the middle of the eighteenth century, things began to change: the amount of royal tribute continued to grow, but its relative importance was declining. Revenues from the state tobacco monopoly, from the alcabala, and from rights on mining production, grew at a much faster rate, such that tribute came to account for less than 5 percent of total fiscal revenue.54 The replacement of tribute as a source of fiscal revenue by taxes on Spanish enterprises and royal monopolies was undoubtedly one of the contributing elements to the Crown's growing inaction vis-a-vis the expansion of Spanish enterprises at the expense of indigenous communities. The royal tribute was by no means the only tribute obligation weighing on comuneros. In the early seventeenth century, Indians paid eight reales plus half a fanega of corn (about four reales) as royal tribute, one real for the Medio Real de Fabrica (a tax designed to contribute to the costs of construction of the metropolitan cathedral) and four reales for the Medio Real de Ministros (a tax to cover the costs of Indian litigation and judicial protection).55 In addition, there were local taxes, legal and illegal levies by Spanish and Indian authorities, and many special taxes. Indians also paid tithes on Spanish-type produce or properties, such as cattle, wheat, silk, or lands that had belonged to colonists. Furthermore, the tithe was often imposed on Indian products, though legally they were exempt. Communities were further obliged to contribute directly or through their communal funds to the maintenance of religious orders and churches. The clergy would frequently demand from the communities the payment of derramas (additional or unauthorized contributions), making them pay special dues to cover fiestas, calls, and other expenses. Alms—donations that on occasion amounted to considerable sums— constituted further payments to the church.56 Communities also had to provide labor services for all kinds of public and ecclesiastical works. The repartimiento was used to force Indians to

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Tributary Despotism Table 2. Royal Tribute, 1569-1770 (pesos) Year 1569 1600-1610 1610-1620 1620-1630 1630-1640 1640-1650 1650-1660 1660-1670 1670-1680 1680-1690 1690-1700 1700-1710 1710-1720 1720-1730 1730-1740 1740-1750 1750-1760 1760-1770

Annual Average 327,403a 229,921 237,450 199,197 239,020 269,224 242,442 189,921 204,381 225,464 226,076 286,115 356,921 344,626 536,209 564,763 651,297 596,220

Total for Decade 2,299,210 2,374,500 1,990,970 2,390,200 2,692,240 4,424,420 1,899,210 2,043,810 2,254,640 2,260,760 2,861,130 3,569,210 3,446,260 5,362,090 5,647,630 6,512,970 5,962,200

a

Data available for one year only. Source: Fabian de Fonseca and Carlos Urrutia, Historia general de Real Hacienda, vol. 1, p. 450.

work on the construction of public buildings, churches, forts, roads, bridges, and drainage systems. Although it had been banned, the repartimiento survived in relations between state and communities, even after its practice had been discontinued within the private Spanish economy. Tribute in kind, currency, or labor, as well as the tithe in the widest sense of the term, were all manifestations of the despotic-tributary relationship that existed between the agrarian community and the statechurch community. Tribute was closely linked to the general functioning of the community. It fell on the individual, but right up to the end of the colony Spaniards set a global sum for the cabecera (head town or village), and the Indian government was responsible for its collection. Officials' salaries depended on this, but so did their influence within the community. Therefore, in many communities, pre-Hispanic methods of collection, which were based on differential assessments proportionate to the

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wealth and status of individual comuneros, rather than on one equal share for all tributahos alike, were still enforced.57 Detailed records of tribute were kept at all levels. There was, for example, the Codex Valeriano (1574), in which Indian officials represented each tributario by means of a red head. Payments were recorded three times a year and in case of death, the head of the tributario was painted black and a death certificate, written in Nahuatl, was enclosed.58 For the repartimiento, population registers of all tribute-paying communities were drawn, detailing varying percentages (between 2 and 14 percent) of laborers that were to be supplied on a weekly basis. Registration, accounting, collection, and control mechanisms required a vast and complex Spanish and Indian bureaucracy that constituted the backbone of the system and the Crown's steadiest point of support. The Peasant Community, the Encomenderos, and the Crown The colony brought about profound changes within the Indian community and in its status within the larger society. 1. Indigenous society and the community underwent a leveling process: the strata of the dominant classes whose functions were related to war and religion were the first to fade away. Thepochteca (merchants) lost their privileges, and competition from Spanish and mestizos pushed them aside into minor local trading. The nobles' fate was different. The Crown recognized the privileges of those who cooperated; it exempted them from paying tribute and from the bans on wearing Spanish dress and possessing horses. Some of them, known as caciques throughout the colonial period, kept their holdings and actually increased them. Many were assimilated into the Spaniards' way of life and became related to them through mixed marriages. However, those nobles who resisted were reduced to the condition of macehuales, and their fate paralleled that of other comuneros.59 Throughout the sixteenth century, Indian officials in the cabildos retained a certain degree of power in their capacity as intermediaries between conquerors and communities. But the consolidation of the Spanish bureaucracy and the increase in the number of mestizos lessened their status, which by the seventeenth century was considerably lower. Thus, the vast majority of Indians found themselves reduced to the condition of macehuales. 2. Most communities underwent a process of economic regression. The disappearance of large Indian urban centers and the marginalization of the communities from the more dynamic markets resulted in the collapse of calpulli that had specialized in trade, crafts, and intellectual activities. The inevitable result was the return to a more primitive

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agrarian life. Economic mechanisms and outright bans forced Indians to remain in agriculture, while crafts, trade, and manufacturing passed into Spanish hands. While there was a high proportion of bureaucrats, administrators, merchants, and artisans among the settlers in the republica de los espanoles, the Indian population consisted, for the most part, of peasants. 3. The trend toward differentiation between communities was also accentuated. The farther these were from cities or mining centers, the more noticeable was the natural character of their economy. Due to transport problems, surplus from those communities could not be used and therefore there were fewer incentives to introduce new crops and methods of production. The requirements of the encomienda and the repartimiento, the enforcement of the policy on reducciones, and the effect of epidemics also varied considerably from region to region. This gave rise to three contradictory trends: (1) the dissolution and disappearance of the preHispanic community, (2) the merging of several communities into a new single one, with a different conformation and organization and more direct contact with mestizos and Spaniards, and (3) the survival of old communities—particularly in inhospitable regions—in conditions similar to, and at times even more primitive than, those that had prevailed in pre-Hispanic times. 4. A system of exploitation essentially based on unequal exchange was established between Spanish cities and Indian communities. Most communities became integrated into local substructures, with clearly defined economic and political relations with urban centers. A community would usually specialize in a product that was traded locally. Thus, production in the community was organized into two sectors: a selfsufficient sector and a market sector. Indians from communities turned up at regular markets in cities to sell produce and crafts and to buy necessary manufactured goods and crafts. The cities held the monopoly on manufacturing and modern crafts and made Indians—at times, through the use of violence—consume their products.60 In return, Indians found themselves compelled to supply produce to the cities. The scattered nature of Indian production, the "industrial" superiority of cities, and Spanish political rule enabled urban merchants and officials to exploit the agrarian community systematically. The exploitation of Indians was not of an individual nature, unless they turned up as gananes [laborios or workers) in Spanish enterprises. Within the community, Indians were free, but this freedom did not prevent their exploitation by the state and its officials, by encomenderos and the republica de los espanoles as a whole. Their condition was not all that different from that of peasants under the Asiatic mode of

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production, described by Maurice Godelier as follows: "In the Asiatic mode of production, the exploitation of man by man takes the form which Marx called 'generalized slavery/ essentially different from Greek and Roman slavery in that it does not preclude the individual's personal freedom, nor does it involve a bond of dependence with another individual and it is carried out through the direct exploitation of one community by another."61 This peculiar condition explains Humboldt's mistake, when he asserted that, unlike the serfs in Eastern and Central Europe, the Mexican Indian was a free person.62 Spanish rule over communities was relatively stable because it did not rely solely on force. The Conquest was also a spiritual conquest. The comuneros fought for their lands within the Spanish legal framework instead of resorting solely to armed struggle, because the antagonistic relationship between state and community had its counterpart in a political-spiritual unity. The remarkable phenomenon of the rapid massive integration of Indians into the religion of their conquerors still awaits a satisfactory account, but it is clear that within a few decades after the Conquest, the spiritual contract had been sealed. The astonishing boom in construction of public and religious buildings precisely in Indian villages was a natural expression of this unity. Barely within fifty years, magnificent Christian churches were erected on the ruins of pyramids and sacrificial temples, at a rate unparalleled in Europe or America. Sets of splendid municipal buildings rose in the squares of newly founded reducciones. The building fever was neither a whim nor a fancy of Crown and clergy,- in a society whose foundations still rested on the indigenous agrarian community, unity with the Spanish state and God could be cemented only with communal works that replaced old ceremonial and administrative centers, symbols of a fallen state and gods. The massive Christian structures and administrative buildings that towered over communities that had once been cities and were now reduced to small villages were the embodiment of a new unity between Indian communities and the Spanish state, a deeper and more stable unity than the one attained by the parasitic Aztec state. It was a unity that, like the goddess Juno, had two faces: one was the face of tribute and forced labor, the other the face of king and church protecting the Indian community from the rapacity of private Spanish entrepreneurs. This accounts for the former's deep hold over Indians who, when the time came, fought against bad government [mal gobierno), but not against their king and master Ferdinand VII; they fought against a corrupt clergy, but not against Holy Religion. Throughout the sixteenth century, the encomenderos were the principal opponents of the despotic-tributary system. As they became the

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immediate beneficiaries of tribute and forced labor, they thwarted the reconstruction of the centralized tribute system that had prevailed before the Conquest. Encomenderos disregarded the calpizque (tribute centers established by Moctezuma) and negotiated the amount of tribute directly with local caciques, who found themselves subjected to a kind of serfdom: those who cooperated with the encomendero survived; those who did not were soon removed.63 To impose its central rule, the Crown was forced to withdraw, one by one, those prerogatives that it had originally granted to encomenderos. So, for example, Gibson has rightly pointed out the double motivation behind the fight for the emancipation of Indian slaves. He writes, with reference to Panama, The Dominicans' strong support denotes the pious motives behind emancipation, but the prospect of collecting tribute from former slaves is—one might suspect—the real reason behind the firm stand of the Council of the Indies when faced with the colonists' vociferous protest.64 Feudalistic localism and primitive accumulation clashed with tributary centralism, and the result was a forceful struggle whose outcome we know. Neglect of the economic and political roots of the antagonism between the Crown's despotic-tributary tendencies and the encomenderos* feudalistic-capitalistic leanings has led more than one serious historian to discern a "Renaissance humanism" behind the royal defense of the Indian community—a humanism, however, that would stand in contradiction to the Crown's policy in Europe. At heart, this "humanism" was one and the same despotism that crushed the comuneros'rebellion in Spain and was set against the Reform in Europe. Renaissance humanism and utopianism were vigorously represented during the Spanish colonization. Fray Bartolome de las Casas, Vasco de Quiroga—and many others like them—recognized in the reformed Indian community the human values that Thomas More wished for his Utopia.65 But the political significance gained by the movement—a significance without parallel among other colonial ventures—was due to the Crown's conservative or self-interested attempt to preserve the existing despotic-tributary structure. The Crown's reactionary intent coincided temporarily with the zeal of the most illustrious representatives of Spanish Renaissance utopianism. The latter's triumph—that is, the successful abolition of the encomienda within the first fifty years of the colony—might perhaps have preserved the Indian community, but it would also have delayed the emergence of haciendas, obrajes, mills, and mines.

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No sooner had the encomenderos been overcome than thehacendados, whose growth in the sixteenth century had not represented a serious threat, came onto the scene. The Crown's position vis-a-vis this new rival was far more restrained, and it did not receive the support of the church, which, in the interim, had become New Spain's major landowner. A weakening of the "humanist" ilanl Perhaps, but, above all, disillusion with the troubled tribute system and its growing dependence on the more vigorous economy of the republica de los espanoles. Tributary despotism and the encomienda in New Spain throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were fundamentally different from feudalism in Western Europe. In contrast to conditions there, the system of exploitation in New Spain was not based on large private feudal property: state inherent property prevailed instead. Relying on a dense net of bureaucrats, the state restricted the extent, and limited the development, of large feudal property and seigneurial rule in its various forms,- it imposed a system of tributary exploitation on the community. The Spanish state in the sixteenth century was not an instrument of New Spain's feudal lords: rather, it clashed with them. The interests of the Crown, the church, and the communities concurred in the fight against the development of large feudal properties,- despite their expansion since the seventeenth century, the latter continued to be subordinate to the Crown's tributary power. The Crown's "inherent" property limited private property,- the latter was not predominant until the second half of the eighteenth century, and its victory was not attained until the coming of independence, in the subsequent period of anarchy. Another basic element of Western European feudalism was also missing: the private peasant plot, separate from the community, which— in Marx's words—"is part of the basis of the feudal mode of production," was virtually nonexistent.66 Peasants in Mexico had not cut the umbilical cord that bound them to the community, and, whenever they did, they became wage laborers tied to their workplace by coercion, or slaves, rather than producers [usufructuarios) with small plots. In Western Europe, small property owners constituted the basis of most struggles against feudal lords. Their emancipation from the yoke of serfdom laid the foundation for the proliferation of petty commodity production, the threshold of capitalism. In New Spain, peasant struggles were, in most instances, community struggles, and each victory served to consolidate further the conditions of their perpetuation.

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3. Empire and the International Market Three external factors influenced the formation of New Spain's economy: the transition from feudalism to capitalism in Europe, its incorporation, since the sixteenth century, into the emergent international market with the status of a colony, and, more directly, the shaping influence of Spanish society and the Spanish imperial system. The period between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries was one of transition from feudalism to capitalism. We know that before that time capitalist outbreaks were weak and that their emergence in a few Mediterranean cities did not substantially affect the structure of feudal society.1 It is also accepted that the industrial revolution, which began in the late eighteenth century in England, marked the definitive triumph of capitalism. But the period in between these two boundaries continues to be the object of lively debates.2 The controversy on this complex process of transformation, which embraced all aspects of social life, spread to several continents, and took on extremely varied transitional forms, lies beyond the bounds of the present work. Nevertheless, we think it would be useful to state some of the basic premises that determine our approach to the relation between this process and the rise of the economy of New Spain. Primitive Accumulation on a World Scale The rise and development of capitalism in those centuries cannot be understood in terms of a single national economy. It must be seen within the context of an international economy, in a twofold sense: (1) early capital did not originate in production—it came from the expropriation of rural petty commodity producers, from the appropriation of public loan funds, but, above all, from the looting of colonial societies in three continents;3 (2) the primitive accumulation of capital took place on a grand scale; the surplus product extracted from the inhabitants of the colonies was transformed into capital and invested to buy wage labor in

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those areas where social and economic conditions were ripe for such metamorphosis. The following is a rough estimate of the transfer of assets from the colonies to western Europe between 1500 and 1750: 1. E. J. Hamilton has estimated that the value of gold and silver transferred by Spaniards from North and South America to Europe between 1503 and 1660 was in the range of five hundred million gold pesos. 2. H. T. Colenlirander has estimated that the plunder taken from Indonesia by the Dutch Company of the East Indies between 1650 and 1780 amounted to six hundred million gold florins. 3. Father Rinchon has estimated that in the eighteenth century profits of French capital from the slave trade alone came to five hundred million gold French pounds—this does not take into account profits from the work of these slaves on Caribbean plantations. 4. H. V. Wisemann and the Cambridge History of the British Empire group have estimated that profits from slave labor in the British West Indies amounted to between two hundred and three hundred million English gold pounds. 5. The pillage of India alone between 1750 and 1800 furnished the English ruling class with some one hundred to one hundred and fifty million gold pounds. The sum total of these amounts comes to more than a thousand million English gold pounds; in other words, it is greater than the total value of capital invested in all European industrial enterprises around 1800!4 Control of the international market by national industry paved the way for the kind of expansion that would not have been possible within the modest framework of the inadequately developed national markets of the times. As H. J. Hobsbawm has observed on England's role, "at that time there was no room in the European economy [including its colonies] for the initial industrialization of more than one country/'5 Hence, the significance attached to mercantile supremacy, expounded by mercantilists. As Marx wrote in 1867, Today industrial supremacy carries with it commercial supremacy. In the true manufacturing period, the opposite applied: commercial supremacy led to industrial predominance. Hence the predominant role played then by the colonial system . . . Under the colonial system, trade and navigation prospered as hothouse plants. The Gessellschaften Monopoha (Luther) were powerful levers of capitalist concentration. The new manufactures which sprang up everywhere found in the colonies a market for

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their products and for an intensified accumulation of capital, thanks to the monopolization of this market. The loot captured outside Europe through plunder, slavery and slaughter flowed back to the metropolis,where it was transformed into capital.6 The experience of Portugal, Spain, and Holland shows that neither possession of a vast colonial empire nor control of trade with the colonies was sufficient to produce the necessary conditions for the rise of industrial capitalism in the metropolises. But colonial exploitation—in its totality—played an important role in the victory of capitalism, in those areas where internal conditions were already given, as was the case in England. Thus, the triumph of capitalism in one country was possible only because of the plundering of other countries,- the boom of its national industry fed on the collapse of manufacturing in other nations,- one country gained control of the international market for a certain product after forcing its competitors to give it up, bringing about their ruin. The colonial system and trade wars helped to bring about a revolutionary transformation of the economy at one end, regression or the delay of capitalist development at the other. The more negative effects of the creation of a capitalist international market and the triumph of the new mode of production in a few countries manifested themselves in the colonies. "England," wrote Marx, "a country with developed and predominantly industrial capitalist production, would have been drained of its blood had it been bled like the Irish people."7 The discovery, conquest, and colonization of America were an inseparable chapter in the history of primitive accumulation and the triumph of capitalism in some European centers. Independently of what might be said of the peculiarities of the Spanish empire, Spanish America participated directly in the process of gestation of the major capitalist centers between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. The discovery and exploitation of American mines in the sixteenth century brought about an increase in the quantity of precious metals available in Europe and an inflation that favored accumulation. However, we must not overstate the significance of this phenomenon: in a predominantly feudal economy, where the number of proletarians was relatively small, the drop in real wages had fairly limited effects. The secret to the revolutionary effects—for European capitalism— produced by American gold and silver lay in their having first come from plunder and theft, and then from the technical revolution of the "patio system" and the intensive exploitation later of an extraordinarily cheap labor force. America's contribution to the development of capitalism in

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Europe was not so much "inflation" as the outrageous exploitation of its people and their unpaid labor. Undoubtedly, the development of capitalism has displayed, since its earliest stages, a trend that leads to the concentration of both wealth in some centers and poverty in others. The colonial system was as vital to capitalist countries as it was to the regions it exploited. Nevertheless, the metropolis-colony relationship should not be regarded as the key to the unequal development of capitalism between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries. The metropolis-periphery relationship cannot by itself help to explain why early capitalism failed in Portugal and Spain but flourished in England, or how the gradations among the levels of development of countries that shared colonial or dependent status in Eastern Europe, America, Asia, and Africa came about. Nor can it tell us why the industrial revolution took place in England thirty years before it occurred in the leading colonialist countries. To answer these questions, we have to return inevitably to the study of the peculiarities in the development of the socioeconomic formation of individual societies and the dialectic between the endogenous and exogenous factors that influenced it. There can be no doubt that the international status of each country (metropolis, colony, or dependent country) influenced its development, but it did so through its particular socioeconomic formation rather than in a simple causal manner. Each fundamental change in international status affected the national system in its totality and, through it, each of its elements. That is why the general consequences of the metropolis-colony relationship were so different in each individual case. Spain Was "the Indies" of Other European Countries For three hundred years, New Spain was a Spanish colony. However, since the sixteenth century, it had maintained an economic relationship of colonial exploitation with Europe's capitalist centers. This was made possible by the fact that, very early on, Spain had been reduced to the condition of a country economically dependent on other powers, whose capitalism was more advanced. From an economic point of view, Spaniards played the role, largely, of middlemen. From the late sixteenth century, a network of channels had been consolidated. It originated in the most developed capitalist centers, passed through the "colonial powers" (Spain and Portugal), and ended in the American colonies. These channels served to extract the surplus product of colonial societies and to transform the latter into captive markets for French, English, Dutch, and even Italian manufactured goods.

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German financiers plundered the Spanish Royal Treasury, and foreigners in Seville seized the lion's share of private profits.8 Very early, England began to assert its economic hold over the Iberian countries and, through them, over their colonies. In exchange for sea protection, English traders forced their entry into the Portuguese redoubt in the colonies of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. In the early seventeenth century, half of all textile exports from London went to Spain.9 A century later, English merchants had so many business interests in Spain and its colonies that, no sooner had Louis XIV of France's plans been made public to demand both the opening up of the Spanish colonies to French traders and the exclusion of the English, than Great Britain wholeheartedly embarked upon the Spanish wars of succession (1701-1713).10 The surplus from America, which arrived in the metropolis in the form of silver, did not remain long in Spain. There were frequent complaints in the Spanish cortes about bullion leaving the country, and Spain was said to be "the Indies of other countries." Spain was primarily an exporter of raw materials and an importer of manufactured goods, with a negative balance of trade, whose deficit it met with American silver. Precious metals were taken out of the country illegally by Spanish merchants and foreign residents in Spain and channeled toward the large capitalist centers of production. In a sense, precious metals were the crutches which enabled the Spanish economy to move. But on top of such clandestine exports, the state had to authorize legal payments in kind to import necessary food products and naval implements which had to be paid for in money. However, the larger payments were those made by the Crown in order to meet its commitments abroad . . . All roads taking precious metals out of the country converged in northern Europe, either directly from Bilbao or via France and Italy, since it was there that Spanish interests were liable and the balance of trade was worse. Money was crucial both for the conflict with France and the war against the Low Countries as well as for its relationship with northern Europe's economy, since it went via Amsterdam to Germany and to England, which also profited from the smuggling of bullion by Spanish traders in wool ships.11 Spanish production, which was not competitive at home, was even less capable of meeting the needs of the colonies. Jose Campillo y Cosio complained in 1740 that less than one-twentieth of the products used in the West Indies were of Spanish origin. There were other European centers to turn to, and Spanish traders became genuine middlemen, not between Spanish producers and colo-

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nial consumers but between the latter and foreign producers, who were legally excluded from trading with the colonies.12 Seville's merchants did not turn America into a monopoly market for Spanish goods, but they did so for products from other countries. New Spain became a major market, particularly for English and French textiles. Since the sixteenth century, European textiles accounted for three-quarters of all imports to New Spain.13 At the same time, the export of dyes for the textile industry grew in importance. In the mid-eighteenth century, a representative for the big Spanish merchants described in the following terms the significance of Spanish trade to the rest of Europe: "[Spain's] trade has supplied many items for the wealth of the other nations, it feeds, drives and sustains their industry in a twofold way, with many raw materials essential to their manufactures and with a substantial amount of money with which every year it settles a balance favorable to its general trade in European industrial goods."14 On the other hand, illegal trading between European nations and Spain's American possessions grew considerably. Foreign merchants carried out such trading directly through Seville or Cadiz. They unloaded goods from their ships and loaded them straight onto Spanish vessels without signing the register of the Casa de Contratacion, or, as early as the seventeenth century, they would simply call at colonial ports in their own ships.15 A sizable fleet, financed by Dutch, French, and English traders, was used for these activities with the consent of the colonies' inhabitants. The wars waged by Spain in the mid-seventeenth century made transatlantic sailing particularly unsafe for Spanish ships. Fleets became more irregular. Between 1650 and 1770, Spain experienced only eighteen years of peace. At the beginning of this period, fleets would depart for Peru once a year. Later, they sailed every three, even four, years. After 1682, they did so every five or six years. As a result, contraband trade between Europe and the major Latin American centers increased substantially, and a significant proportion of the silver produced went— without prior payment of the quinto (the "fifth")—to pay for illegally imported commodities.16 In the middle of the eighteenth century, C. H. Haring relates, "Don Bernardo de Uloa estimates contraband trade amounts to half the Cadiz trade. He bases this estimate on the number of ships which sail between Spain and America, which comes to no more than forty a year, whereas the English and the Dutch deploy more than 300 ships to sail to America via Curazao and Jamaica... The English admit that none of their colonies is as valuable to England as Jamaica, due to the contraband trade with

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Spaniards, and that the riches from this trade have made its inhabitants neglect their fields."17 According to Kossok and Markow, "90% of colonial trade was directly or indirectly in foreign hands,- more than 95 % of American silver left the country [Spain] through contraband, through foreign trade deficit and through the servicing of foreign debts." 18 Chaunu has estimated that during the period 1561-1650, Spain obtained gains from its trade with Latin America four times greater than the value of goods exported. But Spanish traders acted only as commission agents, and the greater share of their colonial profits ended up in the capitalist centers of Holland, France, and England.19 The Spanish Empire imposed its major institutions on the colonies, but its role in their commercial exploitation was that of an increasingly weaker partner. Taking these factors into account, we can speak of a degree of continuity in the economic status of Latin American countries from the sixteenth century to the present day. Despite changes in the forms of exploitation, their condition has been that of countries directly or indirectly dependent on the more developed capitalist centers. As a result, processes of surplus extraction, of decapitalization, of hypertrophy of export sectors, and of obstruction of industrial development have been at work for four centuries. These phenomena have been part of the global process of the rise and development of capitalism from its very first stages right through to its imperialist phase. Its economic essence is a relation that produces superprofits for the metropolis, be it through the monopoly control of trade or through the investment of capital that yields higher returns than those prevailing in the colonialist country. The metropolis-colony relationship is present at every stage of development of the socioeconomic formation of all Latin American countries; it thus becomes a constant in their history, but not their history, as some historians and economists, who underestimate or deny the significance of internal factors, and who reduce complex historical development to the simplified metropolis-colony dichotomy, would claim. The Driving Forces of the Spanish Colonial System In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the landowning nobility still remained the dominant class in Spain, its economic power growing steadily. Three percent of the population owned 97 percent of the land in Castile (and Castile had a decisive influence on the colonial venture), and half of this 97 percent belonged to a handful of grandees' families.20 It is true that, legally, serfdom was abolished in 1480. But, in practice, the majority of peasants continued to live in a state of semiserfdom, under

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the nobles' jurisdiction. The majority of large landed properties were worked by sharecroppers who were forced into debt to obtain plots.21 In the seventeenth century, the nobility recovered its political power and the importance of the court increased.22 Meanwhile, from the midsixteenth century on, the bourgeoisie experienced a rapid decline. Amid the frenzy of inflation, land alone seemed a safe investment. A large part of the capital accumulated by Seville traders in the sixteenth century was invested in purchasing all kinds of large country estates and haciendas in Ajarofe and Sierra Morena.23 The bourgeoisie was becoming feudal. It acquired nobility titles and juros (property rights or pensions held in perpetuity). The trend became more pronounced because, until 1772, involvement in activities of a manufacturing nature had entailed the loss of nobility status. Merchants tended to display their power and wealth by ennobling their offspring. The second generation of manufacturers were "better disposed to study in Salamanca and to gain a social position than to work in their father's workshop or store."24 At the end of the sixteenth century, Castile's industrial cities must have experienced an intense phenomenon of businesses' winding up and of entrepreneurs' turning into rentiers.25 The widespread nature of this phenomenon enables us to speak of the meteoric transformation of a class of capitalists into a class of ennobled rentiers. Under such circumstances, the Crown leaned decidedly on the feudal nobility and the church. Its relations with merchants assumed the form of a fairly uneasy partnership. The dominant class tolerated them because it depended on them for the import of luxury items, but it never had to share state control with them. As for the Spanish bourgeoisie, it was long after the defeat of the comuneros before it launched another decisive struggle for power. The mercantile policy pursued by the Crown throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries did not reflect a sustained and effective trend to protect national merchants and financiers as a whole. (Official policy was influenced by the group of Seville importers, who were tied to foreign capital, and by a nobility interested in having access to plenty of imported luxury products, rather than by those interests linked to national capitalism.) During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Spanish Crown protected a few trading houses, but foreign trade was of interest to the king only as a source of fiscal revenue, and merchants only as potential lenders. Privately owned precious metals from the Indies were often seized. Other times they were traded for juros that were never paid26 and that caused the financial ruin of any merchant who did not enjoy privileges at court. These privileged individuals were almost always foreigners or representatives from Europe's large trading and financial houses.27 The Spanish nobility participated decisively in the conquest and

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colonization. Its territorial ambitions spurred the rapid spread of Spanish armies in America, and the readiness of its members to become feudal lords hastened the formation of large latifundios. The hidalgos, the lowest sector of the nobility, constituted a very important sector among emigrants;28 they lent to the Spanish colonial venture a chivalrous, adventurous, and rapacious spirit, and a resistance to productive occupations, which characterized it during its early stages. The direct and active participation of the church in the colonial enterprise underscored even more its feudal nature. Many of the best theoretical and political cadre during the colonial expansion came from the church. The work of friars among Indians in the sixteenth century helped to cement the economic and cultural unity between the Crown and the Indians and the latter's integration into the new system of exploitation. From the second half of the sixteenth century, the church, supported by the Crown, became the most powerful economic corporation in New Spain. In the year 1636, the members of the Mexico City ayuntamiento complained about the economic expansion of the church in the following terms: Since the year fifteen hundred and seventy, this city has repeatedly entreated His Majesty to see fit to ban the mendicant orders of Dominicans and Augustinians and the fathers of the Society of Jesus from acquiring houses and properties in this city, because the residents were now unable either to buy or even to leave inheritances to their children, which they might keep and which might remain the property of their descendants, as a result of which they were obliged to bequeath legacies in the form of coin . . . Given that in this kingdom there are only six types of property, namely houses, arable fields, mills, sugar mills, cattle and sheep, as regards the first, the two convents of Santo Domingo and San Agustin have the number testified, so that in this area they cannot carry out their plans to establish or buy properties because most of them are already accounted for by the censos of the nunneries, obras pias and capellanias, and arable properties are risky because of the decline in the number of Indians and because there is no one else to work them; these orders also have mills everywhere in this city and its surroundings not to mention sugar mills, while the fathers of the Society have large quantities oiganados menoresj so that altogether they have at least a third of everything, and since these properties are sufficient to feed the kingdom, if it were wished to develop others, in the current conditions which the provinces face, as a result of the huge decline of the Indians, the founders would risk getting no advantage from their outlays; in

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The History of Capitalism in Mexico: Its Origins, 1521-1763 addition to which these religious orders are constantly buying and doing business, such that within a few years half the kingdom will be theirs, their income being exempt from all tribute and tithes to the Church, which can barely maintain itself with what it gets, on account of the many holdings of these orders.29

Church wealth came from royal mercedes, from tithes, levies, legacies, and donations paid by Spaniards and mestizos as well as Indian and caste cofiadias. Although some of its enterprises followed capitalist canons, they pursued extraeconomic ends (the perpetuation of the church, etc.) that gave them that quality of mortmain that would become the focus of liberal criticism and opposition after independence. The innumerable church haciendas, cattle estancias, mills, and obrajes, and its lending capital, which placed liens upon virtually all large landed properties, constituted a powerful obstacle to the emergence of a local bourgeoisie. The essentially feudal structure of the metropolis, the presence of significant outbreaks of embryonic capitalism, and the fleeting character of such capitalism, which flourished for a few decades but foundered in disintegration that would continue for several centuries, were manifest in the Spanish colonial system, which developed a century earlier than either its English or Dutch counterparts. Various sectors of Spanish society, each with its own specific interests, took part in the colonial venture. At the beginning, certain cities and a few noble families enjoyed considerable freedom of action.30 Gradually, however, the king imposed his primacy. The defeat in the metropolis of the forces that challenged his power paved the way for the Crown's victory in the colonial venture. Plunder obtained through the latter consolidated royal despotism in Spain. It can be said that before the eighteenth century there had not been a wholly capitalist colonial system, but from that point some fundamental differences emerged: while the impetus of preindustrial capitalism triumphed within some colonial systems (e.g., the English and the Dutch), it was the past that persisted within the Spanish mode.31 As long as it remained free from capitalist tendencies—as Markow observes—feudalism experienced aggression and colonial expansion but no colonial systems: the latter required international trade and the profit motive. However, there were empires in late feudalism in which the countervailing tendencies of the nascent bourgeoisie and the feudal classes manifested themselves in complex fashion.32 Spanish imperialism, particularly in the period 1500-1760, displayed all the contradictory aspects that have led Pierre Vilar to label it the "highest stage of feudalism."

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Spanish "Mercantilism" It has been said that the main incentive for colonialism in its first phase was gold. This was true of the Crown: "Beware, Sire, of the Indies—the king's contador general (general auditor) used to say—"for that is the place where money comes from and with it also the substance of the monarchy."33 It was also true of the conquistadores. When Cortes arrived in New Spain, he told an Indian: "The Spaniards suffer from a heart ailment, for which gold is the only real cure."34 However, an insatiable hunger for gold has not always been, as some authors might argue, a symbol of capitalist development. There have been many crowns and adventurers—both noble and plebeian—in Europe since the time of the crusades, ready to embark on the most unlikely ventures in search of gold. Since the end of the Middle Ages, the need for precious metals grew at the same rate as the consumption of eastern commodities. An importer rather than an exporter, Europe had to obtain increasingly larger amounts of gold to meet its balance of trade deficit. Hence, an almost unquenchable thirst for precious metals became typical of early colonial empires. In contrast, the major drive of later empires, linked to capitalist centers of production, was the desire for "tied" markets for the output from the metropolis's growing industry and the development of plantations (sugar, tobacco, etc.) to supply expanding European markets. The difference between the two stages also was reflected in the area of economic thinking. While the early mercantilists argued that the purpose of economic activity was the accumulation of precious metals at home, those who followed (what Marx called mercantilism in the strict sense) aimed above all at a favorable balance of trade—in other words, at selling more goods than were bought. In fact, the policy of the Spanish Crown was never mercantilist in the strict sense. The nationalist factor of protection of Spanish merchants and financiers against foreigners was missing, and so was the deliberate promotion of national production through a suitable colonial policy. The Spanish position on crafts and manufacturing in America was never as strict as that pursued by other colonial powers. Compared with the destruction of India's textile industry by the British, the Spanish policy was extremely acquiescent.35 The Crown did little to transform the colonies into a protected market for mass-produced textiles from the metropolis, and the development of obrajes in America in the midsixteenth century undoubtedly contributed to the early eclipse of the Spanish textile industry, which in its boom period could not compete with a "greenhouse" offered by a colonial market. Until 1568, the development of manufacturing in Spanish America

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proceeded unencumbered: Martin Cortes, son of the conquistador, signed an agreement in 153 7with the viceroy of New Spain, with regard to some privileges, to plant within a period of fifteen years, one hundred thousand mulberry trees . . . In 1548 a royal decree specifically authorized the residents of Puebla de los Angeles, to set up workshops for the manufacturing of silk, without restrictions or obstacles of any kind. Henry Hawke, an Englishman who lived in New Spain for five years, said that [in 1572] the country manufactured not only all kinds of silks, taffetas, satins and velvets, of as high a quality as those from Spain, save for the fact that their dyes were not as good, but it was also well supplied with wool and it produced enough cloth to dress all the common people and to export to Peru.36 It would seem that a similar situation prevailed in Peru, where crafts and obrajes proliferated. From 1569—possibly due to pressure from Seville importers and from owners of Spanish textiles who were in full crisis—the situation changed and restrictions were set on New World manufactures, particularly through labor regulation. An ordinance in the year 1581 ratified the license for the operation of obrajes in the city of Puebla, and a second one in 1579 banned justicias (magistrates) from inspecting obrajes too often in order to check their observance of the law. However, in 1586, another ordinance required the registration of existing obrajes and permits for all new establishments.37 In 1595, strict labor regulations were issued as well as severe penalties for offenders and, in 1599, permits for obrajes in the cities of Mexico, Puebla, Oaxaca, and Valladolid were curtailed, though they were not totally banned.38 There is no doubt that there were groups in Spain demanding a ban on textile obrajes in the New World, but they were not powerful enough to achieve their objective. On November 24, 1601, after a "junta grande with a large number of personages from the court and councils called by him," the king adopted a measure that could have entailed the demise of textile manufacturing in America: he categorically banned the use of free, repartimiento, or forced Indian laborers in "cloths, linen, wool, silk and cotton" obrajes. But this order was not enforced. The viceroy of New Spain promulgated the ordinance and set a time limit of four months to comply. But the colony's obrajeros reacted forcefully. They appointed an eight-member commission, which submitted a petition to the viceroy on their behalf. In it, they claimed that it was impossible to comply with the order. Each obraje—the representatives argued—required at least a hundred laborers. If blacks were to be

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bought for that purpose, four hundred pesos would be needed to pay for each of them. Virtually no obrajero was in a position to do this. Furthermore, several months would be wasted teaching blacks their new trade. Closing down the obrajes, they continued, would affect many other activities: sheep-breeding farms, small cloth merchants, as well as textile exports to Guatemala, Peru, Puerto Rico, and Havana. The obrajeros requested that the decree not be applied, and they promised instead to abide by the rules protecting Indian labor. At first, the viceroy pressed on, demanding that the royal decree be complied with. But shortly afterward—it is not clear why—he yielded. Subsequent ordinances did not make any further reference to a total ban on Indian labor. Instead, there followed a series of measures—which we know were not observed—to regulate working conditions in workshops. In fact, the obraje survived every assault from the metropolis. Labor, location, and other regulations were rarely followed, and the textileL industry in New Spain continued to compete advantageously with that of Spain until the late eighteenth century. Fiscal Policy and Trade Throughout the period under consideration, colonial exploitation of America made use of various channels. The ancient system of pillage and plundering prevailed during the Conquest.39 However, as relations became more stable, it was replaced by economic mechanisms such as the imposition of forced tributes and loans, the removal of wealth and capital by Spaniards returning home,40 and unequal trade. These mechanisms gave rise to a constant drain of precious metals, which was acutely felt with the departure of each fleet or ship from New Spain. The loss of silver and gold then was such that trade in the capital came to a halt for as long as three months after the boat's departure. Feudal elements prevailed in some of these methods of exploitation. In others, on the other hand, the capitalist links of colonial exploitation—which would become established and would persist even after the Latin American countries became independent—burgeoned. Two extreme cases can be cited as examples: the Crown's fiscal system, in which the solid precapitalist elements of the Spanish empire were clearly manifested, and colonial trade, many of whose mechanisms of exploitation remain to this day. Economically speaking, the Crown had only one interest in America: to obtain the necessary silver to finance the exorbitant expenses imposed by the empire. Through a complex system of royalties, tributes, taxes, monopolies, and forced loans, the Crown managed to retain a substantial share of colonial loot. Chapman has estimated that its American colo-

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nies yielded, roughly, some 70,000 pesos a year up to 1518, a total of 1.2 million up to 1554. After the conquest of Peru, the annual income rose to 3.5 million and reached 45 million during Philip II's reign,- subsequently, it dropped, remaining at a average of 17 million throughout the century.41 Crown revenues grew rapidly. During the reign of Charles V, the budget tripled; during Philip IFs, it quadrupled. Nevertheless, expenditure rose faster. Philip II inherited from his father a debt of 20 million ducats, and passed on to his successor one that was five times greater,numerous public loans, the two suspension-of-payment decrees in 1575 and 1596, respectively, and desperate financial moves document the endless voracity of the royal treasury42 and its growing indebtedness. The fiscal system devised by the Crown to obtain revenues was governed by strictly feudal criteria, according to which all known production or income had to be taxed. There is a marked difference between the Spanish fiscal system and the English, which from the seventeenth century was designed to meet the needs of the commercial and manufacturing strata. The Spanish system of customs and monopolies was not fundamentally different from the systematic pillage carried out by feudal lords, who taxed everything from traveling on roads to opening windows. Thus, during the period of the Conquest, the Crown imposed taxes directly on pillage and loot. It granted conquistadores and new settlers the privilege, for two years, of being the only ones to "ransom" Indians. In return, they had to pay the Crown a tax: a tenth or an eighth at the beginning, later a fifth. Some decrees specified that if a cacique or a powerful lord was captured, of the ransom "one sixth will be given to us and the rest shared among the conquistadores... and whenever the said lord was killed in battle or later through the process of the law or in any other manner, we will jointly receive half of everything that is taken from him.//43 To obtain the highest fiscal revenue in the shortest possible time was the guiding principle of royal fiscal policy and, through it, of the inflexible colonial economic system as a whole. The main taxes set by the Crown were the duties on precious metals including the quinto real (royal fifth) on silver, which in 1548 was lowered to a tithe, and 5 percent on gold. Mintage duties appeared in 1536. The alcabala, an indirect tax on all sales, was introduced in New Spain in 1571; the alcabala made both raw materials and finished products extremely expensive, increasing production costs and reducing actual demand. The estanco del mercurio (quicksilver monopoly) was established in 1559, very soon after the introduction of the patio system,the Crown held the monopoly over production of this strategic component for mining and banned private individuals from trading in it. The quicksilver monopoly constituted a curb—often insurmountable—to

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the development of mining. The bula de la Santa Cruz (a bull of indulgence) was an 8 percent tax granted by the pope to the Spanish monarchs. The almojarifazgo was a custom tax ranging from 5 to 15 percent. The estanco de lapdlvora (gunpowder monopoly) involved production being monopolized by the royal treasury. The composiciones or agreements were payments—substantial during some periods—made to legalize doubtful land titles. Papel sellado (stamped paper) (1538) was a duty equivalent to half a year's salary to be paid by all civil servants as well as artisans, when appointed or inspected at their trade, and tribute was written about at length in chapter 2. There was also the regular sale of public positions and offices sold at public auctions, and the countless forced loans, imposed on merchants, landowners, and bureaucrats.44 In the beginning, the Crown actually attempted to keep sole monopoly over colonial trade, excluding all private individuals. The instructions given to Columbus in 1493 strictly forbade private individuals from trading directly with the Indies, and it was ordered that local transactions take place before a treasurer, a bookkeeper, and Columbus's representative.45 The colonizers were allowed to import from Spain whatever cattle and foodstuff were necessary for their survival, but none for trade purposes. They were expressly banned from introducing clothing, shoes, horses, and other items the trading of which was reserved for the Crown.46 These measures, which revealed the weakness of commercial sectors during the early stage of the Conquest, were abandoned only when, as colonization spread, they became a clear obstacle, a source of permanent friction with merchants and colonos who demanded to share directly in the gains from the discovery and colonization. However, they were replaced by a limited monopoly, subject to considerable fiscal burdens, which benefited only the Crown and a few Seville and Cadiz trading houses. Under monopoly regulations, colonial trade yielded substantially higher profits than those governing the exchange between countries of similar levels of development. There were huge differences between the sale price of products in their country of origin and in the American colonies.47 Since fleets were the only legal means of commercial traffic, the differences between the value of shipments transported by them to the metropolis and the value of merchandise taken back can be taken as an index of the unequal terms of trade. Normally the mainland fleets carried a value of eight, ten or twelve million pesos in European merchandise of all kinds; and these fleets came back in exchange with thirty or forty million pesos in gold, silver, vicuna wool, cacao and precious fruits from those

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kingdoms . . . sometimes the dealers made up to five hundred percent profits from merchandise of the lowest price and quality; but the common and sure gain from these trips was one hundred per cent.48 Eighteenth-century Spanish economists knew very well that those mercantilist principles according to which the wealth of a country lies in its capacity to export more than it imports did not govern trade with the colonies, where exchange was not equal and the surplus imported reflected the prevalence of unpaid-for monopoly gains rather than the output of precious metals. The general interest of Spain in such trade [with America], like that of all nations with colonies consists in transferring many products and merchandise from Europe and bringing back there much from the Americas. Any economic arrangement under this trade which does not lead to this end will only have disastrous foundations and must be spurned. The general maxim of trade, which demands that a state transfer much and bring little in, does not hold for trade with America. The nations which have colonies there will never obtain many products for the amount of wealth transferred from Europe: and the more is brought in in products, merchandise, the more is transferred and the easier abundant transfers become.49 They also understood that this trade helped consolidate one of the most salient aspects of dependence: the existence of a class whose way of life and wealth can neither be met nor satisfied by local production. The luxury among residents [of the colonies] brought about by trade, the opportunity it constantly offers them of procuring all life's comforts with the product of their own land, is the only motive urging them to work and to make the colonies increasingly richer productionwise.50 Spanish "Capitalism" Capitalist relations existed in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain. But they represented an early or embryonic capitalism, which after a short period of boom entered into a long decline, during which its parasitism was accentuated and the reversion, the integration between early capitalism and the feudal system, which Marx classified as "an ignominious and slow decay," took place. During the first two-thirds of the sixteenth century, manufacturing experienced a significant boom,51

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although not on the scale of France or the small industrial revolution undergone by England during the same period. The influx of cheap precious metals, combined with the slow growth in production, gave rise to chronic inflation. Everything in Spain was produced at higher costs. "In France, one real buys some 60 items, in Rome 50, in Rousillon and Sardinia 40, in Catalonia, Aragon and Valencia 24, and in Castille only 17."52 Merchandise from those countries least affected by inflation poured into the Spanish market and destroyed production. In the seventies, industry and agriculture were already in full crisis.53 In the sixteenth century, the great fortunes were hardly transformed into capital. Pierre Vilar writes on the trading and banking houses of Seville: "There is no lack of Spanish names: Espinoza, Iiiiguez, Lizarraga, Lombardo, Negron, Morga. But their history had only been outlined before it became, from the first half of the century, a history of their collapse . . . If 1536-1540 is the era of the foundation of Seville banks . . . 1552-1555 is the first great age of numerous collapses." Pointing to other sectors of the economy, he continues: And what of the treasures of the conquistadoresl And the profits of middle and small merchants, of the early wine and oil retailers, and of wool and silk manufacturers? There was a degree of capital formation. Can we trace its path? Hardly during its initial mechanisms, but fairly well when it comes to its results. That which is not spent on public or private wealth, on lands or on houses, goes to the censo or the juio, that is to say, on fixed rent and, particularly, state loans.54 The fewer the opportunities for productive investment, the more marked became the feudal condition of wealthy Spaniards and the parasitic elements of the economy. Not only did powerful people live in dazzling luxury, they also kept actual courts of servants and staff. Churches and monasteries multiplied. Parasitic professions prevailed. The pick of the young ended up in the army, the navy, the bureaucracy; they abandoned themselves to a "picaresque" life and to the wildest ventures. A working man has to maintain himself, the lord of the domain, the rentier, the beneficiary of the tithe, the preceptor of the censo, everyone who has a claim . . . the ratio between those who work and those who are idle is one to thirty.55 What took place in Spain was a typical case of the genesis of an early

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capitalism that failed to break down the feudal shackles and adapted to them instead or, rather, became part of them. The failure marked the beginning of a long decay. After attempts in 1812, 1820,1835, and 1854, the bourgeois democratic revolution had not yet triumphed and, even well into the twentieth century, the obstacles created by that structure had not been overcome completely. The remarkable feature about Spain is the brilliant and at the same time fleeting nature of that early capitalism. Its moment of greatest splendor came in the first half of the sixteenth century. In the latter half, the population decreased, the cities dwindled, bankruptcies increased, production fell. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, it is clear that the first large surge of Spanish capitalism has failed to create the necessary conditions for an industrial revolution and the final triumph of capitalism. Through its colonial ties, Spain will bequeath to America feudal institutions, embryonic capitalism, and, above all, the peculiar cycle of its brief flourishing and its long decay.

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4. The Republica de los Espanoles (Structure) In the seventeenth century, Mexico became a colony of settlement and mestizaje. Within a century and a half, immigrants, their descendants, and kin represented a significant sector of New Spain's society. When Tenochtitlan fell, Cortes had some 1,500 men with him. According to Borah's reckoning, by 1570, Spaniards, Europeans, and those mestizos who were members of their households because of blood ties amounted to some 63,000. In 1646, their numbers were 125,000; in 1742,565,000, andin 1772,784,000^ Within a period of two hundred years (1570-1770), the "white" population had more than doubled. Europeans, Creoles, mestizos, and other mixed-bloods (castas) constituted 0.7 percent of the total population in 1570, 18 percent in 1646, and 27 percent in 1742.2 But the economy of the republica de los espanoles did not comprise just "whites." Castas, blacks, and Indians removed from their communities were a part of it. Within the republica de los espanoles, the peninsulares and their families constituted only an exploitative minority, and the economic relations that developed at the heart of it became the crucible of the new nation. Many of the new mining and cattle enterprises sprang up far from densely populated areas, giving rise to considerable migratory movement. For example, in the northern mining centers, Indians from several tribes lived alongside mestizos and poor Spaniards. From the start, the growth of Spanish enterprises was marked by the emergence of a group of Indian laborers displaced from their communities. These groups grew substantially during the latter half of the sixteenth century and particularly in the seventeenth century. A stratum of underemployed and "marginal" population, whose core was a mixture of Indians, blacks, and mestizos, appeared in the cities. A report from 1692 says: "With the contact which [Indians] constantly have with such low and irresponsible people, as are mulattos, Blacks, mestizos and servants of such households, they learn Castilian and become ladinos.,,s Soon there was also a sector of impoverished Spaniards who mixed with the rest of the population of low means: some acted as foremen or

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interpreters; others lived off illegal activities such as the sale of alcohol to Indians, cattle rustling, and poaching.4 Many of them adopted Indian customs and were known as "renegade Spaniards" [zaramullos). But the most important group were those mestizos who belonged neither to the communities nor to the Spanish elite and who had access to government positions and corresponding privileges. Unlike the English in India, the Spaniards did not confine themselves to exploiting an indigenous society. In the course of the colony, they set up a new social structure modeled on that of the metropolis. The republica de los espaholes was to a large extent a transplant—a surprisingly successful one—of Iberian society to New Spain. In many aspects, its evolution faithfully reflected that of metropolitan society. Of course, not every element of Iberian society was transferred to the colonizing settlements. A process of adaptation to and selection for the new environment shaped the singular character of colonial society.Still, the danger posed by a large Indian population, the ubiquity of royal despotism, the weakness of autonomous capitalist trends, and the work of the church tightened the links between the republica de los espaholes and the metropolis. For the first hundred years, the influence was more direct; later, it worked through the more firmly established structure of New Spain's economy. But its impact at all times was deeper and more varied and lasting than that of colonial systems based on the exploitation of autochthonous societies. Each change in Spain, each crisis, each reform or reaction movement was clearly and directly mirrored, with its counterpart in the republica de los espaholes in New Spain. The cultural baggage of the conquerors played a very significant role in the shaping of the economic system, all the more so because it found favorable conditions for its flourishing. First of all, the Spaniards brought new means of production and techniques. As in other settlement colonies, these permeated the indigenous economy slowly. On the other hand (after certain modifications), they became the basis for the economy of the republica de los espaholes. Nevertheless, the conquerors transferred not only means of production but also value systems, ideology, and social, political, and religious institutions, born overseas and constantly fed by their source of origin. This imported superstructure profoundly influenced the development of the new economy. The economic power attained by the church could not be explained without the immigrants' strong Catholicism. Thanks to the "oriental" facet of the Crown, the Indian community was able to survive the new conditions. If the colonizers' aspirations to reproduce the life-style of the Iberian aristocracy had not been so strong, the vast wealth from the Mexican mines would not have been squandered so fruitlessly.

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The influence of the superstructure was even greater because in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the economy in Spain and its colonies was largely subordinate to extraeconomic goals. Most activities were carried out not according to the criterion of maximum possible gain, but in pursuit of goals imposed by custom, morality, religion, and even legislation. These were multicentered economies.5 The laws of the market were at work, but could not account for the functioning of the system as a whole. A title of nobility was more valuable than capital. An absolution could be obtained by turning a flourishing business into a monastery. Wealth and ostentation were more important sources of social status than ownership of productive capital. Investing in the purchase of an official position was unquestionably a more profitable and safe business than buying an obraje. A mestizo who had prospered did not—due to his origins—have access to Spanish ruling circles. Indians did not buy European garments, arms, or horses,- they could not own land privately or assume substantial debts. The development of the new economy was closely linked to a global system of social values, within which cultural elements played a very important role. A complete superstructure, developed in a foreign socioeconomic formation, Spain's, was powerfully at work in the structuring of the Mexican economy. From its very first step, the evolution of feudal elements within the economy of the republica de los espanoles was pervaded with capitalist trends, and early capitalism appeared integrated into and subordinate to these feudal elements. They constituted a single and indissoluble structure. Feudalism was present with the following characteristics: 1. Unlike the despotic-tributary structure, economic life in the republica de los espanoles revolved around the private ownership of land and other instruments of production. This ownership was not absolute. Both private (landowner) and corporate (church) property were subject to a series of extraeconomic hierarchical restrictions. 2. Workers who lived on those properties were not, for the most part, free. They were bound to the landowner through personal relations of servitude of one kind or another. The ties of these workers to their agrarian communities had weakened considerably or been severed altogether {peonaje). 3. The economy of the estancias and haciendas had a quasi-natural character. Tied to the local market through one or two products, they produced virtually everything consumed internally. This was also true for other enterprises—mines, mills, and obrajes—that were part of a large property from which they obtained all their needs. 4. There was no national market (not even in its infancy); instead,

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there was a constellation of local markets, independent of each other and extremely limited and static. 5. The crafts' guild system prevented business diversification, capitalization, and the introduction of technical innovations. 6. The Crown sanctified the division of society into estates. The individual was part of society not as an individual per se but as a member of a guild, cofradia, community, consulate, etc.; society was divided into racially based castes. The Crown also stifled all private initiative beyond its fiscal control; it monopolized the more remunerative sectors. The church, the major landowner, diverted for noneconomic purposes a substantial share of the surplus product. The dominant values in the society curbed capital accumulation and the development of productive enterprises. The features of embryonic and dependent capitalism were as follows: 1. Because of their internal organization and social function, the big mines constituted the genesis of embryonic capitalism. 2. The mining centers and the cities inhabited by Spaniards promoted the social division of labor between different regions and sectors and the penetration of commercial and usurers' capital into production. Some mills and obrajes acquired a capitalist character. 3. The process of primitive accumulation, with its manifestations of pillage, usury, monopoly hoarding, crisis, and multiple exploitation, which helped the formation of early capitals in the midst of feudal society, found an ideal setting in New Spain. But there the result was the reverse of what took place in the metropolis,- hence, it would be more appropriate to talk of a process of primitive accumulation and disaccumulation. 4. "To talk of ancient or medieval 'capitalism' because there were usurers in Rome and merchants in Venice is a misuse of language," writes Vilar. "These characters never controlled social production in their time."6 This is also true with regard to New Spain, and yet we cannot ignore as another factor the significance attained by both large and small merchants. The city of Mexico was a powerful center of international trade (the most important one in the Spanish empire after Seville). There were many fortunes made in commerce and usury, and much speculation and entrepreneurial activity. Consumption by the dominant classes was dependent on imports, and thus inevitably they had to ensure commercial production for export. There was a sizable internal market for some products. These elements taken as a whole, and only as a whole, represented the embryonic capitalist tendencies within the economy of New Spain. But, of course, it was a very precarious capitalism. Who would compare its

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scope to that of the Italian or German emporia before the sixteenth century? Clearly, it is not enough to refer to the feudal and capitalist traits of the republica delos espanoles without emphasizing that they were both profoundly changed by the latter's colonial status. The colonies experienced the first stage of primitive accumulation of capital: the separation of the producer from the means of production and the accumulation of monetary fortunes; however, only in Europe did these fortunes become capital. Pillage and unequal trade have existed since time immemorial, but only in some areas of Europe beween the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries were monetary fortunes transformed into industrial capital. New Spain became familiar with all the nightmares of original accumulation, but few of its revolutionary effects. Some segments of New Spain's economy lost their autonomy through those sectors producing goods for the international market (silver, gold, dyes, hides, cacao, vanilla). Prices for these products varied according to fluctuations in the international market, and metropolitan manufacturing capital imposed its dictate over large noncapitalist sectors of the colony, which were thus subject to fluctuations in its development. Writes Marx in Capital: the Cycle of industrial capital interweaves with the circulation of commodities from the most diverse social types of production, as long as these are also systems of commodity production. It does not matter whether the commodity is the product of a type of production based on slavery or peasant labor (Chinese, ryots, Indians, etc.), a communal system (Dutch East Indies) or State production (as is the case in some primitive periods in the history of Russia, based on serfdom), primitive hunting societies, etc.; whatever their origin, they confront money and commodities representing industrial capital as commodities and money . . . The nature of the process of production from which they come does not matter for these purposes . . . It is, then, its universal nature, the existence of the market as a world market that characterizes the process of circulation of industrial capital.7 Mining, the most dynamic sector of New Spain's economy, hastened the development of capitalism in Europe, but in the colony it consolidated and perpetuated the colonial feudal-capitalist structure. Set on preventing other powers all access to the "immeasurable" treasures from its colony, Spain increased the latter's isolation. The recipient of vast quantities of gold and silver, it did not care to develop other export productive activities. The mining centers soon displayed

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their condition of "enclaves," extensions of the European economy. The economic surpluses produced in them enabled New Spain's dominant classes to live in grand luxury, but they were transformed into capital only in the metropolises. In order to utilize the surplus product of New Spain's population generated outside the mining sector, the Crown and those Spaniards who wished to return to their homeland had to turn it into commodities and sell them. Hence, circulation developed more rapidly than mercantile production. Although the latter was limited, exchange played a very significant role in New Spain. The need to sell a series of nonexportable products in the internal market, at any price, unduly favored the owners of monetary fortunes, lowered income levels of producers, and perpetuated the differences between the natural and mercantile sectors of the economy. Established in the interstices of a feudal and colonial society, New Spain's embryonic capitalism generated its own impotence. Integrated from the beginning into the colonial structure, it quickly became an obstacle to the subsequent development of internal capitalism. The Impact of the Silver Economy The path of New Spain's embryonic capitalism virtually paralleled that of silver. It flourished in the period of great silver prosperity: when the latter came to an end, autarchy became stronger in many regions, life centered around the land, feudal relations of dependence became widespread. In the second half of the sixteenth century, mining fostered the rise of a series of activities that supplied it directly or satisfied the needs of those in the mining sector. Satellite economies closely linked to mining centers via heavily used roads sprung up in agricultural and cattle regions. A dense network of interdependencies was spun between the center, the Bajio, and the North. Price rises and a high level of actual demand in mining areas boosted trade. Silver fever brought new immigrants from Spain. The first wage laborers whose ties with their communities were fully severed made their appearance in mining towns. From the very first years of the colony, the search for and exploitation of precious metal veins was a major Spanish concern. However, twenty years after the fall of Tenochtitlan, endeavors were still fruitless. Although thousands of Indians met their death in places where the conquistadores vainly persisted in searching for those mythical treasures suggested by their imagination, production was very low. The earliest great expeditions to the North, led by the sadly famous Nuno de Guzman and by Coronado, did not bring about the hoped-for discoveries. Up to that time, the new mercantile economy grew only in response to

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the demand for goods that the Indian communities could not meet.8 In 1546, nevertheless, Spanish perseverance finally received a fitting reward. On September 8, a small detachment of Spanish soldiers, headed by Juan Tolosa, discovered the deposits of what has since been known as the Cerro de la Bufa (Zacatecas). The exploitation of these deposits, carried out under very difficult conditions, was financed by a small group of capitanes de guerra and encomenderos and quickly fulfilled all expectations. During the subsequent two decades, the number of mines continued to increase rapidly. Francisco de Ibarra carried out explorations farther north and discovered silver deposits in San Martin, Sombrerete, Avino, Guanacevi, and Ind6. The main veins in the mines of Guanajuato were discovered in 1548 and 1558. The sizable mine of Santa Barbara, more than 1,250 miles from Mexico City, was discovered in 1547. The mines of Pachuca and Real del Monte, much closer, were discovered in 1552. Those in Fresnillo (Zacatecas) were discovered a year later, and the mines in Mazapil, Chalchihuites (also in Zacatecas), and Temascaltepec (in the state of Mexico), were also discovered around that time. 9 Sizable towns grew by the mines: Guanajuato, Zacatecas (which became the third largest city in the country), Taxco, Pachuca, Real del Monte, San Luis Potosi, and so on. In 1570, the city of Zacatecas, at the foot of the Cerro de la Bufa, had a population of 300 Spanish families and 500 black slaves. A description from 1620 mentions more than 1,000 European families, and a total of 40,000 inhabitants; the city had 25 large haciendas de beneficio and 72 ingenios that used the quicksilver method and where 2,000 hands worked daily with the aid of 10,000 mules. Commerce was represented by 60 clothier's shops, 140 grocery stalls, and numerous confectioneries, bakeries, candleshops, andsoforth.10 Around 1580, Taxco had a population of 150 Spaniards, 650 slaves, and 2,500 Indians.11 In 1610, Tlahualipan had 1,427 "whites" and 2,522 Indians.12 The mining boom in the North led to the settlement and economic development of the fertile Bajio and the vast pastures of Queretaro that lie on either side of the road to Zacatecas. Miners, followed by Indian peasants from the South, missionaries, and ranchers, invaded the Bajio and the Valley of Aguascalientes, which became the granary of Zacatecas.13 As early as 1579, the alcalde mayor Hernando Vargas reported that "more than 100,000 cows and two hundred thousand sheep and ten thousand mares grazed between the town of San Juan [del Rio] and Queretaro, which are seven leagues apart, and two others beyond and as many leagues' crossing again."14 After a visit to New Galicia in 1608, inspector Paz de Valecillo wrote that "there are usually more Indians to be found in every mining hacienda and in many estancias than in many towns."15

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The handful of Basques who embarked on the risky exploitation of the Bufa mine represented the beginnings of a silver aristocracy who appropriated virtually all of the North's resources. Within a few years, they owned large agricultural and cattle properties and commercial and mining enterprises, and they financed, with their own means, expeditions of discovery and conquest. Gabriel Ortiz de Fuenmayor, founder of the mines of the Cerro de San Pedro de Potosi and San Luis Minas de Potosi and captain of numerous peacemaking expeditions, made his will in 1617. The inventory of his property included, among others: Mines in the Cerro de San Pedro with slaves, buildings, huts and other, the mines of Guadalcazar, the mines of Sierra de Pinos and in the Peiion Blanco jointly with their discoverers; he also owned the mines of Charcas and Matahuala. In Tlaxcalilla, he had a coalyard and a mining hacienda. A hacienda to obtain silver with quicksilver in Agua del Venado, with two water wheels. An irrigated smallholding and a flour mill with buildings, vegetable garden, huts and others. The main houses which he owned in the town of San Luis Minas del Potosi which were next to the royal houses. 15 black slaves, forty Indians,- 5,000 head oiganado mayor-, 30 young bulls; 19 bulls; 500 goats; 4,400 sheep and rams in the Mixquitic valley; 130 oxen; 260 horses and mares,- 106 draft and saddle mules; 4 wagons,- 10 plowshares,- 6 mattocks. Haciendas twelve miles from Zacatecas with waterwheel for foundry ore,- five smallholdings in Mixquitic with buildings, fence posts, huts, vegetable gardens and corrals. A large quantity of fine furniture, clothing and cloths and numerous set of china, silver and goldplated silver center pieces. Five quintals of scrap iron and thirty quintals of quicksilver.16 Compared to the manufacturing industry, mining required little manpower. Nevertheless, the distance between the areas developed and the center, the substantial initial investment required for the opening of mines and smelting ingenios, helped to form a significant market. At the beginning, virtually everything had to be brought in from the centerthus, the first step was to build roads, to guard them, and to set up shelters and warehouses for caravans. In the early years, Zacatecas was linked to centers in New Galicia (particularly Guadalajara) that were nearer and from which the explorers had set out.17 But soon the roads stretched farther and new ones were opened, first to transport silver to Mexico City and later to link up with the rich agricultural and cattle areas in Michoacan, Guanajuato, and Queretaro. Improvement works proceeded at a good pace, and by about 1555 the road

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between Zacatecas and Mexico had been sufficiently repaired to enable heavy wagons to carry special loads—quicksilver, for example—from the capital to Zacatecas within twenty-seven days.18 Early on, almost all haulage was done by tamemes (porters). While they never altogether disappeared, they were gradually replaced by muleteers with their packs of mules, wagons, and carts. For the first time, there was a regular wagon service, organized by Fray Sebastian de Aparicio.19 Permanent shelters, which served both as supply centers for caravans and as garrisons to guard against assaults from nomadic Indians, were built along the way.20 The magnitude of transit trade was such that the city of Queretaro was moved to a site closer to the highway in order to take advantage of it.21 The abundance of silver and the scarcity of supplies led to a considerable increase in prices and a commercial boom. This particularly benefited the merchants in Mexico City, but it also gave rise to a group of Indian and mestizo merchants-muleteers, without whom many isolated settlements and mining camps would not have survived.22 A few of the northern cities at the center of mining regions acquired a markedly commercial character. So, while the city of Parral had only some 800 inhabitants in 1637, it had 37 shops and 47 five years later.23 These clearly served to supply the surrounding mines and the numerous gambusinos who traveled around the region. The caravans that left Mexico City carried all kinds of implements and materials used in the mining industry: picks, mallets, metal parts for machinery in silver ingenios, and special shovels and rakes used in them. Mercury, which was transported in wood-reinforced hide bottles weighing half a quintal, was particularly important. Once the amalgam method was adopted, mercury became the lifeblood of mining. There were also construction materials and implements for agriculture, cattle, and transport: plowshares, all types of knives and blades, tailor's and cobbler's needles, iron coas, mattocks, iron bars, iron ingots, zinc plates, hand and woodcutter's axes, all kinds of nails, cart axles, iron rims, hooks, metal chains and rings, saddles and whips from Castile, horseshoes, horse harnesses, various types of scissors, and swords. Among the items for consumption, the most important were woolen, cotton, and silk textiles; blankets and clothes from Spain or from the obrajes in Texcoco, Puebla, Valladolid, Toluca, and so on; shoes, boots and slippers, belts, gloves and all kinds of trimmings; soap and candles. Sugar, honey, oil, wine, vinegar, olives, cinnamon, figs, bananas, rice, different kinds of preserves, sardines, and tobacco constituted the main foodstuffs.24 In the latter half of the sixteenth century, the mines had become true magnets, attracting products from all over the country. Many individu-

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als from Colima, Guadalajara, Michoacan, Puebla, and Mexico took their merchandise to Zacatecas to share in the silver boom.25 For example, oranges from Culiacan, Guadalajara, and Valladolid came to Parral; as did cacao from Tabasco and from the Soconusco; sweet products from the Huasteca region, from Jalapa, Cuernavaca, Guadalajara, and Culiacan; alcoholic beverages from the Mezquital area, from Colima, Zacatula, Mexico, and Spain; woolen and cotton clothing from Queretaro, Texcoco, Puebla, Yucatan, Toluca, and La Mixteca; green plantains and coconuts from Michoacan and Jalisco.26 Related enterprises sprang up alongside silver mines. Magistral workings provided the copper sulfate needed for amalgamation. Several individuals owned small mines of this substance, which they sold to those who ran patios.27 Salt was as indispensable for amalgamation as magistral. Hence, saltworks soon became a steady business. Many of them were located in the desert areas and steppes of northern Mexico. A few were located hundreds of miles away from the mining centers, and the salt had to be transported over considerable distances. In spite of this, the principal mines in Zacatecas, Guanajuato, and Taxco always had a regular supply of salt.28 The mines consumed vast amounts of wood, which was used as construction material for galleries and ingenio buildings, but particularly in the early years for fuel, in the form of charcoal. The haciendas de carbon (charcoal-burning establishments), which caused irreparable damage to forests in mining areas, were small centers of population that sprang up near mining centers and included: woodland and the appropriate license to carry out its exploitation,- the ranch, where the charcoal burner, his family, and Indian laborers lived; as well as corrals for the mules that served to transport the product.29 Lead, too, largely imported from Spain—although there were also mines of this metal in Ixmiquilpan, Zumpan, and Mapimi—was used in large quantities. The great demand for animals and animal products in the mines boosted the development of cattle. Ranches supplied mines with meat for the miners and hides for sacks and pouches into which the ore was extracted and transported. The main foodstuffs were corn and wheat, so cultivated hacienda complexes, which also supplied the mines with beans, squash, chiles, and so on, sprang up in their vicinity. The most significant pockets of embryonic capitalism within the economy of New Spain were found in the internal organization of large mines. It is true that ownership of deposits and mines was restricted. The Crown retained inherent ownership of the subsoil and regarded all mines as royal regalias (prerogatives), whether in Crown lands or in those granted to cities or private individuals.30 However, in practice—unlike what happened in the case of land—the mine licensee enjoyed most

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private property rights and the king was satisfied with collecting the quinto—sometimes reduced to a tenth—of the product and the levy on numerous loans and donations.31 The exploitation of the mines was carried out by partnerships, often joint-stock companies, based on the contribution of capital. The Zacatecas ore was exploited by a Basque company whose shareholders were Diego de Ibarra, Crist6bal de Onate, Baltasar Termino de Banuelos, Juan Tolosa, Vicente and Juan Zaldivar, and Diego Hernandez de Proano. The Tlalpujahua mine was owned by a company formed by Jose de Borda and Miguel Aldaco. The Valenciana mine was exploited by a company formed by Antonio Obreg6n y Alcocer (Count of la Valenciana), Pedro Luciano Oteri, and Diego Rul. The Penon Blanco mine was also owned by a company whose main shareholder was Gabriel Ortiz de Fuenmayor. Discoverers did not always become owners and exploiters of mines. Lacking in resources, they were frequently forced to form a partnership with, and even to sell their rights to, less adventurous but wealthier and more powerful entrepreneurs.32 Mine workers can be divided into three groups: (1) those who came from repartimientos, (2) black and Indian slaves, and (3) relatively free wage laborers. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, workers in the mines in the central and southern regions, as well as those in Taxco, Pachuca, Ixmiquilpan, Sultepec, were mostly encomienda and repartimiento Indians, recruited from neighboring small villages. The repartimiento was much less prevalent in northern mining centers.33 It was there that groups of almost-free wage workers first appeared. In Zacatecas, there was free labor as early as 1550, and around the end of the sixteenth century it was the prevalent form in mines within the tierra de guerra (war zone)—a region with many indios bravos, unconquered or partially controlled Indians. A list of northern mines, prepared by West, shows that in all of them there was a sizable number of Indian free wage laborers. Simpson asserts that, in the late sixteenth century, mine owners in Zacatecas constantly raised wages, competing to hire scarce manpower. In 1591, Gaspar Nunez de Leon, general inspector of mines, recounted that "there are no repartimiento Indians in these Zacatecas mines/' and a document dating from 1608 affirmed that 1,500 Mexican and Tarascan-speaking Indians had come from far-off places to work as wage laborers in the Zacatecas mines. By the end of the sixteenth century, it was the dominant form of labor in every northern mine.34 This fact clearly differentiated Mexican mines in that region from Peruvian mines, where the mita was still prevalent at the end of the eighteenth century. The repartimiento was discontinued more rapidly in mines than in other sectors, because mining required permanent and specialized workers, which the repartimientos—whose gangs could not,

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even of their own free will, remain at the mines longer than forty days— could not supply.35 For that reason, the majority of repartimiento Indians, even in the central region, performed unskilled tasks. In most large mines, slaves formed an adjunct labor force. Indians came mostly from war expeditions against nomads,-36 blacks were bought in Mexico City.37 The numbers in the north were low: 6 percent of the labor force in Zacatecas, 10 percent in Pachuca.38 There were many free laborers. They often came from remote areas, forced out by land dispossessions in the more populated areas or attracted by tribute exemptions and wages. There were also many mestizo and mulatto wage laborers. In the Parral mines, workers lived together from the Valley of Mexico, Michoacan, Sonora, and Sinaloa,- laborers of Acaxe, Xixime, Opata, Tarahumara, Concho, Mexica, and Tarascan origin.39 Generally, they performed the more skilled tasks in mines and ingenios,40 and their pay was higher than that of repartimiento Indians.41 The organization of labor in the mines—as already pointed out in the first chapter—went beyond simple cooperation and had the features of an advanced division of labor. Management fought to enforce strict labor discipline.42 Mines produced virtually exclusively for the international market; 90 percent of silver was exported. It was entirely due to silver that the repiiblica de los espanoles was in a position to sustain a sizable flow of imports. The sum of these facts cannot but lead to the conclusion that the economy of large mining centers—including their internal character—displayed significant manifestations of embryonic capitalism. Such was the situation in the principal mines of New Spain, which as a whole constituted the largest extractive industry in the world at that time. But it should not be forgotten that most mines were small enterprises located within haciendas. The hacendado carried out their exploitation according to a concept of general profitability that governed the distribution of capital and labor resources among the different activities within thehacienda (agriculture, cattle raising, mining, obraje). In general, systems of extraction and processing were far more primitive, and the laborers were the same peons or repartimiento Indians who were engaged in agriculture. Development of the Market During the first two centuries of colonization, there were two types of Spanish cities: some sprang up in the more populated areas, generally on the ruins of Indian cities. Their population included a few Spanish and mestizo families and an Indian majority. Until the second half of the sixteenth century, these cities were essentially supplied by Indian

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communities, and while they became less important, they never disappeared altogether. Others, however, were completely new. They arose as a result of mining or cattle expansion or along the new commercial routes. The former were in some sense integrated into the old despotictributary structure, and the mercantile sector within them was small. The latter, on the other hand, favored the rise of all kinds of Spanish enterprises to supply them and to enable them to fulfill their function as mining, commercial, cattle, or manufacturing centers. However, the dominant classes in the city were the same as in the countryside: the viceregal bureaucracy, encomenderos, hacendados, and mine owners. There never was a clash between the countryside, dominated by feudal lords, and the city, a commercial center and capitalist embryo. Mexico City, with its powerful commercial oligarchy, was somewhat of an exception.43 But there, too, the cabildo was basically in the hands of agrarian interests. Nevertheless, cities constituted small, stable markets.44 In 1640, some 57 percent of the white population lived in ten cities. In 1774, twelve cities accounted for 61 percent of white residents.45 Mexico City played a special role in this sense. In 1570,28.5 percent of New Spain's white population was concentrated there. In 1646, the ratio was 38.4 percent. Around the middle of the seventeenth century, it was the largest city in America.46 The wealthiest sector of the country's dominant classes lived there with their usual clientele and a great number of beggars. It was the most important commercial center of Spanish America, because through it passed products reexported to Peru, Manila, and the Far East.47 The powerful consulate of Mexico City merchants, established at the beginning of the seventeenth century, dared to compete with Seville's. Describing the city, Bernardo de Balbuena wrote: This city, built on waters, has paved roads, which to its many people seem narrow, though they are wide . . . Mule packs, carts, wagons, drays: loaded with silver, gold, riches, supplies come and go by the score . . . . . . and so many treasures and silver that a fleet from Spain, another from China leaves laden with its products every year.48 The fleets from Spain, the ship from China, the large silver wagon from the North, the mule packs loaded with dyes, they all had their

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terminals in Mexico City. Veracruz and Acapulco—though they served as the only ports for foreign trade—were squalid villages.49 Mexico received supplies from the most remote areas. In times of scarcity, wheat and corn came even from far-off Oaxaca on the Mexico-Huatusco road.50 In the seventeenth century, the city consumed yearly the meat from 170,000 sheep, 12,000 cows, and 30,000 pigs; it also consumed 220,000 fanegas of corn and 180,000 fanegas of wheat flour.51 Manufacturing and industry used many raw materials produced by Mexican agriculture and cattle raising. Cattle raising, with its center in the plateau north of Mexico City and near Puebla, Tlaxcala, Toluca, Ixtlahuacan, Huichapan, Queretaro, and Oaxaca, was closely linked to urban crafts and manufactures.52 Trade in cities like San Miguel el Grande flourished mainly because of the wool trade.53 Textile industries promoted the cultivation of cotton, which spread on a large scale in Tuxpan, the Papaloapan, and other regions.54 As a result of the amazing increase in cattle during the first thirty years, sedentary Indians quickly took to meat consumption. Despite bans that attempted to prevent a rise in prices in Spanish settlements, by the middle of the sixteenth century many Indian villages had their own slaughterhouses.55 As for the white and mestizo population, their meat consumption was such that in 1563 F. Morales wrote to the king that "more meat was consumed in one city in the Indies than in 10 Spanish cities. "56 The estancieros entered into contracts with existing slaughterhouses in settlements and supplied them with meat, bringing herds from very remote pastures. It was estimated that in the early seventeenth century the annual number of cattle sent from New Galicia to New Spain was twenty thousand. When a cattleman sold part of his herd, more than sixty thousand head were involved.57 Estancias, dedicated almost exclusively to wheat cultivation, sprang up near cities. At the end of the sixteenth century, there were several hundred Spaniards living in the Puebla-Atlixco region, whose properties yielded 156,000 bushels a year. Near there, in the Valley of San Pablo, sixty Spanish properties yielded close to 114,000 bushels.58 There were also sizable estancias in the vicinity of Mexico City, Valladolid, Patzcuaro, and Guadalajara, dedicated chiefly to growing cereals—wheat, barley, oats, and corn. Later on, wheat cultivation also spread to the plains of Celaya and even to areas of New Galicia and New Vizcaya.59 In the sixteenth century, there were shipyards on the Pacific coast that also encouraged the division of labor and exchange. The earliest traces of this industry date back to the activities of Hernan Cort6s in Tehuantepec, Huatulco, Acapulco, and Zihuatanejo, and reached their peak in 1542. This was followed by fifteen years of neglect; in 1557, work

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resumed in the port of La Navidad to build ships for the LegazpiUrdaneta expedition to the Philippines. In 1560, four ships were being built; the largest ever built in the shipyards of New Spain's Pacific coast: two galleons of 500 and 300 tons, respectively, and two smaller boats of some 60 and 40 tons. The company was headed by a director and a bookkeeper, and it employed several dozen carpenters, shipwrights, blacksmiths, coopers, and rope makers, as well as hundreds of repartimiento Indian laborers. The wood for the masts was found in Tehuantepec, where they were carved, "the end product being as high in quality as German ones." The ropes were to be obtained from Nicaragua, but when not enough were found, they were brought instead from Seville. The sailcloth came mostly from Veracruz, as did the anchors. Casks and barrels for the armada were manufactured in La Navidad and Acapulco. Most of the nails were brought from Spain. Large quantities of iron were used, somewhat smaller quantities of steel. Lead plates protected the hull of the flagship against the destructive action of barnacles. The ships were equipped with guns brought from the metropolis,- munitions and gunpowder came partly from New Spain. Alonso Martinez, the alcalde mayor of Michoacan, was commissioned to purchase wheat and to organize the manufacturing of flour and hardtack, as well as bacon, cheese, butter, and victuals for shipyard residents and the expedition crew. He was also empowered to take whatever measures he deemed necessary to ensure the transportation of those goods. Improvements had to be made on roads in order to transport provisions and artillery by land from Mexico City. Work was carried out on a new road joining the Yopes River with the port of Acapulco on the Mexico-Acapulco route and on the construction of a special barge to cross the Yopes,- in addition, several crossings on the road leading from the province of Tentalco to the southern seacoast were repaired, and a new road from the town of Utlatepeque to Tehuantepec was opened to transport artillery and munitions from Veracruz.60 The most important tropical crop was sugarcane. In response to a growing demand, production of sugar and preserves grew rapidly. Ingenios, large water-powered agricultural-industrial establishments (some sold for 80,000 to 100,000 pesos) equipped with a variety of mechanical processes, multiplied. In the early seventeenth century, there were twelve in an area that today is the state of Morelos; there were another dozen ingenios in the warm zone of Michoacan, and roughly as many again in the area near Jalapa.61 Chevalier estimates that there were at that time some fifty or sixty large ingenios producing from three to five

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thousand tons of sugar a year in vast numbers of small mills (small presses used for the production of various drinks and preserves).62 This represented a very substantial amount for the times: about one-third of Brazil's sugar production, the only major resource of that country.63 For a few years, a portion was exported, but within a short period competition from other colonies forced New Spain's producers to focus on the internal market. Silver was not the only export from New Spain. In the southern regions, where there were no mines, there were dyes: cochineal and indigo. Cultivation of the latter, which produced a violet-blue color in great demand in Europe, began in the second half of the sixteenth century, in Yautepec, near Cuernavaca. Later, it spread to other warm lands and to Yucatan. In 1606, the fleet from Veracruz took some 1,600 arrobas (about 40,000 pounds) of indigo, whose value reached the considerable sum of 546,562 pesos.64 The Mixteca was the main area for dyes and, although it was some 300 to 350 miles away from Mexico City, it was linked to it by the cochineal and indigo trade. The value of cochineal exported in Veracruz equaled the value of hides exported from Spanish America and, after the midseventeenth century, the value of indigo exported surpassed that of cochineal.65 The North was linked to the international market not only by silver but also by hides, the ever-growing demand for which depended basically on the suppliers of clothing to the large Spanish army. Other regions of the country also remained linked to the international market for shorter periods. Such was the case with those areas producing cacao, sugar, vanilla, Campeche wood, cotton, and even manufactured products such as baize, sackcloth, and blankets. A steady flow of traffic joining New Spain to Europe, Asia, and South America proceeded along two main axes, one from east to west, the other from north to south. Nothing could be more false than the image of New Spain linked to the international market solely by the export of silver.66 The Natural Economy and the Local Market The natural economy was fairly widespread, not just in the communities but also in the repiiblica de los espanoles. The haciendas almost always included arable lands, pastures, woodlands, and particularly springs, which it was important to control. Only part of the land was used for commercial production,- a considerable proportion served to reward workers in lieu of monetary payments, and the rest was not utilized for the simple reason that there were no markets capable of absorbing its products. The amount of land intensively cultivated for the market

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always remained singularly limited. Cattle estancias, sugar ingenios, and mining and agricultural haciendas tended to produce most of what they needed internally. Thus, only part of their total production became commodities and reached the market.67 Sugar ingenios—whose main product was intended for the market— had pastures for draft animals, large herds of cows and sheep to provide meat and wool for slaves and Indian laborers, cornfields to feed them, and above all woodlands and sawmills for fuel. Obrajes were often located in cattle regions, and their owners also owned large sheep herds.68 Right from the beginning, northern mine owners tended to acquire large herds of mules for work and transportation, cows and sheep to feed their laborers, and wheat, corn, and vegetable fields. The exorbitant supply prices, made even higher by problems of transport, Indian assaults, and monopolies, boosted this process. Since they required large amounts of wood and coal, they also acquired woodlands and set up charcoalburning establishments. They also owned processing haciendas, dams, mills, and different types of workshops. Instead of settling near the mines, which were often in desert and mountain areas, the wealthy men of the North—as Chevalier has called them—established their hacienda houses near rivers or fertile valleys where they settled with their servants. Thus, many small and mid-sized mines became, as far as the bulk of supplies was concerned, not markets, but the core of large selfsufficient properties. When silver production went into decline, these haciendas closed in on themselves, and their cattle-breeding or farming element was intensified.69 The natural economy of the large unit within which agriculture and domestic industry were entwined on a large scale was more common than the natural economy of the small peasant so widespread in Europe. One of the most conservative aspects of the Mexican hacienda lay in this union between agriculture and industry found at the very heart of it. It thus prevented the process of separation between these two sectors of the economy and the consequent social and technical differentiations, as well as the acceleration of the mercantile transformation of products. Only in the major mining centers did mercantile production and the division of labor between agriculture and mining become established. In most cases, the exploitation of ores was carried out on a sporadic basis,laborers working them returned to agriculture when the yield diminished or capital grew scarce. Hacendados, mine owners, and merchants tended not to expand their activities within their sector, but to absorb the most diverse sectors within a single economic unit and to monopolize, in the region under their control, all activities of any interest to their competitors. Under the prevailing market conditions, this inevitably intensified the trend to-

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ward the formation of economic complexes self-sufficient in everything save two or three products that formed the link with the market and enabled the transformation of the surplus product into commodities. There was no broad market for most products. The economy of New Spain consisted of a series of local and regional economies poorly linked to each other, rather than a national market. As regards essential products, while one region might have been experiencing shortages and high prices, even famine, another one, not too far away, might have been suffering from overproduction. In 1580, the price of corn in Tlalmanalco was eight reales ptifanega, but twelve reales in the Valley of Tacubaya, a little farther away; corn brought to the capital from outside the valley was twice as expensive as in its place of origin. Production responded to a severely limited demand, and any unforeseen variation brought about severe imbalances in the regional equilibrium. Several years of good harvest could ruin a ranchero as surely as a sudden harvest loss. Given the limitations of the regional market, even the hacienda lacked the incentives to increase production to take full advantage of available resources, as Florescano writes: In virtually all the regions where the large hacienda, particularly the cereal-producing hacienda, was established, its normal development as a unit of production was curtailed by the limitations of the market. The case of wheat and corn haciendas in the Puebla region at the end of the sixteenth century, of the ranchos and haciendas which supplied the mines in the mid-seventeenth century, or of haciendas in the valley of Mexico at the end of this last century, all these cases show that within a relatively short period of time, the large hacienda was able to satisfy regional consumption. But once this goal was met, before its maximum productive capacity was developed, the regional market structure, vast distances, poor roads, high transport charges and the Crown's trade policy prevented its surplus from reaching beyond the regional boundary.70 In some hot land areas, corn production was very plentiful, but market deficiencies prevented its full utilization. Thus, in those bountiful lands, farmers often found themselves having to do what, according to an informant, the Cosamaloapan peasants did: "The harvests obtained [in this region] are very plentiful [but] after setting aside the necessary corn for their own consumption, [the farmers] burn and throw away most of it for lack of buyers."71 Prices fluctuated greatly from region to region due to the backward-

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ness of production and the problems of supply. Difficulties of transport, the alcabala, nomadic Indian assaults—all these factors curbed regional exchange to a considerable extent, led to higher prices, and increased losses. Along the most important traffic artery for foreign trade goods, the road from Mexico to Veracruz, the irregular arrival of fleets often forced muleteers to go from total unemployment to hectic activity. Prices reflected this, and so did the condition of goods. Complaints for mishandling multiplied, and transport costs experienced tremendous fluctuations. In 1653, the price of a wine cask between Seville and Mexico rose by 1,000 percent and by almost 70 percent between Veracruz and the capital. In November 1612, the cost of transporting a cask of wine from Veracruz to Mexico City was 13 pesos, in other words, much more than what it cost in Seville.72 The alcabala duty was applied in New Spain from 1575 onward. At first, it amounted to 2 percent of all merchandise exchanged or sold. In the eighteenth century, it was increased to 6 percent, and, in 1770, it reached 8 percent. New Spain was divided into eighty "alcabala areas," and the first sale in each of them entailed a new alcabala) thus, such a tax most affected goods that went beyond the local market. The alcabala became both the major source of income for the viceregal treasury and the most effective obstacle to the development of a national market. The unavoidable attributes of small local markets were primitive methods of production and the predominance of commercial and usurer's capital. The more remote a village or settlement, the greater was the power of the local merchant and the more cruel the forms of subjection binding producers. The predominance of the natural economy, which accounted for the scarcity of money in the countryside, granted every owner of capital a power that bore no relation to the level of income. The kind of capitalism capable of linking these small markets and joining them together to form a national market, destroying the more primitive forms of production and subjection, would not appear in Mexico until the late nineteenth century. A capitalist enterprise cannot develop on the basis of a small local market. The rule of capitalism is a constant transformation of the methods of production and an expansion in the scale of production. Under the conditions prevalent in New Spain, most units of production operated for centuries without experiencing significant changes in techniques and without reaching beyond the limited regional market. The capitalist enterprise, however, cannot survive unless it quickly transcends the regional and even the national market. During the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, precisely because of the limitations of national markets, no sector could generate capitalist development

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without the guarantee of a broad international market. The only sector that met this condition in New Spain was precious metals mining. Crafts Crafts were strictly regulated. The ordinance of the silkweavers' guild was issued as early as 1542; chair-, saddle-, and harnessmakers had theirs in 1548; the ropemakers' ordinance was issued in 1549; that of gilders and painters, in 1550.73 These were followed by many others that constituted powerful instances of the feudal straitjacket that stifled initiative, the process of differentiation of artisan enterprises, the accumulation of capital. Let the guild of needlemakers, formed in the early seventeenth century, serve as an example. While there were only three masters in Mexico City, the set of rules adopted consisted of fifteen sections. They estabUshed that one of the masters would serve as examiner and inspector. Nobody could practice the craft without prior examination, and any artisan from outside the city had to obtain a license from the city's cabildo before settling there. Indians, mestizos, and mulattoes could not be examined nor could they engage in the needle trade. Each master was entitled to only one store, and the import of needles from Castile was banned. Prices were rigorously fixed: one real paid for 8 sewing needles, or 6 seamstress needles, or 4 surgeon needles, or 4 wax worker needles, or 4 muleteer needles.74 The small artisan producer understands that his interests demand the preservation of his monopoly position, and thus he directs his efforts and those of his guild toward stopping competition. He does everything within his power to prevent others' entering into his domain and to consolidate his position as a small master, absolute lord of a small but steady circle of clients. Routine, fragmentation, and rigidity prevail in the artisan workshop. In order to prevent the growth of enterprises and their differentiation, many decrees restricted the number of apprentices and journeymen who could labor in each workshop.75 Only after one to three years of proven service could a journeyman become a master. To do so, he had to appear before inspectors with the master he had served. It was requisite, besides passing the examination, to be of Spanish origin and to possess a certain amount of money to open a store. Sometimes the journeyman spent many years unable to meet these requirements. Thus, he took the examination at an advanced age. There were also bans on practicing several arts or crafts within the same enterprise, on artisans holding the title of master for more than one craft, and on their belonging to several guilds.76

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Each article had to carry the seal of the guild, which was handed down to inspectors year after year and which guaranteed quality, size, and so on.77 Inspectors could take legal action against transgressors. Infringements of guild ordinances were severely sanctioned with penalties that might consist of fines, destruction or seizure of their work or tools, or loss of rights, including imprisonment, banishment, corporal sanctions, mutilation, and even, in some cases, death.78 Internal Trade and Obrajes Internal trade, too, was strictly regulated. Price and quality of goods were checked. Prices in each town were set by a magistrate and a regidor appointed by the cabildo. In Mexico City, fresh fruit prices were fixed daily,- the price of olives, dried fruit, fish, bacon, cheese, sugar, and similar items was set monthly, and that of bread, every three months.79 There were few shops. In the seventeenth century, there were only five authorized butcher's shops in Mexico City and thirty-four bakeries. Each butcher's shop was assigned two inspectors who checked products and their sale.80There was an itemized list of the products that could be sold for each type of business. In 1619, publicans attempted to widen the range of their business. Although they could sell wood, coal, candles, and the like, they were not allowed to sell vegetables and fruit. They complained, claiming that at the marketplace these provisions would run out between 10 and 11 o'clock in the morning and that many poor people who had no money at that time of the day were left without food. After a series of claims, they obtained the desired license, on condition that they not purchase supplies before noon or sell them before 1 o'clock in the afternoon.81 The Mexico City consulate controlled the major trading sectors and monopolized them for the benefit of a very small group of hacendados and merchants. In general, strict regimentation tended to benefit big hacendados and to curtail the development of industry and trade. Under those conditions, the more enterprising middle and small merchants found themselves forced to carry out their activities under illegal or quasi-illegal conditions. The consolidation of colonial and feudal interests was so powerful that the majority of middle-class individuals lived outside the law. There were many unauthorized manufacturers of alcoholic beverages, illegal suppliers of cards, and smugglers of imported goods, local products, and gold and silver. The importance of this sector grew such that, in the last fifty years of the colony, it had become the embryo of a bourgeoisie stifled by feudal regulations and from which emerged many of the most distinguished guerrilleros.

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Vendors of pork in Mexico City avoided taking their goods to the market where magistrates controlled prices. The meat was sold at their houses at prices set by supply and demand.82 Other small traders sold fruit and vegetables in similar conditions and, in 1619, a decree was issued sentencing mestizos, blacks, and mulattoes caught in such acts to two hundred lashes and two years in the galleys. Alguaciles (constables) who did the same risked losing their position and paying a fine of forty pesos.83 While obrajes were not banned, they never enjoyed the state protection that made possible the triumph of industry in England, Holland, and elsewhere. The number of factories was subject to restrictions, and their establishment was allowed in only a few cities. Goods and their prices were subject to regulations that, though not as rigorous as those applied to crafts, were nonetheless fairly strict, particularly after 1592. No measures were ever taken to protect local production from imports or to promote the conquest of foreign markets: the colonial power always favored goods merchants brought from Seville. Labor restrictions that, without preventing the unbridled exploitation of workers, did however hinder the expansion and growth of enterprises, weighed on obrajes. In clashes between the latter and craft guilds, viceroys almost inevitably supported the guilds. The major advantage of the obraje over the artisan workshop was the division of labor. Water power and some machines were utilized, but, on the whole, manual methods prevailed. As a result, the big obraje could not displace the small one or eliminate the workshop. Manufacturing was integrated into a structure that included urban crafts and rural domestic industry. Frequently, a particular product was partly manufactured in those sectors. The obraje constituted an intermediary link between crafts and machine manufacturing, but it was far from being the large establishment with hundreds or thousands of wage workers, producing for international markets, which presaged the arrival of large mechanized industry. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, manufacturing in New Spain had not yet become the dominant form within industry. It appeared within a framework that was not its own, alongside guild crafts, which enjoyed a privileged position. Given its local isolation and its subordination to guild and domestic crafts, the obraje was manufacturing of a precapitalist kind. Money The expansion of the mercantile economy required the introduction of money. In the early years, it was very scarce and the conquistadores

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mainly used unminted gold and silver, the former in the form of dust or nuggets and the latter melted into sheets or bars. Measuring units were established in relation to the weight of the more common Spanish coins, hence, the more prevalent name: peso. The highest value unit was the peso de oro (gold peso), also called castellano de oro (gold Castilian),peso de oro de minas (fine gold peso), peso de oro ensayado (assayed gold peso), peso de oro de minas de ley perfecta (standard fine gold peso), which was equivalent to the weight of some 450 maravedies. Gold with fewer carats was labeled peso de oro comun (common gold peso), peso de lo que cone (valid peso), or else peso Tepuzque (some 290 to 320 maravedies). One peso Tepuzque could be exchanged in the market for eight silver reales.84 This gold unit, and its equivalent in silver, was maintained throughout most of the colonial period. In response to repeated requests from the colonos, who saw their economic activities frustrated by the lack of minted currency, the king ordered in 1535 the foundation of the Casa de la Moneda (mint) with powers to mint gold, silver, and copper coins.85 According to various estimates, some 90 percent of precious metals extracted were minted in New Spain. A fantastic sum of 760.6 million pesos in gold and silver was minted between 1537 and 1731.86 But this figure could be misleading regarding the degree of monetization of the Mexican economy. Currency minting was in fact an export industry, like mining or dyes. Only 10 percent of transactions in New Spain were carried out in official currency. The vast majority of deals were done in local currencies or through barter. A considerable proportion of wages was paid in cacao beans. Tlacos or clacos—local currency substitutes made of wood, copper, or soap, arbitrarily established by merchants or hacendados who issued them, forcing their suppliers and buyers to accept them—were widely used for such purposes. The value of these coins depended on the willingness of the issuer to exchange them at any time for commodities and official currency, and was subject to great depreciations outside their place of issue.87 Because of the spread of the natural economy and the limitations of the market, such coins were used far more widely than official gold and silver ones. Capital If one were to adopt a definition that sees capital in "any ensemble of goods removed from consumption and assigned to production" or else in "any sum of money used to obtain profits," it would not be hard to find it even among the Indian communities. 88 But for cattle, implements, or money to be assigned to production and circulation and to produce profits, for the process of realization of the product in the market and

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accumulation to take place, a series of social conditions have to be present. Writes Marx, "capital is not a material thing, but a given relation of production, corresponding to a given historical formation of society, which becomes embodied in a material thing and gives it a specific social character."89 And, he adds elsewhere, that "a Black person is a Black person. Only under certain conditions does he become a slave. A cotton spinning machine is a cotton spinning machine. Only under certain conditions does it become capital. Torn away from those conditions, it is no more capital than gold in itself is money, or sugar, the price of sugar."90 To talk of capital in the full sense of the word two conditions are necessary: (1) the transformation of labor into a commodity, the possibility of buying it in the market, the prevalence of wage labor,- and (2) the development of the market to the level necessary to enable productive enterprises to transcend the local market and to enter a phase of constant expansion of the scale of production and of transformation of the techniques and methods of production. However, prior to the accumulation that derives from capitalist production, capital must originate at the core of precapitalist society. Marx called this the process of primitive accumulation of capital It is, essentially, the expropriation of land, means of subsistence, and instruments of labor from the great mass of the people and their concentration in the hands of capitalists. The mechanisms are many and vary from country to country. For that reason, one must not confuse forms with the process itself. Two phases of primitive accumulation can be distinguished: Commercial capital and usurer's capital reached a considerable level of development in many precapitalist societies, and not only European ones; perhaps their development was even greater in some Eastern societies. Nevertheless, as Mandel has observed, "It is a process that develops on the periphery of economic life, that is to say, outside production and circulation relating to such production. While it is true that as a result of activities of this nature larger accumulations of capital may be generated, capital never becomes the master of the economy under social conditions still predominantly feudal."91 Commercial capital in its independent form can function as an intermediary between societies or social groups whose production is not directed at the market. Thus, exchange is introduced from outside the process of production, and its influence on the latter depends wholly on the structure of these societies. In this first phase of primitive accumulation, commercial capital can fully continue to exist and grow without changing the productive structure of the societies in question.92

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It is only in the second stage of primitive accumulation —which we shall call industrial primitive accumulation—that capital gains its dominant position. The difference lies above all in the scope of the process (as Hobsbawn would say, capitalism can win only in those places where there already exists a certain degree of capitalism). Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, a series of phenomena became intertwined: the expropriation of small producers and their proletarianization; the pillage of the colonial world; the rise of commercial and usurer's capital to a previously unknown level (shareholding societies, stock markets, banks, etc.); political victories by the bourgeoisie,- peasant wars, and so forth. But the result was qualitative: capital penetrated production and gradually dominated all sectors of the economy. The economy was commercialized not because of the action of intermediary commercial capital, but because of the growth of increasingly more powerful manufacturing centers. Commercial capital expanded no longer as a mere intermediary but as the driving force behind a national industry. Manifestations of the first stage prevailed in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century New Spain: primitive accumulation led mainly to the formation of commercial and usurer's capital. These types of capital barely penetrated production and fit within the interstices of its heterogeneous structure. Only in the second half of the eighteenth century, with the growth of a social and regional division of labor, with the combined boom in mining, sheepherding, export manufactures, and agriculture, did an incipient industrial primitive accumulation vigorously begin to appear. Thus, despite the development of commercial and usurer's capital and the rapid expropriation of producers, there was no full process of primitive accumulation of industrial capital in New Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The most generalized form of capital in New Spain was commercial capital, whose independent development is always—as Marx points out—in inverse ratio to the development of capitalist production. At times, commercial capital serves as an intermediary between spheres of production at very different levels, such as the indigenous community and the Spanish city. This was the case of the alguacil in charge of buying fodder for Mexico City's horses. Due to shortages, the viceroy appointed an official to oversee this transaction. The alguacil received one silver real for every three loads of fodder. He bought cacao cheaply on the coast, at 150 beans per real and paid Indians 25 beans per load, that is 75 for 3 loads. Thus, the alguacil made a profit of 100 percent: for every half real he paid out, he received one from the buyers. Every day he gave out some 200 reales of hay, on which he made a juicy profit of 100 reales. He further

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forced Indians to hand him without prior payment some 64 to 80 reales of hay, which he would then resell, receiving substantial bribes from favored residents.93 Thus, the alguacil earned some 6,500 pesos a year from this business, an income higher than the Casa de la Moneda superintendent's salary, which amounted to only 6,000 pesos.94 This merchant benefited from the isolation of the cacao producing communities, which did not have direct access to markets in the central region; from the shortage of fodder in Mexico City, brought about by a lag in production,- and from the authority that conferred on him his official post. The source of his gains would inevitably have been blocked with the expansion of the national market, the increase and standardization of production, and the relaxation of political control over economic activities. While commercial capital served as a mere vehicle for the exchange of goods between barely developed communities, commercial profit manifested itself as theft and fraud. In the early seventeenth century, Mexico City residents frequently complained of the high price of essential goods. They argued that this was due to the activities of regatones (small-time dealers) who stopped Indians from selling their merchandise directly in the city. Whenever the latter came near the markets carrying their fruit and vegetables, middlemen (often blacks and mulattoes working for a master or for themselves) intercepted them, took their produce away, and resold it at 100 percent profit.95 In many areas, commercial capital was closely linked to the activities of encomenderos and officials. A set of clients formed around a powerful individual, someone who would corner all commercial activity within a certain region and, through the strictest monopoly, would accumulate a substantial fortune within a few years. Chevalier recounts that in Guadalajara—which had only 160 residents in 1602—Dr. Santiago Vera fulfilled such a role. His house had a large warehouse where a wide variety of agricultural produce—ranging from cereals and butter to water from orange blossoms produced near Chapala—could be purchased. The doctor had thirty-seven relatives and right-hand men, most of whom lived in his house,- the family monopolized the only source of commercial wealth in the region: cattle, a business in which within a few years it had accumulated a fortune of 300,000 pesos. One son-in-law had a cattle estancia with 10,000 cows, from which he supplied the Guadalajara slaughterhouse, partly owned by him. He brought goods from Mexico City and sold them on credit to the city's merchants at 15 percent interest. He sold mules in the northern mines and lent money to miners at high interest. His profits exceeded 100,000 pesos a year. Pinedo, the doctor's compadre, bought up newly born mules and corn bushes. Some

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eighteen sons and kin were alcaldes and corregidores in the vicinity and carried on similar activities.96 The case of Juan Pelaez de Berrio, alcalde mayor of Oaxaca and owner of an encomienda with 25,000 Indians, serves as further example. Together with his brother, Juan Delgadillo, his cousin, Luis de Berrio, alcalde and captain of the province of the Zapotecs, and other kin and fellow countrymen, he created a powerful bureaucratic-commercial group that tended to displace the one headed by Hernan Cortes. In a letter to Spain dated March 24, 1529, Juan Pelaez de Berrio wrote: And it seems to me that one of the best and most important benefits in this land is merchandise, because that is where the real mines are found, which are beyond belief and one cannot go wrong. And profits are so certain and large that, having a well-supplied store here is the richest thing in the world, it is alchemy. Apart from this I am appointed captain and alcalde mayor of the province of Guaxaca . . . There it will be possible to use most of what is brought in and with me there everything will be put to such good use that nothing will be wasted, and whoever is there with the clothes will benefit, and everything will be made the most of. And that is why I have resolved to send vuestra merced monies, to do what we discussed there. And would it please God that I had brought some thousand ducats worth of clothes which, the way things are here, it would have been possible to send back four thousand, and even five, according to what it is said about the need for Castile clothes. In the same letter, the alcalde stated that he was sending two consignments, one for 1,700 gold pesos and another for 790, both to be used in the purchase of goods or to pay debts to suppliers.97 These were not isolated cases. Whenever the encomendero,hacendado, or official could not also be a mineowner, he frequently was the region's profiteering merchant. Commercial capital was bound to feudal landed property and the bureaucratic Crown service. It prospered precisely because of the smallness of the market. The limited horizon of the local producer, his lack of resources,frequentcrises of overproduction, and local famines caused by isolation enabled a merchant with the necessary means at his disposal to make extraordinary gains. A well-defined commercial oligarchy, linked to international trade, whose economic and political medium was the consulate, emerged in Mexico City. "Big business," writes Pierre Chaunu, "seems to play a proportionately more important role at the top of the Mexican social

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hierarchy than anywhere else in the Indies, comparable only to its rank in the big cities of Atlantic Europe."98 Big commercial capital of that period, which strove to take advantage of all shortcomings of the market and lags in production, perpetuating th^m, exemplified the most extreme monopoly in all its forms. Thus, big merchants supported many measures tending to restrict the development of production in New Spain. In order to preserve their monopoly, they favored a ban on the growing silk industry, lent their support to decrees limiting the development of obrajes that competed with imports, and waged a relentless war against other industries. They also favored various forms of price control and monopolies that intensified the exploitation of the countryside by the city and the appropriation of the surplus product of artisans and small producers. Control of big commerce was in the hands of neither independent merchants vying with each other nor joint-stock companies, such as in England. Overseas Spanish merchants were organized in typically feudal corporations, as rigid as artisans' guilds. Traders' consulates were an old Spanish institution that derived from the Catalan "Consolat de Mar," which in turn had its origins in the "Consolato del Mare" of Pisa and Genoa. The consulate combined both the functions of the commercial tribunal that had to regulate the activities of each individual merchant and an association that represented merchants as a whole vis-a-vis the other corporations into which society was divided. To be accepted into the consulate, the merchant had to meet a series of conditions relating to age, capital, and activity. The members of the association elected the magistrates, one prior, and two consuls in annual assemblies. These individuals were active merchants and members of a thirty-member junta de gobierno (ruling council) in whose hands resided the power within the organization. Alongside these officials, there was a body of five "deputies" to assist in their work. In theory, important decisions were made in plenary assemblies, but they convened rarely. The first consulate in Spain was established in Valencia in 1283. It was followed by those in Mallorca (1343), Barcelona (1347), Perpignan (1388), Burgos (1494), Bilbao (1511), Seville (1543), and San Sebastian (1682). For the first seventy years of active overseas trade, merchants in Mexico acted alone. But the consulate was established in 1592, following a petition by a group of traders. This institution never acquired the character of a commercial enterprise. There was never a situation when the consulate undertook, on its own, import or export transactions, buying or selling. It was a state-supported professional organization whose functions were of a strictly corporative nature. The consulate consolidated the financial power of big merchants and

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became the representative and guardian of their interests, and therefore one of the colony's most powerful corporations. The kings of Spain, who were always in need of money, approached the consulate more than once to request loans or "donations/' The viceroys did likewise and turned to it for the financing of well-known public works. Naturally, such services were repaid with very significant privileges and prerogatives." Petty commerce was also very important. Indian and mestizo peddlers, who led a wandering life and acted as intermediaries in the local trade in corn, beans, chiles, cotton, squash, and maguey products consumed by the sedentary Indian population, barely eked out an existence.100 Small and mid-size merchants in cities were more prosperous. In 1686, there were 323 stores (cajones or stalls, as they were called at the time) in the plaza mayor in Mexico City. There were so many that in 1660 the city council had to order that they be placed in rows because they obstructed the movement of carriages around the plaza.101 There were also lots of small producers who traded their goods directly. In Mexico City, many Indians caught ducks, others made salt in the lake at Texcoco, and still others collected flies, worms, and insects, which they sold to the rich as birdfeed.102 The large number of these very menial producers was an unequivocal reflection of dispersal, isolation, and technical backwardness. The leading moneylender in the colony was the church. A few decades after the Conquest, this institution had already formulated an entire financial policy that enabled it to invest funds from earnings, charity, and donations on deposits of interest-yielding capital (mortgage loans). At the beginning, the methods used were elementary: a person who wished to give a donation or income to an individual or an institution of the church, but did not have the necessary amount, bestowed a 5 percent interest on a property that could not be claimed by either the member of the religious order or the institution at issue, though the property did remain in the latter's name. This lien on property was given the name of censo. As its funds increased, the church began to lend to any applicants, as long as they could offer adequate guarantee. This usually consisted of real estate. Sureties were accepted only under exceptional circumstances. The contract granted control over the property to the creditor, since no changes could be carried out without his consent. Loans were given for a period between five and nine years, during which a 5 percent interest rate was paid. In theory, at the end of the period the loan had to be reimbursed, but in practice the term was prolonged indefinitely, such that properties remained encumbered in perpetuity and debts were bequeathed with them. The centers of the church's financial activities were the juzgados de

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testamentos, capellanias, and obras pias (tribunals of wills, chantries, and charities). By the eighteenth century, the tribunals had become large credit institutions, handling several million pesos in capital, employing trained staff, and carrying detailed accounts. The credit activities of the church developed in such a way that most rural and urban properties were controlled by it and virtually all lending capital was in its hands. According to Chevalier, "in due course, a great number of censos and chantries represented heavy mortgages on rural properties, and many individuals, seemingly owners of vast haciendas, in reality enjoyed but a third or fourth of their income/'103 A register of 154 haciendas and ranches in Tlaxcala provides an example of the degree to which rural properties were encumbered (see table 3). As one can see, more than 65 percent of properties were mortgaged and the amount of censos and empenos (obligations) came to over 42 percent of their total value. In the hands of the church, lending capital became a powerful obstacle to the development of capitalist production. It was totally at the service of the big squanderers of the times: the hacendados and real-estate owners. The majority of church loans were channeled toward conspicuous consumption rather than production. Thanks to the church's "mortgage mentality," there was plenty of money for censos and obligations but little for investment in productive activities. While interest rates for mortgages tended to be 5 percent, it was hard to obtain less than 20 percent for production. Through donations, legacies, charity, and the like, a large part of the money-capital accumulated in mining, obrajes, or trade, was turned into censos. The role of church capital was exactly the opposite of what was necessary for the development of capitalism. Instead of transforming usurer's capital into productive capital, it was a decisive factor in the metamorphosis of mining, agrarian, and manufacturing capital into censos. But the church was not the only moneylender. Mexico City's big merchants, and even lesser provincial ones, "financed" the production of cochineal, indigo, vanilla, and so on, or lent on the surety of farmers' harvests or miners' current investments. "Thus," writes Florescano, "merchants from Puebla financed cotton harvesters along the coast of Veracruz; northern merchants financed vine and corn growers and cattle breeders; merchants from Guadalajara financed farmers in the region, etc. In the provinces, particularly, merchants constituted somewhat of a subsidy bank for many farmers."104 Usury accelerated the formation of monetary capital; however, most of the time it did not bring about a fundamental change in methods of production,- instead, it made them more expensive and hindered their development. Significant amounts of

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Table 3. Debts Incurred by Tlaxcala Haciendas and Ranchos (1712)

Districts

No. of Haciendas and/or Ranchos *

Apizaco Huamantla Hueyotlipa Nativitas San Felipe Histacuiztla Santa Ana Chiautempam Tlaxco Total

No. of Pincas Subject to Censo or Empeno

No. of Pincas Free of Censo or Empeno

Pincas with No Data Available

Total Value of Pincas (in pesos)

Amount of Mortgages and Empenos (in pesos)b

13 38 12 33

8 29 3 27

2 2 — 1

3 7 9 5

124,050 515,222 149,100 411,965

59,770 214,690 13,700 225,700

23

10

—

13

171,900

32,800

20 16

11 14

5 2

4 —

140,075 257,325

74,170 127,905c

155

102

12

41

1,769,637

748,735

a

Only ranchos outside hacienda boundaries that constituted independent properties are included. b Not all censos come from the church; a few come from private funds.105 c There is one censo whose amount is not legible. Sources: Isabel Gonzalez Sanchez, Haciendas y ranchos de Tlaxcala en 1712 (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia), 1969.

social surplus product thus became concentrated in the hands of nonproductive sectors. Some capital was invested in production. Merchants financed artisans and bought their goods; they established "decentralized workshops" in which workers, as part of a division of labor, carried on production at home. Some obrajes were large, but very few transcended the local market. In the seventeenth century, the average number of workers in 49 obrajes in the Valley of Mexico was 45. The smallest had 30; a few had 120 workers.106 As can be seen, in most cases there was no comparison with the large factories that flourished in France and Holland during the same period and that assembled thousands of workers under one roof. Set in large stone buildings, some had fairly expensive installations. The following implements for a textile obraje were found in the inventory of Fernando Cortes's possessions (1549): A fulling hammer [a machine, usually water-powered, consisting of heavy wooden mallets, moved by a spindle, to pound, scour, and

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full cloth]; pounders and fulling flows; two sackcloth looms assembled and with their cloth; 21 spinning wheels for wool with their bobbins and iron handles,- 13 arrobas of wool spun into balls,and a large quantity of half-finished or finished fabric.107 Another inventory of the Orizaba sugar mill, dating from the sixteenth century, discloses a long list of iron implements, boilers, copper parts, a forge, and a fully equipped carpenter's shop to repair machines, as well as the mill itself, several structures (a house for the press, another for boilers, and two purifying buildings), dozens of oxen and mules, and a large number of slaves (each one priced, in the late sixteenth century, at some four hundred pesos).108 These means of production, however, can be considered as capital only when they correspond to incipiently capitalist relations of production. A fulling hammer, which forms part of a small obraje that meets the local needs of a hacienda, has a totally different socioeconomic meaning from a fulling hammer of similar kind and shape, utilized in a large factory that meets the needs of part of the country. The earliest investors were Crown officials. Viceroys, oidores, members of cabildos, and so on, were the only ones with sufficient resources to invest. While high-ranking officials would sell their properties when their period of service came to an end and would return to the metropolis, lower-ranking bureaucrats became involved in city life and often became powerful hacendados. Not until after 1580 did mineowners, merchants, and the church begin to invest in agriculture.109 Only a small portion of investments came from hacendados at the end of the sixteenth century. In most cases, they were forced to turn to church or private lending or usurer's capital. This situation has been described by the bishop of Puebla, Francisco Fabian y Fuero: We cannot pretend either that the farmers themselves, who own property, do not play an important role in this sad decline [of agriculture]. Some lead very indulgent lives: rarely are they content with the respectability that befits them,- their extravagance in superfluous spending, gambling and other things of that ilk . . . has brought them so much ruin [that]... the majority that call themselves owners [do not in reality have] more control over their properties than what sale or auction deeds show on paper. Study these carefully, for they will support this truth, because rarely does the purchase of a hacienda take place which includes a small cash payment; in most cases, as long as deed and auction costs are met, and [buyers] undertake to honor the principales [or mortgages encumbering the hacienda], they take possession and after remain-

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ing in it several years without paying [interest or redeeming the mortgage], they part with it yet again and creditors are outwitted . . . their purchases are in fact feigned, and it is censos owners who sustain all the setbacks in this process . . . Such frauds are very common in these times [1767] and it is all the more regrettable since they are debts contracted because farmers, in need of the gain they implore, ask desperately for principales without [which]... they themselves admit they could not support themselves or provide for their families, and with which they build houses, increase their wealth, plough fields, reap benefits and come out of the financial difficulties in which they would inevitably fall... [This way]... the owners of most of the haciendas, whether pressed by their needs, or led by their extravagance, have burdened them with so many censos that their yield does not cover the amount of interest they have to pay.110 However, the function of lending capital invested in agriculture was not to hasten the development of capitalism but to exploit and preserve the prevailing semifeudal system. Even though there are no detailed studies on this subject, it is possible to assert that the bulk of this credit was used to expand existing properties, to buy more ranchos or haciendas, to put right the imbalances caused by the mishaps of rural life (losses incurred in years of low prices, bad harvests, bankruptcies, or thefts by administrators, failures of new crops), and for purposes other than production. There is no evidence suggesting that it was essentially assigned to improve cultivation techniques or to increase the productivity of haciendas. The lack of interest in increasing productivity and yields, or reducing production costs through technical innovations, can be explained by the absence of a national market and the narrow scope of local markets. The problem facing farmers was not an increase in production, but control of available markets. For such an end, it was necessary to monopolize the land, to have a cheap labor force, and to control local trade rather than to make large investments in more advanced techniques.111 These circumstances rather than "Spanish heritage" or "Creole indolence" account for the reason the hacendado concentrated his efforts as discoverer and colonizer into becoming a rentier, whose power lay precisely in becoming the lord of thousands of hectares and hundreds of lives, rather than the owner of a capitalist enterprise. New Spain's system restrained capital invested in production in a straitjacket. The market, or rather, markets, were too small to allow the steady growth of businesses. Corporative restrictions imposed by the Crown, the church, and the guilds, pricing systems and controls unfavor-

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able to nonmonopoly producers, preferential consumption of imported luxury items, legal restrictions on the consumption of "European" articles by Indians, the extraction of the surplus in the form of silver, and the export of capital constituted insurmountable obstacles for an even more vigorous embryonic capital than the one prevailing in sixteenthand seventeenth-century New Spain. A study of the course of capital reveals a process that transformed capital into feudal fortunes instead of one of accumulation and sustained growth. The largest share of profits went into luxuries, sumptuous buildings, titles of nobility, dowries for daughters who withdrew into convents, donations to the church, social gatherings, and gambling. New Spain's dominant class lived in grand luxury: From the time they began to colonize, the conquistadores hoped to create a world comparable to the peninsula's in every respect... the fighting days were over, only the memory of heroic deeds remained, while the river of gold continued to flow. From a very early date riches enabled Renaissance exquisiteness—plateresque architecture, costumes, jewelry, paintings, courtesan life—to arrive very early on in the New World. Western art was thus imposed over its American counterpart, at times merging with it. Thus, within a few years, younger sons from Extremadura who had never been presented at the Spanish Court and who had been amazed at the magnificence of the native kings, were enjoying, too, a world full of pomp and splendour, in tune with their new condition as lords.112 As early as the second half of the sixteenth century, Cervantes de Salazar wrote that in Tacuba Street the houses, without exception, were splendid, all built "at great expense as befits such noble and opulent residents."113 A considerable quantity of valuable jewels, clothes, and furniture, predominantly of foreign origin, invariably figured in testamentary inventories of wealthy Mexicans. Bishop Zumarraga wrote to Charles V: In this great Babylon there is excess and superfluity in dress and household fineries. Not even in the chamber of the blessed Empress, your dear mother, have I seen such tapestries and so many silk pillows. I have been told that some forty or fifty women attended two wedding ceremonies, which took place here this year, each wearing three or four thousand pesos' worth of fineries. More than one European visitor in the seventeenth and eighteenth

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centuries was intrigued by the cycle that swallowed up capital, reflected in the famous popular saying of that time: Father a merchant son a nobleman grandson a beggar. A very substantial share of accumulated capital was spent on the purchase of vast properties of unproductive land. The latifundio, as Zavala has demonstrated, was not something carried over, nor did it grow directly from royal or viceregal grants. Its origin lay in the illegal exercise of privileges derived from membership of the upper echelons of the colonial bureaucracy, as well as in the availability of substantial sums of money to buy lands or to legalize titles.114 The Origin of Large Landed Property A latifundio that did not have its origins in a substantial amount of money was rare. The sons of conquistadores who felt that a combination of corruption and the investment of large sums of money to purchase land was below their condition of hidalgos were left behind and replaced by rich merchants, mineowners, and newly arrived enterprising emigrants who combined entrepreneurial activity with the conquest of a wealthy Creole heiress. The origin of large landed properties provides a typical example of the interweaving of feudal right and capital. Authority over the conquered lands rested in principle with the Castilian crown. This prerogative served in practice to limit all forms of property, making it dependent on royal favor and subjecting it to high fiscal levies whenever the needs of the treasury so required it. Sooner or later, landowners paid the Crown substantial sums of money for the lands they occupied. In principle, only the gracia or merced real conferred private control over land, but, in fact, the latter was granted to various authorities, including municipal cabildos. The earliest laws rigorously limited the size of plots granted, and in the first years the authorities strove to limit these donations. The beneficiaries were a great many individuals of very diverse origins, occupations, and degrees of wealth. However, the general economic conditions did not favor the rise of small and medium-size properties. In order to concentrate land ownership in its hands, the encomendera and commercial bureaucratic oligarchy resorted to the lacunae and ambiguities of the legal system as well as illegal occupations and purchase of titles. The law stipulated that plot ownership could not be

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transferred before a minimum period of time, but it did not ban their sale or surrender. This enabled less-well-off beneficiaries, who could not work their properties, to lose no time in selling their plots with a view to obtaining funds for some venture or other, to establish a dowry, or to pay back a favor to some powerful individual. Thus, speculation in gracia or merced titles rose quickly.115 As far back as the sixteenth century, Mexico had a fairly active market for buying and selling land. The granting of mercedes to servants and staff of powerful individuals was common,116 and some individuals even used prestanombres (literally, people who lend their names) on a regular basis, who served as intermediaries in their objective to expand their domains. At the end of the sixteenth century, many lands had been appropriated without any title whatsoever. Among plots legally granted, there were large areas of unclaimed land that big landowners used illegally as theirs. These demasias, occupied without any title whatsoever, represented a very significant part of nearly every large property. An official sent to Michoacan to inspect the latifundios reported at the beginning of the seventeenth century: "Those who have deeds for one, have possession of six";117 furthermore, existing titles were often irregular and were based on feigned or illegal sales to private persons and communities. Thus, many hacendados were outside the law. There lay the origins of endless lawsuits between hacendados and communities, which helped to increase the power and corruption of the local bureaucracy. The legalisation of the status of large landed property came in the first half of the seventeenth century and took on a form rather like a sales deal between the state and wealthy and powerful private individuals, most of whom were already in possession of the lands. For many communities, this process meant the legalization of their expropriation. The following shows how it all came about. In 1591, the king set out the principle for such a settlement in two decrees: in order to overcome the adverse situation at the treasury, all private individuals who possessed lands had to produce the titles that supported their possession,- if they were deemed adequate, their domain was honored; otherwise, the payment of a sum commensurate with the value of the land was ordered or its reincorporation into the royal patrimony was demanded. The decree established that "as many times as the King, the Viceroy, or Governor representing it, deems suitable, he can observe the law and make the possessors of such lands or estancias come forward in order to produce and show any titles and mercedes which they have for them . . . to let them keep and make good everything that they seem to hold and occupy legitimately, to have taken away that which they might have seized, all of which shall be assigned to the treasury."118 Landowners unequivocally opposed a legalization that would cost so

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dearly. Hence, the measure was carried out gradually. Twenty-five years after the proclamation of the decree, the settlements reached were few. But the king persisted. In 1631, he issued a final order according to which all Spaniards who had seized lands could pay a moderate settlement, if they wished to keep them.119 Any land that failed to meet such a requirement would be sold in public auctions. At the same time, the Crown put large areas up for sale, enabling a few rich merchants to acquire vast latifundios. Thus, illicit appropriations acquired legal titles, and the latifundio became part of the established property system. In exchange for their money, the hacendados and the church received definitive titles, not just over lands but also over springs, as well as the right to free use of woods and pastures found on the properties, and the privilege to enclose them. Therefore, the latifundio in Mexico had a twofold origin: the illegal use of relations and services to the viceregal bureaucracy, and the possession of a substantial monetary fortune. The North excepted, large landed property rarely had its origin in direct grants conferred from above for services rendered to the king.

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The Republica de los Espanoles (Labor) Extraeconomic Coercion The great majority of Indians, blacks, and mulattoes who worked directly for the colonizers did so under a system of extraeconomic coercion. Unlike the situation of the wage laborer, who is driven by economic necessity, under relations of slavery, encomienda, repartimiento, or peonage, work is performed under direct coercion upheld by justifications of a juridical and religious nature. There was free wage labor among Indians and blacks, but only as a secondary and subordinate element. It was more common, on the other hand, among mestizos and poor Spaniards, though one must not forget that their duties were often of an administrative and supervisory nature. Two conditions are necessary for the existence of a large class of wage workers, of proletarians: the expropriation of all the means of production and their concentration in the hands of a small number of owners (which presupposes a certain level of development). These conditions were not present in New Spain. In many areas, Indians retained their communal lands and the necessary implements; in others, virgin lands were so abundant and the tools needed so rudimentary, that Indians could shun any system of exploitation based on economic coercion. Spanish enterprises operated at a totally different technical and social level from that of Indians in the communities. Hence, working in them required a radical change in customs and attitudes. Furthermore, many enterprises (particularly in mining) were found in desolate and/or dangerous places, removed from the area inhabited by Indians. Only the most brutal coercion could force Indians to abandon their communities and undertake the arduous marches that claimed so many of their lives. The most capable among the king's representatives realized the inevitability of extraeconomic coercion. Following the 1542 reform— which attempted to abolish forced labor—Viceroy Mendoza, known as a man of great ability, was of the opinion that it was absurd to assume that Indians would work for Spaniards of their own free will, even for pay.

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He argued that the abolition of the systems of extraeconomic coercion (slavery, encomienda, and repartimiento) would inevitably bring about the collapse of the mines.1 In sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Mexico, there were no sizable nuclei of proletarians, much less can one talk of a working class. The modern worker differs from workers in the past not only because he or she is free, but also because of the means and instruments of production used by him or her because of the particular working conditions.2 Thus, it is absurd to regard the presence of naboiio Indian wage workers as a sign of capitalist development. (Wage workers living in the haciendas, who might be more or less free, were given the name of naboiio or laborio Indians.) There have been free wage workers in the ancient Eastern empires, in Rome, and in feudal Europe, but there is a qualitative difference between them and modern proletarians. The vast majority of workers in New Spain were engaged in agriculture. They were bound to the lord of the encomienda and the land, or to the state, through typically precapitalist personal relations of dependence and coercion. Centuries of development would go by, and a series of revolutions in their social status and their working conditions would take place, before they would be transformed into proletarians; a process that was not to become fully apparent until the end of the nineteenth century and early decades of the twentieth, and which has not yet come to an end. The more immediate roots of the earliest proletarian nuclei in Mexico, which emerged in the 1860s, can be found among miners, obraje workers, apprentices, and craftsmen in artisan workshops. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, these social strata were very thin and their principal characteristic was their heterogeneity. Some were almost free,- others were completely so; some owned their tools; others did not; craftsmen could become owners of workshops; obraje workers were slaves of a sort and their place was at the lowest rung in society or even outside it. Nearly all the forms of exploitation had clear roots in Indian and Spanish precapitalist societies. Slavery for just wars and ransom was a very common institution in the Spanish Reconquest and was not unknown among the indigenous people. The encomienda, as Gomez Orozco has pointed out, was very similar to the institution created by Spaniards in the south of the peninsula to tackle the problems of a new, non-Christian, subjugated class, which as vassal of the Crown was placed under the jurisdiction (encomienda) of the military fraternities or orders that took part in the Reconquest.3 The repartimiento was rooted in the Indian coatequil (a Nahuatl word that refers to a system of public labor to which all calpulli had to contribute) and in the Spanish systems

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of forced public labor. This shows the continuity that existed between the new society and its two direct predecessors, but it does not enable one automatically to draw the conclusion that these forms of exploitation fulfilled the same function or had the same meaning in the former as among the Aztecs or in medieval Spain. These new relations were created in a different framework, and their content was shaped by the Conquest, the fusion of a despotic-tributary structure, a feudal-capitalist structure, and the incorporation of America into the process of the rise of capitalism: Marx specifically included Mexico among those "rich and densely populated" countries " taken up with pillage and killing," where "the treatment of Indians [assumes] the most cruel forms," which became the stage for primitive accumulation of capital.4 The encomienda, the repartimiento, and slavery served not to strengthen and preserve the despotic-tributary system, but to build the economy of the republica de los espanoles. Indian forced labor in the mines and in those businesses that sprang up around them [estancias, sawmills, farms, mills, transport, etc.) materialized in the form of silver. The metal, protected by speculation, monopolies, and concessions, assumed the character of money capital, which in turn, once in Europe, was transformed in a final metamorphosis into industrial capital. These events marked a fundamental difference between the relations of production in the New Spain of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and those prevailing before the Conquest, or, despite their formal similarity, in medieval Spain. In the indigenous society, as in medieval Spain, the production of rent that satisfied the consumption of the dominant classes determined the dynamics of the entire system. In the colony of New Spain, on the other hand, the production of silver and dyes for the international market and the profits of commercial and usurer's capital were important incentives. It must not be forgotten that capitalism, which can only feed on the exploitation of wage labor, had no objection to not only tolerating but also producing and reproducing in the colonies and marginal areas all forms of slavery and servitude characteristic of precapitalist systems. "In general, the hidden slavery of wage workers in Europe required, as its base, slavery sans phrase [without disguise] in the New World."5 Slavery in its pure forms was harsher and more widespread on plantations in the English American colonies than in Spanish American mining operations. And yet, black slavery—in Marx's words—was a purely industrial phenomenon.6 It had no roots among the autochthonous population, and the colonial power involved constituted the most advanced capitalist country in the world at that time. That is why a review of existing similarities between forms of extraeconomic coercion prevalent in sixteenth- and seventeenth-cen-

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tury New Spain and those in force in pre-Hispanic and medieval societies is not enough. It is also necessary to define their differences, differences determined by the structure of a society in which the labor system is as pluralistic as the economic system itself. Slavery, among the encomenderos' domestic servants, had a different function from slavery in the big mines. Sometimes the encomienda and the repartimiento served to make the tributary system work, and at other times they served to set in motion quasi-capitalist economic units. In the latter case, labor in Mexico did not reflect any essential differences vis-&-vis the labor system established in the English, Dutch, and French colonies since the seventeenth century: in many sectors (especially the mining sector), slave or serf labor contributed directly to the development of capitalism as a world system. Nevertheless, these relations, having been impelled by the incipient world process of capital accumulation, were incompatible with the local development of a capitalist mode of production. As numerous cases demonstrate, no sooner had the ties binding these sectors to the international market weakened, than form and content were in keeping once again. A precapitalist regression took place. Engels observed that "serfdom is not a peculiarly medieval feudal form, we find it everywhere or almost everywhere where the conquerors forced the early inhabitants to work the land for them." The difference lies not in the form of coercion but in its function. Only a study of the concrete society in question can reveal the true meaning of each form of labor exploitation. There is no universal formula for this, no substitute for concrete dialectical analysis. The difficulty in the case of New Spain lies in the fact that it was a heterogeneous society and that slavery, the encomienda, and the repartimiento were simultaneously the foundation of precapitalist and embryonic capitalist structures. They were at the same time the manifestation of backwardness and economic isolation and of direct participation in the process of worldwide development of capitalism. The Crown's Labor Despotism In 1480, the Catholic kings had issued a provision that granted freedom of movement to Spanish commoners (tributaries). In 1544, this provision was incorporated into a royal decree and extended to Indians.7 Before and after that significant measure, which legally placed Indians on an equal footing with Spanish laborers, the Crown reaffirmed on several occasions the order that Indians be treated as free individuals. Nevertheless, this did not prevent the Spanish state from legally sanctioning and reinforcing, in practice, slavery, the encomienda, the repartimiento, and peonage, which canceled out or drastically reduced such freedoms.

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Concerned by the decline in Indian population and the condition of the communities, viceroys frequently protected Indians from the colonos' abuses, but they strictly defended the system that compelled them to work in the mines and in those Spanish enterprises regarded as "useful" to the Crown. Instructions sent to Viceroy Mendoza (1535) ordered him to take the necessary steps to ensure that Indians "who are lazy by nature" worked in the mines and also on the construction of monasteries and fortresses.8 The orders to Luis de Velasco, who succeeded him in 1550, were even more explicit: "Indians must be forced to work for wages in the fields or in the towns, to stop them from becoming vagrants."9 Patriarchal yet despotic, the central power demanded from lower echelon employees, under threat of severe punishment, a steady supply of forced labors, at the same time that it issued decrees to protect Indians. A similar method was applied to collect tribute. The viceroy officially controlled dues, he made rulings favorable to petitions by towns and villages, and at the same time he uncompromisingly demanded the prompt collection of taxes from minor authorities. Thus, the more brutal aspects of the system were enforced by local bureaucrats, while the central power appeared as protector of the Indians. Mmmgiepaitimien tos serve as an illustration. In 1587, the viceroy ordered the capture of the governor and the alcalde of Cimpan unless they promptly sent repartimiento Indians to the Pachuca mines. In 1588, the juez repartidor for the Guanajuato mines was ordered to force Indians to turn up to work at any cost.10 In the last decade of the century, instructions to repartidores ordered that alguaciles in charge of taking Indians to their working place should themselves be forced to take their place if they were unable to assemble the designated number of workers. This order was later extended to other sectors of the economy. n In the repartimiento system and its variants, which prevailed throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the state played a very special role. It not only legalized relations of personal dependence but was itself the direct agent of extraeconomic coercion and the supreme organizer of the supply and distribution of the labor force among the various sectors and enterprises. To carry out its functions in the matter of labor, the central power relied on a vast bureaucratic apparatus. Its task was twofold: on the one hand, it had to provide an adequate supply to enterprises of the republica de los espanoles, following a hierarchy determined by the state's fiscal interests,- on the other, it had to enforce labor regulations aimed at the preservation of the Indian labor force, which was dwindling. The viceroy directly controlled the supply of hands. He regulated repartimiento licenses, though at times he simply ratified local agreements if they had been reached with the consent of all parties. He authorized inspections to ascertain the position of those enterprises that took Indians under the

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repartimiento or that requested consignments. He appointed jueces repartidores and even gave direct instructions to alcaldes and authorities in Indian villages.12 Jueces repartidores, in turn, enjoyed a wide latitude of action, and their personal income depended on the number of Indians distributed. They received a quarter of a real from favored farmers for each Indian delivered as well as half a real for each fanega sown. Mine repartidores received half a real per Indian, but they did not collect anything on the mine's yield. From the fund made up of these earnings, they paid the salaries of alguaciles who assisted them and kept back the rest as supplement to their official salary of 250 pesos a year.13 Beside the juez repartidor, alcaldes mayores, cabildos, and Indian village authorities—governors, alcaldes, and principales—were also involved with the repartimiento. In some areas, there were inspectors responsible for making sure that Indians were employed only in designated tasks and under the conditions set by law. There were also special magistrates for obrajes.14 This vast bureaucracy supervised the most minute details of this fundamental element of economic life with such wide powers and degree of corruption that no economic venture could succeed without its consent and support. The possibility of being able to depend on an adequate labor supply marked the success or failure of an enterprise. That is why the system served decisively to combine, often in a single individual, the roles of official, miner, landowner, and obrejero: the official often became an entrepreneur, or, alternatively, the latter obtained or bought an official position. The system of repartimiento and its variants, which was in force throughout the colonial era, was one of the foundations of state economic despotism. Chattel Slavery During the early decades, chattel slavery was very widespread as a form of exploitation of Indians. After 1542 (the New Laws), this form of subjection became less significant, but it never disappeared altogether, and in some sectors it retained its importance until the end of the colony. To be able to resort to forms of exploitation known and accepted in preHispanic society, Spaniards had to become part of the latter and to consolidate and legitimize their power. Throughout this period, the most effective way of securing a labor force for their enterprises was to enslave Indians. Slavery had a long tradition among the Iberian people, and Spanish legislation foresaw several lawful sources of slaves, the most important of which were: the just war against infidels; the ransom of slaves of nonChristian owners, who thus passed into the hands of masters "in a

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position to convert them to the true faith"; the offering of slaves as part of tribute, and enslaving as a punishment for breaking Spanish laws.15 In 1524, Cort6s assured the emperor that there would be no need to resort to encomienda Indians to perform heavy tasks in mines and plantations, since there were plenty of slaves, either captured in war or bought from the Indians, to carry them out.16 Rodrigo de Albornoz, New Spain's contador, related in a letter to the king, dated 1525, that the conquistadores often obtained authorization to carry out expeditions into border provinces. These licenses, which were granted under the pretext that Indian villages were rebelling, served to legalize expeditions whose real aim was to hunt down slaves. Even when the Indians seemed peaceful, they were nevertheless attacked and provoked for the purpose of enslaving them.17 Other times, Spaniards demanded excessive tributes, and when Indians failed to pay them they would suggest payment in slaves, which favored prevalent customs among many Indian people.18 When a great rebellion was crushed, the rebellious Indians were always enslaved. Two thousand rebellious Indians in New Galicia were enslaved in 1541, after the capture of their camp.19During the expedition to conquer the Northwest, the detachments led by Nuno de Guzman were followed by vast ranks of shackled slaves, and in the Panuco the Spaniards captured some fifteen thousand slaves and sent them to the Caribbean islands.20 In other peripheral regions, such as Guatemala, Yucatan, and Nuevo Leon, there was a large slave trade. In 1532, Fuenleal reported that every Spaniard was ardently trying to obtain slaves because the discovery of new mines had raised their price to 40 pesos.21 Fifty-five years later, this phenomenon still continued. The import of Nuevo Leon slaves for the mines in the central region reached such proportions that the viceroy had to issue a decree banning this trade and ordering New Spain's magistrates, and particularly those in certain mining areas, to arrest any individual who brought in captured Indians from Nuevo Le6n to sell in the mines.22 In the sixteenth century, some laborers in the mines and in those enterprises that depended on them were slaves. In the 1570s, there were 1,100 Indian slaves, 800 encomienda Indians, and 2,600 naborios working in the mines of Guerrero, Mexico, and Michoacan. The orders to Viceroy Mendoza mandated that the mines should be worked by Indian and black slaves.23 In 1579, a miner requested a repartimiento of Indians for his Pachuca mines because his slaves had died in an epidemic.24 A year later, another made a similar request because he was too poor to purchase the slaves needed for his Temazcaltepec mines. The discovery of the Zacatecas mines, and the development of all kinds of supplementary enterprises in an area inhabited only by indios

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bravos, created a great demand for labor. To meet it, the Spaniards instigated wars against the Zacatecs and the guachichiles (1561).25 The expeditions to procure slaves were demanded by the Spanish residents of the new mining centers and justified by prelates who endorsed the use of captured Indians as slaves for a limited time (1569), although slavery had been abolished twenty-seven years earlier.26 The 1503, 1508, 1511, and 1526 royal decrees authorized the enslavement of Indians who offered resistance to the conquistadores, and in 1528 this authorization was extended to New Spain.27 Thereafter, legislation was fairly ambiguous and wavered according to the fiscal needs of the Crown and the relative power of the various parties exerting influence over the Crown. The registration of all slaves and a review of all property titles were ordered in 1529. Expeditions to hunt down slaves without official license were banned on penalty of death. Those slaves wrongfully held or not registered were to be regarded automatically as free, and the iron to brand new slaves could be used only with Archbishop Zumarraga's consent.28 The enslavement of new Indians was definitively banned in 1530. However, in 1534, during an early mining boom, the king learned that following the banning of slavery the boldness of the indios bravos had grown, and he ordered that those captured in war be enslaved and their women and offspring turned into naborios.29 The new laws of 1542 expressly banned once again chattel slavery in all its forms. Available information on the measures that followed this momentous reform gives one an idea of the number of Indian chattel slaves during that period. Las Casas estimated that there were over three million Indian slaves in New Spain, Central America, and Venezuela.30 Motolinia, on the other hand, limited their number in New Spain to between one hundred and two hundred thousand.31 In a recent study based on a comprehensive survey of data from very different sources, Jean Pierre Berthe gives his view on this divergence: It must be said plainly that available documentation does not enable us to establish with any degree of certainty the number of Indians enslaved, but everything points to the fact that it must have been very high. While it may be impossible to corroborate Las Casas' estimates statistically, it must be acknowledged that they offer a truer idea of the effect of slavery on Indian societies than those of Motolinia. Roughly until the 1550s, colonial society as a whole—with the exception of religious orders and a few royal officials—tended decidedly to support the preservation of Indian slavery. This is so, because their more profitable economic activities depended on it to

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such an extent that the abolition of slavery seemed to threaten their very existence.32 The number of slaves declined gradually, but the phenomenon did not disappear. Slavery was again partially legalized in 1558. It was established that Indians taken in the wars against the lacandones and the pochtulas "be had as slaves/' and in 1569 a similar measure was applied to Indians in the Northwest.33 A marginal element, Indian chattel slavery persisted throughout the remaining colonial period, as royal decrees in 1578, 1609, 1618, 1631, 1662, 1663, and 167934 aimed to restrain it, and the decree of Hidalgo in Guadalajara, which freed all slaves, so indicates. Indian chattel slavery did not prove to be a profitable sytem of exploitation. As Spaniards became integrated into the new society, it was more feasible to resort to forms consistent with the pre-Columbian organization of Indian society. Under the encomienda or repartimiento system, there was no need to buy the laborer. Furthermore, mortality— which undoubtedly rose with slavery—had to be curbed. Thus, from the latter half of the sixteenth century, chattel slavery took a secondary role. Black slavery was introduced very early on into New Spain's economy. Blacks were stronger and better built, they better endured the strain of certain heavy tasks, and, above all, they were better adapted to tropical areas, which proved fatal for Indians from the cold lands. They also possessed greater immunity against certain contagious diseases that obliterated the indigenous population. The colonizers demanded on several occasions the import of black slaves, and the authorities advocated it. However, due to the abundance of local labor, it never reached the scope of the slave trade in the Caribbean, Central America, the United States, and Brazil. Around 1560, there were almost as many blacks (16,147) as Spaniards (20,211) in Mexico. Their number rose to a peak of 35,000 and some 100,000 mulattoes in the middle of the seventeenth century.35 But, victims of their condition of slavery and of epidemics, the black population did not grow. With the gradual decline in imports and the rise oimestizaje, their absolute number decreased: on the eve of independence, there were only 10,000. Working conditions of black slaves were highly burdensome, though not as much as in other colonies. The regulations of 1545 established that they had to work from sunrise to sundown, under strict care and supervision. They were banned from carrying arms, assembling, and becoming members of cofradias. Blacks who fled ran the risk of castration. The alguaciles who captured them were rewarded.36 Inquisition magistrates sentenced blacks accused of blasphemy, even if they had committed it while being whipped

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by their masters. Civilian officials often punished blacks with lashes or by assigning them to the hardest chores in mines and workshops.37 In Mexico City in the seventeenth century, there was a special market for buying and selling black slaves in the site previously occupied by the city's rubbish heap. The capital's Spanish residents regarded the auctions as an undesirable but necessary task.38 Such crass exploitation prompted outbursts of rebellion, almost from the very first decades of the colony. The first uprising took place in 1537.39 Seven years later, after uncovering a conspiracy, Viceroy Mendoza rigorously banned further imports of slaves. In 1548, following rumors of revolts, the viceroy issued orders forbidding the exchange or sale of arms to free or enslaved blacks and imposing a curfew on all blacks. Slaves could not gather in groups of three or more, unless accompanied by their masters.40 In 1550, Motolinia suggested the construction of a fort in Puebla de los Angeles, because there were so many blacks and they had plotted several times to revolt and to kill the Spaniards.41 In 1609, black slaves in Orizaba rebelled, and later there were a series of uprisings in the region of the Gulf of Mexico. The slave rebellion in 1735 in the Cordoba region forced the government to call in troops from Veracruz, Orizaba, and other areas. In the last four decades of the sixteenth century the viceroyalty experienced a series of insurrections which surpassed all earlier revolts. Between 1560 and 1580 black slaves in mining centers, cattle ranchos and fincas, and toward the end of the century in the eastern sugar plantations, fled from their masters like never before. At times, looking for an alliance with the Indians, the insurgent blacks would venture outside their caves and hideouts to attack ranchos, burn sugar plantations and mills, kill the owners and free the slaves [and] to rob travelers.42 Spanish laws made manumission of slaves easier, so free blacks engaged in various activities from early on: cowboys, muleteers, foremen, petty traders, and artisans.43 The massive enslavement of Indians and blacks lasted roughly one generation, the time needed to carry out a fusion of the institutions of both societies. Pillage, wars of conquest, and original expeditions were on the agenda,- the major mining centers had not yet sprung up. The massive slavery of the early decades of the colony seems to have provided a temporary solution to the labor problems faced by the conquerors. Moreover, it was a solution deeply rooted in Mediterranean reality. Since the eighth century, Christians and Moors had fought each other in the Iberian peninsula, enslaving prisoners. Slavery thus survived without any hindrance until the end of the Middle Ages: "in the

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early decades of the fifteenth century, the Mediterranean slave trade reached its peak, and the flourishing cities in northern Italy, the Moorish urban centers from Cirenaica in the west to Gibraltar, the Spanish cities of Aragon and Catalonia, those of the kingdoms of Mallorca and Portugal, were to a considerable extent sustained by slave labor/744 In New Spain, as the new system took shape, chattel slavery became a complementary element in agriculture and mining. It was used only where the encomienda, the repartimiento, or the supply of farmhands could not satisfy the specific needs of enterprises. A very different situation prevailed in two sectors of New Spain's economy, where slavery was kept up, if not as the sole form of exploitation, certainly as the main one, for the whole duration of the colony: the sugar mill and the obraje. All government efforts to abolish or restrict slavery in them failed. At the end of the colony, just as at its beginnings, the slave labor force constituted the major core of the labor force. The obrajes can in fact serve as a document of every form of slavery present in New Spain. There were Indians enslaved for debts or crimes against the government; blacks purposely brought from Africa; Chinese, mestizos, or mulattoes with criminal records; Indians who, having started work as part of encomiendas or repartimientos or as naborios, were simply kidnapped; pirates and other foreigners captured around the coast, and so forth. These slaves and semislaves had lost theirfreedomof movement; they were bought, transferred, and sold. Working conditions were appalling, and the pace of work was sustained by all kinds of punishments, including corporal ones. The obraje laborer was regarded as the lowest rung in society.45 Available descriptions of working conditions in obrajes resemble those that have been passed on to us on the Zucht und Spinnhaus (prison and textile workshop) in Germany and other countries during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the seventeenth century, friar Antonio Vazquez de Espinosa described a Puebla obraje in the following terms: There are in this city obrajes where a substantial amount of fine cloths, sackcloths, woolen fabrics are manufactured in which gentiles earn profits, since this is one of the strongest businesses in the land and even those who have obrajes are gentiles in their Christianity, and in order to have their obrajes fully supplied with people . . . they pay individuals whose job is to deceive poor innocents, and who when they see some Indian stranger, with tricks or under the pretext of making him carry something in his basket like a porter, paying him, they would take him to the obraje and once inside they would close the hatch and the wretched would never

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again leave that prison, until he dies to be buried and this way they have caught and deceived many married Indians, with children who have been left forgotten for twenty years and more without their wives and children knowing about them, because even if they want to leave they cannot, such is the great care taken with the closing of the gates; these Indians are engaged in carding, spinning, weaving and other tasks in the manufacturing of cloths and woolen fabrics, from which the owners receive their profits through such unjust and illegal means.46 Sugar mills, on the other hand, were based above all on black slavery. Working conditions were such that most black rebellions originated precisely in the regions where such mills were located. However, conditions for Indian laborers working in these mills were often worse, and viceroys would repeatedly issue orders that their food and working day be similar to those of black slaves.47 Barrett's work [The Sugar Hacienda of the Marques del Valle) enables one to provide an outline of black and Indian slave labor in a sugar mill: the hacienda of the Marqueses del Valle began to import black slaves in 1544. Cortes negotiated with Lomelin, a Genoan, the purchase of five hundred slaves who arrived in several lots. Imports continued until late 1680. Half of the slaves who worked in the mill during this period had been born in America, the other half had been brought over. During the latter half of the sixteenth century and the first two decades of the seventeenth century, slaves constituted a substantial sector of the labor force. In the early eighteenth century, the number of black slaves began to decline,- by the middle of the century, many of them had fled, and no attempts were made to recapture them. In the peak years of slave labor, the number of blacks reached 153. Twenty-five percent of black slaves died during the first seven years following their arrival in New Spain. The average span of their working life was twenty years. On the hacienda, they were subjected to the most brutal submission. They could neither speak in the presence of Spaniards nor look them in the face. Inventories always indicate the existence of instruments of torture: whips, collars, chains, and shackles. Public punishments were common. A black slave under 12 years of age was worth 300 pesos, and an adult, 400. The price began to drop from age 50. The mill also had Indian slaves. In 1549, there were 165, twice the number of black slaves. They had been brought from various regions of Mexico and Guatemala. A small group worked with wool, but the majority were engaged in sugar processing, with specialized jobs: potters, coachmen, boilermakers; one of them was a blacksmith. There were also a few Indian prisoners who were like slaves. To procure them,

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the hacienda paid the governor a sum equivalent to the prisoners' debts. In addition to these workers, there were also others recruited under the repartimiento system, as well as peons and free wage laborers.48 Generalized Latent Slavery Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the great majority of Indians were subjected to the encomienda and/or the repartimiento. These two systems of extraeconomic coercion differed significantly with regard to the relation between the state and the Spanish colonos, as well as the mechanism of their social division of labor. However, in practice, the status of the Indian as laborer was similar: without losing his condition of comunero, he rendered services in the properties of colonos under direct coercion. Forged from military conquest and the collapse of the old spiritual world, the power of Spaniards over the defeated was immense. Its arbitrariness was limited only by the position of the colono vis-a-vis the state, the nature of the enterprise owned by him, and the availability of Indians. Indians tied to the encomienda or repartimiento were not slaves in the same sense as those subjected to chattel slavery, like blacks in the Caribbean or North American plantations. They had not been torn away from the preexistingrelations of their society: they remained comuneros, family members, users of land, and even owners of means of production. They enjoyed certain civil rights and could even take a master to court. In other words, they had not been reduced to the condition of instruments of production, and they retained "human functions." But under the legal forms of the encomienda and the repartimiento lay hidden the generalized latent slavery of the Indian population. The encomendado or repartido had not been torn away from his communal life, but had been brutally transformed into an instrument to build a new economy and a new society alien to the logic of the development of his own, an economy and a society in which he occupied the lowest social rung. He was not the private property of the conqueror, but was treated as "borrowed property" whose use value had to be utilized in the shortest possible time. His condition was that of collective slave who was available randomly to cultivate the land in wheat farms, to transform Tenochtitlan into Mexico City, to work silver ingenios located many miles away from his community, or to carry, in the capacity of tameme (porter), the conqueror's belongings in the jungles of Central America. Had the Spaniards established from the very beginning a plantation and mining economy based on peonage and chattel slavery, the preColumbian social structure would have broken up quickly. But latent slavery was already present in the old structure: "If an Indian ruler called

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a macehual, the latter"—says Ramirez de Fuenleal—"was a slave."49 Thus, the encomienda and the repartimiento made generalized Indian slavery possible for the wider community of Spaniards, without destroying the old social relations, which became part of the legacy of Mexican society in its subsequent development. Reduced to the condition of "talking objects," black slaves in the United States transferred very little of their tribal structure to the new North American society. Transformed into "borrowed goods," encomienda and repartimiento Indians preserved their old social relations. The secret of continuity lay in the system of latent and generalized slavery that the encomienda and the repartimiento shielded and the Crown's protection of the Indian community. It was during the colony's first half-century that the nature of latent slavery concealed by the encomienda and the repartimiento was manifested most clearly. But the fact that, subsequently, the more brutal elements were mitigated and improved in response to a twofold need imposed by demographic trends and Indian resistance does not change its essence. At the heart of latent slavery, there always lies the possibility that it might be transformed into manifest slavery, and the boundaries between the two are often blurred. Writes Gibson, The formal distinction between encomienda and slavery failed to gain acceptance in the early period. The reasons are obvious. The whole anterior history of encomienda in the Antilles had been closely related to enslavement. The careful differentiation set forth in royal law had a distant and impractical aspect. Indians captured in war might be legitimately enslaved even in the monarch's view, and there was a sense in which all the native inhabitants of the Valley had been captured in war. . . . In practice, both slavery and encomienda were fairly flexible, since under either system laborers could be sold and/or hired to other entrepreneurs and used in illegal ways.50 The boundaries between the two conditions were often ambiguous: to prevent future competition, Spanish artisans in 1531 opposed the enrolling of free Indians in the trades "because if they have to have Indians, they want to have those whom they had as slaves and of those there are plenty with the said officials because they can draw from them ceaselessly."51 In some areas, married and single Indian women were distributed for the encomenderos' personal service. They kept them permanently, forcing them to marry their black and mulatto slaves.52 The conquistador Gonzalo de Salazar employed Indians given to him as encomienda to transport his belongings to Veracruz immediately after

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a trip to Spain. More than two hundred of them died carrying out this task.53 Miners preferred to use encomienda Indians for loading and carrying because mortality among tamemes was very high, and they reserved their slaves for direct work in the mines.54 When short of funds, Cortes, Gonzalez de Guzman, and other conquistadores used to brand some of their encomienda Indians and sell them as slaves to make money. Encomenderos used their Indians in all forms of manual labor, in building, farming, and mining, and for the supply of whatever the country yielded. They overtaxed and overworked them. They jailed them, killed them, beat them, and set dogs on them. They seized their goods, destroyed their agriculture, and took their women. They used them as beasts of burden... . . . and for a long time they even challenged doctrinally their human condition and their right to possess a soul.55 As sources indicate, in real life, encomienda Indians were subject to: 1. Insults, beatings, torture, loss of freedom, and murder. 2. Being bought and sold or transferred along with the encomiendas. 3. Being hired to other encomenderos. 4. Being branded and sold as slaves during hard times. 5. Theft of women. 6. Being reduced to the condition of beasts of burden in deadly marches. It is true that the most destructive aspects of the encomienda and the repartimiento had become less common toward the end of the sixteenth century. Nevertheless, as legislation suggests, they never disappeared altogether. Furthermore, they were effectively replaced by less obvious mechanisms. A series of racial and economic restrictions weighed upon the Indian who was still at the mercy of the collective needs of the republica de los espanoles. His situation gained a new dimension only when his personal and direct subjection as peon to the individual owner of vast latifundios, the hacendado, became generalized. Although the institutions of the encomienda and the repartimiento underwent transformations, the major elements of Indian slavery were preserved. Its influence on every aspect of the development of Mexican society was to be profoundly felt. Despite the spread of slavery of one type or another, New Spain's society never went through a "slave mode of production." It must not be forgotten that generalized Indian slavery served to flood with cheap silver a Europe in the midst of a socioeconomic revolution and to lay the foundations of feudal economic units in Mexico.

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Generalized slavery did not make New Spain's society into a slave system any more than commercial and usurer's capital in ancient Rome turned the latter into a capitalist emporium. Black slavery in the United States established the foundations for the development of industrial capitalism; Indian slavery in New Spain served to precipitate the rise of a system in which feudalism was closely entwined with embryonic capitalism. The Encomienda In the sixteenth century, the encomienda was the vital cell of New Spain's economic organism. There were other institutions—virtually all those that would gain significance later on—but the encomienda dominated the scene. All the threads of the system intersected within it: the encomienda was to New Spain's contemporary society what the manor was to feudal Europe or the manufacturing industry was to capitalism. Hence, the difficulties inherent in its analysis: as the central category of a heterogeneous social structure, the encomienda has legal, economic, and political traits that seem contradictory and incompatible. This accounts for the frequent substitution of analysis with description 56 and for one-sided and opposing definitions. Above all, then, it is necessary to bear in mind that in Mexico the encomienda in the strict sense experienced a brief development, that unlike other areas of Spanish America it was a transitional phenomenon that predated the consolidation of the economy of the republica de los espanoles and that declined with it. In the 1530s, the encomienda prevailed and the encomenderos constituted the most powerful sector of the dominant class.57 Toward the middle of the century, its influence began to encounter serious limitations. Following the New Laws, it was so unstable that encomendero families left New Spain. Before 1600, the encomenderos had in fact lost their rights over Indian labor and had seen their tribute in kind severely reduced by the Crown and the drop in population. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, encomiendas were still granted or their validity extended, but these had little in common with the institution that had prevailed in the sixteenth century. Most of them were instances of fixed incomes assigned to the fiscal revenue of certain areas or to some sector of the royal treasury. They were apportioned to noble families—often absentees—and the collection and payment of the income were in the hands of the Crown.58 Legally, the encomienda was an official allocation of Indian communities to a favored colonizer. The encomendero had obligations of a military, public right, and religious nature vis-a-vis the Crown and the

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church; he had to ensure the acquiescence of the Indians, to regulate their administration and to convert them to Christianity.59 In return, he obtained the right to the tribute they paid. The encomienda was not property but usufruct. The Crown retained ownership of the land and natural resources. The Indians were free—the king's, not the encomendero's, subjects. The encomienda was inalienable, it could not be sold or transferred; when the encomendero passed away, possession reverted to the Crown. Nor could it be bequeathed (though the king did temporarily confer this condition on it).60 From a juridical point of view, the encomienda presented great obstacles to the consolidation of a system of private property. The encomendero's right over Indian labor issued from a royal grant and continued to depend on it, since it could not be transformed into ownership of land or Indians. In the short term, the grant was subject to the goodwill of the authority conferring it: every change of audiencia or viceroy spread uncertainty among encomenderos. In the long term, its negotiability was limited, since it was not legally transferable. The development of a system based on private ownership of land and means of production inevitably clashed with the encomienda as a juridical institution. Either the latter was transformed into ownership in the full sense of the word or it ceased to exist as a legal institution. The encomenderos fought dauntlessly to attain the former. When they failed, their fate was decided. The development of private property sentenced them, as encomenderos, to death, without disowning them as mineowners, hacendados, obrajeros, and so on. However, the legal form of the encomienda does not reveal its true economic function—first, because it tells nothing about how tribute was applied, that is to say, to what use was the encomendados' surplus labor put, and, second, because laws were treated in the well-known "obey but do not comply" manner, and the royal status of the encomienda was very often illegal or at any rate semilegal. The economic history of New Spain began with the encounter of two elements: the Indian community, which provided a productive base, and the colonizers, agents without the means to form a new society. From this encounter, there emerged a new economy based less and less on the community and its technique, an economy embodied in the estancia, the hacienda, the mine, the artisan worshop, and the obraje. How did this miracle come about? What means were used to finance the rise of these new economic units? The main answer—albeit, not the only one— to that question must be found in the encomienda. The Spaniards who came to New Spain had no capital, and few among them were peasants or artisans. To finance their ventures, they had to resort to the surplus produced within the framework of Indian society.

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Without state aid, private wealth was the necessary condition for any activity of conquest, wealth which barring a few exceptions, emigrants to the Indies did not bring with them . . . From the data we have gathered on the origin of those fortunes which financed the ventures of conquest we learn that they were made in America and that their sources of origin were limited: plunder, Indian trade, exploitation of the repartimiento and encomienda, profits from ventures and ransom and commerce.61 When the days of plunder and pillage that went with the Conquest were over, the surplus from the communities took the economic form of tribute (in kind and labor). The economy of the republica de los espanoles owed its origins to Indian tribute,- hence, the significance of studying the amount of tribute and what it was used for. The Crown, the church, and the encomenderos had access to tribute. The Crown invested particularly in the consolidation of its power and the expansion of its empire within New Spain and elsewhere. The church provides a more complex case: it spent a fantastic amount of resources erecting numerous temples and monasteries that to this day form an inseparable part of the Mexican landscape, as well as social welfare works such as hospitals, orphanages, and the like. Later on, it established agricultural, manufacturing, financial, and commercial enterprises. But they were all subject to the overall interests of the colony's most powerful political, ideological, and economic corporation. The juridical institution that granted private individuals rights over Indian tribute was the encomienda. The latter thus became the principal economic relationship between Indian laborers and the new lords. The fundamental difference between the encomienda and subsequent institutions of the new economy lay in the fact that, in the former, there was a decided predominance of Indian production within the framework of the traditional community. In the last analysis, the encomienda, based on the tributary exploitation of the community, did not, however, serve to entrench a bureaucratic-tributary system; instead, it destroyed it. In many instances, Indian tribute was used for the establishment of private property and the gradual replacement of the community with alternative units of production rather than for the personal use of the encomendero and the reproduction of the community. In practice, the role of many encomenderos bore little resemblance to that of a tribute lord whose present and future income derived from rent and whose economic concern was to balance the latter in accord with consumption needs. The encomendero is above all a man of his time, driven by the profit motive and with wealth as his goal. Among his contemporar-

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ies, the encomendero is the man of action, most strongly affected by the ideas and yearnings of a new world. He is very far from medieval man; he is the product of a radically different way of perceiving the world and life . . . thus, unlike the feudal lord, he does not confine himself to the simple enjoyment of tributes and services but will turn both into the principal basis of various ventures, the economic core of multiple earnings.62 Many encomenderos took a very active part in the establishment and operation of mines, farms, cattle estancias, obrajes, mills, and commercial enterprises. On this question, there are many documents brilliantly gathered and introduced by Jose Miranda. The encomendero Sebastian Grijalva was a partner in two mining companies. Fernando Alonso contributed two hundred Indian slaves along with tools to a mining company and supplied Mexico City with meat. Francisco de Santa Cruz, also an encomendero, owned a mill, a small shop, and a cattle estancia.63 But the most outstanding example of entrepreneurial activities by an encomendero was set by Cortes himself who, according to a report by one of the oidores of the Segunda Audiencia, had four hundred Indians near Cuernavaca who planted sugarcane and three hundred who transported it. A hundred men carried heavy stones from the hills for a building under construction. A considerable number of Indians were engaged in planting grapes, and others, in feeding silkworms. As many more were engaged in planting cotton. Furthermore, the inhabitants of Cuernavaca had to send 140 loads of corn, chile, beans, and the like to Cortes's mines. Cortes had become partners with Italian and Spanish merchants to operate various enterprises and engaged in overseas trade.64 Very rarely did the encomenderos have all the necessary means to establish enterprises. Hence, they would set up partnerships with other encomenderos or with merchants. Two or more encomenderos might even join resources to operate enterprises of the most diverse nature in partnership. There were also partnerships between encomenderos and Indian communities to exploit silk, indigo, and so on.65 The encomendero was unquestionably—as Miranda says—the center of a series of economic and juridical relations that bound the tributary-communal sector to the new developing economy. Thus, he appeared simultaneously as merchant, company partner, building contractor, master of artisan and other laborers, and partner in sales contracts and transfers. But while the encomendero might be rightfully classified as the caballero de la acumulaci6n primitiva (nobleman of primitive accumulation),66 in no way is he a true bourgeois. We must not confuse the "entrepreneurial spirit"—present virtually throughout all historical ages—with the role of capitalist. As the encomendero spurred the new

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economy on—and this aspect has escaped Miranda's notice—he did not on the whole establish a series of independent enterprises, but a set of elements that formed part of the same self-sufficient unit (the estancia). An obraje owner, he would have acquired a herd of sheep and would have sown corn for his laborer. Having discovered a mine, he would have set up a mill to grind the ore and sawmills to supply his own construction materials. Most of the time, the encomendero1 s hectic "entrepreneurial'' activity resulted in the growth of sets of complementary elements integrated into a relatively self-sufficient whole rather than a series of independent units. Caballero de la acumulacidn primitiva, the encomendero was even more "entrepreneur of the feudal economy." The greater part of his income was squandered on ventures of conquest and exploration financed by him; on the ostentation of urban aristocratic life, which enabled him to be close to the organs of power; and on a coat of arms and the right to belong to a Spanish military order, which he bought from the king. The encomendero kept a veritable court of relatives, men-at-arms, servants, and so on, most of whom did not work. Seldom did he manage his own affairs directly in the encomienda-, for that, he relied on the assistance of his mayordomos, whose pay and knowledge were adequate enough to take responsibility for all practical matters and who, furthermore, had wide powers. At the same time that he was an entrepreneur, the encomendero was also an aristocrat, a conqueror, and a royal official. His activity was governed by the desire to adopt fully the way of life of the Spanish dominant class—a way of life that, instead of becoming bourgeois, soon became feudal. The encomienda boom has been identified with an unusually severe period of Indian exploitation. This was no coincidence. The Conquest introduced a new element in the exploitation of macehuales. The encomienda was at the same time an instrument of primitive accumulation, feudal expropriation, and the brutal uprooting of the Indian laborer from the Stone Age to the sixteenth century. The labor and surplus product necessary to finance the mines, particularly, and the economic complex around them, but also the estancias that supplied the new Spanish cities, had to be extracted from the Indian community, which the Conquest had thrown into crisis. Even if there were no Black Legend, the analogy drawn from European countries and their other colonies would have suggested that this process could not have been smooth or idyllic. Under conditions of colonial exploitation, silver for Europe and the economy of the republica de los espanoles could be obtained only at the expense of nameless suffering and even the physical destruction of entire villages. There had been plunder and mass murder under feudalism, but only the fact that a substantial share of production was directed at the

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national and, particularly, the international market, that the influence of capital spread, and that profit became one of the incentives for production can account for the levels of exploitation established in the encomiendas of New Spain once the euphoria of pillage was over. The encomienda was integrated from the beginning into the sphere of mercantile circulation through which the colonial system carried out its exploitative function. Products from the more remote communities had to be transformed from use values into exchange values and then into money before they could be accumulated in Europe. And it is this mercantile surface that has led those analysts who equate trade with capitalism to regard it as a capitalist institution, taking no notice of its mode of production. When the Spanish conquest of Mexico came to an end, the king, alarmed by the experience gained in the islands, had already decided to abolish the encomienda. Thus, from its very early stages in New Spain, this institution encountered opposition—sometimes muted, others open—from the Crown.67 The latter would have preferred to have imposed its direct control over a society of tributary communities from the start and to have employed Indian labor intensively only in the mining sector. But the conquistadores had managed to subdue the Indians by themselves, and they were set on getting something back. Furthermore, Cortes's men had not been paid for more than three years, and the greater share of the plunder had been sent to the emperor to win his favor. The conquistadores were essential to preserve the newly subdued kingdoms. How could their loyalty, their stay in the new lands, and their fulfillment of their military duties be assured? The Crown had neither the power nor the necessary funds to turn them into simple rent collectors. The only solution was to give the conquistadores direct access to Indian tribute in kind and in labor. Determined not to confer feudal possession rights over land and subjects, the king opted for the lesser evil: he accepted the encomienda, a temporary and precarious grant. Thus did the encomienda, a halfway point between contradictory interests, also come to prevail, by force of circumstances, in New Spain. After some hesitation, the royal provision of November 1526, incorporated into the instructions for New Spain's first audiencia, empowered the latter to distribute Indians. Cortes himself received 23,000 Indians in encomienda, though in practice he appropriated 50,000.68 Despite endeavors on the part of encomenderos, the Crown never conferred on the encomienda the status of an estate in perpetuity; it extended its legality only when it was beginning to dwindle and when the encomenderos' powers had been severely curtailed: its life prolonged over three (1555), four (1607), and five (1627) generations, the encomienda

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began to be regarded as hereditary (albeit not transferable) at a time when the encomendero was no more than a rentier of the royal treasury.69 The encomienda, such as it was established in the beginning, tended in practice to be a personal relation between the Indian laborer and the encomendero. The Crown did all in its power to end this personal relation. In 1536, and especially in 1542, it abolished compulsory work for the encomendero and set up in its place the repartimiento, in accordance with which the encomendero himself had to request permission to use Indians given to him in encomienda. This trend was also reflected when the Crown retained the right to fix the amount of tribute. Thus, the Indian-viceroy-encomendero relation gradually replaced the personal relation between Indian and encomendero. The process culminated in the abolition of the encomendero's right to collect tribute directly and his transformation into a simple rentier. The uncertainty that characterized the encomienda intensified its destructive nature and the brutality of Indian exploitation. Uncertain of their rights and enjoying great freedom of action given their distance from a central power, encomenderos took advantage of those opportunities offered by the expansion of the new economy and promptly transferred tribute revenues to new ventures. Friar Juan de Zumarraga pointed out that if the encomienda had been granted in perpetuity, its beneficiaries would not have been so fearful of losing their rights every time there was a change of administration and would have concerned themselves more with the condition of their subjects, easing their living and working conditions to earn their loyalty. They would also have concerned themselves with planting vines and olives and raising productivity within the communities. The bishop-elect of Mexico pointed out that under prevailing conditions no one dared to carry out improvements and that Indians were squeezed dry without any thoughts for the future.70 While the Crown and the church tried to fix tribute at a level that would keep the communities alive and ensure their reproduction, the encomenderos raised their demands to meet the levels required by primitive accumulation and the rise of the new enterprises. The policy pursued by the former favored the perpetuation of a bureaucratictributary structure, while the one pursued by the latter favored the rise of the new feudal-capitalist economy, even at the expense of the community's disappearance. At a formal level, the similarity to some oriental precapitalist phenomena is obvious: in a precapitalist, though monetary, system, based on community production and a despotic central power, the military— who are at the same time tax collectors—took on despotic powers in areas beyond the reach of state power.71 Now, to break off the analysis

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at this point would be like equating slavery in ancient Rome with its counterpart in the English colonies in America. Just as the slave plantations in the United States provided the basis for the development of capitalism rather than a slave mode of production, so did the encomienda—despite its tributary form of exploitation—serve to bring to life a structure based on private property in which feudalism and embryonic capitalism were entwined. Nor was the encomienda a capitalist institution, as another group of writers claims. Such an argument makes no distinction between encomienda and encomendero. The encomienda functioned as a tributary institution based on the community, not as a mining, manufacturing, or commercial concern. The encomendero, on the other hand, could carry out his triple role of tribute lord, feudal landowner, and entrepreneur with a clear conscience. Cortes was an encomendero, but that did not turn his business into an encomienda. The church was the major moneylender in the colony; that does not make usury a religious institution. Seventeenth-century documents indicate that the function of the encomienda as an institution was bound to the tributary system till the end. Wherever the encomendero did not become an hacendado or "entrepreneur"—and there were many such instances—he stubbornly opposed the repartimiento system and the development of the hacienda. The transition from the encomienda—a tributary institution—to the hacienda—a semifeudal unit—was at times accompanied by muted conflicts. As a transitional form, the encomienda could lead to either feudal or capitalist relations; it could also remain a tributary institution. The outcome did not depend on the encomienda but on the general economic conditions and the local socioeconomic framework within which it developed. In Mexico, the number of enterprises whose owners were not encomenderos increased very fast. The encomenderos who earlier had been noted for their disproportionate levies went on the defensive to stop "their" Indians from rendering services to other Spaniards, and placed all sorts of obstacles to the steady supply of workers to the private sector. By the early seventeenth-century, the encomienda no longer served as a transfer mechanism. It became "an element which preserved the villages; on the other hand, the concern of those colonos settled in mines and haciendas lay in taking and keeping workers away from the villages. "72 An encomendero, whose Indians were to be used for service in the mines, had their return trip paid at a rate of one real for every five leagues; others requested that their Indians not be forced to work in the mines; still others protected them from abuse at the hands of corregidores and the church; there was, on the part of encomenderos, generalized opposition to services to be rendered in haciendas, mills, sugar mills,

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and obrajes) to the repartimiento; and to the gananeria (farmhands). Insofar as the encomendero had not transformed himself into an hacendado or miner, he had ceased to be a caballero de acumulacidn primitiva to become a protector of the community and an ally of the Crown. Repartimiento At the time of the colony, the concepts of encomienda and repartimiento were applied in a broader and looser sense than that which is given to them in this work. F. A. Kirkpatrick has shown, for example, that in the sixteenth century the concept of repartimiento was used in at least three different ways: to denote (1) the forced sale of goods to Indians who were thus compelled to consume Spanish products or subject themselves to forced labor to pay debts,- (2) the allocation of consignments of Indians to colono enterprises or else the consignments themselves,- and (3) the granting of encomiendas (the phrase used was repartimiento de encomiendas) or the encomienda itself.73 The same applied to the concept of encomienda. Lockhart argues that it had little use in the Spanish Indies, and then in a generic sense: in the sense of "getting Indians in encomienda." Only in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, by which time the institution had already lost its true content, did the term become widespread.74 Nevertheless, research of an economic nature cannnot rely on these ambiguous concepts of encomienda and repartimiento. To study phenomena, one must reduce them to categories with clearly defined meaning, and to do so one has to resort to abstraction,- in other words, the reduction of phenomenon and category to their essential traits. The definition of the concept of encomienda that has been offered above (see pp. 120-128.) does not correspond to the notion held by sixteenthcentury individuals,- it corresponds instead to what the author regards as the essential and most generalized traits of the real phenomenon. Similarly, the category of repartimiento is used here only in the sense generally given to it in the late sixteenth and early seventeeth century (clause 2), and then in a much stricter sense. This method is legitimate given that the object of study is the phenomenon and not the idea of it held by contemporaries. The repartimiento, then, was the system of rationed and rotating labor within the economic units of thcrepiiblica delos espanoles, which affected both encomienda and other Indians and benefited a much wider property-owning class than that which had profited from the encomienda.75 To this must be added that unlike the encomiendas of Indians—given for good behavior in the king's service, which enabled the beneficiary to use them for whatever venture he considered suitable—

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the repartimientos were more commonly granted for well-defined economic ends and included a ban on using the Indians involved for anything else. Under the new system, the priority of requests was determined—in the last instance—by the viceroy, who could administratively restrict, extend, or revoke the repartimiento. The scale of priorities placed the needs of the development of the silver economy above those of the encomenderos. Thereafter the viceroy decided the pay and appointed the jueces repartidores who had to enforce his decisions. If the labor force was assigned without his knowledge, he overruled it. Any beneficiary had to show the jueces repartidores a warrant from the viceroy conferring on him the right to the requested labor force. These warrants were not given until an investigation had been carried out at the actual site by local officials. Thus, for example, on September 29, 1579, viceroy Martin Enriquez ordered the alcalde mayor of Queretaro to report on the nature and size of the cattle business of a certain Langaro Sanchez, so that he might decide whether the petition put in by the latter with a view to secure repartimiento Indians was justified. On occasions the viceroy would even request an investigation that went well beyond the operation of the petitioner. Thus, on February 13, 1591 Luis de Velasco the Younger ordered the alcalde mayor of Avalos to report accurately on the nature of the operation of Alonso de Avalos Saavedra, who had asked for one hundred Indians for harvesting and plowing. The viceroy also wished to learn what would be the benefit for neighboring monasteries and for the residents of Avalos, which Indians might be sent and how far away and, finally, whether there were other recruitments in the area. Viceroy Ziiniga y A., count of Monterrey, ordered, in 1599, a less comprehensive report on the estancias of Antonio de Saavedra, who owned one estancia de ganado mayor of some 1,750 has. [hectares] and a second one of ganado menor of 780 has. The point was to establish whether this breeder of cattle and lambs really did need Indians.76 Under the agrarian repartimiento, communities had to supply Spanish enterprises 2 percent (4 percent later on) of their workers and 4 percent (later, 10 percent) during periods of intense activity, to carry out compulsory work. Indians on a particular gang left every Monday morning. They started work on Tuesday and carried on until the following Monday, when they were paid and began their return home. Their jobs were taken over that same day by other laborers who had come to replace them.

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This is how, according to an order from viceroy Martin Enriquez dated February 19, the repartimiento of the village of Atzcapotzalco, where Juan Sanchez Adriano was juez repartidor, worked in 1580. This repartimiento also affected smaller settlements dependent on the head village, where the repartidor, who had to have eight hundred and seventy-two Indians each week for distribution, lived. These men came from twenty-three villages and districts. Texcoco, for example, had to send one hundred and forty and Tepeaulco a hundred. Between the months of November and April the quotas were reduced by half because there was less work. The repartidor had a register of repartimiento beneficiaries with the labor fees due. Every Indian had to render a week's service three times a year,- these weeks began on a Tuesday and ended on the following Monday evening. The pay was four reales for a sixday working week. One-fifth of the Indian population was exempt from compulsory labor,- this percentage included privileged individuals, the old and the sick. Among the privileged ones were the governor, whose main function was that of treasurer of the caja del pueblo (he was often a cacique, and for that reason alone he did not owe any service, but he also held certain traditional aristocratic powers, which predated the conquest), the regidores (between one and four per village) and the alcaldes (one or two), as well as the alguaciles who helped them.77 The communities were further burdened by repartimientos for mining, public works, transport, domestic service, and the like, which represented variations on a theme. Better suited to the development of the economy of the republica de los espanoles than the encomienda, the repartimiento displayed contradictions that rendered it obsolete within a century. The repartimiento aimed to reconcile necessarily antagonistic processes and interests: to supply Spanish enterprises with a steady labor force from the Indian community protected by it, thus preventing an excessive drain of workers,- to incorporate Indians as individuals into the framework of the new economy, and, concomitantly, to preserve their communal ties (each Indian was subject to the repartimiento no more than two or three times a year, and a performance pass served as a safeguard against excessive demands). This was, of course, a transitory state of affairs. The dynamics of the new economy would inevitably lead to the absolute subordination of the community to the mine, the hacienda, and so on, the breaking up of the individual's ties with his original socioeconomic cell, and his direct subjection to the new unit of production. The process of substitution of the encomienda by the repartimiento moved forward rapidly through-

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out the decade of the sixties. At the end of the century, the new system of extraeconomic coercion had become generalized. The viceroy protected an hacendado who employed Indians from a village given in encomienda, from the encomenderos' endeavors to retrieve them; he issued an order against an encomendero who wished to stop his Indians from having to work in the repartimiento at the Guanajuato mines,- he authorized taking Indians from a village belonging to the estate of the Marques del Valle to serve the Spanish owner of a sugar mill. The governor of the province of Yucatan was unable on his own to stop his encomienda Indians from serving in the repartimiento in the mines of San Luis and Sichu and appealed to the viceroy for that purpose.78 The encomenderos, who wanted to use Indian labor from "their" villages, had to request a repartimiento—which was often granted—and once given, it had to pay wages, like any other master.79 The replacement of the encomienda by the repartimiento went with the gradual disappearance of unpaid labor, peculiar to the tribute, and the generalization of the obligatory payment of wages. By the 1670s, unpaid labor survived only in some public works and some other isolated cases. The colonial subjection of Indians as a whole to the collective needs of the republica de los espanoles under the repartimiento system was particularly clear. Whenever there was a wheat shortage, the viceroy put pressure on Indians to fulfill their labor obligations, particularly to those Spanish farmers who regularly took grain to urban markets.80 Registers for 1616 indicate that over ten thousand Indians worked on Mexico City's drainage system during that year.81 The repartimientos for the sawmills in the vicinity of the capital were approved on the grounds that they were necessary to supply wood for public works.82 With the decline in Indian population and the consolidation of the new enterprises, the clash between the communities (supported by the central power and the encomenderos) and entrepreneurs intensified. The communities tried to curb the repartimiento) the entrepreneurs demanded its expansion. Illegal practices increased and abuses against Indians multiplied. I do not think that it would be possible for the Spanish haciendas, the buildings, farmlands, mines, cattle, monasteries, orders, to keep going or make headway without the service and assistance of Indians whose nature and little inclination to busy themselves, work and earn a living, represents such a drawback that they have always had to be forced to do that which they would have done had they had the capacity and courtesy, that is to conduct themselves for service. This violence is based on the needs of Spaniards and it is carried out for their sake . . . it is so distressful that it has

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prompted many members of religious orders to endeavor to put an end altogether to these repartimientos and personal services.83 To curb this process, the king made several attempts between 1601 and 1632 to control and even abolish the repartimiento. Competition between masters was increased in order to improve the treatment of Indians without mitigating extraeconomic coercion. With this purpose in mind, the king ordered in 1601 "to stop repartimientos of Indians sent then and in the past to work in fields, buildings, cattle tending and domestic service and any other services . . . Since engagement in such activities was not necessary for the preservation of the provinces, from then on... Indians would be taken and put up in the plazas for work, to deal with Spaniards or other Indians... They would be engaged for days or weeks and the Indians would leave with whomever they wanted and for as long as they wished. Menial and idle Spaniards, and free mestizos, blacks, mulattoes and zaimbagos could be forced to work in the same way."84 But the effects of the law were very limited, and the repartimiento continued in most areas, either openly, under its old name, or formally disguised by the new system of compulsory hiring*5 The repartimiento gave way only in the face of the spread of new forms of extraeconomic coercion that constituted a higher stage of the community's subordination to the new economy: the subjection of wage workers to Spanish enterprises through debts (peonage). Naborios, Gananes, and Peones When colonization began, Indians who, without being slaves nonetheless enjoyed less freedom than comuneros, were called naborios. In the latter half of the sixteenth century, this concept was applied to those workers who rendered services in Spanish units of production without being subject to the repartimiento*6 Gradually, the terms naborio, laborio, and gandn Indian became synonymous. There were wage workers in agriculture, the mines, and obrajes from the very beginning. At times, retrictions on movement because of debts or other mechanisms limited their freedom of contract. Nevertheless, there were also free wage laborers whose numbers grew considerably beginning in the last decades of the sixteenth century. However, they did not constitute a well-defined sector, clearly differentiated from those Indians subjected to diverse forms of extraeconomic coercion. Between those workers kept because of debts and free ones, there was a series of intermediate levels of dependence. The system of debt peonage in agriculture, which became widespread

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in the nineteenth century, arose from what at first sight might seem to be an embryo of semifree wage workers. 'The origin of the labor system in haciendas/' writes Zavala, "has to be found in voluntary gaiianeria rather than in compulsory encomiendas and repartimientos."*7 Free wage workers in the second half of the sixteenth century represented the liberation of the Indian from his obligations to the community and the Crown. Nevertheless, it was a temporary "liberation." It would lead to the consolidation of ties of direct extraeconomic coercion between the Indian laborer as an individual and the landowner, ties that were more immune from community or state intervention. It represented the dissolution of despotic-tributary relations and their replacement by the semiieud&lhacienda. In contrast to what happened under the encomienda or the repartimiento, the gandn or naborio Indian left the community economy definitively to move to the new units of the republica de los espanoles. Spanish owners derived great benefits from the labor of naborios and gananes. It was more productive than the cyclical repartimiento, with changes of gangs, and it saved the large investment needed to purchase slaves, but its spread clashed with those elements bound to the tributary economy: the community, the Crown, and the encomenderos. The most tenacious resistance to the development of the gahaneria came from the communities that were vigorously opposed to haciendas drawingtheirmembersaway.Theyinitiatedhearingstostopiflcend^dos from taking comuneros away by force; they demanded gananes in haciendas to continue to meet their repartimiento commitments,- they asked them to pay tributes imposed on the communities. For this purpose, they hired Spanish "protectors" who acted as their representatives before the authorities. At times, the dispute between communities and hacendados on the future of comuneros took a violent turn. The clash between the Indian community and the hacienda, not only over land, but, far more significantly, over the peasant, had begun. It was to continue over three centuries. Every further expansion of the hacienda rekindled the dispute, which was one of the major causes of the revolution in 1910. By the mid-seventeenth century, the labor of more or less indebted, more or less free, naborios, gananes, andpeones had already replaced the repartimiento** in Spanish properties. The evolution of encomiendarepartimiento-gananeria-debt peonage possessed its own internal logic: that of the substitution of the community by the new productive units; of the comunero by the worker tied to the hacienda, the obraje, and so on. The encomienda was an institution based essentially on the community. Only sporadically was the comunero's labor used outside it. The encomendero always remained, at least in one of his multiple personali-

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ties, a tribute lord. The repartimiento was a response to the development and proliferation of Spanish enterprises that did not belong to encomenderos. Through a rigid system, the Crown demanded that all comuneros give service in Spanish economic units. According to Borah's estimates, Indians over the age of fifteen had to give roughly 6.08 percent of their annual labor time for the mines and 6.3 percent for agricultural activities, not counting time spent traveling to the areas of work, which was considerable. Gananeria and debt peonage tied the worker and the community directly to the local hacendado. At the same time, it freed them from the guardianship of the central bureaucracy and avoided the huge waste involved in the coming and going of gangs. The transition of the comunero, now gandn acasillado, between the communal and the private economy, was about to come to an end.

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6. The Dynamics of the System

Up to this point, this study has emphasized the differences between the republica de los indios and the republica de los espanoles. Such a distinction is essential to an understanding of the heterogenous nature of Mexico's precapitalist formation. Now it is necessary to give a more detailed account of the relation between these two structures, in other words, the increasingly more intricate links binding them into a single system. Throughout the period of the Conquest—the first two decades— Spaniards obtained virtually all their supplies from the republica de los indios through pillage and noninstitutionalized tribute. The distinction between either form of appropriation was rather blurred. As colonization and mestizaje became more significant and the colonizers' power became established, the links between the declining republica de los indios and the expanding republica de los espanoles were of two clearly distinctive types: the encomienda, on the one hand, and tribute to the Crown, on the other. Through the former, the communities' surplus labor and product went into the establishment and development of new economic units,- through the second, the republica de los indios helped to meet the colonial demands of the Crown. There are some data on the relative importance of each one of these two forms of appropriation: in 1550 in New Spain there were 537 encomienda villages and 304 villages that belonged to the Crown. In 1560, there were 480 encomienda villages paying a tribute of 400,000 pesos a year,- those belonging to the Crown had risen to 320 and contributed 100,000 pesos. In 1571, there were 359 villages paying tribute to the Crown,- their population was estimated at 440,000 Indians, but their tribute was less than 150,000 pesos. In 1602, there were still 140 encomienda villages (note the considerable drop in numbers) with a tribute of 300,000 pesos, to which might be added 30,000 pesos from unclaimed villages.1

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As the encomienda weakened, the relation between the tworepiiblicas grew more complex. Comuneros' work in Spanish enterprises was secured through the repartimientO) the transfer of the product, through tribute. Unequal exchange, furthermore, became increasingly more important. The communities sold their products cheaply and bought those of the reptiblica de los espanoles at a high price. There were two kinds of transactions between the republica de los indios and the republica de los espanoles. The most important ones were not mercantile in nature: from the reptiblica de los indios came unpaid labor, produce, and money (tribute, etc.). This was not a system of equal value exchange, nor one of exploitation concealed by the relation of exchange. The republica de los indios handed over a substantial share of its economic surplus directly to the country's conquerors and their descendants, without any compensation whatsoever. Other transactions, however, did take on the form of exchange: the sale in the markets of the reptiblica de los espanoles of products from the communities as well as paid work in its enterprises. New Spain's economy was an integral part of a wider entity. Since the Conquest, four elements bound it to the European economy: (1) the establishment of a hypertrophic mining sector that produced singularly cheap silver,- (2) a system of extracting surplus product through public (taxes, tributes, compulsory loans, etc.) and private (remittances to kin, export of fortunes) channels,- (3) a system of unequal trade that made silver even cheaper and transformed the colony into a captive market for European commodities,- and (4) the more or less systematic policy on the part of the metropolis to prevent the development of competing sectors. The external impact did not merely constitute a superimposition over the prevailing system: it affected its entire internal functioning. The discussion that follows will attempt to describe its various effects throughout the 250-year period that this work has examined. The mining boom between 1550 and 1610 boosted the development of new agricultural, artisan, and manufacturing units. It also hastened the monetization of New Spain's economy, since part of the mining wealth (probably a modest portion) went to purchase foodstuff and other commodities needed in big mining centers. And it functioned as a powerful dismantler of the despotic-tributary structure, as it gave rise to considerable internal migrations and profound changes in land use, crops grown, and labor organization. On the other hand, the abundance of silver enabled the extraction of surplus product from all sectors of the economy (this process could take place only if products were transformed into gold and silver within the colonial market). The hypertrophy of the mining sector (rather than mercantilist bans) curbed the independent development of other sectors of production, that is, beyond

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mining needs and those of a dominant class with a large import capacity. Moreover, it brought about the massive destruction of the Indian labor force and the phenomenal enrichment of the Spanish Crown, the church, and a handful of private individuals. Monetary revenues thus concentrated in the hands of the dominant classes were translated into a demand for imported goods from European metropolises rather than locally manufactured commodities. Similarly, major ''investments" were directed to export-oriented sectors rather than those that produced for internal consumption, such that crafts and local manufacturing had to survive in an environment of constant competition from products from a more developed economy. The period of primitive accumulation in Europe corresponded to a period of expropriation of wealth and "primitive disaccumulation" in Latin America. Available data on the expenditures of the caja real in Mexico City give an idea of the scope of the appropriation of New Spain's wealth directly through state channels (see table 4). It must be borne in mind that the revenues of the said caja real from the almojarifazgo, the alcabala, and the sale of quicksilver were very substantial: equivalent to those in Lima. The same thing happened in the private sector: exports of precious metals were much higher than imports of commodities (see table 5). Only part of the vast surplus generated in New Spain remained in the country. The viceregal government and individual Spaniards saw to it that the greater share was transferred to the metropolis. New Spain's society had a relatively large surplus: rates of exploitation were probably some of the highest at that time. But the surplus available in the colony was a relatively modest share of the total, hence the "unaccountable" contrast between the poverty of the masses and the lack of power of New Spain's dominant classes. New Spain, or Peru, generated enough surplus to transform these countries into powers (feudal or incipiently capitalist in character). But this outcome was never possible in reality. Because of colonial dependence, the dominant class of a country whose population clearly showed all the symptoms of dreadful exploitation was not even the master of its own state. Under the Spanish commercial system, the colony was subjected to unequal exchange of vast proportions. European products (not only Spanish ones) were sold at substantially higher profits than the average rate. During that time, European trade with America and a few Asian and African trading posts constituted the totality of world exchange, and European internal trade was largely a subsidiary of the former. Hence, the metropolis imposed a very rigorous monopoly: New Spain was able to trade with only one country and one port. Even within the empire its exchanges were very restricted. Furthermore, the development of silver

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