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Hacienda and Free Community in Eighteenth Century Alto Peru: A Demographic Study of the Aymara Population of the Districts of Chulumani and Pacajes in 1786*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Herbert S. Klein
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Extract

In the history of rural society in Latin America, the interplay between the large landed estate, or hacienda, and the free Indian landowning community, known as ayllu or ejido, has proven one of the most complex issues to understand. The struggle for land, labour and markets between these two seemingly competitive rural landholding institutions varied both time and space and only in a few limited areas has this interrelationship been fully analyzed.

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Articles
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , November 1975 , pp. 193 - 220
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1975

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References

1 A good survey of this literature will be found in Magnus, Mörner, ‘The Spanish American Hacienda: A Survey of Recent Research and Debate’, Hispanic American Historical Review, LIII, No. 2 (05 1973), 183–216.Google Scholar

2 The classic study on colonial Chile is by Jean, Borde and Mario, Góngora, Evolución de la propiedad rural en el valle del Puangue (2 vols.; Santiago de Chile, 1956). A series of coastal Peruvian haciendasGoogle Scholar have been studied by Keith, Robert G., ‘Origen del sistema de hacienda’, in La hacienda, la comunidad y el campesino en el perú (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1970), pp. 13–60,Google Scholar and by Mar, José Matos, ‘Las haciendas del valle de Chancay’, in La hacienda en el Perú (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1964), pp. 283–395. On the Jesuit haciendas,Google Scholar see Germán Colmenares, Les haciendas de los jesuitas en el nuevo reino de Granada (Bogorá, 1969),Google Scholar and Pablo, Macera, La hacienda peruana colonial(siglo xviii) (Lima, 1968).Google Scholar

3 See, above all, the brilliant report of the enlightenment Intendant of the province of Cochabamba, and Santa, Cruz, Francisco, de Viedma, Descripción de la provincia de Santa Cruz de la Sierra’, in Pedro, de Angelis (ed ), Colección de obras y documentos relativos a la historia antigua y moderna de las provincias del Rio de la Plata (2nd ed., Buenos Aires, 1970), VI, 511–736. There are also several of Viedma's unpublished reports in the Colección Matta Linhares, Academia Real de Historia (Madrid).Google Scholar

4 The most complete such surveys so far published are by Joaquín, de la Pezuela, Memoria de gobierno (Sevilla, 1947),Google Scholar and Manual, de Amat y Junient. Memoria de gobierno (Sevilla, 1947).Google Scholar

5 Antonio, de Alcedo, Diccionario geográfico-histórico de las indias occidentales de América (4 vols., 2nd ed., Madrid, 1967; 1st ed. 1786–1789), III, 85. Referring to Pacajes, Alcedo noted that ‘because of its high altitude…its weather is cold and disagreeable, and its land is very sterile’. The major exports of the region were dried root products, above all chuño made from potatoes, and the meat, wool and cheese products produced on the many haciendas devoted to sheep grazing. ‘Previously Pacajes was celebrated for being a very rich and opulent mining center … but none of these mines is now worked.’ The Spanish population which had been supported by this mining had largely disappeared and the only mineral export from the region was some talcum, produced in one remaining mine.Google Scholar

6 A rather extensive survey of the Yungas in 1798 reported that in ‘…the territory of Chulumani are nine curatos (parishes) which have fifteen townships inhabited by thousands of persons, half of them being Spaniards’. Report of the Oidor Honorario de Charcas Cañete, D. Pedro Vicente in his Visita to the Real Caja de Aduana of La Paz, dated Potosí, 26 07 1798, in Archivo General de Indias (AGI) (Sevilla), Audiencia de Buenos Aires, legajo 511.Google Scholar

7 While there are no actual studies available on coca consumption patterns, it has been argued by some that increases in coca production reflect declines in food consumption. Thus an expanding coca production in the Yungas might in fact reflect a relative decline and/or depression in food producing areas. However, given the fact that coca was a cash crop, the increase in consumption must have been accompanied by an increase in purchasing power of the Indian masses, which would obviously not coincide with a general depression. That the Spanish overlords themselves were unsure of the role that coca played in the Indian diet is evident in the numerous and contradictory reports produced in the colonial period. A good survey of this literature is found in Gagliano, Joseph A., ‘The Coca Debate in Colonial Peru’, The Americas, XX, No. 1 (07 1963), 43–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 In his report, the Oidor Cañete noted that in the sixteenth century, little coca was produced in the Yungas, and what there was all came from the ayllus. In this period, the province of Cuzco was the prime supplier for all of Peru. In the seventeenth century, a few La Paz vecinos began to purchase land and begin coca plantings. Even so, he notes, it was not until the 1730s that major haciendas were finally established in the region. AGI, Audiencia de Buenos Aires, legajo 511, Report of Pedro Vicente Cañete, loc. cit.

9 The major areas that have been excluded are the mining centers of Oruro and Potosí which were overwhelmingly Aymara Indian areas, and some of the cereal-producing valleys to the south and west, especially in the province of Chuquisaca. While there were some Aymara in the cereal center of Cochabamba, this was primarily a Quechua Indian area.

10 Though both the terms forastero and agregado are used interchangeably in the documents of the eighteenth century, henceforth I will use agregado as the standard term to avoid confusion.

11 This was one of the conclusions reached by Carter in his study of a series of haciendas and free communities in Pacajes in the mid-1950s after they were seized by the central government. From pre-1952 Reform government surveys and from his own studies, he concluded that haciendas in the Pacajes region (which in the present period is divided into the departments of Pacajes, Ingavi, and part of Los Andes) had only some 30% of the total arablc and grazing lands in the owners' crops and 70% for that of the ‘usufruct’ lands for the peons (divided into sayanas [a home plot], aynokas [a more extensive one-crop land] and common grazing lands.) See William, E. Carter, Aymara Communities and the Bolivian Agrarian Reform (University of Florida Monographs, Social Sciences, Fall, 1964), pp. 65 ff.Google Scholar

12 While the above tables of sex ratios have been calculated for the entire populations, it is worthwhile pointing out that calculating these ratios for the adult populations alone (those here estimated to be over fourteen years of age) yields similar results. Thus in Chulumani the overall figure for the adult population alone is 111·5 males per 100 females, and for Pacajes it is 76·4 males per 100 females (see data in Tables 9 & 10).

13 Letter of the ex-corregidor of the Yungas district, Albizuri, José de to Segurlo, Sebastian de, Paz, La, 22 06 1784,Google Scholar AGN, Manuscritos de Biblioteca Nacional, Libra 190, pieza 1930. It is interesting to note that this migratory labor pattern continued up to the time of the Agrarian Reform in the 1950s and was as much promoted by local yanaconas as by the hacendados themselves. Thus Burke, describing the Yungas in this later period, noted that 80% of the value of exports was still made up of coca production, despite the input of such new crops as coffee and bananas. Also, coca production was then still carried out on smaller size haciendas than on the altiplano and employed intensive type production techniques. ‘There has never been population pressure upon the land in this region,’ he notes, and therefore ‘labor, prior to the agrarian reform, was always somewhat scarce in the Yungas and thus was able to command a money wage.’ Also, unlike the altiplano haciendas, the colonos (or yanaconas) produced cash crops apart from subsistence food crops on their own parcels, and because ‘most of their labor time was obligated to the landowner, these campesinos typically utilized migratory labor from the over-populated Altiplano on both their usufruct lands and those of the hacendado.’ Melvin, Burke, An Analysis of the Bolivian Land Reform by Means of a Comparison Between Peruvian Haciendas and Bolivian Ex-Haciendas’, (Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, 1967), p. 117.Google Scholar

14 Fortunately, the Pacajes census of 1786 gives the total of all persons definitively missing from its communities, aside from the ausente males of tributary age. To the 1,243 absent tributarios are added 139 missing youths fourteen to eighteen years of age (proximos) and 103 male children under fourteen years. There were also 443 married women, 5 single women, 20 widows and 17 girls under fourteen years. Thus the total number of missing was 1,970 persons, of which 1,485 were males and 485 were females. If this breakdown were the norm, then it would appear that two-thirds of all persons missing were males, and well over half of the total missing were tributarios – that is double their number in the sedentary population. It should be stressed that these ausentes were not temporary migrants or miners, nor were they deceased, since all such persons were carefully recorded, the former listed as if in residence, and the latter noted in the libros de difuntos of the parish.

15 Though Mecapaca had no ayllus, its location in the center of the poorer zone, and its consistent identity of demographic features with the poorer pueblos led me to include it in the poorer zone.

16 The simple correlations between the dummy variable created to represent the wealthy pueblos and these three factors were +·422 for economically active male population, –·311 for fertility and +·240 for sex ratio.

17 See Whitehead, Lawrence, ‘Altitude, Fertility and Mortality in Andean Countries’, Population Studies, XXI, No. 3 (11., 1968), 335–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 In my survey of all the Alto Peruvian tribute accounts available in the archives of La Paz, Sucre, Buenos Aires and Seville, and in the Matta Linhares collection in Madrid, I have found few lists for the eighteenth or early nineteenth Centuries which contain the names of the hacienda owners.

19 This compares with 1·5 haciendas per owner estimated in a 1796 survey of the area. See below n. 21.

20 Thus the top 5% of the Southern United States planters owned 39% of the slave labor force in 1860. This compares with the top 5% (13 hacendados) who owned 32% of the total yanacona labor force in the Yungas in 1786. For the U.S. data see Gavin, Wright, ‘Economic Democracy ' and the Concentration of Agricultural Wealth in the Cotton South, 1850–1860’, Agricultural History, XLIV, No. 1 (01, 1970), 79.Google Scholar

21 AGI, Audiencia de Buenos Aires, legajo 513, ‘Estado que manifiesta el numero de Haciendas…en el Partido de Yungas…’dated Paz, La, 27 11 1796.Google Scholar

22 For a broad survey of the history of the Urus, see Manelis Klein, Harriet E., ‘Los Urus: el extraño pueblo del Altiplano’, Estudios Andinos, No. 7 (1973), pp. 129–150.Google Scholar

23 Coroyco participated in virtually every export leaving the Yungas valleys and was the largest single producer in three quarters of the goods shipped from the region. AGI, Audiencia de Buenos Aires, legajo 513, ‘Estado’, loc. cit.

24 It has been suggested that the region around Coroyco was in fact less suitable for coca growing than lands in the Coripata and Chulumani districts in the contemporary period (personal communication from Leons, Barbara, dated 10 12 1974). This may also have been the case in the eighteenth century.Google Scholar

25 In fact, grazing itself may have been one of the richest sources of income for the altiplano populations. In the province of Chuquito, just to the north of Pacajes, royal officials in the sixteenth century noted the great wealth of the region, which was evident from the rich ornamentation of the Churches, and was based on ‘a vast quantity of community herds’. Cited in Murra, John V., ‘An Aymara Kingdom in 1567’, Ethnohistory, XV, No. 2 (Spring, 1968), p. 520. Chuquito, like the province of Pacajes, more or less conformed to the ancient boundaries of the pre-Incan Aymara kingdoms of Lupaqua and Pacajes respectively.Google Scholar