While in the previous chapter, general patterns were directly contrasted between both regions of study, here Cajamarca and Michoacán are treated separately, focusing on petitioners categorized as “migrants” – whether they really moved from place to place or not. It makes sense to treat the two regions separately to be able to explain at length how the respective fiscal categorizations worked; but comparative aspects are mentioned whenever appropriate.
As has been already mentioned, the range of tributary categorizations was considerably wider in Cajamarca than in Michoacán, which translates into a slightly differing structuring of the corresponding section. However, many mechanisms regarding tributary categorizations and migrations were similar. I would like to highlight the importance of ancestry on the one hand, and the existence of forms of translocal belonging in both regions of study on the other. The latter might be due amongst other factors to the fact that a considerable share of the indigenous migration was regional, often within the same province. This could ease the maintenance of ties to the place of origin. In Cajamarca, many movements intertwined the neighboring provinces of Conchucos and Trujillo, while in Michoacán, mining areas more to the north, such as San Luis Potosí, became a destination for Michoacán’s indigenous migrants. In the late colonial period, the mine of Hualgayoc in Cajamarca also became a point of attraction; however, it cannot be compared in importance to the much better and earlier mine of Potosí in Charcas.
Many “migrant” petitions could also be labeled as petitions of “mixed” ancestry, since migrants and their descendants often had parents belonging to different fiscal categorizations. However, in this chapter, aspects of movement and belonging are emphasized. In this book, I focus on the fiscal impact the categorization had on migrants and their descendants, but these categorizations also changed other aspects of the individuals life, such as the degree of freedom of choice of marriage partners, as I have shown elsewhere.1 The legal restraints for “migrants” to fully be incorporated into society and not be discriminated was highest for vagos, which made this categorization one of the least desirable.
4.1 “Migrant” Petitions from Cajamarca, Peru
In the Andes, to a stronger degree than in New Spain, belonging was closely linked to social units and land ownership, both of them obtained and proven through ancestry. Therefore, the analysis starts, again, with descent. It carries on with the integration of the “migrants” into local networks as well as the continuation of ties to places of origin, i.e. forms of translocal belonging. Later on, less prominent “migrant” categorizations will be discussed, including those from neighboring Trujillo, to which close ties with Cajamarca had existed since prehispanic times, and which was part of the same caja real.
4.1.1 Claiming Belonging through Descent
Already in prehispanic times, migrants and their descendants were assigned to, or had established, their own social units equivalent to those of the originarios (cf. section 3.3). Generally, a person’s belonging to such a guaranga, pachaca or ayllu through descent did not change after the Spanish conquest. This is another explanation for why the attempt to prove ancestry is a fundamental point in most petitions throughout the colonial period. It is fascinating how the petitioners used evidence of baptismal certificates and testimonies to put forward their claims, being successful even in cases in which the evidence would not seem to fully support their argument, adopting different strategies that focused on the most favorable parts of their and their ancestor’s biographies.
The baptism (and not the birth itself) was registered in a parish book. As is to be expected, most of the certificates in the petitions from the town of Cajamarca were from the indigenous parish of San Antonio, with the exception of that of Fabian Serquen, a mixto quintero, with a certificate from Santa Catalina, the parish for the Spaniards. However, witnesses attested that he and his brother were children of indios forasteros, and they were officially recognized as such.2 Until at least the beginning of the nineteenth century, the baptismal records occasionally register the ayllu of the baptised, as in the case of “Clara, three days old, legitimate daughter of Antonio Quiliche and of Maria Raico (ayllu forastero quintero)” born in 1812.3 During some periods, there existed separate books for the different categorizations, as the mentioning of a “book
In the petitions, copies of the certificates of these parish books were presented to prove the belonging to a pachaca or ayllu of the baptised themselves or of their parents. Generally, the calidad stated therein was accepted without question, with the few exceptions noted in section 3.3.
The strategy to recur to the preceding generations if the legitimacy was doubtful or the desired calidad was not mentioned in the parish register has been detailed for the case of Francisco Gómez, who claimed to be an Inca (cf. section 3.3). A similar strategy was put forward by Jorge Sarango in 1695.7 He claimed to be the legitimate son of Don Francisco Sarango and Antonia Chuquimian, both from the ayllu forastero. He presented the baptismal certificate of his mother Antonia, identifying her as the legitimate daughter of Juan Bautista and Ana Petrona. Curiously, in the marriage certificate of Antonia Chuquimian to his father, his mother’s mother was now allegedly Constanza Chimi of the ayllu Malcaden. Sarango’s adversary, Don Juan Bautista Astoquipan, rejected Sarango’s claim, arguing that he was born before the marriage of his parents and therefore should follow the fuero of his mother and his brother Nicolás, who was paying tribute in the same guaranga.8 Astoquipan added that those who pretended to benefit from the fuero of mestizos, forasteros, Incas, “and other mixtures”9 should not be allowed to change their status because this was detrimental to the Crown, and their obligations would fall on the other members of their pachaca. Because of alleged tribute debts, Sarango was put in prison and Astoquipan managed to present the baptismal certificate of Sarango, in which he was denoted as “bastard son of Juan Michiga and Antonia Chuquimian of the ayllu Malcaden.”10 Even so, Sarango, through the protector de naturales, maintained his claim, alluding to his “long-standing possession”
Another case in which the legitimacy of the petitioners was in question is the slightly earlier one of the brothers Francisco Hernando and Joseph Lorenzo in Santiago de Chuco (Huamachuco).12 They claimed, through witnesses rather than through a baptismal certificate, that they were the legitimate children of Pedro Alonso, forastero, and Juana Pisanpanyac (or Aguaspintas). Pedro Alonso was, for his part, the son of Pedro Juan, originally from Chachapoyas, and of Juana Ysauel of the guaranga Guacapongo, i.e. an originaria. After the death of Pedro Juan (in Otusco), Juana Ysauel remarried, thereby becoming the wife of Alonso Chucumango (or Pillaumango) from the town of Usquil in the same encomienda. As Hernando and his brother were still small, they did not know that Chucumango (or Pillaumango) was not their biological grandfather, and that therefore they were rightfully forasteros and had for three decades been incorrectly paying tribute like originarios and assigned to the pachaca de Guaso in the guaranga Guacapongo.13 According to the document, the revisita of 1644 also listed Pedro Alonso as the son of Alonso Chucumango, not recognizing his forastero status, and according to the defensor de indios of the revisita, the principales from Santiago de Chuco could not say anything about his origins. But despite this contrary evidence, the judge of the current revisita recognized the testimonies of the witnesses presented by the petitioners, and they and their descendants were declared forasteros. The decision seems surprising, insofar as the judge gave the testimonies of the petitioners more credit than those of a defensor de naturales and an entry in a past revisita.
As ascendency was a crucial aspect in many petitions, it might be expected that in cases in which the descent from a certain person was doubtful, the physical aspect could be used to infer his or her blood relationship and the belonging to a certain categorization. But the change to or rather recognition of one’s belonging to a certain fuero, naturaleza, or calidad14 was rarely related
Like in the related source of the gracias al sacar, Cajamarcan petitioners emphasized only those aspects of their ascendancy that favored them most, employing the available evidence strategically. And in doing that, they were highly successful.
4.1.2 Probanzas de limpieza de sangre
Despite the doubtless importance of descent in Cajamarcan petitions, I found none that were closely associated with probanzas de limpieza de sangre or which made much emphasis on “purity of blood” and the associated terminology. This does not mean that probanzas de limpieza de sangre did not exist in Peru. However, their numbers are much smaller than in New Spain (cf. section 4.2). In the national archive in Lima, they are grouped in the genealogies section, genealogías, which contains 81 individual files. Of these, 15 date to the seventeenth, 39 to the eighteenth, and 27 to the nineteenth century, four of the latter from after 1820. The first one is from 1611 and the last from 1848. The ones before 1685 seem to be more closely related to the relaciones de méritos y servicios, as can be discerned from the titles. 1685 is the first time that the terms “legitimacy” and “purity” (limpieza) are mentioned in the titles of the documents; henceforth they are sometimes used, but more often in alternation with the term “filiation.” Usually they were presented in order to obtain a certain position in the colonial administration, be it secular or ecclesiastical.
Only four of these files are from the northern part of the Audiencia de Lima, one each from Piura, Chachapoyas, Huamachuco, and Cajamarca.15 Like most of the other petitions, the one from Cajamarca is presented by a Spaniard, called Domingo de Zúñiga. In fact, the document from 1817, rather than a certification of purity of blood, is a description of the merits and services of his father, Gregorio de Zúñiga, who had served as principal administrator of the royal treasury in Cajamarca, Huambos, and Chachapoyas since the 1780s.16 A few similar documents from Cajamarca are conserved in the Diocesan Archive of Cajamarca. They date from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century and were written by Spaniards trying to gain access to positions in the
Besides Spaniards, indigenous nobles or mestizos with partly indigenous noble ancestry also presented certifications of purity of blood in viceregal Peru, as has been studied for the case of southern Peru by O’Phelan Godoy.19 In Cajamarca too, indigenous nobles claiming to be Incas presented petitions to prove their Incan ancestry. However, these documents are not proper certifications of purity of blood since they do not claim purity or use the associated terminology. The usual testimonies about the absence of “heretic” or Afrodescendant “blood” are missing. The proofs presented consist in royal cédulas from the sixteenth and seventeenth century and certificates of baptism. In one case, additionally a copy of a matrícula is added with the clear aim of gaining tribute exemption.20 The abovementioned case by a supposed Inca, Francisco Gómez, is clearly a petición de cambio de fuero and not a probanza de limpieza de sangre.
4.1.3 Networks and Integration into the Local Society
In the petitions, the presentation of documentary evidence was closely intertwined with the testimonies of witnesses. The certificates primarily corroborated the “officialized” belonging of the petitioners, and the witnesses to their public reputation, whose centrality in colonial life has been underlined by several studies.21 To convince these individuals to testify on their behalf, the petitioners needed social capital and good networks within the local society. The fact that they could recur to a number of witnesses from other ayllus and from other social groups, such as Spaniards confirm that they were not isolated strangers in the local societies but deeply immersed in the local social structure. This was also due to the fact that many of them were second- or third-generation residents of Cajamarca, a normal length for acculturation processes.22 Generally, the witnesses highlighted that part of the ancestry that was most advantageous for the petitioner’s claim.
Wightman mentions three mechanisms of inclusion of forasteros in the receiving communities: “marriage into existing ayllus, submission to local kurakas, or the development of an ayllu forastero.”24 The existence of the last mechanism has been demonstrated amply by the petitions presented above. Both marriage and the creation of the ayllu forastero at least from the 1630s onwards prove the integration of the migrants into the local society. Generally, the migrants were men, married to local women. Only in two cases were both (grand)parents forasteros,25 and in only one other the mother was a forastera.26 As can be seen in nearly all of the presented cases, especially those in which the legitimacy of the petitioner was doubtful, belonging to the ayllu, pachaca or guaranga of the mother was always a point under discussion since it was generally through the mothers lineage that a clear belonging to a place existed which could be beneficial for the petitioner – or not.
In contrast to this, there exists one case in which belonging is vindicated not through descent, but through the link to the spouse: Lorenzo Condor,
4.1.4 Translocal Belonging in Cajamarca
In the previous section, the belonging of petitioners to different fiscal categorizations, and through this to social units, has been discussed. Here, I want to examine cases that show individuals’ belonging to different places and authorities. As we will see, this belonging was often translocal in nature. The examples include petitions by individuals but also by authorities and other related sources which show this phenomenon. These sources I have studied date from the early seventeenth to the early nineteenth century, but scholarship about the sixteenth century shows the same phenomenon already from earlier on.
As I will try to show, the question of where a person belonged had very concrete effects on the tributary categorizations. This is clearest in the case of the forastero category. In many Cajamarcan petitions, the forasteros are defined as those people who had migrated permanently, severing their ties to their cacique or encomendero of origin, thereby privileging the territorial association. However, up until the mid-eighteenth century, another “type” of forastero existed, who still maintained ties to their original caciques, continuing to perform colonial obligations with them.
4.1.4.1 Early Colonial Rule: Prevalence of Personal Association
Territorial discontinuity existed in the pachacas and guarangas of Cajamarca since prehispanic times, like elsewhere in the Inca Empire. The prehispanic organization was partly disrupted, first by the creation of encomiendas, and
Links existed also to the more distant capital Lima, with a considerable number of cajamarquinos residing there.32 That this migration was not simply unidirectional and permanent becomes evident in the testament of the cacique Francisco Guaman, presented in Lima in 1601. He related that he was originally from Chota, where his wife Polonia Guaman Ascona and his children were living at that moment. He owned two plots, a house, and fields back in Chota, as well as 150 sheep, 145 llamas, three pigs, and a horse. Besides, he had a house in Cajamarca where indios from his repartimiento lived.33 This suggests that he had probably been moving among these three locations, likely due to his function as cacique but possibly also because he was participating in commerce between the two provinces which was carried out by muleteers, called arrieros in Spanish.
These trade contacts were also mentioned in a document from a few decades later which relates the burial place of several indigenous people from Cajamarca, one of whom was serving as a muleteer for a Spaniard.34 This muleteer trade circuit, which also included the north coast and Chachapoyas as well as some parts of the Audiencia de Quito, is mentioned in several seventeenth- and eighteenth-century documents and has also been addressed by
4.1.4.2 1631 Onwards: Coexistence of Personal and Territorial Association
As I have argued elsewhere together with Gil Montero, at least since 1631 Spanish authorities intended to enforce a territorial association among the indigenous people of Peru, trying to register them in their places of residence instead of their places of origin and with their original caciques (personal association). However, this was a long process that only led to a widespread application of the regulations enforcing the territorial association in the mid-eighteenth century.37 The coexistence of both forms of organization, the territorial and the personal, are also visible in disputes about belonging in the long seventeenth century in Cajamarca. In fact, what most often lies behind the dispute was that people did not clearly belong either to their community of origin or their place of residence but rather practiced translocal forms of belonging, something neither the colonial authorities nor the owners of enterprises such as textile mills or haciendas liked. Sometimes, these different “masters” disputed the allocation of indigenous workers, in order to be able to dispose of their labor force and/or to exact their tribute.38 But indigenous individuals also petitioned for the belonging that seemed most beneficial to them at a given moment, as happened among others in the case of the Yupa family.
The example of the forastero Lucas Yupa has already been mentioned in the Introduction.39 In his petition, which dates from the end of the seventeenth century, movement between the northern coast and the Andes can be traced. Yupa was born in Cajabamba in the corregimiento of Cajamarca but moved to the coastal town of Trujillo because of conflicts with the Cajabamba cacique. In Trujillo, Yupa had owned houses. He also underlined the fact that in Trujillo he had been paying the sales tax called alcabala. During most of the colonial period, tribute-paying indigenous people and products produced by them were supposed to be exempt from the alcabala (cf. section 2.2). At first, this led me to
oblige, force or compel the stated, Lucas Yupa to pay tribute in said town as a tributary indio and even less force him to do the mita of the six months as an indio mitayo of the seventh part, and the stated, Lucas Yupa should fulfill his duty to pay the tribute that the indios forasteros pay with the name quintos, and that he should benefit from the fuero of being an indio forastero as son and descendant of Pedro Yupa, who was originally
from the jurisdiction of Huanuco, and of Isabel Llaxsacally, who was naturally from the said town of Cajabamba.41
Yupa’s case is an example of a person who changed his tribute categorization from migrant to non-migrant several times during his life, with these changes seeming to have been somehow linked to his changes in place of residence in a manner not entirely discernible from the documentation. For him, the categorizations forastero and originario seem to have been placed on a continuum along which he could move back and forth. Probably, in his view, each categorization did express his current status at a specific place and time in an adequate manner – or the particular categorization was the most beneficial one at each moment. Despite having moved to several other towns during his lifetime, he seemed to have maintained ties to his birth town, Cajabamba, to which he returned. The fact that he could recur to several witnesses from different social units (pachacas and guarangas) in Cajabamba shows that he was well connected and established in Cajabamba. Through his witnesses’ and his owns declaration, he aptly played the card of the descent of a recognized migrant to obtain this desired status at this specific point of his life. It would be interesting to know what had happened to his land and house in Trujillo but the documentation provides no information in this respect. The fact that he owned a house is interesting in itself, since the main argument was that forasteros and quinteros were exempt from the mita and paid less tribute due to the fact that they did not have access to land.
I found a reduced number of other house-owning forasteros quinteros from the seventeenth and eighteenth century: one example is the 1676 case of Diego de la Cruz, grandson of a couple from Piscobamba in Atun Conchucos. When his grandparents migrated to Otusco (Huamachuco) they received a “lot and house which was assigned to them by its nobles because they helped the naturales of it [the town].”42 Another land-owning quintero was Don Santiago de las
Disputes about the belonging of tribute payers took place not only between the tributaries and their authorities but also between different indigenous authorities. In a case from 1678, the cacique of the guaranga Andamarca in Huamachuco, Don Antonio de Tolentino, confronted the tribute collector of the ayllu forastero, Don Gabriel de Mendosa of the town Jesus, in Cajamarca over the latter’s having deprived him of the tribute of Juan Bautista Arteaga and his sons, Alonso Arteaga and Francisco Quilich, since 1675.44 Tolentino contended that these tributaries descended from Francisco Carguanquilich and Agustin Pisanquilich (father and grandfather of Juan Bautista Arteaga)45 and were all registered in his pachaca of Chugay, guaranga of Andamarca. He presented the census in which Agustin Pisanquilich was inscribed as belonging to the pachaca of Chugay. Referring to the inscription of Arteaga and his sons as forasteros in Jesus he underlined that the forastero status should only be ascribed to those people whose cacique of origin was not known, and that the status could also be reverted in case the cacique became known later on. Tolentino alleged that the tributaries themselves had declared their belonging to said pachaca, willing to pay and serve the corresponding obligations, including the mita. Furthermore, Juan Bautista’s brother and his sons kept serving and paying in their pachaca in the town of Huamachucho. In fact, Juan Bautista Arteaga and his son Alonso were there to testify. Although differing with regard to the exact filiation, they all stated that Juan Bautista and his sons were at that time living in the estancia Samaday, close to the Cajamarcan town of Jesus, east of the villa of Cajamarca.46 Juan Bautista even added that he and his sons had been born on the estancia. The owner of Samaday was called Diego Muñoz. Both Alonso and Juan Bautista confirmed that Agustin Pisanquilich was original from Huamachuco, pachaca Chugay, but had left it and Samaday too, and had also worked and lived for some time of his life on the estancia Sorochuco, north of the capital Cajamarca. In brief, they confirmed the filiation from a man of the pachaca Chugay in Huamachuco, and even self-designated as originarios from Huamachuco, but also underlined their long period of residence in
Opposing the cacique of the pachaca of Chugay, Don Juan Bautista Astoquipan, principal cacique and governor in Cajamarca, came to the help of his tribute collector Mendosa, underlining the forastero status of Juan Bautista Arteaga and his sons as proven by baptismal records which did not mention their Huamachuco origin.47 Furthermore, he pointed out that the three of them had already been paying quintos as forasteros for 28 years, since the time of his predecessor Francisco Astopilco, and that it would be detrimental to the royal exchequer if they stopped paying their quintos as forasteros. The corregidor of Cajamarca, Hontaneda, obliged Bautista Astoquipan to additionally conduct the latest census of the forasteros, which he did not accomplish in due time. This led the corregidor to exhort Astoquipan to pay the corresponding sum back to Tolentino. However, Astoquipan protested and alleged that he had conducted the census, but due to illness he had not done it personally, listing again all arguments in his favor. This led to a reopening of the case, which according to the available documentation remained without final resolution because Tolentino seems to have desisted from further declarations.
The most interesting aspect of the case is that nobody, not even Tolentino, contended that said tributaries resided in Jesus, Cajamarca. Tolentino did not ask for a restitution of the tributaries to their supposed hometown in Huamachuco, nor did the corregidor ever order it. Thus, the dispute was not about their place of residence but solely about the issue of which indigenous authority they belonged to and therefore paid and served: to Tolentino, their cacique of origin in Huamachuco, privileging therefore the personal association and their ancestry, or to the cacique of the forasteros in Jesus, Cajamarca. The latter would have meant that the translocal ties to their original guaranga and pachaca had been, at least officially and on a fiscal and legal level, severed, therefore privileging the territorial association. An additional interesting element is the position of the estanciero Muñoz, who apparently did not get involved in the lawsuit, despite the fact that for him it would have mattered if he paid the tribute for his servants in the form of quinto or the normal rate for originarios or indios de guaranga.
A case in which a person’s belonging to one of two different guarangas of originarios was disputed was that of Juan Crispin, natural child of a woman from the pachaca of Chimchim in Cajamarca who later on got married to a man from the guaranga de mitmas in Cajabamba, Huamachuco; the issue began in 1678.48 This case was similar to that of Francisco Hernando and Joseph Lorenzo, already mentioned above. However, in their case, their categorization as forasteros was under dispute and translocal ties existed amongst others with Trujillo.49 Bonds to Chachapoyas were already being severed in the case of Bartholomé Bentura, and it was debated whether he should be registered as forastero or as originario in the pachaca Pauxán, guaranga of Guzmango, being forced to serve mita in the hacienda of a Spaniard.50
Disputes among authorities continued in the early eighteenth century, with the ongoing debate about the prevalence of territorial or personal association. Gil Montero points out for southern Peru that under the viceroy Duque de la Palata, who served at the end of the seventeenth century, the responsibility of the original community for their absentees was still promoted, although the alternative, of linking the tributaries with their actual place of residence was beginning to be considered.51 In a case from the early eighteenth century, one of the major agents in a litigation, Francisco de Aiala, alluded to the
As we will see, the practice of paying with the original cacique, although living somewhere else, continued to be effective in the following decades in northern Peru. This shows the ongoing arguments that took place over the belonging or formal membership of indigenous people realized via their enrollment in tribute lists that were only seldom updated, a practice that did not comply with their repeated changes in places of residence. These disputes about membership to one place only were foremost tied to economic issues, as people could only effectuate their tribute payment in one place, and authorities quarreled over where this should be, in order to be able to exact the tribute along with their own share out of it. In the case of Aiala, the interpretation that the people in question had effectively migrated permanently prevailed, thereby privileging the territorial association. Besides, the example shows the continuity of the relationship and mobility with coastal regions, which is also evidenced in other similar cases.54
4.1.4.3 1730s Onwards: Gradual Enforcement of Territorial Association
Still in the 1730s, a considerable number of forasteros from Conchucos continued to pay their tribute to their original caciques, against the general tendency towards a registration and payment in the place of residence. This practice is evident in the general inspection ordered by viceroy Castelfuerte, which in the corregimiento Cajamarcas was carried out by José Damián de Cabrera.56
Damián de Cabrera undertook the inspection in the corregimiento of Cajamarca in the early 1730s. This inspection seems to have been quite influential, since in some parts his apportionments for the mita continued to be valid 70 years later.57
Damián de Cabrera reported several irregularities in the payment of tribute during his inspection. Among others, many owners of haciendas, estancias, and textile mills resisted the registering and exaction of tributes from their laborers, which indicates that probably the numbers of tributaries registered by him were lower than the real ones.58 Many of these laborers came from Conchucos. For them, he referred only the numbers from the previous inspection and tasa in 1685/1694, in which 266 out of 675 indios forasteros were original from Conchucos. But he related that during his inspection he still encountered a high number of forasteros who continued to pay their tribute back in Conchucos to their original caciques, therefore still privileging the personal association. Damián de Cabrera stated that they should pay their tribute amounting to two pesos de a ocho reales to the royal exchequer, therefore being de facto quinteros.59 This shows that the territorial association with a registration and payment at the place of residence was still not fully implemented, and Damián de Cabrera accepted the tribute receipts from Conchucos presented to him. Furthermore, it shows the continuity of the fiscal privileges for quinteros, since originarios had to pay more or less double the amount of tribute, which amounted to four pesos six reales and three quartillos de ocho en plata.
The direct impact of the revisita and retasa by Cabrera is reflected in a petition by Incas dating from only three years after the retasa. According to this document, in the partido of Cajamarca, the revisita listed 232 forasteros with land, of which 99 were Incas,61 and 1,825 were forasteros and yanaconas without land. The petition reports that the revisita differentiated between “forasteros originarios, forasteros quinteros, the yndios declared to be peons and chachapoias and the other mixtures.”62 Out of those, the forasteros and Incas were obliged to pay five pesos each since they all owned houses and land, and the other “yndios forasteros, yanaconas and peons for being manifest that they did not have land” only four pesos each, which was “the price the indios forasteros without lands of the district of the royal treasury of Trujillo pay.”63 The Incas objected to the recent imposition of this obligation, arguing that they had been exempt “from time immemorial until now”64 but seemingly failed to retain their privilege of exemption, a decision approved by the viceroy.65 And in fact, the census of the partido Cajamarca of 1803 listed the “pachaca de Incas,” which then consisted of only three men with their families, as being assigned the same tribute rate as the other guarangas, i.e. six pesos four reales.66 In contrast to this, “originarios and forasteros with houses and land”67
The intended redistribution of land to forasteros accompanying the same general census70 was echoed in a petition from 1746. In it, Don Pablo Pomayambo from Guzmango (Cajamarca) complained that he had not been registered at all in the revisita by Cabrera, either as originario or as yanacona. He tried to prove his status as forastero, claiming that he owned “no lands whatsoever, not by himself nor through the community,”71 i.e. he had no land acquired personally, nor did he have right to community land as originarios did. He referred to a repartition of “lands as ordered by ordinances”72 – although it is clear from his petition that despite these decrees, not all forasteros owned land. This suggests that decrees regarding the redistribution of land were known locally but had not been implemented comprehensively. Pomayambo’s case is especially interesting, because it is the only case in which the absence of land ownership is the central strategy in the petition to prove a forastero status; a possibility that had opened up because of the Crown’s politics regarding landownership and tributary status.
The absenteeism and sometimes double registration of tributaries continued in the next decades, as did the knowledge of their whereabouts by the tribute collectors. This is attested in several lists from 1741 of tributaries who were registered in two places or social units, or who were absent from haciendas or had gone to Lima.73 In neighboring Trujillo too, forasteros continued to be obliged to pay with their original caciques even in cases when they themselves only descended from migrants of previous generations.74
These contradictions, or rather the coexistence of personal and territorial association, continued until the end of century. This is visible in the case of Rumaldo Gutiérrez from 1794. He was incarcerated in Trujillo, seemingly for not paying tribute there. But he contended that he was paying his tribute back in his hometown in Otuzco, where he continued to work on the land and had not even been listed as absentee. Unfortunately, no resolution is preserved so that we do not know if Gutierrez’ underlining of his personal association
4.1.4.4 Last Decades of Colonial Rule: Restricting Translocality
Several examples from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century show that the translocality and free movement of tributaries was increasingly restricted, not only by royal authorities but also by Spanish masters of haciendas and estancias. They tried to retain the tributaries who had moved to work to their enterprises permanently, getting them registered as yanaconas de españoles.76 Sometimes they asked the authorities to send back laborers who had moved away,77 or they forced them to stay on their enterprise alleging debts.78 These and other tributaries tried to resist restitution and petitioned before the authorities, pointing to their belonging to pueblos de indios and interpreting their migration as seasonal or circular, in Tilly’s terms. Occasionally the petitioners argued that they had been forced to work with their master, or that he had registered them as yanaconas against their will and without their knowledge. Some of them referred to having been treated as if they had been enslaved.79 This attests to the development of forms of (debt) peonage which became widespread in haciendas in Peru and also in New Spain during the young republics.80
The case of a petitioner called Santos Romero seems exemplary in this respect. His petition dates from the early nineteenth century, shortly before the independence from Spain.81 Santos Romero was labeled by the authorities as mixto quintero, a quinto-payer with “mixed” ancestry, and supposedly a yanacona born and enlisted in a hacienda. The witnesses he presented declared, however, that he was a “royal Mestizo”82 and as such had never paid tribute. His mother was of the class of quinteros, but neither she nor his father had been born on a hacienda, and did not have the reputation of being yanaconas.
Santos Romero is an example of different conceptions of belonging for the several actors involved. Romero, on the one hand, saw his living on the hacienda as something temporary, qualifying it as a “coincidence”85 and his belonging to the indigenous town as unquestionable, he and his parents having paid tribute there, and later their contribution as “free republicans.”86 On the other hand, the hacienda steward and at least a part of the authorities classified his belonging to the hacienda as something definitive or permanent; i.e. both parties were advancing the categorization of his belonging that was most beneficial for them. During the course of his life, Romero changed his and his family’s place of residence several times but put forward that he had belonged all the time to one place and tribute categorization only. These changes of residences were possibly due to the fact that he did not own land that would have tied him more permanently to the indigenous town, although this is not made explicit
The intentions of the owners of haciendas and estancias to get their laborers permanently tied to their enterprises is understandable when we look at the silver mine of Hualgayoc, which was discovered in 1772 and soon flourished. It did not receive mitayos and had to depend on day-laborers.88 These workers included many mestizos, Afrodescendants, and mixtos quinteros and, according to O’Phelan Godoy, a relatively low number of indigenous people.89 The Spanish miners constantly complained about the fluctuation in their labor force. On the other hand, the mines profited from the reduction in textile production, which led workers to abandon textile mills in Huamachuco and Conchuchos and move to Hualgayoc.90 As in the previous centuries, the origins of the migrants lay mostly in the same and neighboring provinces in the northern Andes.91 However, these migrants were not only indigenous but included people of all calidades.
4.1.5 Vagos and Tasillas – Less Prominent “Migrant” Categorizations
4.1.5.1 Tasillas
In the previous pages, the forastero categorization has been depicted as something attractive and desirable. However, there were also petitions that attested that some people tried to leave this categorization, therefore representing a movement in the opposite direction. One person who, at least at some point in his life, tried to escape the forastero categorization was Juan Guaccha.92 Even though his biological father pertained to the ayllu forastero and his baptismal certificate emanated from the register of the forasteros, he – in contrast to many other similar cases – reinforced his claim of belonging to his mother’s ayllu, Chuquimango. And according to the procurador de naturales, Tocastanta Guatay, who acted on behalf of Don Pedro Carguacancha, principal of the “yndios mitmas tasillas,” Guaccha at some point registered himself voluntarily in the “ayllu de los tasillas,”93 even adopting a new surname.94 This, however, was categorically denied by Guaccha. Unfortunately, this petition remains without final resolution. It broaches the question of the term tasilla. According to Espinoza Soriano,95 the term tasillas is the Spanish denomination for mitimaes. In the petitions I analyzed, the term tasilla appeared mostly when referring to the competence of Astoquipan, denominating him “cacique and governor of the Indians of the seven guarangas tasillas and forasteros of this province Cajamarca.”96 In a census from 1803, the “pachaca de tasillas” was listed separately from the “guaranga de mitmas,” and as paying the same tribute as the “Chachapoyanos de Caxamarca,” i.e. four pesos, two reales.97Accordingly, the term tasilla seems to refer to a group of people who did not belong to one of the seven guarangas in Cajamarca and might have had a history of migration at some point in time, whether overlapping with that of the mitimaes or not. It seems clear that there was no overlap with the colonial “migrant” categorization of the forastero. The term itself, with the reference to the term tasa, could indicate a particular tribute payment, maybe because of
4.1.5.2 Vagos
Another categorization that appeared rarely in petitions is that of the vago, also called vagamundo, vagabundo, or vagante. Seemingly, it did not have a clear fiscal meaning in Cajamarca. Vagos occasionally appear in other sources such as legislation, viceregal correspondence or criminal causes throughout the colonial period.98 Therein, as in New Spain, they are depicted as lazy, morally dubious, and potentially criminal persons. In several sources, they are mentioned together with delinquents, especially in the late eighteenth century.99 Apparently, in some cases the simple categorization of being vago could lead to incarceration, as happened in two late eighteenth-century cases with Spanish militiamen.100 In another case, an incarcerated vago was later forced into bonded labor in the royal navy.101 These cases show that it was a categorization that was not exclusive of indigenous people but could pertain to people of all calidades.
In Table 3, shown at the beginning of this chapter, only one case of a petition regarding the vago categorization appears, and it pertains to New Spain. However, there are a few Peruvian petitions in which the term vago appears as an external adscription, all of them dating from the late colonial period. Since in all of them vago was not the prime adscription and did not imply a clear fiscal significance, the respective petitioners became subsumed under other categorizations in the summarized table. In all three such petitions I found the petitioners self-declared as indios originarios. However, they were opposed by hacienda-owners who affirmed that they were or should be registered as yanaconas de españoles on their enterprises. An argument to get them registered as such was that they were being accused of living as vagos. This condition was clearly associated with negative stereotypes. Such was the case of the owners of the hacienda Jesús de Palco in Huambos, who accused Atanacio Narvaez and Pedro Vallejo of being “vagrants and ambulants [who are constantly] in a state of drunkenness.”102 Therefore, they should return to their hacienda and keep working for them as their yanaconas.
been wandering around as a vagabond abandoning his wife and children who to follow him and live by his side left their homeland, ground, and doctrine, which is in Otuto, walking many miles until coming to the partido Conchucos where they maintained themselves for some seasons, and making their trips to this Huamachuco and even to the same hacienda Otuto together with his companions to take mules and other kinds of stolen four-leggeds for which there have always been complaints before this court. On the day and after the extinction of the tribute, he fixed his residence in a cattle farm denominated la Panquilla next to the hacienda Otuto, renting a small piece of land, giving shelter to some of his companions on it.108
So as explained above, again we see a case of translocal belonging and circular mobility between different places, including the neighboring Conchucos province. While the petitioner insisted on his freedom of movement, not being fixed to one place and, in this case additionally serving a Spanish master was not acceptable to the authorities or to the hacienda owner. We do not know if the accusations of robbery are well-founded or merely used as an argument to discredit the petitioner and his lifestyle. An interesting element in this petition is the fact that it happened in a period when tribute payment was temporarily abolished. Zavaleta seized the occasion to underline the changes this implied for the status of indigenous people. He self-denominated as an “indio español”109 and pointed out that there existed decrees to protect the liberty of the “españoles naturales,”110 thereby granting him equal status to that of Spaniards. He claimed that in his youth indigenous people were treated like enslaved people, forced to work in haciendas, but that now the “sovereignty had declared our equality with the Spaniards.”111 However, seemingly his line of argumentation was not taken up and even less followed by his opponents and
4.1.6 The Indio Alcabalero and Petitions from the North Coast
In previous examples of petitions by forasteros, it has been noted that this term was often used as a synonym of yanacona del rey (and sometimes quintero).112 The same was true for the coastal region from south of Trujillo up to Piura, where some other distinctive synonyms were often added that were employed only partly in Cajamarca but which show connections between both regions: solarero (criollo), and alcabalero.
4.1.6.1 Solarero Criollo
The term solarero criollo was ascribed to Diego Román, an indigenous inhabitant of the city of Trujillo, in a seventeenth-century petition.113 It referred to the fact that Román owned an urban plot in Trujillo. He demanded as one advantage the right to not to be reduced, i.e. relocated, according to him a privilege of the indios solareros. This right was officially granted to Román as result of his petition.
The term solarero appears only once in my sources in the already mentioned case, but Castañeda Murga and Noack have shown that there were further cases in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Trujillo. Castañeda Murga explains the emergence and meaning of the term as following: many indigenous migrants from Cajamarca and Huamachuco had come to Trujillo since the sixteenth century. These included mitayos who never went back, yanaconas de españoles working as domestic servants, people wanting to learn craft professions, and also nobles. As in Cajamarca, they did not settle in separate quarters of the city but mostly in the squared city center, the traza, with caciques owning plots therein,114 domestic workers living in the houses of Spaniards, and also professionals owning houses. Initially they were denominated vecinos, but from the 1580s onwards they became known as solareros to distinguish them from the Spanish vecinos, a terminological separation that
A further ramification of the term solarero can be seen in a case mentioned by Noack in which the term criollo (creole) was added to solarero. In her opinion this shows that the person in question was deeply rooted in the urban life and familiar with the respective habitus.118
4.1.6.2 Indio Alcabalero
The second term I have found in a number of petitions from Trujillo and also occasionally for Cajamarcan individuals or people moving between both regions, is indio alcabalero, i.e. an indigenous person paying the sales tax called alcabala. Before the Bourbon reforms in the late eighteenth century, indigenous products or productos de la tierra were exempt from the payment of this sales tax. Therefore it seems surprising to find the term indio alcabalero particularly with regard to the cases from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century.
Especially interesting is a seventeenth-century case that links coastal Trujillo to the highlands of Cajamarca. It consists of several different files and refers
In Cajamarca, I have not found a similar petition speaking of indios alcabaleros. There is, however, a collective petition dating from 1680 in which the alcabala payment of indigenous people from Cajamarca was debated. This case is special insofar as it refers to a specific occupational group: artisans. Through the Protector de Naturales, they protested against the recent introduction of alcabala payment for artisans in Cajamarcan towns, adducing that indigenous people were generally exempt from this obligation by royal tariff rates. Their plea was countered by the authorities with the argument that the sales tax had to be paid by all indigenous traders and those who hold “offices with public shops.”120 Still, the petitioners were not discouraged by the negative answer and insisted that the fact that some of them were working in shops did not mean they were traders. They were already paying the royal tribute and had no means to additionally pay the alcabala. Unfortunately, the file is incomplete, so that we do not know if they were successful with their petition. We can only speculate about further arguments against and in favor of their plea deduced from the Recopilación de Leyes de Indias. Therein, it was stipulated that artisans as well as traders should pay alcabala but that indigenous traders and artisans were exempt even if they had shops.121 The term alcabaleros also made it into a report sent to Viceroy Conde de la Monclova in 1689 in which an accountant of the royal treasury speaks of “vagabundos, mostrencos y alcabaleros”122 thereby associating the term to migration and vagabondism.
In Trujillo, I have found several other cases of petitions by indios alcabaleros that date from before the heyday of the Bourbon reforms.123 In these, as well as in the case of the Yupa family, it is unclear whether the term indio
These cases seem to indicate that possibly all these petitioners from the different cases had the common denominator of being indigenous but not being subject to a cacique or an encomendero, and therefore having to pay their contribution directly to the royal exchequer. Seemingly, at least during the seventeenth and early eighteenth century, this contribution was called quinto in Cajamarca but (tributo de) alcabala in Trujillo. The classification of yanacona del rey (sometimes also called forastero) was therefore equivalent to the term quintero in Cajamarca but to alcabalero in the coastal region. In the case of the artisans from Cajamarca, however, the reference to the alcabala actually meant the “normal” sales tax.
This “normal” meaning of the sales tax is present in several petitions from late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Cajamarca, i.e. already after many Bourbon reforms.127 In the Cajamarcan petitions, it is also referred to as “cabezón de alcabala.”128 These petitions debate the obligation of alcabala payment by indigenous people with regard to their income resulting from the breeding of livestock or the trading with its fresh meat. They might be seen in the wider context of changes of alcabala payments in the 1770s. The tax rate was increased from two percent, first to four and then to six percent, and
In a 1785 Cajamarcan case about the tenancy of livestock in possession of religious brotherhoods, cofradias, in Guzmango, the indigenous petitioner Lorenzo Valiente claimed that the payment of alcabala for people like him had been newly introduced. He pointed to the fact that indigenous people as well as the clergy used to be exempt from this tax and that indigenous people already paid tribute, citing corresponding decrees.131 However, the royal administrator countered his argument with other decrees, according to which only the clergy was exempt and not their tenants, and that indigenous people should only be unburdened when trading products of their breeding and production or when renting them from other indigenous people. His argumentation was followed by Saavedra, at that time intendente of Trujillo, who thus rejected Valiente’s petition.132
Although the petition was rejected, it seems that in the late colonial period even some authorities were not sure in which cases the sales tax could be exacted. This becomes clear in an 1803 petition from Cajamarca that involved several authorities in Cajamarca and Piura who debated whether indigenous people should pay alcabala for the selling of fresh meat, the product of their herds of goats. Contrary to the previous case, this time it was decided that they should not pay – but arguing not so much on the basis of their calidad of being indigenous as with the analogy with Piura, where there was no tradition of exacting alcabala for fresh meat, in order to avoid increasing the prices.133
This short deliberation about categorizations in a neighboring region shows that some fiscal categorizations were highly localized and that their precise meaning depended not only on the region but also on the time period. Indio alcabalero seemed to be equivalent to indio quintero in Cajamarca during the long seventeenth century, referring to someone who was not subject to a cacique or encomendero and who had to pay a special kind of tribute directly to the royal exchequer. At that time, the “tributo de alcabala” coexisted with the
4.1.7 “Migrant” Petitions in Cajamarca: a Summary
The forasteros arose as a new and important categorization with the Spanish conquest. Nevertheless, more generally the categorization of different kinds of migrants and their descendants with an according colonial regulation was nothing new in northern Peru: since prehispanic times, migrants had become integrated into the local structure of corporate social units based on descent. Some of them, the mitimaes and yanaconas, continued in an adapted manner under Spanish rule and underwent significant changes throughout the colonial period. The yanaconas de españoles developed towards peons at the end of the colonial period.
The categorization of the yanacona del rey became closely associated with the forasteros. Like the successors of the prehispanic migrant units, some of the forasteros formed a new ayllu and inserted themselves into the social structure through marriage and the creation of networks which they could activate on their behalf in order to defend or improve their privileged fiscal status. In the local power play more often than not they were successful in evading local caciques who wanted to keep them under the originario categorization. Some managed to acquire land, which was fomented more widely by the colonial administration in the eighteenth century with the intention of abolishing the categorization. The development of the categorizations forastero and yanacona del rey mirrored the intention of the Spanish administration to achieve a shift from the prehispanic and early colonial model of personal association towards the territorial association. This struggle started in the mid-seventeenth century but was only fully implemented towards the end of the colonial period. In practice, during the entire colonial period, many of the petitioners presented throughout this chapter exercised forms of translocal belonging.
The importance of “migrant” categorizations since prehispanic times and the associated struggle over their place of belonging that started in the late sixteenth century explains the earlier emergence of petitions debating this belonging as opposed to Michoacán. The Bourbon reforms were mostly aiming at a recategorization of “migrants” into indigenous people tied to the communities where they lived, but largely failed in this attempt. This is why they probably did not have a significant impact on the number of petitions presented. As we will see in the next section, the situation was different in
As I have tried to show throughout this chapter, there existed different types of forasteros in Cajamarca, such as those who had ties to their original caciques and those who did not. Forasteros with and without land persisted until independence and even beyond (cf. section 6.1) even if those with land were equal in terms of obligations to the originarios. In this regard, this “kin-group of strangers”134 experienced a similar fate to that of the descendants of the prehispanic foreign nobles, the Incas. They, as well as mestizos and mulattos, had an even more desirable fuero and naturaleza due to their being closer to the Spaniards. However, the Spanish calidad was only very rarely claimed. It is important to bear in mind that although the categorization of the petitioners presented here resulted from migration, it was not always the petitioners themselves who carried out the actual movement in space, but rather some of their ancestors, and thus some of the petitioners could, strictly speaking, also be labeled as sedentary and belonging to a community. All the mentioned categorizations existed in most parts of the Viceroyalty of Peru, with a huge numeric importance in the Audiencias de Lima, Charcas, and Quito.
But in Cajamarca a unique categorization existed, that of the quintero. The first mention of the quinto payment I have found dates from 1665,135 the first reference of the term quintero to 1680.136 The term was closely associated and partly overlapping with those of the yanacona del rey and the forastero. As the eighteenth century progressed, the term mixto quintero gained more relevance. People categorized as such had mostly ascendants from different calidades, including non-indigenous ones. This will be discussed in section 5.3. In Cajamarca, the categorization of the quintero was even longer-lived than that of the forastero and yanacona del rey (cf. section 6.1).
The categorization of the quintero also occasionally appeared in sources from the neighboring north coast. However, there developed other regionally circumscribed classifications such as indio alcabalero and indio solarero. The vago categorization appeared only occasionally in the eighteenth century. In New Spain, it was much more relevant, as will be discussed in the next section. As we will see, in other aspects too, the “migrant” categorizations in Michoacán were quite different from those in Cajamarca.
4.2 “Migrant” Petitions from Michoacán, New Spain
In Michoacán (and presumably in New Spain generally), the fiscal petitions had a close relationship with reports of merits and services in the first half of the colonial period and with certifications of “purity of blood” in the second half. This is why I start with a section about these topics and their relationship with descent, which also include some examples of non-indigenous migrants. We will see that several of the examples included migrant petitioners which however were not fiscally categorized as such. The next two section focus on “migrants” who were categorized as either laboríos or vagos. How they and other mobile people maintained relations with several spaces will be discussed in the section about translocal belonging, before ending with a brief summary.
4.2.1 Uncategorized Migrants and Entanglements with Nobility, Descent, and “Purity of Blood”
Relaciones de méritos y servicios, reports of merits and services, were petitions to receive royal grants as a reward for services rendered to the Crown. They were very common from the early days of the conquest of America, with many conquerors presenting their reports to the Crown, and subsequently their ancestors claiming to descend from them and therefore worthy of grants of their own. The reports were generally written in the first person, and a central element was a report, an información, detailing the personal achievement in the form of an interrogatory.137
Also important as ego-documents in colonial Spanish America were the probanzas de limpieza de sangre,138 certifications of “purity of blood.” They were a prerequisite for entering colleges, being ordained as a priest, obtaining
a pure Indian was technically someone who descended only (or mostly) from pre-Hispanic peoples. For this reason, formal procedures for determining native purity prioritized the examination of baptismal and marriage records. But when these records did not exist or did not provide the necessary information, officials were compelled to rely more on the declarations of local community members, who on most occasions referred not just to the person’s public reputation but to factors such as physical appearance, language abilities, clothing, and tributary status. Because most native people had to pay tribute, the last factor in fact became one of the most important social signs of being a pure Indian. Even though its definition privileged bloodlines, then, the category of “indio puro” was frequently determined through a combination of genealogical, sociocultural, economic, and physical characteristics. It was thus, as much a historical and social construct as “Spaniard,” “black,” and “Mestizo”.141
According to Martínez, the linkage between indigenous “purity of blood” and nobility was confirmed several times by royal legislation. Therefore, the purity of indigenous blood was also put forward by indigenous nobles who were seeking privileges such as tribute exemptions.142 In these cases, probanzas de limpieza de sangre were congruent with peticiones de cambio de fuero in my definition. Castillo Palma has called these voluntarily elaborated petitions “probanzas de calidad.”143
4.2.1.1 The Huitzimengari Family in Different Places
I will present the cases of the members of the Huitzimengari family together, since they were closely interlinked. These are the cases of the descendants of the last preshispanic Tarascan irecha, Tzintzicha Tangáxoan, often referred to as cazonci in the sources. Thereafter, I will continue with the chronological presentation of other cases. A partial genealogy of the Huitzimengari family can be seen in Figure 12.
Partial genealogy of the Huitziméngari-family. Figure elaborated by the author, adapted from: (Castro Gutiérrez 2004, 58)
As prominent nobles, many of whom acted as governors of Michoacán or at least held positions in the Pátzcuaro city council, many members of the Huitzimengari family were receivers and not payers of tribute. Among them were Antonio Huitzimengari, his son Tzintzicha Tangáxoan, and Don Juan Puruata, his mestizo nephew.144 Therefore, generally their petitions did not plead for an exemption from tribute payment but for higher-ranking privileges. Several of the children and grandchildren of Tzintzicha
Antonio’s illegitimate son, conceived with Ana Ocelotl, Don Constantino Bravo Huitzimengari (I), presented a report of merits and services in the late sixteenth century and received a royal decree granting him a generous income through the allotment of tribute payments.146
Don Constantino Bravo Huitzimengari (I) also acted as witness in a 1611 petition of two of his nephews, Don Fernando Huitzimengari and Don Antonio Enríquez Huitzimengari.147 This petition is part of the “Prouancas y Recaudos de la nobleza e filiacion de don Antonio Enriquez Guitzimengari, cacique de la ciudad de Pasquaro,” presented equally on behalf of his cousin Don Fernando.148 Don Antonio Enríquez Huitzimengari stated that he was the son of Don Juan Bautista Huitzimengari, grandson of Don Antonio Huitzimengari and great-grandson of the “great caçonçi … king and natural lord … of these provinces.”149 Furthermore he was married to Doña Gerónima Ocelotl, also a descendant of caciques. Don Antonio and his cousins pleaded to be considered in the elections for the government of the city of Pátzcuaro, as well as to be exempted from any payment of tribute and of doing personal service. Their petition was positively answered but already a decline in their status was visible, since their father and uncle Pablo and Constantino were not only exempted from any payments but were rather recipients of tribute payments. The information presented by the two cousins did allude to the legitimacy of their descent from the last irecha and that they should be privileged because of their calidad. Furthermore, it pointed to the fact that other nobles in central Mexican cities and also their uncle Don Constantino (I) enjoyed the same privileges. However, no one involved in the case mentioned “purity of blood” or employed a related terminology.
Huitzimengari was not able to enjoy his allowance for long. Shortly later, in August 1698, his testament was written and by 1699 he was dead. This can be inferred from a letter from his nephews Don Roque Velasques and Don Phelipe Velasques “caciques of this kingdom,” who presented the testament in July 1699.151 In his testament, Huitzimengari stated that he was married to a Spanish woman, Doña Agustina Rodríguez. He amply referred to the members of his lineage who were interrelated with Nahua nobles from the Valley of Mexico, but did not speak of “purity of blood”.
The royal grants for the Huitzimengari family were again mentioned in a 1731 petition presented by Don Felipe de Castilleja y Guzmán, cacique of the town of Zirahuén, subject to the city of Pátzcuaro. Castilleja was a mestizo nephew of Tzintzicha Tangáxoan, son of the cacica Beatriz de Castilleja. In the petition, Castilleja argued both with his Spanish as well as with his Tarascan ancestry in order to legitimize his possession of estates.152
In 1735, another branch of the Huitzimengari family submitted a petition. The nephews of Don Constantino Bravo (II) presented themselves as caciques of Tacubaya in the valley of Mexico, all carrying the surname Velásquez.153 In contrast to the already mentioned documents concerning the Huitzimengari
The above presented petitions by the real and fraudulent descendants of the last irecha referred to until now have been selected, from a longer list of petitions by family members, as being the most relevant ones for the topic of this book. They show how the descendants continued to hold privileges such as royal grants on tribute payments, or at least the exemption from paying tribute themselves and doing personal service, from the time of the conquest to the eighteenth century. However, the issue of “purity of blood” rarely played a role and only made a clear appearance in the eighteenth century. With this, I want to go back to other petitions of colonial indigenous nobles not clearly or directly related to Tzintzicha Tangáxoan to show that therein, the development was similar. I will again start in the sixteenth century and proceed in chronological order.
4.2.1.2 Other Colonial Indigenous Nobles and Migration
The earliest unpublished case dates from 1564 and could additionally be categorized as a report of merit and services. The petitioner was Bernabé Zinzon, who included his brother Francisco Zizique155 and his own children in the plea; both were from the city of Michoacán, at that time located in Pátzcuaro. They complained about being forced to pay tribute and do labor service in the “public works and the common tequios such as the maceguales.”156 They presented a report to prove that they were nobles, descending from parents and grandparents who had been nobles (or caciques) in prehispanic times in the “city of Michoacán and its quarters,” where they also had been exempt from
Despite this ample information, the judges of the royal Audiencia rejected the petition on the basis of the resistance of Zinzon’s opponent, the prosecutor (fiscal) Cavallón. Cavallón did not believe Zinzón or his ancestors had ever been nobles, and stated that they had always been paying tribute. Besides, he argued that according to royal dispositions, no indigenous people should be exempt from tribute payment because this could result in a high number
In the next case, dating from 1606, the petitioner shared Zinzon’s brother’s surname: Tsitsiqui, flower.164 Angel Tsitisiqui claimed to be a noble, native and citizen of the quarter Capaquaro, subject to Sevina. He stated that he had held the office of mandón (prehispanically known as ohcambeti) for more than thirty years and that he had fallen ill a year ago, which some “maceguales” were trying to take advantage of, attempting to oblige him to do personal service. His case was forwarded to a higher authority, and unfortunately no further documentation is preserved.
Also for the following case, which dates from 1640, we have no final resolution. The petitioner’s name was Francisco de Rivera, original from Zamora but resident in Uruapan. In Peru he would therefore have been classified as forastero, but here no concordant fiscal categorization is mentioned – though there is no question of his migratory status. Like Zinzón and Tsitsique, Rivera was being obliged to pay tribute and do personal services. As in the earlier cases, he claimed to be noble and cacique, son of Don Lorenzo Guacuxa and Doña Marta Magdalena. Furthermore, according to his petition his ancestors descended from the kings that reigned in “Mechuacan and New Mexico and kin to the great cacique Mostesuma,”165 a quite dubious relationship.166 Rivera
The information presented contained testimonies by three witnesses which show very few elements referring to “purity of blood” or typical features of a report of merits and services. The issue that Rivera had migrated from Jacona/Zamora to Uruapan was not mentioned often in the documentation but it seemed to have played a greater role than it seems at first sight. For the report it was important, because the witnesses had to know him from back where he was originally from. Three witnesses were presented on behalf of Rivera. Two indigenous and one Spanish, they were all original from Uruapan but had known Rivera since before his migration. They all stated that Rivera was a noble indigenous man, wearing a sword and being publicly known as such in both places, and that he had been occupying several positions in the indigenous administration of Jacona/Zamora. They reported that he had always been exempt from tribute payment and personal services, as had been his father and grandfather.
An interesting detail is that the second indigenous witness carried the surname Tzintzun and mentioned that he was an indigenous noble as well, possibly being related to Bernabé Zinzón in the file mentioned above. Tzintzun had been to Jacona and Zamora together with some ecclesiastics and had known Rivera there. He furthermore indicated that Jacona and Zamora were so close to Uruapan that if Rivera had been subject to tribute payment, the corresponding authorities would surely have come to Uruapan to collect it from him.
The Spanish witness, Vitoria, detailed an important element in Rivera’s argumentation that the others only passingly mentioned. Being a former notary (escribano), he was able to refer to an earlier legal case in which Rivera already had presented a petition to prove his nobility and therefore exemption. This petition had contained some “papers in Tarascan language in their usage with crowns and lions which had been in them and the stated Rivera in said paintings on a hill with his name.”168 These papers had been used to prove his nobility and privileges.
The painting referred to in the witness’s account of the 1640 petition by Francisco de Rivera seems to resemble similar colonial pictorial documents. Although the description in Rivera’s petition is very short, we can discern three probable elements included in the painting: a coat of arms containing crowns and lions, a hill with a person on it – which probably referred to the residence in or dominion over a certain place – and explanatory inscriptions in alphabetical writing. Very similar elements were contained in the Lienzo de Carapan and the Lienzo de Pátzcuaro, two codices that have been intensely studied by Roskamp and have been tentatively dated to the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century, but they were apparently made with the intention to make them look like sixteenth-century documents, and based on earlier paintings now lost. They were used in litigations over boundaries, dominion, and autonomy of the town of Carapan, located in the “valley of the eleven towns”.171
Returning to the petition by Francisco de Rivera, son of Lorenzo Guacuja, the brief summary of the file given by the teniente de alcalde mayor before whom the litigation was carried out proves interesting. He recapitulated that Rivera had given the information necessary for him to be recognized as noble and exempted from tribute because Uruapan’s “indigenous officers had made repugnance [because of him] being foreigner (forastero) and widower and not having acquired citizenship (vecindad) in this town.”172 Here we can see that the term forastero was employed to denote the migrant Rivera. This had led a fraction of Uruapan’s population to reject his pretense to noble privileges in the town, possibly because they did not know his origins and ancestors (well
As we have seen, Rivera’s and his witnesses’ arguments relied on his noble descent, his position in the indigenous colonial government, his reputation, and former documents justifying his privileges. Similar elements were also used in the 1726 petition by Don Pedro Antonio Guacuja.
The petition by Don Pedro Antonio Guacuja dates from almost a century later than Francisco de Rivera’s, introducing some new elements, previously not as prominent in the peticiones de cambio de fuero. Although some parts of the petitions are comparable, only Guacuja voiced his intention to prove his “legitimacy and purity”173 when presenting his information; therefore the petition de facto was a certification of purity of blood. The goal of both remained the same: to be exempted from tribute payment. All witnesses confirmed that Guacuja was the legitimate son of a cacique, some of them also pointing to the legitimate descent of his parents and to the fact that he had held offices in the Republic of Indians. So far, this is similar to the previous petitions presented. However, the witnesses now also underlined their purity of blood, making use of a vocabulary present in many similar eighteenth- and nineteenth-century petitions and certifications of “blood purity”. They highlighted the fact that Guacuja and his ancestors were “free from all bad race”174 (limpios de toda mala raza), occasionally specifiying this “bad race” as pertaining to mulattos, Moors, and Berbers, and as not having been condemned by the Holy Inquisition. One also pointed out the virtue and honor of his wife’s calidad.175 These elements clearly show the connection (but not equivalence) to fifteenth-century Spanish conceptions of “purity of blood” and honor. In Spain, “bad race” referred to (converted) Muslims and Jews, and the honor of a family was to be maintained by a virtuous life of its female members. In the Americas, Africans became additionally considered to be of “bad race.”176
Don Pedro Antonio Guacuja’s and his witnesses’ strategies worked. His “legitimacy and purity, […] and quality of an Indian cacique”180 was recognized, and he as well as his wife and five legitimate children were exempted from tribute payment. Many years later in 1793, a grandnephew of Don Pedro Antonio, Francisco Albarez Guacuja, asked for a copy of his granduncle’s petition. He probably wanted to plead for the same privilege his granduncle had been conceded. He added a puzzling detail, mentioning that his granduncle was descended from the prehispanic “Ysimbu” kings.181 To me it is totally unclear what this term could have referred to.
There are further eighteenth-century references to the surname Guacuja. In 1746, there was a dispute about the election of a man called Miguel Guacuja as governor of Pátzcuaro. Similarly to the case of Francisco de Rivera, it was controversially debated whether he was noble or plebeian – a term that was used synonymously with the Nahua term macehual. Therein, a fraction of the indigenous habitants of Pátzcuaro opposed the candidateship of Miguel Guacuja as governor because he was supposedly macehual and tributary, and being of such a calidad he should not be able to occupy such positions. It is unclear if his alleged common and tributary status was the real reason of the opposition or if it was merely a pretext because they did not like his political project or him personally. However, he was elected and his election approved by the city council (cabildo), which means that he also had a considerable number of supporters.182 In a list of officials elected in Pátzcuaro in 1793, there appeared several individuals with the surname Guacuja.183
I want to close with a case of indigenous nobles that dates from 1787. In it, the petitioners declared themselves to be descendants of the “catzontzi, lord who was of the province of Michoacan.”184 I decided not to include it with the cases of the Huitzimengari family since the alleged kinship seems dubious – at least the authorities of the time thought so, and rejected the petition. In contrast to the previous case, it is not a certification of purity of blood. The principal aim was to be granted an exemption from tribute obligations. What makes the case interesting is that the petitioners who professed their descent from the Tarascan irechas were living outside the province of Michoacán in the city of Querétaro, more specifically in the quarter of San Roque, but also owned a plot in the town of Yuririapúndaro. The petitioners were five brothers who carried the surname Ramírez Catzontzi. Besides descending from the irecha, they contended to be offspring of Don Diego Ramírez, who was a captain and conqueror of the town San Miguel el Grande, north of New Spain.
Effectively, Tarascans helped the Spaniards conquer many territories north of Michoacán, and Paredes Martínez mentions the existence of a Tarascan hospital in San Miguel, San Luis Potosí.185 The file includes the reference to various proofs presented by the Ramírez brothers; however, the proofs themselves are not contained therein. Therefore unfortunately we cannot see if the witnesses spoke about “purity of blood”. The authorities and the petitioners did not. The evidence consisted of a decree granting exemption in 1727,186 which in turn referred a royal cédula from 1573 also granting exemption for their deeds in the conquest, elevating them to nobles (“hijosdalgo”). Furthermore, the authorities had asked for an examination of witnesses but considered their testimonies to be insufficient. According to the fiscal advocate, the promotor fiscal of the royal treasury, the witnesses confirmed the filiation from Don Diego Ramirez but only one witness asserted the privilege of tribute exemption. In the end, the petition was rejected and the proofs returned to the petitioners. The authorities seemed to insinuate that the Ramírez brothers were probably nobles, but not caciques or firstborn sons of caciques. And
4.2.1.3 Petitioners of Other Calidades, Regulations, and Uncategorized Migration
Apparently, this stricter enforcement of tribute laws in the period of the Bourbon reforms also seems to reflect in petitions by petitioners of other calidades. I have found a number of petitions that at the same time qualify as certifications of “purity of blood” which all date from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Many more certifications of “purity of blood” were written and are preserved; probably several hundred, but for sure several dozen in Michoacán. I will only present those in which tribute payment was a central issue, and which contribute to the understanding of the negotiation of fiscal categorizations.187 Most of these petitioners tried to become recognized as Spaniards, but a suspicion of partly African ancestry lingered around.
The first example dates from 1785 and the petitioner was Don Antonio Escobar y Villegas. The lengthy lawsuit starts with a complaint by Don Antonio before the alcalde mayor of Periban. He protested against his registration as tributary despite his opposition because the alcalde mayor of Xiquilpan had some resentment against him. He stated that none of his ancestors had ever paid tribute and that his registration inflicted negatively on his and his offpring’s good public reputation. To prove that he and his brother were both “clean from all bad race”188 he presented seven witnesses. They confirmed that in their family there was no one known as being mulatto or from another “bad race” but that all were publicly known as Spaniards and that no member of the family had ever paid tribute. Despite the large number of witnesses who confirmed the Spanish calidad of the petitioner and his brother, his plea was not immediately answered.
The reference to a regulation for such cases is meaningful. It implies that these kinds of disputes about the correct registration happened quite often. Copies of the 1739 regulation appear in several petitions concerning fiscal categorizations in Michoacán, in the Pátzcuaro as well as in the Valladolid/Morelia Archive, and there is also a printed one in the National Archive. One of them tells us that the procedure had also been decreed in article 137 of the royal ordenanzas.189 The decree stated that cases had been occurring in which people were presenting themselves before the authorities, asserting they were Mestizos or caciques, petitioning to be declared exempt from tribute payment and eliminated from the matrículas. The fact that the reference made here is to mestizos and caciques shows us that migrant indigenous people were certainly not a majority among the petitioners, but as we will see in the following chapter (5), the procedure established for these two other groups was applied also to them.
In the decree it was suspected that the witnesses presented by the petitioners were instructed by them and did not tell the truth. Thus, it was prescribed that henceforth the alcaldes mayores should include the promotor fiscal, and the governors and mayors of the towns from which the petitioners had originated to testify about the calidad of the petitioners according to the last two tribute lists. The reference to the authorities of their origin implied that sometimes petitioners had migrated. The local priests should produce the baptismal and marriage registers.190 Further competent witnesses should be requested, and presented by the local authorities. Only the promotor fiscal would be allowed to decree the exemption from tribute payment, not regional authorities like corregidores or alcaldes mayores. If any of these steps were not followed, the whole procedure should be nullified.
The impact of the Bourbon reforms on the petitions was thus more visible in Michoacán than in Cajamarca. The reason was that in Michoacán (and New Spain more generally), the reforms aimed to strengthen the tribute exaction among laboríos and mulattos, categorizations that had often evaded payment before. The partly corresponding categorizations of the yanacona and forasteros in Cajamarca had been subject to payment to a much broader degree since at least the mid-seventeenth century.
Coming back to the petition by Escobar y Villega and his brother, we see that most of the missing proofs required according to these 1739 guidelines could be provided; namely the interrogation and invocation of the responsible authorities, i.e. the subdelegado and the priest, the presentation of further witnesses, the record of the two previous tribute registries, and the presentation of their baptismal record, but not the marriage certification of their parents. However, not all proofs were unequivocal. While witnesses and authorities again confirmed that they were publicly known as Spaniards and free from all “bad race,” and that Antonio Escobar was not registered as tributary in the last two tribute lists, his brother Miguel was listed as tributary there. Furthermore, the brothers’ baptismal record listed them as mestizos, not as Spaniards. However, the authorities who displayed these records immediately relativized their content. The priest exhibiting the baptismal record stated that many parish
The promotor fiscal also intervened in a case that took place few years later, citing again the 1739 decree of the Real Audiencia establishing the prescribed procedure to acquire the privilege of exemption from tribute payment. The petition was presented by Don José Santiago together with several of his siblings, carrying the surnames Villareal García de León or Rivera. The seven children of his brother Francisco Luis had been registered as mulatto tributaries and the petition aimed to have them erased from the tribute list. They claimed to be legitimate children of “Spaniards, old Christians, free from all bad race of mulatto, Jew or Zambaigo.”193 and be publicly known as such. Having presented several proofs, such as witness testimonies, the promotor fiscal intervened, requesting due procedure. This led to the display of the prescribed proofs: the interrogation of authorities, baptismal and marriage records (and in some cases the certification of their absence), another witness interrogation, an inquiry about the last tribute lists, and a report involving the competent authorities. Additionally, a letter was provided which testified that the family García de León and Urriola had received from his majesty the right to carry a coat of arms, and therefore were elevated to nobility. This is probably the reason why the ancestry of the García de León family is tracked five generations back, something extremely unusual in the petitions. However, several of the proofs did not unequivocally point to a “pure” Spanish ancestry of the petitioners. Especially interesting in this regard are the diverging baptismal records of three of Francisco (or Antonio) Luis’ children: one, José Vicente, was registered as a mulatto; one, Josefa Vicenta, as a morisca; and another one, Juana María, as a mestiza.194 Their mother María Josefa Camarena or García, in contrast, was denominated as a “pure” indigenous woman by the local priest. This phenomenon of several members of the same family being registered with different calidades has been labeled as mestizaje on paper, or as “pluriethnic families.”195 Baptismal and marriage records also attested to the fact that several members of the family had been migrating between various towns in
The proofs were also contradictory in the case of José Manuel Rivera, brother of Luis and José Santiago. The priest attested that he was a Spaniard but the subdelegado, based on witness’ interrogation and an inspection of the last tribute lists, asserted that he (and also his brothers and father) were mulattos and his nieces and nephews lobos.
The promotor fiscal found the contradictory proofs suspicious and was inclined to believe that the seven siblings were lobos and their uncle José Manuel Rivera mulatto. To be completely certain, he asked for the baptismal and marriage records of Luis, José Santiago, and Estefania Justa, the siblings of José Manuel. José Santiago presented a baptismal record that attested to his Spanish calidad. The others did not present such a baptismal record. Instead, an enforceable obligation by Pedro García de León197 was presented which awarded him the privilege of tribute exemption, and referred to the conferring of a coat of arms to the family García de León, allegedly co-founders of the town Guango. No further documentation is preserved, so that we don’t know if this changed the mind of the promotor fiscal or not. The intervention on behalf of other family members before the fiscal authorities was a common occurrence, as we can see in similar cases.198
4.2.1.4 Discussion & Comparison with Peru
In the previous section about Cajamarca (4.1), we have seen that there too, indigenous nobles presented petitions for tribute exemption. While in Michoacán the reference to the ancestry from the last irecha was prominent, in Cajamarca the allusion to the Incas played an important role. Several cases of such petitions by Incas from the Cuzco area have been mentioned by O’Phelan Godoy.199 People of other calidades also tried to have themselves exempted from tribute payment. However, two important differences are visible. On the one hand in Cajamarca, indigenous migrants and many of their descendants were almost always fiscally categorized as such, being labeled as forasteros,
On the other hand, after analyzing a considerable number of petitions from both places and working in different archives, I got the impression that the terminology pointing to an incipient racialization was more frequent in the peticiones de cambio de fuero from Michoacán. This impression is difficult to quantify, but I will try to substantiate my feeling. The expression mala raza, “bad race,” is explicitly used in six of the Michoacán petitions but in none of those from Cajamarca. I also have not found the reference to the descendance of Moors or Jews in the petitions from Cajamarca but they are present in several from Michoacán. Furthermore, in Michoacán’ archives, most notably in the AHMM, certifications of purity of blood presented to obtain secular or ecclesiastical positions or ranks are often preserved together with the petitions trying to obtain exemption from tribute payment or a change in the fiscal registration. This seems to be similar in other parts of Mexico, since Castillo Palma and Martínez, who both analyze certifications of purity of blood, mention having encountered them among their material petitions for tribute exemption.200
This does not mean that certifications of purity of blood did not exist in Peru. I found several in the AHDC.201 Therein, a similar terminology as in New Spain is also employed, speaking amongst other things about being “clean from all bad race.”202 As O’Phelan Godoy has pointed out, in (southern) Peru too the importance of the “purity of blood” increased during the eighteenth century, with a similar disdain for African ancestry.203 It was mostly the relationship of fiscal categorizations and petitions with “purity” of blood which was less direct. In Cajamarca, this also might have had to do with a lower percentage of Afrodescendant population than in Michoacán.
4.2.2 “Migrants” Negotiating Their Categorization in Petitions I: laboríos
In the Introduction, the example of the petition by the indio laborío Vicente Valdovinos de León was mentioned. He successfully managed to defend his fuero against a change to the categorization of mulatto. His case is one out of only three I have found in which the change of categorization of laboríos in Michoacán is involved. They all date from the beginning of the nineteenth century, although Martínez Baracs mentions a petition by dependent laborers
The fact that we do have so few petitions of laboríos is probably due to various reasons: First, that laboríos were often mobile and preferred to migrate instead of petition when they did not agree with their official categorization; second, some of them possibly did not have the means, i.e. the social and cultural capital, and, in the case of Afrodescendants, the economic capital to start a litigation. Third, in some cases laboríos had already escaped other categorizations when migrating to an hacienda, sugar or textile mill and felt the tribute reductions for laboríos were quite beneficial; especially if their master colluded in hiding some of them from the fiscal authorities.
4.2.1.1 Case I: Valdovinos de León et al.
The case by Valdovinos de León et al. is the earliest petition disputing the laborío vs. the mulatto categorization; dating from 1804. Therein, a group of eight male indios,206 among them the brothers Valdovinos León living in Puruándiro, claimed that they had been incorrectly registered as Mulattos by the substitute district head (subdelegado) and were then exhorted to pay a higher tribute which they couldn’t afford.207 They had all migrated to Puruándiro from different origins in different moments of time. Like Alvarado, they had been previously registered and paid their tribute as indios, and presented tribute receipts as proofs. They expressed resentment regarding the passing of the “infamous quality of pardo”208 on to their children, who as Afrodescendants would be precluded from obtaining public offices in the indigenous town or
Their former registration as indios was confirmed by the substitute subdelegado – at least at first. Besides, they were exhorted to state the duration of their residence in the town Puruándiro. Four of the indios named Acámbaro as their origin, while José María García was originally from Villa de Lagos and José Joaquín Fabian from Yuririapúndaro,211 towns in the nearby region of the Bajío or from within the Intendencia of Michoacán. Their residency and citizenship (vecindad) in Puruándiro varied between seven and twenty years. With this, the calidad of these six indios was sufficiently confirmed in the eyes of the substitute subdelegado. However, in the case of Pedro and Vizente Valdovinos de León, the substitute subdelegado demanded further proof and interrogated the current governor of Puruándiro about them. The governor declared that their father, Francisco Valdovinos de León, had been an indio native of Puruándiro but had lived for several years on the hacienda Pantoja where his two sons were conceived with his indigenous wife, and that these sons had been paying tribute as indios for five years.
With this declaration, the substitute subdelegado was content and would have closed the case. However, the promotor fiscal protector de naturales intervened and invalidated the former decision because of formal errors. The procedure had not respected the corresponding regulations issued by the Real Audiencia in 1739 and article 25 of the ordenanza by the viceroy count of Revillagigedo already mentioned in section 3.3.3. Although this procedure was meant to be for mestizos and caciques requesting exemption for tribute payment, evidently it was also expected from petitioners of other calidades. Thus, the brothers Valdovinos de León were also exhorted to start the whole process again.212 Unfortunately, we do not know if they tried anew as the preserved documentation ends at that point.
4.2.2.2 Case II: Victoriano Alvarado
Many parallels between Vicente Valdovino et al.’s petition to the second case exist in which an indio laborío was registered as mulatto; dating from 1808. The petition was presented by Victoriano Alvarado, although probably it had been written by someone else, as it stated that he did not know how to sign. In the petition, Alvarado bitterly complained about having been registered incorrectly and unfoundedly as mulatto. This “offense” (agravio) would be transmitted like an “infection” to all his descendants. He emphasized the hereditary character of his “fuero” and “class” that would be passed on from parents to children. He mentioned, as disadvantages of being registered as mulatto, the higher amount of tribute mulattos had to pay and the loss of the rights and privileges conceded to the indigenous population. He claimed to have a public reputation of being “indio” and lamented about not having been consulted when the tribute list was elaborated, as it supposedly should have been the case when the “class” of a person was doubtful.213 His documentary proofs were several tribute receipts which labeled him as “indio.”214 The validity of these tribute receipts was confirmed by an inspection of the tribute list (matrícula) of the year 1798, where Alvarado was, together with his wife, listed as indio laborío and worker in a textile mill (obrajero). It was confirmed that it referred to the same Alvarado that in the current tribute list was listed as mulatto.215 However, the competent authority, the royal fiscal inspector, was initially not satisfied with the proofs and asked for Alvarado’s baptismal certificate. As Alvarado was born in the town of Puruándiro, its priest was instructed to issue a copy but could not comply, as the former priest had not registered all baptisms in the parish book of the indigenous population during several years. Besides, the intendente of Valladolid recognized that Alvarado had not been the only case in the tribute list in which indios had been incorrectly registered as mulattos. Despite the missing baptismal certificate, he therefore recommended recognizing Alvarado as being in fact an indio laborío. The royal fiscal council followed this proposition and Alvarado was eliminated from the list of mulattos and put again into that of indios laboríos. Thereby, Alvarado was successful with his claim.
4.2.2.3 Case III: Nameless laboríos and their hacendado
In the third case where indios laboríos were allegedly registered incorrectly as mulattos, the petition was not presented by the tribute payers themselves, but instead by the owner of the hacienda they were working on. This could imply that the tribute payers themselves did not dare or feel able to establish a lawsuit against the Spanish authorities. Instead, according to the hacienda owner, they fled the hacienda, leaving their families behind. That they had been living on the hacienda with their families suggests a more permanent migration than the flight due to the incorrect registration where they abandoned their families. As we can observe, the requirement to pay a higher tribute, more precisely three pesos instead of twelve reales, was being conceived as a burden so important that flight was considered necessary – at least, other motives such as abuses are not mentioned in the documentation.
said indios laboríos were registered in the class of the castas or those married to mulattos without this being really the case; instead being married to indigenous women as I stated in the beginning, and which is very notorious in the neighborhood.216
Hence, he introduced a new element into the discussion: marriage. His statement suggests that the marriage to women of a different fiscal categorization could lead to a recategorization. And in fact, the regulations accompanying the estados generales de tributo from the year 1805 by Juan Ordoñez stated that indios married to indigenous women counted as full tributaries, while indios married to mulattas counted only as half-tributaries, but mulattas married to indios also counted as half-tributaries, so together they counted
However, according to the hacienda owner, the indios in question were married to indigenous women and therefore they should have been categorized as indios laboríos. The petition by the hacienda owner was received by Viceroy Iturrigaray, who ordered the subdelegado of Zacatula219 to conduct a thorough investigation. However, unfortunately the further course of the lawsuit has not been found so we do not know the final resolution. What is interesting is that we know of a similar case from eighteenth-century Guatemala. Pollack refers the petition of laboríos from Escuintla in Soconosco in the year 1782 who successfully threatened their governor with flight if he did not stop including them in the same tribute list as indios tributarios.220
4.2.2.4 Discussion
All three cases have demonstrated that there existed a close socioeconomic (with respect to labor) and maybe also cultural proximity between indios laboríos and mulattos, which could have led to the fiscal administration to confuse them in the tribute lists and which has also been reported for other areas of New Spain.221 Their co-working is attested also in a number of other fiscal sources.222 An indicator of their cultural proximity was a regulation issued
Seemingly, the fiscal benefits of the categorization indio laborío became so pervasive that the intendente of Valladolid felt it necessary to propose the abolition of the difference between the tribute paid by Indios laboríos and the settled ones (radicados).225 In 1800, he wrote a letter to the viceroy, complaining that many indigenous people left their communities in order to pay less tribute. He feared an overall depopulation of indigenous communities if this incentive was not abolished, a practice allegedly already carried out in some towns in the Intendencia. However, his suggestions were not put into practice, partly because of arguments based on the laboríos lacking access to land.226
Given this apparent attractiveness of the categorization of indio laborío, it seems surprising that I have found only three petitions by laboríos, even taking into account that they include references to other cases. The number seems small in comparison, on the one hand with those of the categorization mestizo, mulatto, and cacique in New Spain, and on the other hand with those of the “migrant” categorization indio forastero in Peru. Of course, that fact could
The small number of laborío petitions can be partly amended by the fact that I have found a few petitions by laboríos or their masters from the neighboring Audiencia of Guadalajara; all also dating from the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. In these too, laboríos are closely associated with mulattos.228 A very telling case dates from 1756–1764 and it has also been included in the Table 9.229 Therein, a representative of the royal treasury trying to collect the tribute of the indios laboríos, mulattos, and blacks complains in 1752 about the disappearance of all 118 laboríos in the jurisdiction of Autlán who had been registered previously. The local authorities and hacienda owners all testified in unison that there were no indios laboríos to be found and that all were tributary indios from the towns who were working in the haciendas, ranchos, and labores. They stated that they only temporarily worked on the haciendas but paid tribute back at their hometowns, and that besides these indios there were only free mulattos working on the haciendas. It is unclear whether effectively this form of translocal belonging with a prevalence of the
4.2.3 “Migrants” Negotiating their Categorization in Petitions II: vagos
There are no New Spanish petitions with vago as an explicit self-adscription, and only four where it is an external adscription, though not always the main one. They date from the early seventeenth to the early nineteenth century. In three of these cases, the competing categorization is that of settled indigenous people; in the remaining one the people in dispute were servants.
The first case is the one already mentioned of Diego Mexía from Pátzcuaro. In 1619, he protested against his incarceration for being vago, claiming that he was a vecino of the city and a tailor, having always lived from his profession. He was exhorted to really work in his profession, since as a vagabond he could be sentenced to be sent to the Philippines.230 It is not mentioned which calidad was ascribed to Mexía, which is why this is the only case that in the summarized Table 1 in the beginning of this chapter is recorded as vago.
The other seventeenth-century petition was not issued by tribute payers but by local authorities, specifically several mayors and alderman from the city of Valladolid.231 In 1637 they argued that there had been an unusual high number of deaths among the tribute-paying indigenous population of the city. Therefore, they asked to be allowed to register servants of Spaniards and vagamundos as tributaries. After the interrogation of a number of witnesses, their petition was granted a partial success. They were allowed to categorize the “vagabonds” as tributaries. Unfortunately, we do not know if these “vagabonds” also self-ascribed as such or rather saw themselves as belonging to other categorizations, since they have no voice in this petition.
The third petition dates from the late eighteenth century and shows again that vis-à-vis the categorization vago, being recognized as a settled tributary, this time an indio de pueblo, had its own attractiveness. The petition was written in 1788 in the town of Aranza, in which Don Manuel Equigua, Antonio Rodríguez, and several others tried to get rid of their categorization as vagos in order to be recognized as indios de pueblo.232 They argued that they were noble indigenous lords, caciques, and that one of them was a Spaniard married to an indigenous woman. They tried to prove their status arguing that they had all exercised offices in their indigenous towns. Besides, they had for most of their
In the new tribute list, however, they were enrolled incorrectly as vagos and were thereafter requested to pay the tribute as such. In the further course of the documentation, their calidad was being contested, as Antonio Rodríguez and some others seemed to have been known as mestizos. However, the authorities conceded them their wish and they were enrolled as indios de pueblo, since they did not try to evade tribute payment or change into a categorization which had to pay less. This case is exemplary for García’ Martínez and Grewe’s assertion that the population of pueblos de indios became much more heterogeneous throughout the eighteenth century, with non-indigenous people, often of “mixed” ancestry, occupying positions in the república de indios.233
The fourth and last petition dates from the early nineteenth century and is from New Galicia, not far from the border of Michoacán.234 The petitioners protested against being registered as vagabond mulattos, mulatos vagos. This supposedly incorrect registration had been given to the accountant of indios by the substitute subdelegado of Zacoalco, allegedly in order to allow him to collect their tribute, to prevent them from voting in the república de indios, and possibly also to get a hold of their land. The petitioners, Pedro Esteban Hernández, his son Cecilio Clemente Hernandez, and José Maria Coronel protested vehemently, stating that they had been paying tribute for up to forty years and had occupied positions in the indigenous government of the town Santa Ana Ascatlán. The substitute subdelegado opposed their position, stating that they were not of indigenous calidad but riotous mulattos having paid the vago tribute in the past. He accused them of trying to avoid the payment of alcabala and obligations to the church as well as gaining undue access to the privileges of the indigenous people. Unfortunately, a resolution is not preserved; yet, like in the previous cases this litigation shows the attractiveness of the categorization indio de pueblo and the negative associations tied to both the mulatto and vago categorizations.
4.2.4 Translocal Belonging in Michoacán
As I did in section 4.1 for Cajamarca, I would like to present several cases in which translocality was especially evident in Michoacán, and which include petitions by authorities.235 I have found examples from the sixteenth century onwards, but most date from the eighteenth century. They point to several
4.2.4.1 Belonging to Different Groups
The first example is brief but telling. In 1591, Bartolomé Miguel, originally from Erongarícuaro, complained before the viceroy: he had been living for six years in the quarter of the Zipinis subject to Jiquilpan but located in the town of Jacona, and two years ago he had married an indigenous woman from Jacona. Thereafter, the judge had registered him as a tributary of Jacona, which apparently belonged to a different (fiscal) jurisdiction as the quarter of the Zipinis. Miguel had obtained a house in Jacona as dowry from his wife. As he protested the incorrect registration, the indigenous authorities of Jacona had threatened to take away his house if he insisted upon his registration with the Zipinis. As a response to his petition, Viceroy Velasco entitled Miguel to maintain his house regardless of a registration in the quarter of the Zipinis but imposed on him the payment of one year’s tribute to Jacona.236 This form of payment as legalization of migration and resettlement for indigenous people has already been pointed out in section 2.4. Interestingly, his birth town, Erongarícuaro, was no longer considered as the town to which he should direct this payment, but rather Jacona, the hometown of his wife. By granting Miguel his wish, Viceroy Velasco somehow officially acknowledged Miguel’s belonging both to the town of Jacona and the specific quarter or separate town of the Zipinis.237
It would not seem accurate to label the movement between the town Jacona and one of its quarters as migration, though they were administratively and fiscally separated. This separation probably stemmed from the fact that the Zipinis, according to Miguel, belonged to the “Mexicans, to whose nation he belongs.”238 Several authors have pointed out the presence of Nahua-speaking people and multilingualism in Jacona, apparently since the prehispanic
4.2.4.2 Forced Migration
The second example is also linked to Erongarícuaro and dates from the early seventeenth century. In contrast to the seemingly voluntary migration of Bartolomé Miguel it refers to a more coerced form of mobility between Erongarícuaro and the northern mines of San Luis Potosí. It relates the quarrel between a miner from San Luis Potosí, or more specifically his majordomo and indigenous people from Erongarícuaro. The majordomo was traveling through Erongarícuaro and its surroundings, collecting people to take them to work in the mines and also collecting debts from inhabitants of Erongarícuaro. The debtors violently resisted the collection, apparently freeing the mine workers and two servants of the steward.242 Here, it was (presumedly) a Spaniard who maintained and tried to enforce the translocal ties between Erongarícuaro and San Luis Potosí – which, however met resistance from the indigenous people.
This incident is an early account of the migratory circuit between Michoacan and the mining areas in the north. Gavira Márquez has shown that indios de repartimiento were forced to temporarily work in the mines.243 In similar contemporary documents, these indios were also called laboríos or naboríos,244 and there are numerous complaints against this bonded labor by michoacanos,
4.2.4.3 Frustrated Attempts to Enforce Personal Association
There are several eighteenth-century mentions of people who intended a permanent migration to another indigenous town, wishing to be registered there. Thereby, they were opting for the territorial association. But at least until the mid-eighteenth century there were orders by several levels of the colonial authorities demanding the restitution of people to their original towns, countering the supposed freedom of migration. Several documents show that the authorities in the towns of origin knew exactly where these “absentees” were located, occasionally presenting lists of names with the corresponding whereabouts, which included haciendas, textile and sugar mills, mines, and towns.248 Also from the point of view of the haciendas the translocal ties with their seasonal workers were apparent, as lists of debtors of haciendas residing in towns show.249 However, the frustration of these intended restitutions and the reduction of vagabonds are also amply documented.250
In the towns, the newcomers were not always welcomed, as a dispute from Tarimbaro from 1753 shows. Therein the inhabitants denounced the illicit occupation of lands by migrants as well as their evasion of tribute payments. In the course of the litigation, it becomes clear however, that at least some of the migrants were paying rent, and there existed different opinions on the
While the final result of this litigation in Tarimbaro is not preserved, in a case from 1781 the newcomers were successful with a complaint against their migration and officially resisted an order for restitution to their town of origin. The group of migrants was originally from the town of Santa Ana Jaraquaro in the jurisdiction of Tlalpujahua and had moved from this mining district to Tiripetío five years ago. They highlighted that in Tiripetío they were assisting to the church, paying their tributes, working lands, and exercising their trade as carpenters, thereby underlining their utility for their town of residence. Their usefulness as carpenters for the local tobacco industry as well as the duration of their stay moved the corregidor to let them stay, thereby officially cutting the (supposed) ties to their town or origin.252 In this example we can hardly see aspects of translocality anymore; here the migration was permanent, or definitive, as Tilly would say.
4.2.4.4 Circular Labor Migration
But also in the second half of the eighteenth century we encounter numerous cases of circular labor migration with the corresponding translocal forms of belonging. This circular migration happened over larger or shorter intervals, as we will see with the two remaining examples. The first one shows that sometimes people were living and working on haciendas for several years and then could move back to their hometowns, in a seemingly more permanent form of migration: In 1787, the owner of the hacienda San Joaquín Xaripeo (near Ucareo) reported that there were several persons who had been servants on his hacienda who were still being listed as tributaries there. But they had already left his hacienda and moved back to their hometowns, such as Tocuaro and Jeraquaro, where one of them had already been buried. One couple had another hacienda, Chamuco, as their origin, to which they also moved back after having served on the hacienda Xaripeo. Most of the servants listed were indigenous people, but there was also one mulatto. As a result of the hacienda owner’s report, all these people were erased from the tribute list of the hacienda Xaripeo.253
Haciendas, and also mines and textile and sugar mills were typical destinations for many migrants, and the associated – from the point of view of the
the dispersion of his indigenous parishioners in the sugar mills, and that if they don’t recognize all together their residence and priest, this one will be left without parishioners and stipend, and will only be useful to bury their bodies to which they don’t contribute any fee in their parish, and they have such an urge to be buried in their parishes, maybe to qualify for a recognition of their citizenship (vecindad) that at every step I experience that the indigenous people who fall ill in their sugar mills or die without confession, because of not telling the priest of the territory where they are located or they arrange to get them out and they die on the way or they steal their bodies and always bury them in their towns; and it is the same with the other offices and recognitions, as Martin Domingo, father of the bride […] four years ago held the office of the attorney in his town, and in the present year the commoners elected him as mayor, and he excused himself for now with the excuse that he had a cornfield planted in Arapinaquaro, where he is serving, but that for the year to come he will accept it, and with all this the residency of Martin Domingo and his family, in his town San Juan of my jurisdiction, is made patent.260
With that, the priest enumerated the many steps his parishioners took to ensure their belonging to their original town, despite working and living somewhere else – from holding offices to a warrant for being buried there. With respect to the burial, another eighteenth-century document from Michoacán mentions that the bodies of people not originating in a certain town could be buried in separate sections of the churchyard, thereby prolonging their status as migrants beyond death.261
It is not made explicit, but one might suspect that the laboríos from Tarímbaro wanted to ensure their citizenship in their hometowns in order to maintain access to their communal lands, as was the case of Luis Gonzaga Jiménez detailed below. Interestingly, the case of the bride’s father was emphasized rather than that of the groom’s family, which hints at the latters’ belonging to the original community as being less evident. In the end, the bishop of
In contrast to the Peruvian example from Huambos detailed in section 4.1, the belonging to the original town was given preference over the actual place of work and residence. However, in the case from Zirahuén, links through translocal forms of belonging were much more obvious, evident in the exercise of citizenship rights and land ownership. The referred parishioners, albeit living somewhere else, fought to not be labeled as migrants, despite the fact that they were identified as such by the priest of the localities where they were working. Economic considerations seem to have been the principal motives for the actors involved. In the case of the parishioners, they wanted to ensure land ownership. The priests on the other hand tried to warrant their stipend, which was collected as part of the tribute paid by the inhabitants of their respective towns. But the importance given to the place of burial also hints at other motives, on a more emotional or spiritual level.
…
Petitions from both regions attest to the fact that “migrant” petitioners became firmly integrated into the receiving communities. However, their legal and fiscal categorization differed significantly between Cajamarca and Michoacán. It has to be stressed that far fewer petitions categorized as “migrants” existed in Michoacán than in Cajamarca. There was less variety in “migrant” categorizations and those that existed were not as attractive as for example the forastero categorization from Cajamarca.
A common phenomenon in both regions was the existence of forms of translocal belonging, typical for personal associations. Over the course of the colonial period, we can see a slow and unsteady transformation into a system of territorial association in both regions. Seemingly, this pretension was introduced earlier in Michoacán than in Cajamarca. Throughout the colonial period and in both Cajamarca and Michoacán, categorizations of indigenous “migrants” were often associated with those of “mixed” ancestry, as we will see in the following chapter.
“Clara de tres dias de edad, hija legítima de Antonio Quiliche y de Maria Raico (aillo forastero quintero)” (Index based upon data collected by the Genealogical Society of Utah, Salt Lake City 1668–1841, 357, photo 908).
“Libro de los baptismos de los forasteros”. ARC (1680b, f. 6r), also ARC (1671, f. 2r).
“Negros y mulatos”. ARC (1671–1672, f. 1r).
“Extranjeros”. ARC (1693–1695, f. 3r).
ARC (1693–1695).
Ibid., (f. 9r).
Ibid., (f. 8r).
Ibid., (f. 10r).
Ibid., (f. 12r).
However, they had not been serving mita. It was argued that this was due to their residence in the estancia of Angasmarca, but it is not enitrely clear to me why this was a valid argument. Perhaps because they had been serving as yanaconas there.
The term calidad appears in the petitions of Don Sebastian Jurado Tupac Inca Yupanqui. ARC (1752–1777, f. 7r) and that of Pedro Benito and Matías de Castro, ARC (1680c, f. 2r).
AGNP, Genealogías. Series fácticas, Genealogías.
AGNP (1817). The document is incomplete. The petition to obtain a certification of his services was presented by Gregorio de Zúñiga himself in 1808: AGNP (1808).
For example: AHDC (1703); AHDC (1767); AHDC (1846).
The referred documents are: ARC (1732a); ARC (1736); the one with the matrícula is: ARC (1738).
E.g. O’Toole (2005), Cope (1994).
Most research shows acculturation processes to extend over three generations. Harzig, Hoerder, and Gabaccia (2009, 103).
Wightman (1990, 88).
One case is the petition by Diego de la Cruz whose grandparents were from Piscobamba. ARC (1672–1680), cf. subsection 4.1.6. The other one is that of Juan Luna, whose parents, Lazaro Paria Guanca and Francisca Chiton, were both of the “aillo de estranjero,” and even one of his baptismal godfathers was a “chachapoia”. ARC (1666–1673, f. 1r). However, it has to be taken into account that the origin or status of both parents was not always stated.
The petition was written by Francisco Gabriel, natural son of Josepha Sanches from the ayllu forastero and an unknown father. Gabriel was registered in the guaranga of Chonta indios. Although the document remains unfinished, the course of the file suggests the probable success of his claim. ARC (1736–1737).
The text of the ordenanza is presented in the petition. Interestingly, the same copy of the text had been used before by Pedro de la Cruz. ARC (1678, f. 4vs), which shows that the people of the community shared the knowledge about such legislation.
Noack and Nowack (2017, 205–6); Noack (1996a, 119; 2003, 214, 224); Castañeda Murga (2013, 2019).
Some examples are: ARC (1674–1680); ARC (1665b); ARC (1746); ARC (1622–1623).
Numerous people from Cajamarca are recorded in the 1613 Lima census: Cook and Escobar Gamboa (1968); during the seventeenth century at least some of them were living together with indigenous migrants from Jauja: AGNP (1628); AGNP (1648).
ARLL (1673); ARLL (1672); ARLL (1802–1804); Bonilla and Hünefeldt (1986, 14–15); Ramírez (2017, 103–4); Márquez Ramírez (2018, 32–33).
ARLL (1672, f. 4r–5r). This was something that happened often in Charcas.
Albiez-Wieck and Gil Montero (2020).
Gil Montero and Albiez-Wieck (2020). An example of such a dispute between a (female) textile mill owner in Tauca and the cacique of the town Llapo in the neighboring Conchucos province is ARLL (1656).
“No obliguen apremien ni compelan al dicho Lucas Yupa a que pague tributos en el dicho pueblo como yndio tributario del ni menos le obliguen a que haga mitas de seis meses como yndio mitayo de septima parte y cumpla con su obligacion el dicho Lucas Yupa con pagar los tributos que pagan los yndios forasteros con nombre de quinttos y goze del fuero de yndio forastero como hijo y decendientte legitimo de Pedro Yupa natural que fue de la jurisdizion de Guanuco y de Isauel Llaxsacallay natural que fue del dicho pueblo de Caxabamba”. ARC (1676, f. 18vs).
“Solar y casa que les fue señalado por los principales de él porque ayudaban a los naturales de él”. ARC (1672–1680, f. 9r). Unfortunately, the petition contains no resolution, so we do not know if Diego de la Cruz was recognized as forastero, but the course of the lawsuit suggests this possibility.
The declarations in the file about the exact filiation are contradictory: while Tolentino stated that Francisco was the grandfather and Agustin the father of Juan Bautista Arteaga, Alonso Arteaga stated that Francisco was the father and Agustin the uncle; Juan Bautista himself declared that his father was Francisco and his grandfather Agustin.
The current location of Samaday belongs to the district of Jesus: (“Samaday en Cajamarca”).
This fact was explained by Tolentino as being a neglect (“descuido”) of the priest in Jesus. ARC (1675–1679, f. 12r).
Gil Montero and Nielsen (2010, 59–60).
ARC (1703–1704).
Ibid. (f. 5vs). “dichos indios en los pueblos en que están refugiados de dicho corregimiento de Piura se atilden y borren del padron de Guambos por ser una tierra dura.”
Another case from the same period talks about indigenous tributaries who had gone from Huamachuco to Trujillo and were registered in both places is ARC (1706). An additional example refers to absentees in Saña during the seventeenth century: ARLL (1645).
Cf. e.g. ARC (1671); ARC (1789a); ARLL (1656).
For an analysis of this inspection on the level of the viceroyalty, cf. Pearce (2001).
AGNP (1807, f. 1r).
ARC (1731–1732). In another document he referred the punishment of a tribute collector who had unduly exacted tribute from people who did not have to pay it, supposedly due to the absenteeism of the actual tributaries. This collector also declared that he had not exacted tribute from tributaries with origins in Conchcuos. ARC (1731–1733, f. 19vs–20r).
ARC (1731–1733).
ARC (1730–1731, f. 2r).
The Inca were allegedly included under the category of the forasteros but enumerated in a separate booklet.
ARC (1738, f. 2r). “forasteros originarios forasteros quinteros Los Yndios manifestados piones y chachapoias y demas mixtos.”
“Yndios forasteros Yanaconas y de pion Por constar que no tenian tierras”… “El precio que pagan los yndios forasteros sin tierras del distrito de la real caja de Truxillo”. Ibid. (f. 3r).
“Desde ynmemorial tiempo a esta parte” Ibid. (f. 2vs).
Ibid. (f. 2vs).
Ibid.
Ibid. (f. 33r).
The exact tribute rates, especially of the originarios, vary slightly according to the town, but the general variation among the different categorizations is comparable.
Pearce (2001, 101–2).
“Tierras que por ordenanzas estan mandado”. Ibid. (f. 2vs).
Generally, the documents employ only the term yanacona but it is clear that they are not yanaconas del rey.
Telling examples are: ARLL (1790); AGNP (1795); ARLL (1814).
Bantjes (2011, 339); Bonilla and Hünefeldt (1986, 13–14); Brading (1978, 9); Monteiro (2006, 228).
Royal mestizos, mestizos reales, according to O’Phelan Godoy (2013) were mestizos with an alleged Inca, i.e. noble indigenous, ancestry.
Ibid. (f. 2vs). “republicanos libres”.
Wightman (1990, 85). Powers ([1995] 2007, 11, 46, 76, 80, 171) reports a similar association to haciendas in the Audienca de Quito. She also mentions that in the early eighteenth century many haciendas took the task of establishing census documents over from indigenous communities. She also relates that “ayllu members, who appear to have reconstituted their social organization inside the obraje-hacienda complex” (p. 152).
Contreras (1995, 88).
O’Phelan Godoy (1993, 85). It is possible that among the mixtos quinteros she mentioned indigenous people were also included.
Ibid. (76–77).
O’Phelan Godoy (1993, 99) gives the following list of places of origin extracted from the defunction records of Hualgayoc: Cajamarca, Huamachuco, Hualgayoc, Pataz, Conchucos, Spain, Lambayeque, Chachapoyas, Europe, Trujillo, Lima, Piura, Guayaquil, Loja, Pasco, Chile, Quito, Huamanga, Riobamba, Cajatambo, Cajabamba, Chancay.
ARC (1671–1672).
Ibid. (f. 3r).
The document states literally: “of his own motive (?) he inscribed and enrolled himself in the said ayllu of the tasillas and now he has changed his surname calling himself Juan Chupne” (“de su propio motuo se numero y enpadrono en el dicho ayllo de los tasillas y aora a mudado el sobrenombre llamandose Juan Chupne”). ARC (1671–1672, f. 3r).
Espinoza Soriano (2006b, 199).
“Cacique y gouernador de los yndios de las siete guarangas tasillas y forasteros de esta prouincia de Caxamarca”. ARC (1693–1695).
E.g. AGI (1561–1562); ARLL (1640–1641); ARC (1636–1664); AHDC (1800); AGNP (1820).
E.g. AGNP (1791a); AGNP (1788); AGNP (1793a). For vagos in late eighteenth-century Lima, cf. Chuhue (2006).
ARLL (1802–1804).
Ibid. (f. 3r). Here china refers to the being a (female) servant, and not to Asian ancestry. Both meanings coexisted.
“Reducido a esta finca”. ARLL (1802–1804, f. 3r).
“Prostituidos al bisio de la ebriedad y la holgasaneria”. ARLL (1802–1804, f. 3vs).
“…ha andado siempre bago y errante con abandono de su muger e hijos quienes por seguirlo y vivir a su lado han dejado su patria, suelo y doctrina que es la de Otuto caminando muchas leguas hasta el partido de Conchucos en donde se ha mantenido por temporadas y haciendo sus viages a este Huamachcuo y aun a la misma hacienda de Otuto en consorcio de otros sus compañeros a llevarse mulas y otras especies de guadrupedos robados de que siempre ha havido quejas en este jusgado. En el dia y despues de la extincion del trivuto, fijo su residencia en una estancia nombrada la Panquilla immediata a la dicha hacienda de Otuto, tomando en arriendo un corto trozo de tierras abrigando en aquel lugar algunos compañeros en el…”. ARLL (1814, f. 9r–vs).
Ibid. (f. 1r).
Ibid.
Ibid. (f. 1r-vs). “la soberania hubiese declarado nuestra igualdad con los españoles”.
For this relationship and the development of the categorizations forastero and yanacona del rey, cf. Albiez-Wieck and Gil Montero (2020).
Caciques from Cajamarca often came temporarily to deal with legal or economic obligations. In the sixteenth century they owned plots next to that of their encomendero Melchor Verdugo. There were also indigenous quarters outside the city center, called extramuros. Castañeda Murga (2019, 63); AAL (1694/1695).
Castañeda Murga (2019, 100). According to Noack (2009, 63) the first mention of the term in notarial protocols dates from 1563.
Graubart (2019, 96).
The petitions date from 1604 and 1618. Castañeda Murga (2019, 97–98). I have not revised them by myself, therefore they are not included in my statistics, but Castañeda provides the following signatures: ARLL, Co., HS, leg. 287, 11–03–1604 and ARLL, Co. CO, leg. 168, exp. 568, 25.10.1618.
Noack (2009, 62–63). She mentions one case of a mulatto being identified as solarero. For the concept habitus, cf. Bourdieu and Russer ([1984] 2014).
The petitioners in question were Lucas Yupa, Felix de la Cruz, and Joseph Yupa Romero, all related to each other: ARC (1665a); ARLL (1666); ARC (1676).
ARC (1680a, f. 1vs). “oficios con tiendas publicas.”
“De las Alcavalas. Libro 8, Título XIII” (1680), Ley IV, XII, XXIV. This legislation was partly changed by the Bourbon reforms later on.
Díaz Rementería (1977, 57–58).
ARLL (1709, f. 2r).
Ibid. (f. 2vs).
ARLL (1708a, f. 1r–vs).
ARLL (1785, f. 1r).
Stavig (1999, 224). Stavig mentions dried meat but not livestock and fresh meat among the newly taxed products but his list doesn’t attempt to be exhaustive.
“De las Alcavalas. Libro 8, Título XIII” (1680), Ley XXV, XXVI.
ARLL (1785, f. 6r). For the partial exemption of the clergy, cf. “De las Alcavalas. Libro 8, Título XIII” (1680), Ley XVII.
ARLL (1785, f. 6r–vs)
ARLL (1803–1804). A similar argumentation was employed in a petition by Juan Manuel Loyaga, indigenous tributary in Otuzco trying to be exempted from alcabala payment for his livestock trading. ARLL (1811).
Wightman (1990, 89).
Martínez (2008, 125); Folger and Simon (2011, 4, 29). This type of source has been intensively studied by Folger (2011) and Guyau (2013/2014).
Martínez (2008, 17) distinguishes between “reports of purity of blood” (información de limpieza de sangre) and “certification or proof of purity of blood” (probanza de limpieza de sangre. She explains that “the former normally consisted of genealogical information that a person (hereafter referred to as either “petitioner” or “candidate”) seeking to access an institution or post with purity requirements would provide. The latter generally contained documents from the actual investigation process through which limpieza de sangre was “proven and certified”, Ibid. As the cases presented here aim to obtain fiscal privileges and not to access a post and normally do not present extensive genealogical documentation, they would classify as probanzas de limpieza de sangre. However, the terminology employed in the sources is not always consistent, and some cases of probanzas are labeled as informaciones, such as in the case of Miguel de Chacón y Bustos, who sought exemption from tribute payment in 1793. AGNM (1793–1805).
A typical example from eighteenth-century Michoacán is the case of Juan de Dios Díaz, who wanted to become a cleric but was accused of having an enslaved ancestor: AHCMO (1773).
Martínez (2008, 104–5).
Ibid. (5, 103, 110–111, 118, 141).
Castillo Palma (2011, 219–20).
López Sarrelangue (1965, chs. 7–8).
AGNM (1587); Archivo Histórico de Hacienda (1594); Cf. also: Martínez (2008, 112); Castro Gutiérrez (2015 // 2016, 13–14); Castro Gutiérrez (2009); Martínez Baracs and Espinosa Morales (1999, 36). Constantino Huitziméngari’s mother was Ana Ocelotl, probably pertaining to the Nahua fraction of the nobility. Constantino married a noble woman from the Valley of Mexico.
A part of the case has been published as “Petición de los caciques Don Fernando Huitziméngari y Don Antonio Enríquez Huitziméngari para que se les guarden sus privilegios en los cabildos de Pátzcuaro” in: López Sarrelangue (1965, 311–16). The original document is longer: AGNM (1548–1613). Constantino Huitziméngari stated that he had just left the office of governor in Xochimilco near Mexico City.
AGNM (1548–1613, f. 1r).
Ibid. (f. 13r).
The testament is published as “Testamento que otorgó Don Constantino Guchimíngari Bravo Catzonci, vecino de esta ciudad de México, so cuya diposición falleció.” Despite the diferring date, it is also part of “Probanzas y recaudos de la nobleza y filiación de don Antonio Enríquez Huitziméngari, cacique de la ciudad de Pátzcuaro,” 1613. AGN, Hospital de Jesús, Leg. 302, Exp. 8, f. 4–9vs in: López Sarrelangue (1965, 317–25). The accompanying letter was not published by López Sarrelangue but is available in the original document: AGNM (1548–1613, f. 97r).
Published as “Petición de Don Felipe de Castilleja y Guzmán, cacique y principal de Zirahuén, para que se le ampare en su cacicazgo” from “Autos que siguen los naturales del pueblo de Zirahuén y San Juan Tumbio de la jurisdicción de Pátzcuaro contra don Felipe Castilleja y Guzmán, sobre tierras. 1731, AGNM, Tierras, Vol 514, Exp. 3, f. 2–5 in: López Sarrelangue (1965, 323–25).
López Sarrelangue (1965, 220–21).
The Tarascan writing of their surnames would be Tzintzuni (hummingbird) and Tsitsiqui (flower). López Sarrelangue (1965, 249) refers a 1573 lawsuit in which a Francisco Tsitsiqui complains of having been assaulted by another indigenous man. In 1620 he received the right to ride on horseback, a privilege of Spaniards and indigenous nobles.
AGNM (1564, f. 1r). Tequios are public labor services, and macehuales the Hispanicized form of the Nahua term for common people.
AGNM (1564, f. 2r). In the abovementioned 1611 petition by two grandsons of the last Tarascan irecha, it is mentioned that a person called Francisco Cintzon was regidor of Pátzcuaro. López Sarrelangue (1965, 315).
The title marqués del valle normally refers to Hernán Cortés, who, however, never personally led a military campaign against Colima. According to the Relación de Michoacán, the Spaniards conquered Colima with the help of the Tarascan noble Huitzitziltzi, possibly a brother of Don Pedro Cuinierángari. Albiez-Wieck (2013a, ch. 7). Huitzitzillin means hummingbird in Nahuatl; additionally, the name contains the reverential suffix –tzin. Siméon ([1885] 2007, 757). Tzintzuni, and therefore also the surname of the Bernabé in question, would be the Tarascan translation of the same term.
According to Romero de Solís (2007, 32, 57) there were several Spanish incursions into Colima in the mid-sixteenth century, led by the following persons: Olid and Villafuerte 1522; Sandoval 1523 and Francisco Cortés 1524–25. Francisco Cortés was related to Hernán Cortés.
An insurrection in Nochistlan was put down personally by Viceroy Mendoza. Paredes Martínez (2010, 54–55). Nochistlán is located in what today is the state of Zacatecas, near Juchipila.
The first journey to. Cibola, today known as Zuñi in what is today New Mexico, was initiated by Nuño de Guzmán in 1532, before the reign of Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza. In 1539, fray Marcos de Niza and the enslaved black Esteban de Orantes led another expedition there. Braniff (2006, 42); Riley (1982, 42); Niza (1539).
AGNM (1564, f. 20–22).
López Sarrelangue (1965, 163) mentions Tzintzuni, Tzintzon or Sinson as noble surnames, also being employed as appellation of the prehispanic irecha Zuangua, and Tsitsiqui as another noble surname. Cf. also: Castro Gutiérrez (2015 // 2016).
Castro Gutiérrez (2003); Monzón, Roskamp, and Warren (2009, 24–26).
AHMM (1640b, f. 1r).
First of all, it is completely unclear what is meant by the reference to the king of New Mexico, as no such political entity existed in prehispanic times. Furthermore, the irecha of Michoacán and the Mexica’ ruler Moctezuma were archenemies and not related. The only known, very indirect relationship was that after the conquest, Don Constantino Bravo Huitziméngari (I), grandson of the last irecha, married Doña Agustina de Chilapa, descendant of the ruler of Texcoco in the valley of Mexico. Castro Gutiérrez (2009).
Jacona and Zamora were located close to each other. One of the witnesses even spoke of the “villa de Çamora e Xacona”. AHMM (1640b, f. 3vs).
“Unos papeles en lengua tarasca i pinturas a su usança de coronas i leones que estauan en ellos y el dicho Riuera en las dichas pinturas en un çerro con su nonbre”. AHMM (1640b, f. 3r).
Guacuja is not mentioned in the list of typical noble surnames compiled by López Sarrelangue (1965, 162–163, 261, 330) but appears among the list of nobles in Pátzcuaro. She translated it as “halfway eagle”.
Roskamp (1998, 169); AHCP (1565).
Roskamp (1998, ch. 6). The Cañada de los Once Pueblos is a large valley north of Uruapan and one of the “classical” p’urhépecha regions. The reader can view the Codex Carapan II in the Mediateca INAH under the following link: http://mediateca.inah.gob.mx/islandora_74/islandora/object/codice%3A1606 (last accessed February 6, 2021).
AHMM (1640b, f. 4r).
AHCP (1726, f. 1vs).
Ibid. (f. 3r).
Ibid. (f. 3vs).
Hering Torres (2010, 2011); Undurraga Schüler (2013); Martínez (2008, 107, 141, 158).
Martínez (2008, 279–80).
Ibid. (273–74).
Hannaford (1996, ch. 7); Hering Torres (2010, 143–44); Takezawa (2005).
“Asi de su legitimidad y limpiesa… y calidad de yndio catzique “. AHCP (1726, f. 7r).
AHCP (1726, f. 9r).
Ibid.
AGNM (1787, f. 264r).
The document reads only “year 27”; I inferred the corresponding century from the context.
In the AHMM, about fifty certifications of “purity of blood” are to be found. Most are located in the series Gobierno, caja 55 from files (expedients) 13 onwards and in Gobierno, Caja 56 in the files 1–17; some are also located in Haicenda, Caja 5, in the files 2–39 and in Caja 6 in the files 2–30. Most are presented in order to obtain a public or ecclesiastical office, to be ordained as priest or to become a nun. In the AHCMO, certifications of “purity of blood” are preserved in the Section Justicia, subseries limpieza de sangre, and mostly refer to the obtainment of ecclesiastical offices. In the AHCP, the certifications of “purity of blood” are scattered among various sections. I also quickly found many certifications of “purity of blood” in a brief archival stay in the ARAG, one example is: ARAG (1751). For certifications of “purity of blood” in the AGNM and other Mexican, Spanish, and US archives, cf. Martínez (2008, 17–18). Martínez speaks of thousands of certifications from Mexico across archives in several countries.
AHMM (1785, f. 8r). “limpios de toda mala raza”.
AHCP (1788); AHMM (1788a); AHMM (1804); AGNM (n.d., f. 10–11).
As in Peru, the baptisms and marriages were usually registered in separate books for indigenous people on the one hand and Spaniards and castas on the other hand.
Andrews Gharala (2016, 152). Her work focuses on free Afrodescendants and their petitions, and her descriptions and analysis of petitions from central and east-central Mexico are very much like the ones from Michoacán I have studied.
Castillo Palma (2011, 232–34).
AHMM (1788a, f. 2r). “Españoles, Christianos viejos, limpios de toda mala raza de Mulato, Judio, ó Sambaigo”.
Ibid., (f. 17r–vs).
The letter accompanying the enforceable obligation (“executoria”) speaks of Don Pedro García de León as the grandfather of José Ignacio Camargo García de León. But according to the first declaration of witnesses, Ignacio would be the son of José Santiago, and the great-grandnephew of Pedro García de León, not his grandson.
An example is the case of Juan Miguel Chacón y Bustos, treated in section 5.1.: AGNM (1793–1805, f. 28vs).
O’Phelan Godoy (2013, 20, 83–84, 114).
Castillo Palma (2011, 240–41); Martínez (2008, 104–5).
E.g. a 1767 petition by Juan Manuel de Medina, aspiring to receive minor orders: AHDC (1767). Another example is AHDC (1846).
AHDC (1767, f. 4r).
O’Phelan Godoy (2013, 129).
Martínez Baracs (1998, 49–50) refers to a petition from the mid-sixteenth century from Zacatula in which indigenous people given in encomienda to Gonzalo Gallego as well as indigenous people from other encomiendas were made to come to Zacatula and forced to work for the vecinos of this villa, having to leave their fields behind, unable to comply with their tributary obligation. This collective petition was successful in its aims. Martínez Baracs provides the following signature in the AGNM: Merced 2, exp. 67, f. 31.
Generally, the term Mulatto is employed, but also pardo is mentioned once. AHMM (1804, f. 1vs).
Their names were José Maria Ramires, Franisco Reyes, José Maria Garcia, Pedro Valdovinos, Vizente Valdovinos, Joaquin Fabian, José Trinidad Muños, and Bernardino de Sena.
They had to pay 20 instead of 12 reales.
AHMM (1804, f. 1vs). “infame calidad de pardo[s]”.
Ibid. (f. 1vs). “sangre limpia”.
Ibid. (f. 4vs). Contrary to their declaration, however, the alcabala payment, according to the prevailing legislation, strictly speaking excluded not indigenous people, but indigenous – that is, locally produced – products (cf. sections 2.1 and 4.1).
José Joaquín Fabian, who had been paying tribute in Puruándiro since four years ago, was still registered back in his hometown Yuririapúndaro.
AHMM (1804, f. 6r–vs).
AGNM (1808, f. 394vs).
Ibid. (f. 392r–vs).
It is noted that he is listed “entre los puesteros.” This could possibly mean that he changed his occupation from worker in a textile mill (obrajero) to petty vendor, and that this could be a reason for his change of categorization. However, there are no other indicators of this.
“De que a los referidos yndios laborios se empadrono en la clase de castas o casados con mulatos no estandolo en realidad sino con yndias como asenté al principio y es bien notorio al vecindario.“ AGNM (1804a, f. 242r).
“Advertencias, Adiciones, Cuadros y Cotejo del los Estados Generales de Juan Ordoñez (1805) … (2016, Adv. 2a).
Ibid. (Adv. 3ª–5ª). Ordoñez insisted on the regional variation in the exact amount of tribute to be paid.
Zacatula did not form part of Michocán during the entire colonial period.
Pollack (2021, 88).
Velasco Murillo and Sierra Silva (2012) report the close interaction between indigenous and afrodescendant laborers (male and female) in Puebla textile mills and to a lesser degree in Zacatecas’ mines.
In instructions talking about the tribute exaction and registration of hacienda laborers, often indios (laboríos) and mulattos are mentioned together. An example is: AGNM (1793–1798). The same is visible in tribute lists for haciendas where people of both categorizations are often listed together: e.g. AGNM (1807/1809). A 1700 padrón from Tiripetío is very insightful in this respect since it lists the inhabitants of both towns and haciendas separately according to calidades. In most haciendas, people of different calidades are listed, but I also found a case (Hacienda Oporo) where seemingly only mulattos and Spaniards worked: AHCMO (1700). Also other types of sources which mention both indios and mulattos working on haciendas exist: AHMM (1787b). There are also documents prohibiting indios from working in textile and sugar mills which, however, were often not respected: (AHMM 1641); (AGI 1709).
AGNM (1799); “Artículos 124–141 de la Real Ordenanza Para el Establecimiento é Instrucción de Intendentes de Exército y Provincia en el Reino de la Nueva España, de Órden de Su Majestad” (2016, Art. 132).
AGNM (1800b, f. 1r).
Fonseca and Urrutia (1845, 432–33 (53)).
Martínez (2008, 125) notes as to the archival practices: “The infrastructure for receiving petitions for royal grants began to be established relatively soon after the conquest. Viceroy Antonio de Mendoa asked all the conquerors and first colonists to formally record their accomplishments, thus setting the stage for the vast number of informes (reports) and probanzas de méritos y servicios (proofs of merits and services) that were produced during the rest of the colonial period. In the middle of the sixteenth century, as it became increasingly difficult to identify the meritorious sons of the land (also called hijos patrimoniales de la tierra, or ‘patrimonial sons of the land’), the government stepped up efforts to create an archival infrastructure for preserving their historical and genealogical information and to regularize the process by which they petitioned grants.”
Examples are: ARAG (1756–1764); ARAG (1807–1808). Since my archival stay in the ARAG was very brief, there could be more similar petitions to be found.
For an additional example from central New Spain, cf. Albiez-Wieck (2018c).
AGNM (1591, f. 218vs–219r). Also cited in: Paredes Martínez (1994, 270).
Maybe the quarter of the Zipinis is the place nowadays called Zipimeo and located about 70 km east of Jacona. However, Jiquilpan lies west of Jacona, which makes this identification somewhat improbable.
AGNM (1591, f. 218vs). “mexicanos de cuya nacion el es”.
In prehispanic times Jacona was located in the border region of the Tarascan state; cf. Albiez-Wieck (2013a, ch. 6); Gerhard (1986, 408); López Sarrelangue (1965, 163–65); Brand ([1952] 1993, 485); Seler ([1908] 1960, 40–41). According to Roskamp (personal communication) the toponym Jacona derives from Nahua Xucunan. Gerhard (1986, 408) relates that Jacona belonged to the Crown from 1544 onwards. It was constituted as a corregimiento, with the corregidor of Jacona additionally carrying the title alcalde mayor of Zamora from 1574 onwards, when Zamora was founded as Spanish town. The alcalde mayor collected the tribute from several additional jurisdictions. Paredes Martínez has pointed out the migration of Tarascan-speaking people from Jacona and other towns to Taxco in the mid-sixteenth century: Paredes Martínez (1997, 162).
For a debate on the emergence of ethnicity in Michoacán, cf. Albiez-Wieck (2013b); Albiez-Wieck (2013a, ch. 6).
Gavira Márquez (2015); cf. also: AGNM (1687).
AGI (1636–1720, f. 7r).
Velasco Murillo (2016, 4–6, 38, 164, 184–186).
AHCP (1752); cf. also: AHCP (1753b); AHMM (1745); Castro Gutiérrez (1998).
Cf. e.g. AHCP (1753a).
Similar examples from different periods, and also from regions adjacent to Michoacán, include: for translocality in central Mexico: AGNM (1678); for absenteeism on the coast: AHCMO (1668); for translocality for laboríos on a hacienda in Autlán, Guadalajara: ARAG (1756–1764); for translocality between town and hacienda in Celaya: AGNM (1807/1809).
A similar example debating baptism in Numarán is: AHCMO (1795).
AHCMO (1791, f. 1r). “de immemorial tiempo a esta parte”.
The income of the priests was linked to the tribute payments. Money for the church was partly paid from the resources of the community and partly according to the tariffs on an individual or corporative level. Besides, the priests benefited from personal services. Castro Gutiérrez, personal communication.
Generally, in case of consanguineity, the bishop was responsible to issue the dispensation. It was customary to initiate the procedure in the town of the bride. Latasa, personal communication (2018).
The Spanish colonial term vecindad, which was employed here, was in some aspects similar to citizenship. For an extensive debate, cf. Herzog (2003).
AHCMO (1791, f. 2r–vs).
The document states: “in case the deceased was not originally from the town in which section of the church he was buried to know the rent for the service that corresponded to him which are annotated on the margin of the entry” (“en caso de que el defunto no sea naturral del pueblo en que tramo de la iglesia se sepulto para sauer los derechos que le corresponden de fabrica que se apunttan al margen de la partida”). AHCMO (1737, f. 1r).