I n d ia n S o c iety

in th e

V a l ley of

L im a , P er u ,

1532-1824

Paul Charney

University Press of America, Inc. Lanham New York Oxford

Copyright 2001 by University Press of America, Inc.

4720 Boston Way Lanham, Maryland 20706 12 Hid's Copse Rd. Cumnor Hill, Oxford OX2 9JJ All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America British Library Cataloging in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Chamey, Paul. Indian society in the Valley of Lima, Peru, 1532-1824 / Paul Chamey. p. cm Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Indians of South AmericaPeruLima RegionHistory. 2. Indians of South AmericaPeruLima RegionSocial conditions. 3. Lima Region (Peru)Social conditions. F3429.1.L7 C48 2001 985\2500498- k1 c21 2001034773 CIP ISBN 0-7618-2069-8 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 0-7618-2070-1 (pbk.: alk. paper)

w The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48 1984

To my mother, and in memory of my father

Introduction
The great Peruvian historian, Ral Porras Barrenechea, wrote an article in 1953 for El Comercio, "La raz india de Lima," which suggested that the foundation of Lima in 1535 caused the dispersal of Lima's preHispanic population: "some became yanaconas of the Spanish residents, others fled or were 'desnaturado' (uprooted) from their land, or they became vagabonds.1 He implied that Lima's Indians had virtually disappeared to make way for the Spanish conquerors.2 Lima thus became a Spanish city, which consequently relegated the Indians to a cultural death. In his classic social history, Spanish Peru, James Lockhart echoed this theme of a peninsular, urban society transplanted virtually intact to early Peru.3 He argued that the city contained the dynamic principles of change and acculturation for those indigenous people who are in daily contact with Iberians.4 The evidence for this study, however, paints a far more complex picture of the Indian inhabitants of both Lima proper and of nearby Spanish-created communities, or reducciones (see Table 1.2, Map 1.2 and Appendix 5). These Indians often circulated in the same physical and cultural space which resulted in sustaining a greater Indian community-even an Indian society organized in many ways like the Spanish one. As with Indians elsewhere, Limas were assigned the Spanish-imposed indio status which required Indians to pay a tax and provide labor services. This contrived ethnic label has often symbolized to historians oppression and exploitation. Yet indio status also afforded Indians the legal protection of their communal holdings, or the privilege to form their own cofradas, or lay confraternities, with the blessing of the Catholic Church. The cofradas, though derived from Spanish culture, had the effect of galvanizing whole Indian communities. To be sure, the colonizers term did not always accurately nor consistently apply, especially as racial lines blurred and economic

xviii

Indian Society in the Valley o f Lima

opportunities arose. Historian Robert H. Jackson argues that the Indians, coupled with the local elites perception of landownership and economic circumstances, identified themselves as mestizos when they became small landowners just as the hacienda fragmented in nineteenth century Cochabamba, Bolivia.5 Examples of racial drift and ambiguity caused by similar circumstances also abound in urbanized environments or in areas heavily settled by Spaniards during the colonial period.6 The possibility of such manipulations have relevance to this study since the contrived indio identity comes to be shaped and reshaped by circumstances over which the Indian sometimes has control and sometimes not. John L. Comaroff, an anthropologist, has argued that subordinate groups with contrived ethnic identities often "define their 'ethnicity' as an emblem of common predicament and interest. Their ethnicity, then, becomes an essential feature of the natural order of things, the given character of the world with regard to which people must conduct their lives.7 Such a label, ipso facto, obtains an autonomous character for it allowed colonized and segregated groups, like Limas Indians, to pursue the formation of their own social networks and organizations and to assert the special rights and privileges that it bestowed on them. But individuals at the expense of others of the ethnic-cum-status group acquired resources in either the intra-ethnic arena or outside it that inevitably leads to social and economic differentiation inside the group.8 As will be shown, the very resources Indians used for upward mobility partially originated in that arena and thereby contributed to taming such self-advancement. Individualism thus tended to be mediated through communal-minded norms (some might say social leveling) and ethnically-based institutions, like the cofradas, both of which contributed to what Fredrik Barth has called, ethnic boundary maintenance. An ethnic groups boundaries are marked by both the self-ascription of its members and also by outsiders ascribing people to that group.9 Such contradictory forces ethnicity and individualismcoexisted, and they would contribute to ethno-genesis. Culture, more so than biology shaped this new identity. Still, the emergence of European-style, social and economic differentiation inside the Andean communities has been explained as the product of an emerging global economy wrought by European expansionism. This dependency and world system focus, as suggested by a recent publication, has resulted in analyzing the Andean region or

Introduction

xix

community from the outside, thereby virtually ignoring cultural strategies that might have adjusted to the market intrusion, or even how the new ethnicity posed as a counterweight. Once externalized the community became anchored to the ebb and flow of market forces and subject to the straightjacket of a class analysis. The Indian community was thus more economically defined than based on ancestral origin and kinship.1 0 To be sure, market relations did play an important, though by no means decisive role. While Indians might be forced to migrate in search of work in order to pay the tribute, historians Ann Wightmen and Karen Powers see another dimension to this movement. Despite their outsider status, migrants often became an integral part of a process of social and biological reproduction that acted to stabilize community populations. Sometimes the migrants themselves primarily in kin groups contributed to this reproduction. However, as Powers observes, depopulation, out migration to the Spanish sphere (cities, haciendas, obrajes), and the decline of traditional authority caused the breakdown of such strategies of reproduction by the end of the seventeenth century. Nevertheless, Andean commoners applied those strategies inside the Spanish sphere where many had migrated.1 1 Social reproduction in either case should be considered as the Indians efforts to adjust and accommodate to newer circumstances, as well as to maintain community and kinship ties generationally. ' Erwin Grieshabers pioneering article showed that Indian tributaries on nineteenth century Bolivian haciendas could have communal cohesiveness inside the Spanish sphere. One reason is the Indians maintenance of traditional inheritance practices; that is, women and children became heirs. As such, will-making, an alien import, enabled Indians to retain and pass on lands. Land retention and the growing of low-value traditional crops fostered community survival.1 2 But can there be any sort of reproduction or cultural survivals in the Lima valley where Spanish-Indian contact was most intense, depopulation disastrous, and the penetration of the market economy overwhelming? The answer is affirmative if the valley of Lima is not viewed as a place where all Indians simply lost their identity. Lynn Lowry in her dissertation on the Indians of the viceregal capital described them as formulating their own identity as a ''nation' which depended on individual and collective will, or choice.1 3 But her study is limited to Lima proper and excludes analysis of a hinterland socially

XX

Indian Society in the Valley o f Lima

and economically linked to the city. This study strongly suggests that the city can not be properly severed from its rural hinterland. Multiple connections were formed between the two. Chapter 1 explores how despite demographic catastrophe, the valleyborn mingled with the Indian migrants which contributed to a sustained indigenous presence throughout the colonial period. The identification indio" predominated at the expense of other statuses that Indians in the highlands attached themselves to in order to evade tribute obligations. Integration from the beginning made moot the forastero-originario (outsider v. original inhabitant) dichotomy that often proved provocative elsewhere. Haphazardly attended to by colonial census takers, the division only became an issue when personalities, and family and political ambitions collided. Its infrequent use suggests that Indians took control of the meaning of differences and established the criteria of full integration between acceptable outsiders and others whose standing in the greater Indian community was found wanting. Indians themselves shaped such criteria, which had little to do with ones fiscal status. Moreover, despite their low numbers, the Indians played a noticeable role in the valleys economy and found their niche in certain skilled and unskilled occupations, some even pre-Hispanic. A complex process of acculturation (understood as exchanging ones culture for another) proceeded, though it was far from being a linear development. Socio-racial segregation, continuing Indian migration, the interactions of Indian residents of the city with those of the countryside, and preHispanic survivals combined to make the process of acculturation problematic. To be sure, this chapter also recognizes that numerous Indians were lost to the Spanish world by way of identifying with it ethnically and culturally, some doing so by choice or involuntarily. Chapter 2 examines the uncertainty of land tenure. Within this imagined, colonized construct Indians asserted property rights (of course, not exclusively) based on protectionist legislation, as well as, pre-Hispanic practices, such as in the curaca s (chieftain) assignment of land. This often ill-defined and uncertain aspect of Indian land tenure differed from the private-property rights prevailing in the Spanish sphere. Income-generating, urban and rural property directed towards collective activities and/or tribute demands became intimately bound to indio survival the communal interest. And this property could be either individually or communally-owned. The Indian leadership of the valleys communities, both commoners and curacas,

Introduction

xxi

became managers of indigenous resources. In a sense, Indians accepted the colonial states juridical pre-eminence and expertise, but used imposed terms and conceptualizations, like the privileged communalism-the repblica de indios to challenge other transplanted concepts, like private property as it too became integrated into the Indian community. Landholding was therefore mediated through colonial law and pre-Hispanic practices. Chapter 3 on Indian leadership demonstrates the rise of a leadership class made up of commoners and nobility alike. As the commoners acquired visibility by their participation in governance, the nobility consistently exerted on colonial society a conscious of difference. They got others to recognize their nobility by articulating their lineage and the memory of it, regardless of an equivocal racial background, the ravages of epidemic diseases, or an economic position hardly befitting a noblemen. As curacas they managed to hold on to a Spanish-created post gobernador and kept it inside the families for generations, forged cross-community marital ties, and acted as mayordomos of the cofradas. The urban-rural connections, and the presence of real Indian nobles made Indian commoners not the sole facilitators of reproductive strategies in the Spanish sphere. The curacas of the communities near Lima could in fact participate in social reproduction if such communities were tied to the urban core. By the eighteenth century, the Indian nacin and the curacasgo became part of the Indian nobilitys discourse and a way to assert their leadership and exhibit their prestige. The focus on the Indian cofrada in chapter 4 depicts it as a crucial, ethnic-supporting mechanism. The Indians devotion to, and financial support of a foreign institution and religion reproduced a sort of communalism, especially among urban Indians. Some of the Indians multiple cofrada memberships and multiple bequests to the cofrada cut across urban and rural boundaries which helped define a wider Indian community. The cofradas adamant opposition to non-Indian membership no doubt conformed to the natural order of things and, at the same time, reflected the way that Indians could pursue an autonomous path. The Indian family discussed in chapter 5 survived, though in truncated form, partially because of the successful adaptation of Spanish transplants godparenthood, will-making, and dowries. Their partible inheritance practices revealed much about the extent of the Indian household. Its size continued to be in flux and was hardly static. In the

xxii

Indian Society in the Valley o f Lima

hinterland and in the Cercado (the Indian town built on the eastern outskirts of Lima), the Indian family emerged. Indians made efforts to reconstitute family life, however much high mortality and sexual imbalance posed as obstacles. Each chapter elucidates on the building blocks of the Spanishimposed indio identity, which ultimately resides in a social identity that is capable of concretizing ideas of sameness and difference.1 4 In other words, the Indians of the Lima valley were virtually indigenous by claiming to be so and by others recognizing them as such, even if few autochthonous traits existed. Empowering themselves facilitated the concretizing process. Lima's Indians empowered themselves by borrowing Spanish customs that resembled their own or seemed useful, such as godparenthood with its attended string of reciprocal obligations, or cofradas with their mutual-support mechanisms.1 5 Will-making, though a distinctly European practice, helped Indians to control some land and moveable property and prevented alienation to the Spanish world. It resulted in reproducing, or sustaining an Indian community. Along with acceptance came a form of resistance manifested in the Indians' defiant retention of selected pre-Hispanic practices, as well as the appropriation of elements of Hispanic culture. Undeniably, the Indians' best interest, both politically and economically, would be to follow the prescribed course which brought them benefits or protection. The curacas probably first grabbed on to such perks and sought to maintain their status by embracing European versions of hereditary and nobility, though it was never a total embrace. One could even argue that their surreptitious use of the pre-Hispanic rules of political succession was simply self-interested. That aside, for Lima's Indian population, nobility and commoners alike, their resulting sense of ethnicity however much a Spanish construct, and with all of its manifestations of old and new ways decidedly distinguished them from non-Indians. The colonial Indians of Lima sustained their distinctiveness or boundaries in an almost paradoxical fashion. Many spoke Castilian, dressed like Europeans, professed Christianity, and participated in the market. This acculturation grew out of the contact itself the unavoidable proximity of Indians and Spaniards. It did not result, however, in Indians losing their identity as a people, even though the cultural content and ethnic diversity of coastal Indian society changed dramatically. They ascribed to themselves elements of Spanish culture

Introduction

xxiii

that paradoxically underscored their collective sense of separateness, or, more technically, their "indio" status. These elements included Spanish institutions, customs, and legal devices that Indians used for their own needs in order to bolster their separation from non-Indian society. The Indians also retained aspects of the pre-Hispanic past which furthered the process of boundary maintenance. The maintenance of ethnic boundaries had the effect of obscuring, though not eradicating, Hispanic-style social and economic differences within the "indio" community. Ethnic assertiveness, whether derived from the individual, the family, institutions, or the community, functioned as counterweights to class interest and to Spanish hegemony. As always, the constant dynamic of class and culture, ethnicity and assimilation, made society-building a long-term process indeed. Assertions of indio status and its application does not have chronological precision, just like ethnicity itself. But this study is more an analysis of the ways that indio, as Brooke Larson astutely observes, may subjugate or empower.1 6 Indeed, the Indians' ability to manipulate space cultural and physical acted as the dynamic that set them apart from non-Indians and others not considered acceptable Indians. This manipulation must be understood as a process with cumulative effects. To be sure, the sixteenth century was marked by demographic collapse and vast cultural changes. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Indians reorganized themselves and adopted strategies that ensured their separate identity and, in particular, a future.

>

xxiv

Indian Society in the Valley o f Lima

Notes
1. El Comercio July 28, 1953, 3. 2. Ibid., 3. 3. James Lockhart, Spanish Peru, 1532-1560: A Colonial Society (Mad ison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968). 4. , The Social History of Colonial Spanish America, Latin American Research Review 7, no. 1 (1972): 28. 5. Robert H. Jackson, Race/Caste and the Creation and Meaning of Identity in Colonial Spanish America, Revista de Indias 55, no. 203 (1995): 164-169; and with Gregory Maddox, The Creation of Identity: Colonial Society in Bolivia and Tanzania, Comparative Studies in Society and History 35, no. 2 (1993): 269-272. 6. Martin Michom, The People o f Quito, 1690-1810: Change and Unrest in the Underclass (Boulder: Westview Press, 1994), 153-183. 7. John L. Comaroff, Of Totenism and Ethnicity: Conciousness, Practice and Signs of Inequality, Ethos 52, nos. 3-4 (1987): 312. 8. Ibid., 305, 312-313. 9. Fredrik Barth, "Introduction," in Barth ed., Ethnic Groups and Boundaries (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1969), 14-17; See also George Devereux, Ethnic Identity: Its Logical Foundations and Its Dysfunctions, in George De Vos and Lola Romanucci-Ross eds., Ethnic Identity: Cultural Continuities and Change (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), 48, 54, 57. 10. Karen Vieira Powers, Andean Journeys: Migration, Ethnogenesis, and the State in Colonial Quito (Albuquerque: University o f New Mexico Press, 1995), 10, 173. She includes in her discussion scholars such as Stem, Spalding, and herself. 11. Ibid., 10, 14-17; Ann M. Wightman, Indigenous Migration and Social Change: The Forasteros o f Cuzco, 1570-1720 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1990), 55, 62-63, 69. 12. Erwin P. Grieshaber, Survival of Indian Communities in Nineteenth Century Bolivia: A Regional Comparison, Journal o f Latin American Studies 12, no. 2(1980): 251,256. 13. Lynn Lowry, Forging An Indian Nation: Urban Indians Under Spanish Colonial Control (Lima, Peru, 1535-1765) (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1991), passim. 14. Michael Kearney, Indigenous Ethnicity and Mobilization in Latin America, Latin American Perspectives 23, no. 2 (1996): 5-6. This issue addresses the topic of ethnicity and class. 15. See James Axtell, Beyond 1492: Encounters in Colonial North America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 116. He argues that North American Indians often "turned to the invaders' cultures and religions for empowerment, knowledge, and skills with which to sustain Indian identities and values in other guises" (116). He sees the acceptance among Indians of North

Introduction

xxv

America of European ways as a survival tactic, even a stonewalling device. See also, 117-121. 16. Brooke Larson, Andean Communities, Political Cultures, and Markets: The Changing Contours of a Field, in Brooke Larson and Olivia Harris eds., Ethnicity, Markets, and Migration in the Andes: At the Crossroads o f History and Anthropology (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995), 35. This review article I found to be especially helpful.

Chapter 1 An Andean Coastal Society Under Inca and Spanish Rule

While Inca rule did not radically alter the Lima valleys basic societal arrangements, the Spanish invasion proved different. Epidemic diseases nearly obliterated these coastal peoples, and pre-Hispanic ethnicity, which meant little to the Spaniards, did not endure. However, Indian emigration from the highlands and other coastal areas bolstered the survivors demographically and contributed to the "indio" presence throughout the colonial period. Even full-scale induction into the market economy did not muzzle this presence. Many Indians engaged in economic activities that either fostered their ethnic, or "indio" distinctiveness or provided them with certain privileges. To be sure, numerous Indians in the process of assimilating Spanish culture, whether it be forced or done voluntarily, began to identify with it.
Pre-Hispanic Lima

The first Spanish interlopers in 1535 must have been impressed with the Lima valley's irrigated maize fields, fruit trees, and woodlands. The Indians had constructed irrigation canals that drew from the three river basins--the Lurn, Rimac, Chilln '(see Maps 1.1 and 1.2). These canals were certainly necessary in this coastal society for a nearly imperceptible mist, the garua, provided the only regular precipitation. In the few areas where the Indians found the water table to be close to the surface, they excavated gardens to allow for the water to seep up to them. Known as mahames by the Indians and hoyas by the Spaniards, such gardens served as a supplemental source of water. Writing in the 1550s, the chronicler, Pedro de Cieza de Len, noted that the hoyas and the dew from them contributed to bountiful harvests. Besides agriculture, marine life abounded along the coast and in the three river basins. In fact, it often complemented and promoted the growth of

Indian Society in the Valley o f Lima

crops. Cieza de Len further observed that maize seeds would not sprout if not sown together with "one or two sardine heads."2 Only bits and pieces of documents suggest the ways that such agrarian and marine resources were distributed in pre-Hispanic times. Reciprocal exchanges of goods and services based on kinship ties has been identified as the key principle of exchange in the highlands, and it seems to have operated along the coast as well. Exchanges occurred within ayllusa group of households related to one another by blood kin or by ritual with a common ancestor god. Lima's ayllus, not unlike the highland ones, appeared to have been endogamous and headed by some political authority the curaca, or the principal. This authority also facilitated cooperation and resource-sharing among the ayllu's households. Smaller than the ayllu, the household acted as the fundamental economic unit, producing and consuming, if not playing a central role in reciprocity and redistribution.3 Unfortunately, the few late sixteenth century Indian wills only suggest how pre-Hispanic reciprocity, sharing, and other like norms worked in the Lima valley. Juan China of the ayllu, Ydcay, in the Spanish-created town of Surco noted that four Indians shared the use of his "large fishing net." This act of sharing was intended to benefit more than one individual, perhaps an allusion to a pre-Hispanic practice. Moreover, China bequeathed lands to two orphan boys. He made one of them his heir, and the other benefitted from the harvest of the indigenous food crop, yucca. Miguel Cocssi of Centaulli, another ayllu of Surco, gave his son the responsibility of delivering all the maize harvest to his son's mother and grandmother "for their food." Another testator, unnamed, provided for the delivery of maize to his widow. He also gave part of his chili harvest to Pedro Pahay, for this "old Indian" had worked in guarding a curaca's chacra.4 Such resource-sharing, absent in later wills, reflect both communal and family obligations, from which even the "old Indian" benefitted. The obligation to help those in need or those least able to help themselves was a pervasive norm that applied to everyone. An Indian of Carabayllo noted in a 1586 inquiry, that "to the old ones, the curaca sustains them in what they need." Another traditional duty carried out by this same curaca involved assigning the able-bodied members' lands "in which they cultivate what they desire." The assignment simply involved working the lands for the harvest, not implying a perpetual right of ownership. His Indians reciprocated by giving the curaca a portion of their harvest and by working the lands attached to his office,

An Andean Coastal Society

lands which he did not actually own, and they received in return some of the harvest as a form of "payment."5 This resource-sharing acted to bind the subjects to their curaca and to provide him and his household a sustenance, for he could not do it himself since he had other responsibilities to attend to. A 1550s' litigation perhaps recalled more accurately pre-Hispanic practices. The curaca of Lima gave a group of outsiders-in this case, yanaconas land to work and expected them to return this grant of useright by contributing labor for the upkeep of the canals that irrigated his people's lands.6 He intended this resource sharing as a way to control people otherwise not his subjects, his status and prestige being judged by the amount of labor on which he could draw. Moreover, he simply exercised his pre-Hispanic right to give access to resources to those from whom he expected labor and loyalty in return. The characterization of land tenure in the southern Andes by anthropologist John V. Murra, as "meaningless without access to people," is applicable here as it is further up the Peruvian coast.7 Any sort of labor energy expended deserved something in exchange. The curaca, as head of the ayllu, simply did his duty by distributing lands or taking care of the elderly. In turn he got to use the labor of his people or the produce of that labor. Nobody made claims on land, only on people. As commonly practiced along the coast during pre-Hispanic times, a curaca directed his Indians to cultivate the fields that supported another curaca. The 1596 will of Francisca Chani, the wife of the principal of the Indian town of Magdalena, hints indirectly at this preHispanic practice. She claimed in the will that don Francisco Tantachumbi, the curaca of Surco, owed her twelve bushels of wheat, or "three years of terrasgo" which to the Spaniards meant paying rent to the owner. This crop formed a portion of the harvest, presumably from her lands, that the curaca "commanded" his Indians to cultivate to help pay tribute to the Spaniards. She noted another item in which the fruits of labor were used to pay the tribute: the Indians of Cucham, an ayllu of Surco, owed Chani one and a half bushals of wheat ("del terrasgo") on the same land they worked at the behest of their curaca.8 Spaniards mistakenly viewed such payments as a rent, the "terrasgo," to the landlord, while the Indians still might have considered it in accordance with their own cultural norms. That is, by allowing the Indians to use the land resource sharing Chani expected something in return, a "payment" in kind.9 Compensation for, or reciprocation of their labor, comprised a portion of the harvest.

Indian Society in the Valley o f Lima

The documents are niggardly about other forms of compensation for labor service, but Spanish adeptness at using Andean norms to get what they wanted reveals what might have occurred in pre-Hispanic times. The corregidor of Carabayllo, Heman Wsquez, adapted the Andean way of reciprocating to his profit-mindedness. During his tenure (15771580), he abused his authority by exploiting Indian labor to cultivate his wheat fields, while other laborers made maize beer (chicha) and prepared food that served as payment for the workers. Information from the southern Andes shows that curacas often distributed food and drink to the subjects who had worked their land, and that they remained ever-conscious to create a festive atmosphere as they did so.1 0 This practice of reciprocating labor energy appears to have been panAndean; the Spaniards probably just mimicked the custom that had been practiced for centuries. The coast differed from the highlands in one respect greater task specialization. The highland ayllus relied on satellite settlements to procure goods, which the home community in the vertical world of the southern Andes, lacked. Historian Maria Rostworowski argues that resulting task specialization gave rise to trade on the North Coast, if not on other coastal areas.1 1 Since this trade had no underlying market mechanism based on risk, price, or profit, such exchanges made were probably administered at a social and political level, rather than at anything resembling the microeconomic in a market economy.1 2 No doubt, task specialization compelled the ayllus to engage in trade. Fishing ayllus such as Maranga (Lima) and Piti-Piti (Callao) served coastal Lima. They each had their own beachheads or access routes to the sea and often used salted, dried fish as trade items with the highlands or even with neighboring ayllus for agrarian products. The inhabitants of Calla, an ayllu of Surco whose name translates as "weaving" were perhaps weavers who traded their wares.1 3 Because the evidence does not point to the existence of merchant specialists, the curacas heading such non-agrarian ayllus probably determined trading arrangements with agrarian ones. Colonial documents reveal the fishing villages that survived often had little or no cultivable lands.1 4 Farmers, fishermen, and weavers thus indirectly participated in politically sanctioned exchanges of diverse products, as opposed to the highland colonization schemes. Feasts or ritual ceremonies may have also provided the mechanism for procurement of various goods. At these events, the act of hospitality facilitated the exchange.1 5 The old curaca of Lima, Taulichusco,

An Andean Coastal Society

welcomed the conqueror Francisco Pizarro with "many offerings and gifts of llama meat, foul, fish, maize, fruit and whatever they had, and they amused themselves with the said marqus (Pizarro)."1 6 The curaca's presence and the many "offerings" and "gifts" suggest that such hospitality served as a way to obtain a variety of goods. Perhaps all of this food was not meant to be consumed on the spot, but to be carried away. This giveaway might also have integrated the receiver into the indigenous exchange or trading network. Whatever "trade" went on, it must have had ritual or ceremonial foundations. Undeniably, ayllu specialization defined the economy of this coastal area, but the location of some ayllus and their respective peoples outside the boundaries of their own curacasgos suggests the way that an ayllu could extend its access to resources. Rostworowski found that each preHispanic curacasago containing a certain number of ayllus, identified with a principal irrigation canal from which smaller ones irrigated its farmlands (see Map 1.1). In turn the curacasgo claimed these flowing waters. Some canals separated one curacasgo from another, like Surco and Late, while others divided the curacasgo (e.g. Lima). According to Rostworowski, the territorial "boundaries" for either the curacasgos or ayllus did not necessarily preclude outsiders and often remained illdefined, no doubt because of the extensive resource sharing that went on.1 7 Consequently, ayllus played host to peoples from other ayllus. Groups of fishermen from Pachacamac and Lima in the fishing ayllu of Maranga, and Lima's "neighboring Indians and caciques also had lands in said valley (Lima)."1 8 Although Rostworowski notes that particular ayllus had rights to certain beachheads, these rights did not exclude the possibility that other ayllus, with permission of the curaca, could gain temporary access to those beachheads.1 9 Without evidence of organized trade conducted by merchants, the curacas proved instrumental in facilitating the coexistence of ayllus, exchanges between them, and the maximization of resources through the adept use of labor. The ayllu was greater than the individual who often identified with his curaca, and ancestral lands always belonged to the ayllu regardless of where the individual went. Worship spots, or huacas gave sanctity to the ayllu's landholdings and underscored the individual's ritual and ancestral links to the ayllu. Curacasgos, too, had their one main huaca.2 0 Ancestry, though, did not exist in a timeless vacuum, nor did everyone claim a coastal origin or the same ethnicity. Prior to Inca rule, the Lima valley saw invasions from the highlands and inter-ethnic

Indian Society in the Valley o f Lima

violence. Highland peoples often clashed and mingled with coastal ones and incorporated coastal divinities into their pantheon. The central highland Yauyos boasted in their folklore about their conquering forays on the coast. These coastal-highland connections contributed to the multiethnic flavor of the valley. On the eve of the Inca invasion, the Rimac and Lurin valleys formed the province of Ychma, subject to the religious sanctuary of Pachacamac. The Chillon valley (Carabayllo) constituted a separate curacasgo of Collique. The Incas acknowledged the legendary sacredness of Pachacamac, which attracted pilgrims from faraway places bearing gifts of gold and silver. The oracle at the Temple of Pachacamac told the Inca conqueror, Yupac Yupanqui (1471-1493) to "enlarge the Temple" and to build branch oracles. Out of high reverence, the Inca installed servile retainers at Pachacamac, adorning it with gold and silver and even sacrificing human beings to it.2 1 Placement of retainers, from different ethnic groups, added to the already multiethnic flavor of the valley. The Spaniards had little desire to understand ethnic diversity, however. They understood that curacas held the power and the prestige to procure the labor necessary to answer the Spanish demand for tribute, but they did not always grasp the basis of that power. The old curaca of Lima, Taulichusco, had at least 3,000 Indians under his command but was less specific about the territory of his "kingdom." This implicit fund of combat-ready males undoubtedly impressed Pizarro.22 After meeting the friendly curaca, the conqueror no doubt began to ponder the potential wealth to be gained from so many able-bodied men, and this may explain Pizarro's decision to make Taulichusco's domain his encomienda. Taulichusco's father, not from Lima, was a yanacona or servant of Mama Vila, wife of the Inca ruler, Huayna Capac (14931527). Taulichusco jointly ruled with his brother, Caxapaxa, also a yanacona who resided with the Inca in Cuzco, no doubt to assure Lima's loyalty. The warm relationship struck up between the old curaca and Pizarro bore fruit later on when Taulichusco and his people supported Spaniards against rebellious Incas and Pizarro himself against his rivals.2 3 Perhaps Taulichusco wanted to break free of Inca rule, or he had already been notified of its demise at the ruthless hands of Pizarro and his men and viewed his meeting as an opportunity to join the winning side. The offerings of food, as mentioned earlier, may have been a way to cement an alliance with Pizarro. In any event, Taulichusco was an outsider apparently imposed by Cuzco. His sons, first Guachinamo (baptized don Francisco) and then don Gonzalo,

An Andean Coastal Society

continued to be Lima's curacas with the blessing of the Spaniards. Perhaps to solidify their claim to the curacasgo, the descendants of Taulichusco's brother, Caxapaxa, married into the local nobility (see Appendix 3). Farther up the coast, the Incas appointed yanaconas as political chiefs to keep the Colli of the Carabayllo valley in line. To punish them for their resistance, the Incas replaced their higher-ranked curacas.2* Apart from the occasional impositions of yanaconas, the Incas exerted their authority or made known their presence in other ways. They appropriated local lands for their Sun deity and for the Inca bureaucracy, and they required the local Indians to work the lands. They then collected tribute from the valley's ayllus and encouraged the spread of their language, Quechua.2 5 The Inca relocated ethnic peoples to achieve various imperialist ends, such as creating multiethnic support groups for the temple. They installed the Mochic, for instance, from the Kingdom of Chimor (the indigenous name for the valley of Trujillo) as mitimaq, or colonists, in Maranga. This reflected part of a broader, relocation effort designed to scatter the Mochic people to various parts of the empire in order to prevent any further resistance. In those areas vacated by the Mochic, the Inca resettled ethnic groups considered loyal and accustomed to Inca rule.2 6 The Colli, an ethnic group in the valley of Carabayllo thus became unwilling neighbors of Indians from highland Huancayo. Because of the Colli's stubborn resistance, the Inca settled the loyal highlanders in the curacasgo of Collique.2 7 The ethnic composition of the valley had mixed and shifted a great deal before the Incas, but this ethnic engineering caused particularly abrupt changes.
Indian Depopulation and Survival

More abrupt and traumatic than the Incas' assault on coastal society were the Spanish invasion and the epidemic diseases which preceded it and continued to afflict the Indian population throughout the colonial period. Even before Pizarro had touched South American shores in 1532, small pox had already traveled southward from Mexico to Peru by the mid-1520s. Epidemics of measles, influenza, and typhus followed and hit the Indians especially hard because they lacked immunities to these Old World diseases. Further, the Indians could not always resist such diseases even as they built up some immunity to them. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, epidemics periodically struck Lima and other regions in Peru, and sometimes followed natural disasters. The earthquakes of 1687 and 1746 in Lima

Indian Society in the Valley o f Lima

caused the spread of various illnesses and resulted in many deaths.2 8 The Indian population of the Lima valley almost vanished as a result of its exposure to Old World diseases. Declining drastically in the first two generations, it reached a nadir by 1600 and returned to the 1575 population by the end of the eighteenth century (see Table 1.1 and Appendix 5). Demographic recovery also coincided with the stabilization of sex ratios. This contrasted to the early years 1591 and 1602 when an excess number of males in the Indian communities surrounding Lima resulted from the movement of Indian women from those communities to the city. According to the 1613 census of Lima's Indian population, of the 38 migrants from the two largest Indian communities Surco and Magdalena 21 were females.2 9 In the eighteenth century, however, the sex ratios became stabilized as indicated by the 1784 figures: Date 1591,1602 1784 *Males 1151 2706 *Females 920 2804 Sex Ratio 1.26 *Totals of .96 Appendix 5

Although males predominated in the Indian communities in the late sixteenth century, the female population increased faster (3.0) than the male one (2.3) thereafter. Barring fluctuations over time, the figures available do show a more even sex ratio. Emigration to Lima from various parts of the Peruvian viceroyalty revealed the reverse. Based on the 1613 census, of those emigrating Indian males (934) greatly outnumbered females (423). Males constituted a vast majority of Indian migrants in the ten-to-29 year old age group (837 men and 314 women), and single men (533) were far more numerous than single Indian women (90) in the 18-to-50 year old group.3 0 Such gender gaps did not necessarily remain a constant. Three eighteenth century censuses of the city of Lima revealed changing, though tighter sex ratios among the Indians than those in the 1613 census:3 1 Male Female Total Sex Ratio 1613 934 423 1357 2.21 1700 1277 1506 .84 2783 1790 2190 1722 3912 1.27 1792 2390 1952 4342 1.22 The Spanish scholar, Prez Cant, gives three reasons for the

An Andean Coastal Society

undercounting of males in the 1700 census. Since the census was conducted for military purposes, men might have evaded it. Great numbers of women were counted in the nunneries, possibly revealing a lack of eligible men. Finally, the chroniclers noted the unusual number of single women as a scourge on the city.3 2 The sex ratios in both the city and the hinterlands nonetheless stabilized in the eighteenth century. The increase in the numbers of Indian women undoubtedly improved the fertility rates and brought about a more stable family structure. Migration certainly promoted the Indians' demographic survival. According to the 1613 census of Lima's Indian population (excluding the Indian barrio of the Cercado), all were migrants except for the 49 Indians who claimed Lima as their birthplace. They emigrated from all across Peru, with the northern and central regions supplying the bulk of migrants. Many became long-term residents which consequently, along with valley-born residents, assured Indians a place in Lima's economy and society. The 1613 census reveals that 37 percent(636) of the total male and female population in the ten-to-50 year old age group (1732) claimed to have been residing in the city five or more years.3 3 Parish records of the Cercado indicated that the proportion of males bom there increased significantly from 11 percent in 1575-1610 (numbering 16 of 139) to 33 percent (numbering 18 of 54) in 1650-1686,)while females bom in the valley held fairly steady at 22 percent (numbering 27 of 124) and 28 percent (numbering 16 of 56) respectively.3 4 One of the censuses that distinguished the always strong forastero contingent in the mid-eighteenth century for the eight "pueblos" (Cercado, Late, Magadelena, Lurigancho, Carabayllo, Surco, Lurin, and Callao) and three "anexos o pueblos pequenas" (Bellavista, Miraflores, Chorrillos) in the province of the Cercado (see Map 1.2) gave these numbers: for asteros (340), originarios (290), caciques (6), exempt(119), muchachos or adolescents (293) and women (1,070) totaling 2,118.3 5 The effort to ferret out originarios to pay full tribute may have forced some from that group into hiding and thus resulted in an undercounting and the divergence from the 1784 census; the latter counted 20 caciques with a total Indian population of 5,488. Regardless of its accuracy, the census is revealing of theforastero presence. Having more of them than locals, if that is the case, no doubt forced some sort of accommodation and blurring of lines between, and even mixture of the two groups. Many of the Indian migrants by choice made the Lima valley their permanent home and would contribute to social reproduction. Although

10

Indian Society in the Valley o f Lima

the colonial authorities originally intended the Cercado to house Indians temporarily while they fulfilled mita duties in Lima, many chose to stay beyond the required time because of the higher wages offered to free laborers.3 6 Some even came with the intention of not returning to their homeland. In the mid-seventeenth century, about 20 Yauyos from the extremities of the valley of Late expressed their desire to the Viceroy to live in the Cercado. Two Yauyos principales explained that they had difficulty meeting tribute demands because some of their own had fled and that many youths lacked Christian instruction.3 7 They evidently believed the Jesuits who administered the faith in the Cercado could give them what they needed. To abandon one's homeland is telling of the desperate straits that many Indians faced in the provinces. The Yauyos had the good fortune to come as a group with their principales who might desire to continue their leadership functions in Lima. The opportunity to acquire land, to practice a trade, to be employed, and to marry encouraged individual migrants to settle in the area. Of the 1173 Indian men between the ages of ten and 50 years-old in the 1613 census of the city's Indian population, 641 (or 55 percent) were learning or practicing a trade as tailors, shoemakers, silk weavers, hatters, button makers, chair makers, mat makers, masons, embroiderers, blacksmiths, carpenters, hosier, and makers of musical instruments. Indian women were either household servants or without a designated occupation. Others only resided in the Cercado or in Lima. Accordingly, the census noted that 69 Indian residents of the city worked on Spanish-owned suburban plots of land, and 59 fishermen resided in Lima but earned their livelihood outside the city.3 8 A mid seventeenth century visita described the Indian inhabitants of the Cercado as primarily agricultural laborers who seasonally worked and lived on chacras owned by Lima's Spanish residents. It further revealed some of them as tenant farmers in the valley of Late, while others had permanently settled there.3 9 Rental agreements in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century involved Indian migrants, all residents of the Cercado and Lima proper, as leasers and lessees of rural holdings in the Lima area.40 A few migrants with nonurban pursuits and interests eventually exchanged their urban residences for rural ones. A migrant from Sana, though having grown up in Lima, claimed that at the time of the 1613 census he lived in Lurigancho where he had land and also earned wages as a farm laborer.4 1 The flow of migration directed to Lima, then, partially moved out into the countryside or the seashore where migrants worked alongside the valley-born. Such movement

An Andean Coastal Society

11

forged connections between Lima and its countryside. Late seventeenth and eighteenth century documents reaffirm that Lima proper continued to appeal to Indian migrants. A city-wide census listing their origins, as did the 1613 census, is not extant for the later period, but marriage records (1672-1688) from the Cercado and a 1683 census of the parish of San Marcelo (see Map 1.3) depict the viceregal capital as a continuing focus of migration for greater Peru.4 2 The 1683 census, like that of 1613, revealed the predominance of male migrants. Males (111) outnumbered females (53), and only seven of the former came from the Lima area. Of the 24 men noted as having occupations, all were craftsmen, except for a servant, a fisherman, and a farm laborer. Unlike the 1613 census, the one in 1683 was not a house-to-house count; the authorities simply gathered the Indians at the church of San Marcelo to make a distinction between tributary and non tributary groups.4 3 A good number, though, offered much needed skills. Labor contracts in the 1700s suggest that Lima drew on migrant labor to fill apprenticeships in the apparel trades, as it had in the early 1600s; they came from as far north as Cajamarca and south to Cuzco.4 4 Historian Marcel Haitin found that from 1790 to 1810, "Indians constituted the most important group of migrants to Lima from the interior."4 5 Late colonial Lima, as in an earlier period, attracted Indians who subsequently fulfilled a productive role in the city's economy. Marriage and stable work pursuits acted to integrate the migrants into the valley bom population throughout the seventeenth century. Based on a 1647 visita of Surquillo, forasteros accounted for eight of its 39 Indian inhabitants and five were married.46 Outsiders and the valley bom even founded pueblos. In the early 1600s, migrant fishermen, together with some locals, founded San Pedro de Quilcay, a fishing village in the Pachacamac valley. Many of these forasteros married local women.4 7 Furthermore, Indians themselves made such observations. The Indian cabildo of Magdalena observed in 1691 that its forasteros married with originarios and fully participated in communal obligations and activities.4 8 Even in the city and the Cercado, resident male migrants married the valley-born.4 9 Work and marriage consequently integrated many forasteros into local Indian families and communities. The need to associate with one's own can also be seen in the migrants' desire to maintain connections with their home communities. This sense of provincial attachment might have influenced Lima's more permanent Indian residents to sustain some sort of ethnic bloc. Wills,

12

Indian Society in the Valley o f Lima

the 1613 census, and other documents from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries reveal that Indian migrants from nearby provinces, both women and men, preserved their homeland ties by retaining landholding rights, paying tribute, and periodically journeying back and forth to visit relatives or loved-ones. These migrants provided extra income and/or resources for families and fellow community members who stayed behind.50 In this way, migration promoted community survival in the provinces, and the carrying of one's cultural baggage might have given Lima its indigenous aspects. Other Indian migrants, however, became detached from their communities of origin and incorporated into the Spanish world, sometimes by choice but most often by coercion. Many Indians became victims of the policy of enslaving those who resisted conquest. The peripheral areas of the Spanish empire initially Central America, then Chile and later the East Indies provided the main source of Indian slaves. Even Indians not engaging in hostilities became vulnerable to abductions for the demand for labor could not be satisfied by the slave and free wage market, or by the state-sponsored mita de plaza. Many of the abductions involved orphaned or abandoned children and adolescents who would then be raised and eventually serve in Spanish households, which included Spanish bureaucrats and priests, or be apprenticed in Lima's artisan shops. They came from as far away as Trujillo and as close as Huaylas and Yauyos. Even where not explicitly stated, those contracted for apprenticeships were most often very young and far from home, with no mention of parents or guardians. The situation suggests that they could have been raised by their Spanish employers or by others until they reached a working or contractual age. This displacement among Indians and their dependency on Spaniards often spelled their total hispanization and inclusion in a captive workforce.5 1 Migration patterns in the 1613 census reveal the extent to which Indians had already entered the Spanish world before coming to Lima. According to the census, over a quarter of all migrants had come directly from Spanish provincial cities to Lima. Males (361) who outnumbered females (120) by three to one overwhelmingly engaged in the trades.5 2 Their close association with Spaniards and Spanish culture would no doubt continue in Lima. Despite numerous Indians being lost to the Spanish world, other forasteros were integrated into an identifiable valley-wide Indian "community." The obvious consequence of this immigration was ethnic

An Andean Coastal Society

13

implosion. The influx of immigrants into the Lima valley continued a pre-Hispanic pattern of highland to coastal migration, though the colonial variety proved to be many times more massive with few migrants traveling in groups. Consequently, the multi-ethnicity of the valley increased to such an extreme as to make pre-Hispanic ethnic groups indistinguishable. They gradually lost their separate identities. For example, the 20 or so highland Yauyos who came to the Cercado together with their curaca seemed to have disappeared from the historical record after their 1653 suit to claim their traditional lots in the Indian barrio.5 3 Even non-ethnic yanaconas lost their way. They traveled with Pizarro as his military auxiliaries and settled in the city of Lima, but they failed to appear in any document after the 1550s.5 4 The only group with a durable identity seemed to be the Caaris whose separate militia company greeted the new Viceroy, Count of Lemos, in 1667.5 5 Nonetheless, people generally lost their roots and either identified with their conquerors or, on the other hand, became incorporated into or identified with the new ethnic label assigned to them by the conquering, more domineering ethnic group-the Spaniards. Emigration from the provinces to Lima certainly enriched the multiethnic flavor of the valley, but the marriage of those bom in the valley to migrants stifled provincial identity. Outsiders of whatever station or ethnic background were efficaciously integrated into the developing, newly-founded "Indian" society of Lima. (Appendixes 1-4 show the extent to which outsiders married into the valley's native nobility.) Migrants married other migrants of different provinces, too, thus further diluting the ethnic pool. At first glance, the colonial reality of hispanization and of ethnic implosion appears similar to the Incanization and the spreading of Quechua as the lingua franca underway at the time of the Spanish invasion.5 6 But, of course, epidemic diseases and individualized, geographical mobility definitively wore down any sense of linkage to pre-Hispanic ethnicity.
A Matter of Integration: Three Lawsuits

Indian depopulation in the valley from early on certainly quickened the pace for the acceptance of forasteros, although not always guaranteed and at times tenuous.5 7 Three lawsuits reveal how Indians integrated other Indians and the conflicts that sometimes arose. This micro-level examination also indicates the ways that Indians reorganized themselves into identifiable social networks and seemed only concerned with forastero-originario distinctions when other

14

Indian Society in the Valley o f Lima

interests were at stake.

Francisco Pizarro brought to Lima in 1537 a group of yanaconas who had acted with distinction as military auxiliaries against Inca armies. Lima's curacas, don Gonzalo and his brother Guachinamo, attempted to tie Pizarro's yanaconas to reciprocal arrangements that would have virtually converted them into tribute payers. At some point, Guachinamo "loaned" the yanaconas about 11 hectares of land (chacras) to cultivate with the understanding that they would, in return, contribute labor towards communal activities, like the repair and cleaning of irrigation canals. These tasks would assist the curacas' people in paying their tribute, an arrangement that reflected a long tradition in the valley of dealing with outsiders. Yet the population losses by then also could have motivated Lima's curacas to seek additional labor since much of their power and prestige depended on it. Don Gonzalo soon discovered that colonial realities made preHispanic ways of integrating outsiders risky. The loaned Chuntay chacra was located in the colonial parish of San Sebastian on the banks of the Rimac River (see Map 1.3). Don Gonzalo had claimed Chuntay as pertaining to his domain since Inca times. The yanaconas, however, later opted to obtain a merced, a land grant, from Lima's cabildo, thereby seeking to acquire title to the very land which the curaca had merely given them in usufruct. The yanaconas had the cabildo and Pizarro on their side of the lawsuit, while the pre-Hispanic formulas that made up don Gonzalos argument carried little weight in a Spanish courtroom. Under the protection of Pizarro and headed by their principal, Limayalli, the yanaconas had no desire to become subjects of Lima's curacas.5 8 Don Gonzalo then resorted to force by sending 20 of his people to attack the yanaconas while they cultivated their fields. That failing, don Gonzalo apparently came to terms with them by donating five hectares of land to Limayalli's daughter in 1560.5 9 This suggests a dowry, an imported device that might have served as a gift would have in pre-Hispanic times to integrate incoming Indians, especially political leaders, into the local society now that reciprocal arrangements were no longer viable. The donation certainly alienated property, though it might be considered an adaptative strategy on the part of don Gonzalo to forge new social networks. In any event, the attempt to manage labor in the old way had to yield to or incorporate European notions of land ownership. From very early on, therefore, the

An Andean Coastal Society

15

pre-Hispanic way of acquiring and retaining manpower became outdated, and only through the adoption of the new concept of property could land be controlled. Land would now have value even without labor. Of course, social integration proceeded, though it did not always guarantee acceptance. In a 1617 suit, the outsiders claimed the same rights to land as the original inhabitants. Such a claim indicates that a certain amount of accommodation and merging between the two groups had already developed, which implies that in everyday life the terms, forastero and originario, held little meaning except from the viewpoint of fiscally concerned, Spanish bureaucrats. Both Francisco Huerta and Domingo Garca de Jess came from the Lambayeque region in northern Peru. As residents respectively of Lima and the Cercado, they disputed ownership of three hectares of land in Late. It had been adjudicated in the 1590s to Francisco Chumbipoma, an originario, who passed it down to his daughter, Juana Huacha; her son, Juan Francisco, then inherited it. The son's premature demise left ownership of the land an open question. Huerta argued that his father, Gaspar Barro, was the brother of Huacha's husband, Pedro Cosquin, thus making Huerta first cousin to Juan Francisco and eligible to claim the land. Despite this rather weak claim, Huerta insisted that he had the same rights to land as the original inhabitants of Late, perhaps a consensus that had been reached earlier in contrast to remoter locations. Domingo Garcia and his witnesses cast doubt on Huerta's kinship links by asserting that Huerta and Cosquin were merely "great friends." He then argued persuasively that his own Late-born wife, Juana Catalina, was Juan Francisco's aunt based on her "prima hermana" (cousin-sister) relationship with the deceased Juana Huacha.6 0 Although only related through marriage, the combined kin terms perhaps drew from Andean usage and from the simple fact that both Juanas were originarios of Late and therefore "sisters." However, witnesses on Domingo's side stated that his wife's father, Juan Quispe, could claim two different birthplaces Trujillo and Late. This may mean that his ancestors had been relocated by the Incas from Trujillo to the Lima area but memory of their origins had not been forgotten. The mother's side being originarios mattered more and possibly accounted for the community support behind Domingo. His witnesses, all Indian residents in Late (four Late-born and four from Lambayeque), contrasted to the four outsiders a mestizo, a black, and two Indian residents of the Cercado supporting Huerta's claim.

16

Indian Society in the Valley o f Lima

Domingo had better connections and kinship credentials and, in the end, he retained possession of the land in the name of his wife, Juana Catalina.6 1 His witnesses' consensus on his wife's lineage marked his better integration into, or perhaps even his stronger influence over residents in Late. On the other hand, Huerta never made any mention of marital ties to a local woman. He had the shortcomings of those Indians not fully integrated into the community's political and social institutions. By the early seventeenth century, if not earlier, the forasterooriginario dichotomy showed signs of blurring in Late. This trend continued to the extent that by the 1790s Indian migrants, some married to mixed bloods, even served on the cabildo.6 2 Forasteros became a ^fact of life in Lima, barely distinguishable from the originarios. However, lines were not so blurred as to prevent forasteros from becoming scapegoats at times, despite having longstanding service and residence in a newly adopted community. Sometimes targeted because of jealousy and politics rather than any scramble for resources, even those who married into Indian nobility did not remain unscathed. In 1736, the community of Surco's interim curaca, don Juan Snchez Tantachumbi argued against the community's renting of two tambos to a forastero, don Sebastian Davin Puchuluan. This outsider and his wife of 30 years, doa Petroila Tantachumbi, described themselves as principales. Puchuluan emphasized his marriage into that noble family, the Tantachumbis (see Appendix 1), and, although he was a tribute payer of Colan, Piura (north coast, Peru), his rental payments contributed to Surco's expenses, including tribute and religious festivals. Thus, his argument rested on his marriage ties, long-term residency in Surco, and his indirect support for community affairs, all of which gave him the same rights as originarios,6 3 Don Juan retorted that the rights to renting communal property resided only in the valley bom, even questioning doa Petroila's character because she had married someone of "low station," a "bastard son."6 4 Eventually one of Surco's own received the right to rent the tambos with the financial backing of a Spaniard.6 5 Puchuluan's legal representation of the Tantachumbi family against don Juan's own rights to the curacasgo in 1732 may have truly motivated don Juan to file suit.66 Don Juan only had kinship links with lower echelon chiefs of Surco,67 and perhaps resented this outsider and "bastard son" achieving such prominence in the community and marrying into an impeccable noble lineage. Rivalry over resources

An Andean Coastal Society

17

provided a less likely possibility than did revenge and political ambition because the community would benefit no matter who rented the tambo. Puchuluan and the family he represented got in the way of don Juan's plans. The basis of this originario-forastero rivalry, therefore, did not always reside in economic issues, but sometimes, as in this case, in the political and personal. All three litigation cases reflect the difficulties inherent to any process of integration. Of course, without migration the Indian population of the Lima valley would have been barely recognizable from other hispanized, nonwhite groups. The cases also indicated changes over time and in the larger society. Pre-Hispanic reciprocal arrangements already had broken down by the mid-sixteenth century, and the seventeenth century case clearly reveals that some forasteros had become integrated into the local milieu through various means, such as residency, marriage, friendship, property ownership, or economic enterprise. Social reproduction thus ensued, especially when the Indians themselves assumed an important role in shaping the criteria for the acceptance or rejection of outsiders. Consequently, social networks constructed upon commonly accepted criteria often excluded those deemed unworthy outsiders-not necessarily forasteros. Owing to the special conditions of the Lima valley, the term forastero became somewhat politicized and flexible in its application, in contrast to its more fiscal and distinct nature in the highlands. In short, to be an outsider held no particular disadvantage.
Indian Labor and Enterprise

While social integration and reproduction went on, colonial policy and the growth of the market economy brought Indians in close touch with the dominant culture. Many were thereby lost to it, but others found a niche in the colonial economy which set them apart from nonIndians and maintained their ethnic integrity.
*****

The colonial policy of resettling Indians into Spanish-built towns or reducciones had a disruptive effect on all Indians. Originating in the Antilles, the Spaniards later applied the policy on the mainland. Spanish officials wished to congregate dispersed and depopulated Indian villages into larger settlements, thereby facilitating taxation, the use of manpower, and evangelization.6 8 Relocation in the Lima valley forced the reduced numbers of Indians to vacate most of their pre-

18

Indian Society in the Valley o f Lima

Hispanic territories. The ayllus making up the various curacasgos subsequently reconstituted by around 1570 in the newly-built reducciones (see Table 1.2). The "abandoned" lands became thus opened to European settlement. The Inca's relocation policy was more selective, while the Spaniards sought to reorder much of indigenous space. In fact, the removal of don Gonzalo's people to the town of Magdalena got underway even earlier as indicated by his 1564 letter to the King describing how the Spaniards usurped his people's lands without compensation to build the city of Lima. He unsuccessfully requested an exemption from the tribute as compensation.6 9 The removal did not mean that Lima would remain Spanish. In the early seventeenth century, the Indian chronicler, Guamn Poma, gave a vivid, though unflattering description of Lima's Indian residents:
Indians absent and cimarrones turned yanaconas, tradesmen, mitayos, low class Indians, tribute payers; they dress like Spaniards, in shirt collars and carrying swords. Here is a world upside down. When Indians see their fellow villagers leave, they soon follow, and so nobody pays the tribute, nor serve in the mines; there are many Indian whores, carrying their mestizo and mulatto children, all with skirts, high shoes, and hair nets; though they are married they go around with Spaniards and Blacks. Others neither want to marry an Indian nor leave the city, for they prefer whoring.70

Guamn Pomas Indians were cultural orphans, their world irreparably shattered. This contrasts with the assessment given by a Spanish official who placed much value on Indian labor and did not see a "world upside down, but one that suited him and the Indians he described. Speaking before Lima's cabildo in 1603, the alguacil mayor, Francisco Severino de Torres, opposed the relocation of Indians from the barrio of San Lzaro to the Cercado (see Map 1.3). This had been initiated in 1590 in accordance with the laws of residential segregation which sought to keep Indians away from the 'mal ejemplo' (bad example) of non-Indians.
Many of them (Indians) who have trades and are master craftsmen have been forced against their will to leave the city, abandoning their homes and shops. It has caused much disruption, especially to those with a useful trade...and much too worthy to be taken away from their work. If they were to leave, the colony would lack the products of their labor, and such products would sell dearly from now on.7 1

An Andean Coastal Society

19

Perhaps both had an agenda. Conscious of his Andean roots, Guamn Poma believed that Indians should remain in their homelands and not be corrupted by life in a "Spanish" city. De Torres saw the Indians as contributing productively to the urban economy and implied his willingness to ignore the segregationist laws. To be sure, Lima never lost its Indian residents. Already in the 1550s Indians worked in Spanish artisan shops.7 2 The 1613 street by street count of its Indian population, excluding the Cercado, indicates that the Indians lived and worked throughout the city. Above all, they did not congregate in any one neighborhood or street, though large numbers were found in the barrio of San Lzaro, the southern and eastern fringes of the city and around the central plaza. Even in these areas, one could find Spanish, mestizo, and mulatto residents. In fact, the construction boom at the very beginning of the seventeenth century presaged the movement of Spaniards to neighborhoods once exclusively nonwhite or Indian. Set aside for Indian fishermen in the late 1530s, San Lzaro contained a population of 500 Spaniards by the 1630s. Indian apprentices and journeymen often lived adjacent to or in the back of Spanish workshops or in Spanish households, and they usually rented space from Spaniards. Indian domestic servants, both men and women, invariably lived in Spanish homes.7 3 As a result, Lima became ethnically and racially mixed. Such inter-ethnic and inter-cultural contact sometimes left one's ethnic status an open question. While the vast majority of Indians in the 1613 census identified themselves as Indian, some asserted other identities, or were subject to the whim of the census taker. In some instances, despite claims of being a mestizo, the census taker noted that he/she dressed like an Indian or the mestizo who looked Indian but dresses like a Spaniard.7 4 Whether intentional or not, ethnic confusion continued in the census as indicated by the following examples: the one who claimed to be a mestizo but had a mestizo father and an Indian mother; though described as an Indian, another stated to the census taker he was the son of a mestizo; the "criollo indio" was told by his mother and brother that he is a mestizo; and, a shoemaker emphatically asserts that as a mestizo he has no cacique, but he dresses in the "hbito de indio" (Indian way) because he is poor.7 5 This fluidity and equivocation reflected the prejudice pervasive in the larger society, as well as a measure of uncertainty or pretension. On the other hand, numerous Indians expressed certainty about their ethnicity despite their involvement in the market economy, or proximity

20

Indian Society in the Valley o f Lima

to non-Indians. As will be shown, it often transcended the Hispanicstyle, socioeconomic differentiation emerging among the Indians in the Lima valley. Some economic activities and institutions even bolstered such ethnic ties. No doubt, the demand for Indian labor contributed to the process of bringing Indians closer to Spanish society, but not all were entirely lost in it. In the early years, the encomienda, or a grant of Indian labor, predominated, then the corregimiento partially took it over by the second half of the sixteenth century. The encomendero as the grantee used the labor on his many different enterprises. Eventually the Spanish Crown and laws disallowed the most extreme abuses of the system, namely, not paying for the labor. The encomenderos' wills in the sixteenth century implied some sort of wrongdoing or abuse when they left bequests to help pay their charges' tribute and thereby relieve their guilty consciences.7 6 Subsequently, beginning with the 1549 cdula targeting the encomiendas, the Crown established a state-run labor draft system, the corregimiento, and made labor available to all Spanish colonists in need of it. In Lima Viceroy Conde de Nieva (1561-1564) implemented the mita de plaza and later Viceroy Francisco de Toledo (1569-1581) codified it and increased the number of mitayos from 200 to 1200. Consequently, the always-minority group of encomenderos lost their monopoly over Indian labor and instead became mere pensioners of the Crown.7 7 Put in charge of Indian affairs and of the Indians of the corregimiento, the corregidores behaved no better than the encomenderos and exploited the Indian labor to benefit themselves materially. The corregidores also became responsible by the end of the sixteenth century for rounding up and placing Indian debtors, criminals, orphans, and vagabonds in the service of Lima's Spanish residents.7 8 Meanwhile, the curacas whose control over Indian labor did not completely cease circumvented the encomienda and corregimiento systems. In the first two or three generations, the curacas used their authority to provide labor to Spaniards compensated variously in maize, cloth, food, tools, or pesos.7 9 As commercial agriculture grew, especially wheat and sugar, so did the demand for labor. Continuing depopulation made the state-requisitioning of mitayos inadequate to fill the valley's labor needs completely. In 1624 a mere 60 Indians from the Lima area were assigned to 25 chacras, and Spanish landowners ( hacendados )complained in the late seventeenth century that many of those Indians allotted to them did not stick around for more than a

An Andean Coastal Society

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day or left within a week.8 0 Still, the nearby highlands continued to provide mitayos. In addition to farm work, the corregidor drafted them to do such tasks as maintaining the canals that provided irrigation and drinking water to the city, building roads and bridges, keeping the city clean, and domestic service. The demand and competition for mitayos inevitably prompted abuses. Some of the valley's Spanish hacendados did not hesitate to seize mitayos on the road before they reached the plaza of the Cercado, thus depriving others of their fair share. Some Spaniards provided no food or failed to pay their mitayos. More often than not money went to the curaca or to another official (e.g. the Indian alcalde of the Cercado), who then parceled out the mita workers. After being informed by Spanish residents that Indians could not do mita service in Lima and in their home communities, the viceroy and the protector de indios in the 1590s exempted Indians from such service back home if they lived in the Cercado for more than five years, though their curacas could collect tribute from them.8 1 This is certainly a recognition of a defacto situation as has been shown; that is, for whatever reason many Indians made Lima their home. Although forced labor continued to be used, a free wage, Indian labor market seriously arose toward the end of the sixteenth and certainly into the seventeenth centuries. Yet wages constituted only part of such labor arrangements. In nineteen, one-year contracts dated 1577 to 1602 twelve migrant and seven valley-born Indians agreed to work for Spanish farmers. The terms of seven contracts involved a combination of wages, food, clothing, and usufruct rights to land, while the remaining primarily called for wages. The higher wages (from 22 to 180 pesos annually), compared to those for agricultural work in provincial Huamanga (12 to 24 pesos), suggest the growing reliance on and perhaps scarcity of Indian agricultural workers in the valley.8 2 On one Spanish landowners 1618 payroll, 38 Indians were paid four reales daily plus food for harvesting wheat in Carabayllo, more than the one or two reales and possibly some food under the forced labor draft.8 3 Slavery also became increasingly important in the same time frame. In fact, Lima heavily depended on it, as did other coastal farming areas.8 4 By the end of the colonial period the importation of African slaves had been much restricted: the vast majority of them (13,669) lived and worked in the city of Lima, while a smaller number (4,212) in Lima's countryside.8 5 Despite the widespread presence of Africans, Indian workers could be found in Spanish artisan shops, households, and obrajes and in the rural hinterland doing farm work on a contractual

22

Indian Society in the Valley o f Lima

basis. Noticeably in the late colonial period they resided on the haciendas that had begun to appear in the early 1600s.8 6 No doubt some hacendados recruited workers from the surrounding communities.87 Hence, the free labor market came to dominate: to be sure, the use of coercion was always an option. Higher wages in the Lima area attracted many Indians whose growing involvement in the market economy contributed to their ladinization or assimilation of Spanish language and culture. Of the 40 percent of Indians (685) under a work contract in the first decade of the seventeenth century, 92 percent of that number claimed to be ladinos. Many Indians achieved ladino status while in Lima; those who made no ladino claim in their first contract often indicated, after signing a contract for an additional year, that they had learned some Spanish. Since Spaniards did most of the hiring, the Indians had an economic motive for hispanization, which then undoubtedly eased their adaptation to an urban environment.8 8 So many of the valley's Indians became evidently assimilated that the term "ladino" appeared less frequently in the documents after the mid-1600s to distinguish one Indian group from another. In only one of the 22 apprenticeship contracts from the eighteenth century did the Indian note his ladino status. Of the seven Indians giving their ages as between 12 and 19 years old, two were apprenticed to Indian masters, and all received room and board without pay.8 9 Learning a trade was to be a step towards earning a living wage, being independent, and aspiring to master status. Apart from earning wages, numerous Indians, both men and women, imbibed the entrepreneurial spirit and practiced it. They accumulated wealth as well as debts and made their niche in the market economy. One ladino cloth merchant of the Cercado in 1621 still owed 480 pesos of a 984 peso debt to an encomendero who sold him on credit 80 pieces of cloth obtained as tribute.90 An early seventeenth century Spanish chronicler described the Indian residents of the Cercado, many of them migrants, as "rich and ladinos" owning 80 slaves altogether.9 1 The sample of 123 wills (see Appendix 6) reveals a more moderate profile of slaveholding, though pointing to an interesting difference: each of the six female and two male migrants owned one slave, while only one man and a women bom in the valley owned slaves. Small-scale farmers and the women who sold fruits, vegetables, and poultry in Limas marketplace (sometimes called the tianquiz) numbered among the Cercado's residents. Based on his 1611 will, Pedro Mango, who claimed the Cercado as his birthplace, cultivated peanuts, sweet

An Andean Coastal Society

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potatoes, com, and beans on his scattered farm holdings. One hectare he rented from an Indian of Late, and owed two Indians wages for working his land. Among the male and female migrant residents, some engaged in raising garden crops and fruits, such as figs, guava, oranges, lemons, peaches, and pacay (a legume) inside the Cercado's walls. Julio Gutierres of Huarochiri stated in his 1687 will that he earned 60 pataconas yearly from the production of his fruit trees. In that same year, another Cercado resident, don Julio Tanta of Huamantanga, indicated owning an unspecified number of vicuas in the pastures of Pachacamac.9 2 The Cercado especially served as one of Limas connections with the hinterland. Almost exclusively Indian women made and marketed a traditional item, chicha, from their homes. Most purchased the maize; a few raised their own in partnership with their husbands. Women also dominated street hawking; while some husbands actually went to the highlands to bring, for example, the maize and potatoes they had cultivated for their wives to sell in Lima. Some of the Cercado's prosperous residents even owned the mules that hauled their goods to the city.9 3 In the 1660s, four Indians and two mestizos hauled coca leaves, another traditional item, from the highlands on mule back to sell illegally in Lima. They claimed to have been doing it for years.9 4 Indian inhabitants outside the walls of the Cercado, most of them valley bom, also participated in the market economy throughout the colonial period. Like the migrants, they took advantage of the increasing urban demand for the same kind of garden crops noted previously; they also grew eggplants, cucumbers, and fruits, but more commonly maize and beans. They were sharecroppers and tenants, small-scale producers, and pastoralists; some Indians rented out their small holdings to neighboring Spanish hacendados, or even to other Indians.9 5 One Miguel Cocssi of Surco mentioned in his 1596 will that he had worked for doa Juana Llacsa, the wife of Surco's principal "irrigating her cultivated maize chacra and for said service she has given me a fanega of maize and lands in which I have cultivated maize and yucca."96 Those of noble birth, too, did not hesitate to join the capitalist fray. The curaca, don Juan Casapacsi of Magdalena, tried his hand at viticulture and wheat farming.9 7(A discussion of landownership among the Indians in the next chapter may be considered as part of this discussion of agrarian enterprise.) Perhaps such economic activities hardly distinguished them from those engaged in by many non-Indians. Nevertheless, Spanish

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Indian Society in the Valley o f Lima

hacendados in the late seventeenth century noted that while they grow wheat, Indians predominately specialize in garden crops.9 8 Some evidence suggest this specialty, and the traditional goods coca and chicha which Indians produced and marketed (to what extent is unknown) contributed to their distinctiveness. These small-scale entrepreneurs thus carved a niche for themselves in the coastal economy. Fishing, another activity rooted in pre-Hispanic times, continued to be exclusively Indian after the conquest. Lima's cabildo in the late 1530s mandated that Indians should not be impeded from such activity, and Indian fishermen subsequently plied their trade throughout the colonial period. Fishing villages and fishing as a task specialization, survived the Spanish invasion. The eighteenth century map of Lima and Callao (see Map 1.4) shows the pre-Hispanic fishing village of PitiPiti and the colonial one, el nuevo (new), as barrios situated outside the walls of Callao. The physical separation highlighted the occupation as indigenous. Some even lived in the city; the 1613 census counted 59 fishermen, including one claiming to be a curaca and two being from nearby Surco.9 9 Fishing and Indian control of it eventually became institutionalized under the Spanish gremio system. Two fishing gremios in fact adopted the patron saints San Cristobal and San Pedro, and proclaimed their occupation to have been around "from time ^immemorial and by ancient custom." They excluded other "castas," namely mulattos and Asians (the Philippines), from their fishing area and boasted of having been given rights to fish from the bridge that connected Lima to San Lzaro, to the mouth of the sea by several viceregal provisions. These Indian fishermen successfully prevented others from disrupting their monopoly.1 0 0 Fishing gave numerous Indians a sense of autonomyso much so that some outside the Lima area even founded their own fishing villages like Chorrillos and San Pedro de Quilcay. Some of Quilcay's Indian inhabitants came from the neighboring town of Surco, as well as from other parts of Peru; its destruction by the 1746 earthquake forced the fishermen to move to the village of Lurin, farther south. Fishing certainly maintained a connection with their past. They hauled their fish on mule back to the Lima market on routes designated in pre-Hispanic times along the beach. Also because they had little need of land and their very occupation excused them from the agricultural labor draft, the Indian fisherman could live out their lives without much Spanish meddling.1 0 1 Indian women who were perhaps the fishermen's wives

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participated, too: on the eve of Peruvian independence, an English traveler noted that they brought the fish from Chorrillos to Lima in baskets.1 0 2 Collective deals were made as well: the cabildo of Piti-Piti contracted with the Inquisition to supply fish to its prisoners, apparently well before the eighteenth century.1 0 3 Consequently, the Indians controlled fishing and the marketing of it throughout the colonial period, and such activities contributed to the Indians collective sense of identity. To bolster their identity, the urban Indians established separate gremios under their patron saints. In the early years, they practiced their artisan skills in defiance of guild regulations. In the eighteenth century Indian guilds, modeled on and competing against the Spanish ones, were visible and included such trades as the silk weavers, hatters, tailors and shoemakers. At least 46 Indian master tradesmen were in the shoemakers' guild in 1780s Lima. One master shoemaker counted 125 shops in the city altogether; since only the documented masters of any trade could legally own shops, then the Indian masters potentially owned over a third of them. Moreover, only masters could be elected as officers, and they took charge in examining members for possible master status according to the established standards of Spanish craftsmanship, such as material used and design. Still, some slipped through the cracks and became masters owing to kinship, friendship, or business ties. Some also operated shops clandestinely and without authorization.1 0 4 Lima's cabildo supervised the elections of the Indian officers (and did so for all the gremios in the city) and could even intervene in the event of election irregularities. At the same time, the membership appealed to the cabildo to take action against officers considered to have held office too long or to have been elected under questionable circumstances. The membership aspired to keep the gremio Indian. However, in one questionable election in 1784 a number of Indians from the shoemakers gremio complained to the cabildo that only a minority of masters, not all of them Indian, elected an officer. Often the cabildo or another agency of Spanish government affirmed and reaffirmed the city and viceregal ordinances protecting the Indian v gremios, considered them to be part of the "repblica de indios," and exempted them from alcabalas and other financial obligations. Because of this privileged status, not a few non-Indians including Spaniards desired to be members of Indian gremios. The Indian membership succeeded in resisting this intrusion and argued that the presence of

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Indian Society in the Valley o f Lima

non-Indians would diminish the influence of its membership. Even as late as 1816 Indians continued to fight for ethnic exclusivity; 38 Indian tailors objected to the viceregal government's approval of Spanish participation in the Indian gremio of tailors.1 0 5 Indians also began to make inroads into the usually Spanishdominated silver-smithing. Indian silversmiths established their own zofradia-cum-gremio, venerating the patron saint of Santa Ana. This prestigious occupation attracted the likes of don Pasqual Ramos who was the cofrada's mayordomo and an "indio noble."1 0 6 These Indian guilds contributed to the urban economy and asserted ethnicity the imposed "indio" status. Such economic participation brought Indians to assimilate Spanish material culture. Their wills revealed how much of that culture they thereby assimilated. They left behind silverware, Spanish-style clothing and furniture, linen, religious items, slaves, horse bridles, and spurs. Of course, some Indians possessed more property than others. Furthermore, there were fewer and fewer indigenous pieces, like mantas and cumbis, after 1600.1 0 7 One historian has detected, nonetheless, that women, more so than male immigrants to Lima, continued to differ from non-Indians in their clothing in terms of style and color throughout the seventeenth century.1 0 8
Conclusion

The valley of Lima experienced several invasions; the Inca and Spanish are simply the best documented. Inca imperial policy engaged in ethnic realignments, but to lose one's ethnicity, whether from the coast or highland, rarely occurred. Under the Spanish the valley's Indian peoples faced massive depopulation, structural dislocation, and ethnic implosion. But all was not lost. New World ethnicity was an Old World invention, and it nevertheless served the survivors accordingly. The valley Indians' successful and sometimes not so successful-integration of outsiders into their family networks and communal structures enhanced the Indians' adaptability and strengthened their societal make-up. Any sort of forastero-originario confrontation did affirm, in an cosmetic way, provincial identities, though asserting one's ethno-provincialism was hardly an advantage. Integration proceeded steadily to make the dichotomy irrelevant to the valleys Indians, and the issue only emerged when economic and political interests clashed. This opening to outsiders made the Indian presence known in Lima and became one of

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the building blocks for society formation. Claiming to be "indio" became the way of the world by around 1600, and only on rare occasions, such as in the Yauyos example, would the recently arrived Indian migrant assert some ethnic pretense. Thus, the contrived label and status "indio actually became a template with which Indians could promote social reproduction. The indigenous reciprocity that once defined the distribution system and interpersonal relations gave way to socioeconomic differentiation among the Indians as the market economy took hold. Indian participation in that economy ranged from free wage to coerced labor, and levels of Indian entrepreneurship varied. But numerous Indians specialized in the production and selling of certain agrarian or marine products which came to identified with the colonial category. And some pre-Hispanic occupations and tastes became incorporated into new gremio and market structures. Significantly, Indians were able to form their own gremios based on European skills in response to the Spaniards' discriminatory practices. In many ways, an Indian society had matured by the late colonial period and virtually mirrored the Spanish one, but retaining an even-handed distance from it that often evoked several dynamics working at once: class and culture, individual and collective interests, and the indigenous past and colonial realities. These dynamics would be found in the discourse on what constituted Indian-ness, a discourse that became increasingly complex as the Indians maneuvered to find a place in the valley.