With the New Laws of 1542, the repartimiento was instated...
“With the New Laws of 1542, the repartimiento was instated to substitute the encomienda system that had come to be seen as abusive and promoting of unethical behavior. The Spanish Crown aimed to remove control of the Indigenous population, now considered subjects of the Crown, from the hands of the encomenderos, who had become a politically influential and wealthy class, with the shift away from both the encomienda system and the enslavement of the native groups.[1] The repartimiento was not slavery, in that the worker is not owned outright—being free in various respects other than in the dispensation of his or her labor—and the work was intermittent. However, it created slavery-like conditions in certain areas, most notoriously in silver mines of 16th century Peru[2] under the draft labor system known as mita, influenced in part by a similar draft labor system the Inca used also called mit'a.[1] In New Spain, the collapse of Indigenous populations from conquest and disease led to a shift from the encomienda system to pueblos de indios, as the encomienda system no longer made economic sense since there were not enough Amerindians remaining. They needed to consolidate labor, which they did in a process known as reducciones. The encomienda system was replaced by “two parallel yet separate ‘republics’.”[3] The república de españoles "included Spaniards, who lived in Spanish cities and obeyed Spanish law," and the república de indios “included natives, who resided in native communities, where native law and native authorities (as long as they did not contradict Spanish norms) prevailed.”[3] It was in this second domain where the pueblos de indios resided. Amerindians who lived in the pueblos de indios had ownership over their land, but, deemed subjects of the Spanish Crown, they had to pay tribute.[4] is this true?”
Summary
The 1542 New Laws led to the repartimiento system replacing the encomienda, though the laws mainly transferred encomiendas to Crown control rather than fully abolishing them. Repartimiento was not outright slavery, but it imposed forced‑labor conditions, especially in the 16th‑
Sources 58 searched
- A short story about Potosi—the largest South American silver mine—in the Library’s Collections (Part 2) | 4 Corners of the World
Toledo’s modification of the mita divided the hundreds of villages in Potosí into 17 districts and required them to send about 1/7 (16%) of their able-bodied men each year to work.
- Encomienda, Hacienda and Corregimiento in Spanish America: A Structural Analysis | Hispanic American Historical Review | Duke University Press
The New Laws of 1542, rather than abolishing encomiendas, would simply have provided for them to be taken over by the crown.
- COLONIAL LEGISLATIONS AS A FRAMEWORK FOR DISPOSSESSIONS IN THE CENTRAL ANDES: THE COLONIAL MITA
It is likely that the Toledo mita model may have been based on labor recruitment carried out by the Inca state in the Cochabamba valleys since an identical number of mitayos —around 13,500—, was established for the Potosí mines through ...
- Agricultural and Mining Labor Interactions in Peru:
martial status.6 Indians were also resettled into repartimientos based on areas that · demonstrated economic benefit to the Crown, such as the rich agricultural or mining · zones.7 These, most commonly, represented fertile agricultural valleys in the Sierra ... 9Melissa Dell, ”The Persistent E↵ects of Peru’s Mining Mita,” Econometrica Vol.
- "The Repartimiento System of Native Labor in Colonial Spanish America, " by Arthur R. Steele
This essay will describe the early history of the second form of repartimiento discussed above, viz., the system of forced labor for pay introduced subsequent to 1549. Although the term repartimiento was generally employed in all parts of Spanish America to describe this program of compulsory ...
- Encomienda - Wikipedia
In the conquest era of the early ... grant holder, called the encomendero; starting from the New Laws of 1542, the encomienda ended upon the death of the encomendero, and was replaced by the repartimiento....
- Repartimiento - Wikipedia
With the New Laws of 1542, the repartimiento was instated to substitute the encomienda system that had come to be seen as abusive and promoting of unethical behavior.
- Slavery in colonial Spanish America - Wikipedia
Slavery in the Spanish American ... forced labor and peonage of indigenous peoples, Africans, and Asians from the late 15th to late 19th century, and its aftereffects in the 20th and 21st centuries. The economic and social institution of slavery existed throughout the Spanish Empire, including Spain itself. Initially, indigenous people were subjected to the encomienda system until the 1543 New Laws that prohibited it. This was replaced with the repartimiento ...
- Repartimiento - World History Encyclopedia
The repartimiento system was a distribution of rights to Spanish colonialists and municipalities, which allowed them to extract forced but low-paid labour from local communities in conquered territories...
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