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Coerced or Voluntary? The Repartimiento and Market Participation of Peasants in Late Colonial Oaxaca*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Jeremy Baskes
Jeremy Baskes
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of History at Ohio Wesleyan University.
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Abstract

This article challenges the traditional depiction of the late colonial repartimiento de comercio as a system of forced production and consumption. Employing a micro-economic analysis of the repartimiento's operation in Oaxaca, it argues that peasant participation in the alcaldes mayores' repartimientos was voluntary, not coerced, and that the repartimiento should be understood instead as a system of consumer and producer credit designed to operate under colonial conditions of high risk. Repartimiento credit was expensive, but it permitted peasants to participate more extensively in markets as consumers and producers. ‘Indians are capable of requesting the cargo of a flotilla, and [so] it is a vulgarity and a misunderstanding of the repartimiento to say that they are forced.’

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Articles
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , February 1996 , pp. 1 - 28
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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References

1 Don Manuel Josef López, alcalde mayor of Teotitlán del Camino, in response to the accusation that he forced an Indian to accept a repartimiento. Natural de Teotitlán del Camino contra su alcalde mayor sobre cuentas del repartimiento, Archivo General del Estado de Oaxaca (AGEO), Real Intendencia de Oaxaca (R.I.), II, Leg. I, exp. 7, 1788.

2 That the Bourbon state was weak is most clearly and directly shown by Coatsworth, John H., ‘The Limits of Colonial Absolutism: The State in Eighteenth-Century Mexico’, in Spalding, Karen (ed.), Essays in the Political, Economic and Social History of Colonial Latin America (Delaware, 1982), pp. 25–51Google Scholar, but this notion is implicit in the work of many colonial scholars. Taylor, William B., Drinking, Homicide, and Rebeliion in Colonial Mexican Villages (Stanford, 1979)Google Scholar shows how the Crown of limited strength responded to rebellion through a policy of appeasement, rather than direct confrontation, giving in to peasant demands in most cases. Deans-Smith, Susan, Bureaucrats, Planters, and Workers: The Making of the Tobacco Monopoly in Bourbon Mexico (Austin, 1992)Google Scholar, shows that even in sectors where the state did concentrate its economic and political resources, Bourbon rule was marked by negotiation not absolutism. Hamnett, Brian R., Politics and Trade in Southern Mexico: 1750–1821 (Cambridge, 1971)CrossRefGoogle Scholar demonstrates how the Crown even proved largely unable to force its own functionaries to abide by Article 12 of the Ordinance of Intendancies, the key piece of legislation which sought to outlaw repartimientos.

A weak Crown was not new in the eighteenth century. Weakness was institutionalised in the reign of the Hapsburgs who sold or farmed out most Crown responsibilities, creating what many scholars have termed Spain's ‘indirect rule’ over its colonies. The Bourbon Reforms were the Crown's attempts to address its weak, ‘indirect rule’ and ‘reconquer’ the colonies. But, as Colin MacLachlan put it, ‘…the reformers failed to achieve a perceptual revision of the colonial reality’. MacLachlan, Colin M., Spain's Empire in the New World: The Role of Ideas in Institutional Change and Social Change (Berkeley, 1988), p. 128Google Scholar; see chs. 5–7 in general. Many historians now agree that the Bourbon Reforms did not markedly strengthen the Crown. On the origins of Spain's ‘indirect rule’, see Borah, Woodrow (ed.), El gobierno provincial en la Nueva España 1570–1787 (Mexico, 1985), pp. 18–27 especiallyGoogle Scholar.

3 This system is also known as repartimiento de bienes, repartimiento de comercio, repartimiento or reparto.

4 The classic work on the repartimiento is Hamnett, Politics and Trade; on the Bourbon Reforms and the repartimiento, also see, Stein, Stanley J., ‘Bureaucracy and Business in the Spanish Empire, 1759–1804: Failure of a Bourbon Reform in Mexico and Peru’, Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 61, no. 1 (1981), pp. 2–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fisher, John, Government and Society in Colonial Peru. The Intendant System, 1784–1814 (London, 1970)Google Scholar; Cebrián, Alfredo Moreno, El corregidor de indios y la economí peruana del siglo XVIII (Los repartos forzosos de mercancías) (Madrid, 1977)Google Scholar; MacLachlan, Spain's Empire in the New World.

On the Bourbon Reforms in general and the Plan of Intendancies for Spanish America, see Lynch, John, Spanish Colonial Administration, 1782–1810: The Intendant System of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata (London, 1958)Google Scholar; Fisher, Lillian Estelle, The Intendant System in Spanish America (New York, 1929)Google Scholar; Brading, David, ‘Bourbon Spain and its American Empire’, in Bethell, Leslie (ed.), Cambridge History of Latin America, Vol. 1 (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 389–459CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Limited space precludes doing justice to Hamnett's important and well-known work. Hamnett showed how the alcaldes mayores needed funds to purchase their posts and needed to provide the Crown with fiadores, individuals who guaranteed their solvency in the event they failed to collect the Indian tribute owed to the Crown. This forced the officials to secure wealthy merchant backers who served as fiadores but, in turn, demanded that the alcaldes promote their mercantile interests in the Indian districts in which they were assigned. These merchants provided many of the goods and much of the investment capital that the Spanish officials used in the operation of the repartimiento. This led the Oaxacan officials to become more closely allied with merchants than with the Crown, an arrangement accepted by the Crown until the 1786 Ordinance establishing the Intendancy system, aimed at reducing such corruption. In effect, the power of the alcalde mayor became the private tool of mercantile interests. See Hamnett, Politics and Trade.

6 On Mexico see Rodolfo Pastor, ‘El repartimiento de mercancías y los alcaldes mayores novohispanos: Un sistema de explotación, de sus orígenes a la crisis de 1810’, in Borah (eds.), El gobierno provincial, pp. 201–49. Pastor, Rodolfo, Campesinos y reformas: La Mixteca, 1700–1856 (Mexico, 1987)Google Scholar; Pietschmann, Horst, ‘Agricultura e industria rural indígena en el México de la segunda mitad del siglo XVIII’, in Ouweneel, Arij and Pacheco, Cristina Torales (eds.), Empresarios, indios y estado: Perfil de la economía Mexicana (siglo XVIII) (Amsterdam, 1988)Google Scholar; Dehouve, Daniel, ‘El pueblo de indios y el mercado: Tlapa en el siglo XVIII’, in Ouweneel, and Pacheco, Torales (eds.), Empresarios; Marcello Carmagnani, El Regreso de los dioses: El proceso de reconstitución de la identidad étnica en Oaxaca. Siglos XVII y XVIII (Mexico, 1988), pp. 163–74Google Scholar; Frizzi, María de los Angeles Romero, ‘El poder de los mercaderes. La Mixteca alta: del siglo XVI a los primeros años del XVIII’, in Familia y Poder en Nueva España, Memoria del Tercer Simposio de Historia de las Mentalidades (Mexico, 1991), pp. 49–61Google Scholar; Patch, Robert W., Maya and Spaniard in Yucatán, 1648–1812 (Stanford, 1993)Google Scholar; Frizzi, Mariá de los Angeles Romero, Economíay vida de los españoles en la Mixteca Alta: 1519–1720 (Mexico, 1990)Google Scholar; Chance, John K., Conquest of the Sierra: Spaniards and Indians in Colonial Oaxaca (Oklahoma, 1989)Google Scholar; Chance, John K., ‘Social Stratification and the Civil Cargo System Among the Rincón Zapotecs of Oaxaca: The Late Colonial Period’, in Garner, Richard L. and Taylor, William B. (eds.), Iberian Colonies, New World Societies: Essays in Memory of Charles Gibson (Private Printing, 1986)Google Scholar. Chance, John K., ‘Capitalismo y desigualidad entre los Zapotecos de Oaxaca: una comparación entre el valle y los pueblos del rincón’, in Frizzi, María de los Angeles Romero, compiler, , Lecturas históricas del estado de Oaxaca, Vol. 1 (Mexico, 1990), pp. 193–204Google Scholar; for a comparison between Mexico and the Andes, see Larson, Brooke and Wasserstrom, Robert, ‘Consumo forzoso en Cochabamba y Chiapa durante la época colonial’, Historia Mexicana, Vol. 21, No. 3 (1982), pp. 361–408Google Scholar; for the Andes, see Golte, Jürgen, Repartos y rebeliones: Túpac Amaru y las contradicciones de la economía colonial (Lima, 1980)Google Scholar; Spalding, Karen, Huarochirí: An Andean Society Under Inca and Spanish Rule (Stanford, 1984)Google Scholar; Spalding, Karen, ‘Tratos mercantiles del corregidor de Indios y la formatión de la hacienda serrana en el Perú’, América Indígena, Vol. 30, No. 3 (07 1970), pp. 595–608Google Scholar; Nicolini, Javier Tord, ‘El corregidor de indios del Péru: comercio y tributes’, Historia y Cultura, vol. 8 (Lima, 1974), pp. 173–214Google Scholar; Nicolini, Javier Tord, ‘Los repartos legalizados’, Proceso, No. 4 (Huancayo, 1975)Google Scholar.

7 The exceptions are Pietschmann, ‘Agricultura e industria’ and Romero Frizzi, ‘El poder de los mercaderes’. Pietschmann has long challenged the traditional view of the repartimiento, suggesting that the role of coercion has been overstated. Romero Frizzi's brief article also questions the conventional historiography on the repartimiento, suggesting that means other than force were probably more important in drawing Indians into the market. Neither Pietschmann's nor Romero Frizzi's articles, however, were based on extensive research designed to address this issue specifically. As a result, they are more speculative than conclusive.

8 Lockhart, James and Schwartz, Stuart B., Early Latin America: A History of Colonial Spanish America and Brazil (Cambridge, 1983), p. 356Google Scholar.

9 Farriss, Nancy M., Maya Society Under Colonial Rule: The Collective Enterprise of Survival (Princeton, 1984), p. 43Google Scholar.

10 Pietschmann, ‘Agriculture e industrial’ p. 78.

11 Peter Guardino, Peasants, Politics, and the Formation of Mexico's National State: Guerrero, 1800–17 (Stanford, forthcoming). For the repartimiento in colonial Guerrero, see ch. 1.

12 A third type of repartimiento common in other regions of Spanish America was the advance of goods repayable in indigenous output. This type of repartimiento, however, was not common in Oaxaca where goods provided on credit were normally paid for in cash.

13 Informe de curasj y alcaldes mayores sobre el repartimiento: Miahuatlán, Archive General de la Natión (AGN), Subdelegados, Tomo 34, p. 141, 1752. For the same repartimiento schedule see also the informes of other alcaldes mayores in the same volume: Nexapa, p. 119; Chichicapa y Zimatlán, p. 135; Teotitlán del Camino Real, p. 154; Tlacolula, p. 313.

These informes, used extensively in this article, were produced by priests and alcaldes mayores from districts throughout Mexico in 1752 at the request of the Viceroy, the first Count Revillagigedo, who was considering the legalisation of the repartimiento. The alcaldes mayores clearly had reason to fabricate their reports, yet one is struck by the similarity of issues addressed by all who responded, officials and clergy alike. While it is important to read such reports critically, one would need to accept a broader conspiracy, for which there is no evidence, to discount them entirely.

14 Informes de curas y alcaldes mayores sobre el repartimiento: Nexapa, AGN, Subdelegados, 34, p. 119, 1752; Pietschmann, ‘Agricultura e industria’, p. 77 and Dehouve, ‘El pueblo de los indios’, p. 87 found that the officials of Puebla and Tlapa, Guerrero respectively also purchased their mules for the repartimiento at the annual fairs in Puebla.

15 For a detailed discussion of repartimiento default, see Baskes, Jeremy, ‘Indians, Merchants and Markets: Trade and Repartimiento Production of Cochineal Dye in Colonial Oaxaca: 1750–1821’, PhD Diss., University of Chicago, 1993, ch. 5Google Scholar.

16 The repartimiento price of mules is illustrative. Numerous archival references to the repartimiento sale of mules suggest mules typically sold from 28 to 50 pesos apiece, depending on quality. Even at 28 pesos this represented 112 workdays at the typical colonial wage of 2 reales per day. Mules could be obtained less expensively by paying with cash. The repartimiento, however, provided mules on credit. For more on repartimiento prices, see below.

17 Informes de curas y alcaldes mayores sobre el repartimiento, AGN, Subdelegados, Tomo 34. For Nexapa see p. 119 and for Chichicapa-Zimatlán see p. 135.

18 Informes de curas y alcaldes mayores sobre el repartimiento, AGN, Subdelegados, Tomo 34.

19 Chance, Conquest, p. 97.

20 On preconquest Mexican trade, see Hassig, Ross, Trade, Tribute, and Transportation: The Sixteenth-Century Political Economy of the Valley of Mexico (Norman, 1985)Google Scholar; Berdan, Frances F., ‘Markets in the Economy of Aztec Mexico’, in Plattner, Stuart (ed.), Markets and Marketing, SEA, Vol. 4 (Maryland, 1985)Google Scholar; Berdan, Frances F., ‘Trade and Markets in Precapitalist States’, in Plattner, Stuart (ed.), Economic Anthropology (Stanford, 1989), pp. 78–107Google Scholar. The immediate post-conquest economy is well documented. For the economy in general, seeGibson, Charles, The Aztecs under Spanish Rule (Stanford, 1964)Google Scholar; for close analysis of how Indians reacted to the goods brought by Spanish conquerors to the Mixteca Alta region of Oaxaca, see Romero Frizzi, Economía y vida.

21 Hamnett, Politics, p.7.

22 On the weakness of the Bourbon state, see n. 2 above.

23 A number of leading Latin American scholars have recently employed Antonio Gramsci's concept of hegemony to help advance our understanding of state power. While little agreement to date exists even on the term's definition, hegemonists generally argue that the dominant class used its monopolisation of the ideological tools of the society to construct an ideology which reinforces its class domination. The subordinate class ultimately accepts (or is blinded by) the hegemonic ideology and sees the economic and political system as legitimate. They accept their positions in society, and rule is henceforth through consensus. Coercion and force are employed only in extraordinary cases when the system threatens to break down. Hegemonists might argue that the Crown did not need to employ coercion in the operation of the repartimiento because it exercised a degree of hegemony instead which served to coopt peasant resistance.

While fundamentally sound, hegemony lacks measurability; theorists are unable to establish the degree of hegemony exercised by the state and certainly not all states are equally hegemonic. The late colonial state did enjoy legitimacy even among the indigenous populations of Mexico, but it was a legitimacy predicated on the Crown's inability to step beyond certain boundaries, what scholars have called ‘the unwritten constitution’, or ‘the colonial compact’. The Crown exercised hegemony, but it was a weak hegemony, one which was characterised by a limited capacity in rural, indigenous regions. The Bourbon reforms, an attempt to address this very weakness, failed to increase significantly the state's hegemony.

On the application of hegemony to Latin America see Joseph, Gilbert M. and Nugent, Daniel (eds.), Everyday Forms of State Formation: Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in Modern Mexico (Durham, 1994)Google Scholar; Mallon, Florencia E., Peasant and Nation: The Making of Postcolonial Mexico and Peru (Berkeley, 1995)Google Scholar. For a critique of hegemony not dissimilar to the one provided above, see Scott, James C., Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven, 1985), ch. 8Google Scholar.

24 Gibson, Aztecs, p. 94 claims the alcaldes mayores ‘disposed of’ silk stockings and other luxury goods in the repartimiento. Stein, ‘Bureaucracy and Business’, p. 6, found that the Peruvian corregidores forced Indians to buy ‘velvets…linens, baizes of Castile, fine beaver hats, mirrors, playing cards, [and] gilded paper’. These ‘worthless items’ and others allegedly were forced upon Andeans according to Juan and Ulloa, two eighteenth-century Spanish travellers to Peru. See TePaske, John J. (ed.), Discourse and Political Reflections on the Kingdoms of Peru (Norman, 1978)Google Scholar, translation of Juan, Jorge and de Ulloa, Antonio, Noticias secretas de América (1749)Google Scholar. Patch, Maya and Spaniard, pp. 82, 91 and 158, claims that religious indulgences were regularly sold in the repartimiento in Yucatán. Lockhart and Schwartz, Early Latin America, p. 356, express doubt that such worthless items really were sold in the repartimiento.

25 Romero Frizzi, ‘El poder de los mercaderes’, also suggests that repartimiento credit was a crucial incentive for market participation by colonial peasants.

26 Carmagnani, El Regreso de los dioses, p. 173, notes the importance of the repartimiento in peasants' economic strategies as a source of income and goods, yet he stops short of arguing that peasants voluntarily sought repartimientos. Peasants rarely revealed how they invested cash obtained in the repartimiento, although clearly much went as intended towards financing the production needed to repay the loan. Occasionally, however, documents revealed additional peasant strategies. One woman, Bernarda González, requested a repartimiento to tide her over when her harvest failed and she and her children faced starvation. See AGEO, R.I, II, Leg. 14, exp. 5, 1811. In other cases, peasants without funds when tribute was due borrowed from the alcalde mayor. Since the official collected tribute, there was probably no actual exchange of money in such cases. See several entries in the ledger of the alcalde mayor of Teposcolula, Libro en que consta las dependencias liquidas, AGN, Real Hacienda, Administration General de Alcabalas, Caja 43 (XI).

27 Carmagnani, El Regreso de los dioses, p. 157 refers to the practice of Indians borrowing from the cofradía at an interest rate of 20–25 per cent. I uncovered a case in which peasants, unable to pay their repartimiento debts, succeeded in repaying the alcalde mayor by borrowing the funds from their parish cofradía. See AGEO, R.7. II, Tomo 6, exp. 17, Proceso que se sigue a Nicolás Larumbe subdelegado de Nexapa porfraude en repartimiento, ff. 105.

28 Hacendados extended credit to workers on their haciendas yet proved unable to force them to repay their debts fully before they departed, nor did hacendados normally try. Instead credit was an incentive to attract workers in the first place and peasants sought to maximise their indebtedness. The more privileged rural workers were the most indebted. For a review of this literature see Bauer, Arnold J., ‘Rural Workers in Spanish America: Problems of Peonage and Oppression’, Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 59, no. 1 (1979), 34–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 See the viceroy's questionnaire accompanying the Informes de curas y alcaldes mayores, AGN, Subdelegados, Tomo 34, 1752.

30 According to Douglass North, the degree of institutional organisation ‘determine[s] transaction and transformation costs and hence the profitability and feasibility of engaging in economic activity’. North, Douglass C., Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance (Cambridge, 1990), p. 118CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

Hegemony theories suggest that institutions reflect and disseminate the values, laws, and customs which reinforce the rule of the dominant class and bring about subaltern compliance. Scott points out, however, that the underdevelopment of the elites' (the colonials') institutions in most peasant societies reduces the plausibility that they truly exercise hegemony. ‘Living outside the cities where agencies of hegemony are quartered…and having its own shadow institutions…the peasantry is simply less accessible to hegemonic practice’. Scott, Weapons of the Weak, p. 321. Rural colonial Oaxaca would be a classic case where the weakness of dominant class institutions would greatly reduce the hegemonic power.

31 That the alcalde mayor was alone in his ability to loan funds to Indians safely is recognised by several other scholars. See, for example, Pietschmann, ‘Agricultura e industria’, pp. 77–9; Spalding, ‘Tratos mercantiles’, p. 598.

32 Pastor, ‘El repartimiento’, p. 204; Dehouve, ‘El pueblo de indios’, pp. 87, 92–3; Pietschmann, ‘Agriculturae industria’, p. 77; Carmagnani, El Regreso, p. 172; Chance, ‘Capitalismo y desigualidad’; Larson and Wasserstrom, ‘Consumo forzoso’, p. 365; Golte, Repartosj Rebeliones, p. 115; Spalding, ‘Tratos mercantiles’, p. 605.

33 Chance, ‘Capitalismo y desigualidad’. Spalding suggests that Andean caciques who did not ally themselves with their alcaldes mayores risked losing their posts. Spalding, ‘Tratos mercantiles’, p. 605.

34 Romero Frizzi, ‘E l poder de los mercaderes’, pp. 56–7.

35 Detailed ledgers survive in AGN, Civil, Tomo 302, Primera parte, cuaderno de la cuentas, 21–46; AGN, Civil 284, exp. 6, 19V–24. AGN, Tierras, Tomo, 1038, exp. i, pp. 212–13; AGN, Real Hacienda, Administratión general de alcabalas, Caja 43, I–37; and AGEO, Real Intendencia de Oaxaca II, Leg. 40, exp. 24.

36 On the new role of govemadores, see L. E. Fisher, The Intendant System in Spanish America and Que se observa en Villa Alta la prohibitión de repartimientos, AGN General de Parte, Tomo 78, pp. 14–20.

37 Carmagnani, Marcello, ‘Un movimiento político indio: “La rebelión” de Tehuantepec, 1660–1661’, in Díaz-Polanco, Héctor (ed.), El fuego de la inobediencia (Mexico, CIESAS, 1993), pp. 81–101Google Scholar; also see Rojas, Basilio, La rebelión de Tehuantepec (Mexico, 1964)Google Scholar; Díaz-Polanco, Héctor and Manzo, Carlos, Documentos sobre las rebeliones de Tehuantepecy Nexapa (1660–1661) (Mexico, 1992)Google Scholar; a published 1622 version of the happenings is contained in de Contreras, Cristóbal Manso, La rebelión de Tehuantepec, de la Cruz, Víctor (ed.) (Mexico, 1987)Google Scholar. An authoritative history of the 1660 movement remains to be written.

38 Golte, Repartos y Rebeliones, pp. 176–83 subtracted the sum of per capita repartimiento debts and annual tribute burdens from his estimates of per capita income per province. He then argued that the provinces whose net incomes (income after payment of repartimiento debts and tribute) were 20 pesos or lower were those with the greatest participation in the rebellion. This proved, he claimed, repartimientos were the primary cause of the rebellion's outbreak.

39 Godoy, Scarlett O'Phelan, Rebellions and Revolts in Eighteenth-Century Peru and Upper Peru (Cologne, 1985), pp. 118–26Google Scholar.

40 Stern, Steve J., Resistance, Rebellion and Consciousness in the Andean Peasant World: 18th to 20th Centuries (Madison, 1987), pp. 39–42Google Scholar.

41 Stavig, Ward, ‘Ethnic Conflict, Moral Economy, and Population on the Eve of the Thupa Amaro II Rebellion’, Hispanic American Historical Review, Vol. 68, No. 4 (1988), PP. 737–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 While rebellions were rare in southern Mexico, protests or riots were common. Several involved conflicts over the repartimiento, especially the way in which debts were collected. See Taylor, William B., Drinking, Homicide, and Rebellion in Colonial Mexican Villages (Stanford, 1979), pp. 120, 134Google Scholar.

43 See, for example, Pastor, Campesinos y reformas, pp. 417–18.

44 Only ‘first-hand’ accounts were included, the testimonies of recipients, local merchants, or other individuals who were directly involved in the contested repartimientos.

46 The sum of the complaints by Indians and Spaniards exceeds by two the number of cases used because two cases had multiple parts actually enclosed in distinct expedientes and are counted twice, once as a complaint by an Indian and a second time as a complaint by a Spaniard.

46 For this perspective see Larson and Wasserstrom, ‘Consumo forzoso’, p. 365; Pastor, El repartimiento, pp. 201 and 206; Golte, Repartos y Rebeliones, p. 114; Farriss, Maya Society, p. 44.

47 Farriss, Maya Society, p. 44.

48 That interest rates charged to recipients of repartimiento loans were so high was a reflection of the high levels of risk to which the alcaldes mayores exposed their funds. Debtor default and delay were extremely common. High rates of interest charged on individual repartimiento transactions merely produced normal rates of return on the overall funds loaned. For a more detailed examination of returns on repartimiento loans, see Baskes, ‘Indians, Merchants, and Markets’, ch. 5.

49 See, for example, lnventario y aprecios de bienes del difunto Capitán Manuel María de Ortega, subdelegado que fue de Miahuatlán, AGEO, R. I. II, Leg. 40, exp. 24, 1811. Ortega, the Spanish official of Miahuatlán, purchased cochineal both through the repartimiento at 12 reales per pound and directly in cash at the considerably higher market price.

50 AGEO, Alcaldia Mayores, Leg. 34, exp. 14, 1774.

51 The best sources on the debate over the repartimiento in Mexico are Hamnett, Politics and Trade, and MacLachlan, Spain's Empire in the New World, ch. 6. The 1786 abolition of the repartimiento did not stimulate a trade boom as its authors predicted. Instead, in the 1780s the cochineal industry declined by 50 per cent as the alcaldes mayores' financiers withdrew their investment funds from rural Oaxaca.

52 Informes de curas y alcaldes mayores sobre el repartimiento, Nexapa, AGN, Subdelegados, Tomo 34, p. 119, 1752; Superior Despacho para que los vecinos de Villa Alta paguen a Don José Molina lo que le adeudan de la grana, AJVA, Civil no. 328, 1770.

53 O'Phelan has argued that in the Andes the repartimiento operated primarily as a ‘system of indebtedness’ to supply labour to other colonial enterprises, especially haciendas and obrajes (rural sweat shops). O'Phelan Godoy, Rebellions and Revolts, pp. 99–102. In Oaxaca evidence for this practice is scant.

54 A number of readers have suggested the possibility these notes were forged by the alcalde mayor. Proving their authenticity is obviously impossible, but they appear authentic, and there is no evidence that they were forged. While the letters unambiguously request that the alcalde mayor advance repartimiento money to Antonio, the amounts requested are different from those the alcalde mayor actually loaned. In addition, the total sum requested in all the letters combined is less than that which the alcalde ultimately advanced. One would imagine that had the official forged the notes, he would have sought a more perfect match between the letters and the real situation.

55 Natural de Teotitlán del Camino contra su alcalde mayor sobre cuentas del repartimiento, AGEO, R.I., II, Leg. 1, exp. 7, 1788.

56 Los naturaks de Huitzo contra el subdelegado por repartimientos ilegales, AGEO, R.J., II, Leg. 14, Exp. 5, 1811.

57 Contra el alcalde mayor de Teozacoalco por un natural de su jurisdicción, AGEO, R.I., II, Leg. 13, exp. 2, 1810.

58 Un natural de Tlacoula contra el alcalde mayor de Teotitlán del Valle, AGEO, R.I., II, Leg. 2, exp. 20, 1789.

59 Naturales contra el alcalde mayor del Marquesado porqué cobra con violencia, AGEO, R.I., II, Leg. 4, exp. 13, 1795.

60 AGN, Alcaldes Mayores, Tomo 1, no. 42, 62–7, 1770.

61 This was the point made by Bauer, ‘Rural workers in Spanish America’, and other historians who revised our understanding of debt patronage two decades ago. Institutions like the repartimiento have been developed in other societies to meet the credit needs of peasants. See, for example, Scott's description of the Malaysian credit system of padi kunka in Scott, Weapons ojthe Weak, p. 15. Barham, Bradford and Coomes, Oliver, ‘Wild Rubber: Industrial Organization and the Microeconomics of Extraction During the Amazon Rubber Boom (1860–1920)’, Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 26 (1994), pp. 37–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar show that the ostensibly coercive debt-merchandise contract of the Amazon instead developed as the best solution to the high-risk environment in which it operated.

62 Rates of return on repartimiento loans were good, but not extraordinary. While individual transactions often yielded simple returns of 50–100 per cent, the overall return on the alcalde mayor's entire principal, the funds invested into his business dealings, was much lower, the result of the high level of delayed debt collection and debtor default. For a detailed discussion of debtor default including estimates of returns on investments, see Baskes, ‘Indians, Merchants, and Markets’, ch. 5.