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The Indian Population of Southern Guatemala, 1549-1551: An Analysis of López de Cerrato's Tasaciones de Tributos1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

W. George Lovell ,
Christopher H. Lutz  and
William R. Swezey
W. George Lovell
Affiliation:
Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada
Christopher H. Lutz
Affiliation:
Centro de Investigaciones Regionales de Mesoamérica, Antigua, Guatemala
William R. Swezey
Affiliation:
Centro de Investigaciones Regionales de Mesoamérica, Antigua, Guatemala
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Extract

The tasaciones de tributos compiled between 1548 and 1554 under the supervision of Alonso López de Cerrato have long been recognized as the most important tribute documentation extant for mid sixteenth-century Central America, being of particular interest to all those whose inquiries have focussed on various aspects of the economy and demography of regions stretching from Chiapas and Yucatán in the north to Honduras and Nicaragua in the south. For the purpose of this paper, we wish to concentrate simply on one spatial component of the Libro de tasaciones forming part of the celebrated legajo 128, a rich set of documents housed in the Archivo General de Indias in the section of the archive classified as the Audiencia de Guatemala: that spatial component referred to by contemporary Spanish officials as “los términos y jurisdictión de la ciudad de Santiago de Guatemala,” that is, the territory which in early colonial times fell under the administrative authority of the city of Santiago.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 40 , Issue 4 , April 1984 , pp. 459 - 477
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1984

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References

1 An earlier version of this paper was presented to the 44th International Congress of Americanists which met in Manchester, England, September 5-10, 1982. For the opportunity to attend and to deliver the paper at the Manchester Congress, Dr. Lovell would like to acknowledge a travel grant from Queen's University School of Graduate Studies and Research. The research upon which the paper is based was made possible by the financial support of the Killam Program of the Canada Council, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Plumsock Fund.

2 Among the studies which are based, at least in part, on the Cerrato tasaciones are De Velasco, Juan López, Geografía y descripción universal de las Indias (Madrid, 1971);Google Scholar Del Paso, Francisco y Troncoso, , Epistolario de Nueva España, 1505–1818, 16 vols. (Mexico City, 1939–42);Google Scholar Castro, Rodolfo Barón, La población de El Salvador (Madrid, 1942);Google Scholar Bergmann, John F., “The Distribution of Cacao Cultivation in Pre-Columbian America,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 59 (March 1969), 85–96;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Radell, David R., “Historical Geography of Western Nicaragua: The Spheres of Influence of León, Granada, and Managua, 1519–1965” (Ph.D. Diss., Berkeley, 1969);Google Scholar Cook, Sherburne F. and Borah, Woodrow, “The Population of Yucatán, 1517–1960,” in Cook, Sherburne F. and Borah, Woodrow, Essays in Population History: Mexico and the Caribbean, Vol. 2 (Berkeley, 1974), pp. 1–79;Google Scholar Gerhard, Peter, The Southeast Frontier of New Spain (Princeton, 1979);Google Scholar and Newson, Linda A., “Demographic Catastrophe in Sixteenth-Century Honduras,” An analysis of the Cerrato tasaciones also forms the basis of Dan Stanislawski, The Transformation of Nicaragua: 1519–1548 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1983).]Google Scholar in Robinson, David J., ed., Studies in Spanish American Population History (Boulder, 1981), pp. 217–241.Google Scholar

3 Santiago is known today simply as Antigua Guatemala. For a history of the city, see Lutz, Christopher H., Historia sociodemográfica de Santiago de Guatemala, 1541–1773 (Guatemala, 1983).Google Scholar

4 Becerra, Salvador Rodríguez, Encomienda y conquista: Los inicios de la colonización en Guatemala (Sevilla, 1977), pp. 115–116.Google Scholar

5 For a biography of Pedro de Alvarado and an assessment of his power and wealth, see Kelly, J.E., Pedro de Alvarado: Conquistador (Princeton, 1932);Google Scholar and Sherman, William L., “A Conqueror’s Wealth: Notes on the Estate of Pedro de Alvarado,” The Americas, 26 (October 1969), 199–213.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Becerra, Rodríguez, Encomienda y conquista, pp. 117–118.Google Scholar

7 Archivo General de Indias (hereinafter cited as AGI): Indiferente General 857. These tasaciones are currently being transcribed by Wendy Kramer, W. George Lovell, and Christopher H. Lutz with a view to future publication in Mesoamérica.

8 Becerra, Rodríguez, Encomienda y conquista, p. 118.Google Scholar

9 The cabildo of Santiago de Guatemala to the Crown, April 30, 1549, quoted in Becerra, Salvador Rodríguez, “Metodología y fuentes para el estudio de la población do Guatemala en el siglo XVI,” Alti del XL Congresso Internazionale degli Americanisti (Genoa, 1975), p. 246.Google Scholar The letter of complaint may be found in AGI: Audiencia de Guatemala (hereinafter cited as AG) 41. The Spanish text reads: El licenciado Rogél vino mandado por la audiencia y sin hacer averiguación de la gente que había ni la posibilidad y granjerías que tenía, quitó en las tasaciones mucha cantidad de tributos asi a VM como a los particulares.

10 Sherman, William L., Forced Native Labor in Sixteenth-Century Central America (Lincoln, 1979), p. 135.Google Scholar

11 The New Laws of the Indies for the Good Treatment and Preservation of the Indians, promulC;gated in 1542–43, prohibited Indian slavery, limited the institution known as encomienda, and regulated Indian tribute payments. See Gibson, Charles, Spain in America (New York, 1966), pp. 48–67,Google Scholar for a general discussion of the New Laws and their role in taming the encomienda. Sherman, Forced Native Labor, pp. 129–88, contains an excellent analysis of the impact of the New Laws on the encomienda system in sixteenth-century Central America.

12 Sherman, , Forced Native Labor, p. 12.Google Scholar The same author succinctly reviews Cerrato’s accomC;plishments in “Indian Slavery and the Cerrato Reforms” HAHR, 51 (1971), 25–50.

13 See Macleod, Murdo J., Spanish Central America: A Socioeconomic History, 1520–1720 (Berkeley, 1973), pp. 23–142,Google Scholar for a detailed discussion of economic, social, and political life in early colonial Guatemala.

14 For some idea of the cabildo’s anti-reform views and their responses to the enlightened thinking of, among others, Alonso López de Cerrato, see Macleod, Murdo J., “Las Casas, Guatemala, and the Sad but Inevitable Case of Antonio de Remesal,” Topic: A Journal of the Liberal Arts, 20 (Fall 1970), 53–64.Google Scholar

15 The cabildo of Santiago de Guatemala to the Crown, April 30, 1549, quoted in Rodríguez Becerra, “Metodología y fuentes,” p. 246. The text of the letter in Spanish reads: Después que vinó el licenciado Cerrato, no obstante la tasación del licenciado Rogel, mandó que todos trajesen a tasar otra vez.

16 Tasaciones de los pueblos de los términos y jurisdicción de la ciudad de Santiago de la provincia de Guatemala, AGI: AG 128 (1549–1551).

17 Archivo General de Centroamérica, A3.16 legajo 2797, expediente 40466 (1553–1554).

18 Feldman, Lawrence H., Los tasaciones y tributos de Guatemala (Columbia, 1980);Google Scholar Becerra, Rodríguez, Encomienda y conquista and “Metodología y fuentes;”Google Scholar and De Solano, Francisco y Pérez-Lila, , Los Mayas del siglo XVIII (Madrid, 1974).Google Scholar

19 Señor Fuentes has worked in the Archivo General de Indias (AGI) in Seville for many years, transcribing documents for scores of researchers and research institutes. He has a formidable knowledge, as anyone who has enlisted his help can attest, of colonial Spanish paleography.

20 AGI:AG 128.

21 Feldman, , Tasaciones y tributos, p. 75;Google Scholar Becerra, Rodríguez, “Metodología y fuentes,” p. 248;Google Scholar and Solano, y Pérez-Lila, , Los Mayas, p. 83.Google Scholar

22 AGI:AG 128.

23 See, for example, AGI: Contaduria 973, which contains fiscal records for the years 1624 to 1710. One set of documents in this legajo relates to the treasury accounts of the Audiencia of Guatemala for the years around 1710, when 326 settlements are listed as constituting the spatial unit referred to in this paper as southern Guatemala.

24 Borah, Woodrow and Cook, Sherburne F., “Conquest and Population: A Demographic Approach to Mexican History,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 113 (February 1969), 177–178.Google Scholar

25 Newson, Linda A., “The Depopulation of Nicaragua in the Sixteenth Century,” Journal of Latin American Studies, 14 (November 1982), 263–265.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 See, for example, the meticulously detailed tasaciones of numerous Guatemalan communities which may be found in AGI:AG 45 (1561–1562).

27 Carmack, Robert M., Quichean Civilization: The Ethnohistoric, Ethnographic, and ArchaeoC;logical Sources (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1973), pp. 138–39;Google Scholar and Veblen, Thomas T., “Native Population Decline in Totonicapán, Guatemala,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 67 (December 1977), 494–495.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

28 Del Castillo, Bernal Díaz, quoted in De Santamaria, Carmelo Sáenz, El licenciado Don Francisco Marroquín, primer obispo de Guatemala (Madrid, 1964), p. 74.Google Scholar The letter written by Díaz del Castillo reads: Sepa VM que todo se hizo al contrario de vuestro real mando; porque no se vió cosa de los dicho sino estándose en sus aposentos, se tasó no sé porqué relación y cabeca… y diz que envía agora allí a VM todas las tasaciones como si tuviesen experiencia de lo que es cada cosa y las circumstancias dello.

29 Carmack, , Quichean Civilization, pp. 138–139;Google Scholar and Sherman, , Forced Native Labor, 153–188.Google Scholar

30 AGI:AG 128. The text reads “estaban agraviados de esta tasación.” See Figure III, line 30.

31 Razón de las tasaciones que se han hecho después que el presidente [Valverdé] vino a esta audiencia, de pueblos de su distrito con lo que antes tributaban, AGI:AG 10 (1578–1582).

32 For a discussion of congregación and its consequences in colonial Guatemala, see Macleod, , Spanish Central America, pp. 120–142;Google Scholar De Jesús Cabecas, Horacio, Las Reducciones indígenas en Guatemala durante el siglo XVI (Guatemala, 1974);Google Scholar and Peláez, Severo Martínez, La Patria del criollo: Ensayo de interpretación de la realidad colonial guatemalteca (San José, 1975), pp. 443–460.Google Scholar

33 For a regional analysis of the long-term effectiveness of congregación, see George Lovell, W., “Settlement Change in Spanish America: The Dynamics of Congregación in the Cuchumatán Highlands of Guatemala,” The Canadian Geographer, 27:2 (1983), 163–174.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34 Macleod, , Spanish Central America, p. 19;Google Scholar and Veblen, , “Native Population Decline in Totonicapán,” p. 495. Google Scholar Gucumatz, or cocoliztli, is an undetermined pestilence MacLeod believes may have been pulmonary plague.

35 Cook, and Borah, , “The Population of Yucatán,” p. 9 Google Scholar and p. 16. A manta is defined by Cook and Borah as “four piernas, or strips of cotton cloth woven on a native loom, each strip three-quarters of a Spanish vara (about 33 inches) wide by four varas long.”

36 Newson, , “Demographic Catastrophe in Honduras,” p. 221;Google Scholar and Radell, , “Historical Geography of Western Nicaragua,” p. 87.Google Scholar A fanega is a unit of dry measure of approximately 1.6 bushels or 116 pounds. The area planted with this amount of seed was known as the fanega de sembradura.

37 See, for example, Razón de las tasaciones, AGI:AG 10; and Macleod, , Spanish Central America, pp. 130 131.Google Scholar An increase in the number of tributaries between 1549 and 1581 must not be interpreted as a genuine increase in the Indian population but as a result of changes in the Spanish tribute system. Essentially, certain sectors of the native population hitherto granted reservado status were later classified as being eligible for tribute in an attempt by an impecunious royal treasury to bolster its reserves. The situation in central Mexico is discussed in detail in Borah, Woodrow and Cook, Sherburne F., The Population of Central Mexico in 1548: An Analysis of the Suma de Visitas de Pueblos (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1960), pp. 54–74.Google Scholar Among those who have erroneously interpreted the statistical increase as a swelling of human numbers are Kubler, George, “Population Movements in Mexico, 1520–1600,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 22 (1942), 615–616 CrossRefGoogle Scholar and 623–625; Castro, Barón, La población de El Salvador, p. 100;Google Scholar Spores, Ronald, The Mixtee Kings and their People (Norman, 1967), pp. 73–75;Google Scholar and Rosenblat, Angel, La población de América en 1492: Viejos y nuevos cálculos (Mexico City, 1967), pp. 70–71.Google Scholar

38 Borah, and Cook, , The Population of Central Mexico in 1548, pp. 1–19;Google Scholar and Cook, Sherburne F. and Borah, Woodrow, The Indian Population of Central Mexico, 1531–1610 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1960), pp. 5–6.Google Scholar As yet, no study of the Spanish tribute system in sixteenth-century Guatemala exists that can approach the excellence of the one undertaken for Mexico by Miranda, José, El tributo indígena en la Nueva España durante el siglo XVI (Mexico City, 1952).Google Scholar

39 Borah, Woodrow and Cook, Sherburne F., “New Demographic Research on the Sixteenth Century in Mexico,” in Cline, Howard F., ed., Latin American History: Essays on its Study and Teaching, 1898–1965 (Austin, 1967), p. 719.Google Scholar

40 Van Bath, B.H. Slicher, “The Calculation of the Population of New Spain, especially for the period before 1570,” Boletín de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe, 24 (June 1978), 67–95;Google Scholar and Zamora, Elias, “Conquista y crisis demográfica: la población indígena del occidente de Guatemala en el siglo XVI,” presented to the 44th International Congress of Americanists, Manchester, England.Google Scholar Dr.Zamora’s, paper is based in part on his recently completed dissertation, El occidente de Guatemala en el siglo XVI: efectos de la presencia española sobre la población indígena (Sevilla: Universidad de Sevilla, 1983),Google Scholar and will be published in a forthcoming issue of Mesoamérica. Other critiques of the Borah-Cook methodology include Henige, David, “On the Contact Population of Hispaniola: History as Higher Mathematics,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 58 (1978), 216–237;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Zambardino, Rudolph A., “Mexico’s Population in the Sixteenth Century: Demographic Anomaly or Mathematical Illusion?” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 11 (1980), 1–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

41 Sanders, William T., “The Population of the Central Mexican Symbiotic Region, the Basin of Mexico, and the Teotihuacán Valley in the Sixteenth Century,” in Denevan, William M., ed., The Native Population of the Americas in 1492 (Madison, 1976), p. 125.Google Scholar

42 Gerhard, Peter, A Guide to the Historical Geography of New Spain (Cambridge, 1972), p. 23.Google Scholar

43 Cook, Sherburne F. and Simpson, Lesley Byrd, The Population of Central Mexico in the Sixteenth Century (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1948), pp. 11–13;Google Scholar De Mendizábal, Miguel Othón, “La demografía mexicana: época colonial, 1519–1810,” cited in Borah and Cook, The Population of Central Mexico in 1548, p. 75;Google Scholar and Cline, Howard F., “Civil Congregation of the Western Chinantec, New Spain, 1599–1603,” The Americas, 12 (October 1956), 115–137,CrossRefGoogle Scholar especially p. 131, which concerns the barrio of San Pedro.

44 Gibson, Charles, Tlaxcala in the Sixteenth Century (New Haven, 1952), p. 139.Google Scholar

45 Veblen, , “Native Population Decline in Totonicapán,” p. 495;Google Scholar and Miles, Sarah W., “The Sixteenth Century Pokom-Maya: A Documentary Analysis of Social Structure and Archaeological Setting,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Association, 47 (1957), 766.Google Scholar

47 Carmack, Robert M., “Social and Demographic Patterns in an Eighteenth Century Census from Tecpanaco, Guatemala,” in Carmack, Robert M., Early, John D., and Lutz, Christopher H., eds., The Historical Demography of Highland Guatemala (Albany, 1982), pp. 139–140.Google Scholar

48 AGI:AG 45 (1561–1562).

49 George Lovell, W. and Swezey, William R., “The Population of Southern Guatemala at Spanish Contact,” Canadian Journal of Anthropology, 3:1 (Fall, 1982), 71–84.Google Scholar

50 Borah, and Cook, , “Conquest and Population,” p. 180.Google Scholar The literature on the demographic impact of the Old World on the New (surely one of the most dramatic and controversial issues in human history) is now voluminous, but the debate is admirably synthesized in Denevan, William M., ed., The Native Population of the Americas in 1492 and in Henry F. Dobyns, Native American Historical Demography: A Critical Bibliography (Bloomington, 1976).Google Scholar Two recent contributions are David Cook, N., Demographic Collapse: Indian Peru, 1520–1620 (Cambridge, 1981)Google Scholar and Joralemon, D., “New World Depopulation and the Case of Disease,” Journal of Anthropological Research, 38:1 (1982), 108–127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar David Cook, N. subjects his information base to a critical scrutiny similar to the one undertaken here for mid sixteenth-century Guatemala in his “Population Data for Indian Peru: Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries” in HAHR, 62 (1982), 72–120.Google Scholar