Colonial Terms

acuerdo: agreement or decision; specifically, a meeting of an audiencia (q.v.) or other judicial body to discuss and decide administrative questions.

adelantado: Men who served in frontier regions and who were primarily military commanders. In the conquest of the Canaries and the New World, the crown granted certain men the title of adelantado. This title gave the authority to make repartimientos (divisions) of booty and offices and subsequently appointed some of them to the governorship of the islands they pacified. But the crown reserved the right to control, limit, and revoke at will political functions conceded to the adelantados and governors. The adelantado not only held the military title of captain general; as governor and chief magistrate he exercised civil authority over his won men, and, when after a successful undertaking the expedition of conquest became an expedition of occupation, he assumed the governance of the indigenous population. His captains became his political subordinates, and when the conquerors founded towns they became vecinos and ciudadanos, that is, political persons.

adelantado: frontier governor, possessing a commission to discover, conquer, and settle independent of other authorities in the Indies.

alcabala: sales tax. The alcabala, having long been levied in Castile at a nominal rate of 10 per cent, was introduced in New Spain in 1574, as an impost of 2 per cent on the sales of many variety of goods. It then varied from colony to colony. In Zacatecas the alcabala was raised another 2% in 1627 for the derecho de Unión de Armas. Then in 1636 it was raised another 2% for a total rate of 6%. This raise was for the upkeep of the Armada de Barlovento. a much detested sales tax payable on almost everything sold. ¶ At first only 2 percent of the item's value, the alcabala went as high as 14 percent during Spain's wars of the eighteenth century. (In Venezuela: The alcabala was a sales tax. Imports from the Indies paid an alcabala of 10 percent upon arrival in Spain, whether or not the goods were actually ever sold.) (In Castile the alcabala was levied at a nominal 10 per cent. However, farming of the tax progressively reduced its yield to less than 2 per cent. {Bakewell, p. 103, ff. 1.}) ¶ When silver could not be obtained in the form of payment for Castilian products, it had to be raised by other means: through the manipulation of customs dues, the introduction of some of form taxation and the resort to a variety of fiscal expedients. The white population of the Indies was not subjected to direct taxation; but the Castilian sales-tax, the alcabala, was introduced in New Spain in 1574 at a rate of 2 percent, and in Peru in 1591. [From the last decades of the sixteenth century the crown also attempted to raise its American revenues by selling land, or else the titles of land already illegally settled (a form of sale known as composición de tierras).] ¶ The collection of excise duties, the alcabalas, had been farmed out (for an annual contracted sum) to the consulados, the merchant guilds and their provincial delegates. But in 1754, with the coming of Bourbon reforms, the alcabalas of Mexico City were entrusted to salaried officials and in 1776 the same system of direct administration was applied throughout the colony. Henceforth all the leading towns were blessed with a local director and accountant of excise, assisted by a band of guards. The same system was introduced into Peru during the visita of Areche and thereafter extended across the empire.

alcade mayor: chief constable. Beyond the jurisdiction of Zacatecas, an enclave of the corregidor's power, lay lands in the direct administration of the Audiencia of New Galicia. The remaining towns of the province, and some other large settlements, were the heads of alcaldías mayores.... The alcaldes mayores had much the same judicial and administrative authority as the corregidor of Zacatecas; but since they were appointed by the Audiencia of New Galicia, they did not enjoy his independence. In country districts beyond the reach of the alcaldes mayores, the supervision of justice and the pursuit of criminals were entrusted to officials of the Santa Hermandad, a volunteer rural constabulary.

alcaide: warden or governor of a fortress.

alcalde mayor or magistrate; chief magistrate of a province or district, usually in thinly settled areas.

alcalde ordinario: municipal magistrate of an incorporated Spanish town; each year, two such

alcaldes ordinarios: municipal magistrates; alcaldes ordinarios the two senior officials of a cabildo. They had some judicial powers and more importance than the regidores, who were simply councilors. They presided over the cabildo whenever the town council was not present.

alférez real: herald and standard bearer

alguacil mayor: chief constable of an incorporated Spanish town or province, or of an audiencia. The alguacil mayor was the constable of the town, chief executive officer of justice, and entitled to bear the royal staff of justice. The position was one of great dignity and prestige.

alguacil: constable.

alhóndiga: A grain exchange: Like their mediaeval predecessors in Spain (and Europe in general), cabildos in Spanish America attempted to supervise supplies of food within their jurisdictions. The agency for cereals was the alhóndiga, or grain market, to which all grain entering the city had to be taken before sale. The producer or carrier declared the size of the consignment he brought before the supervisor (fiel, diputado or alcaide), paid an excise tax on it, and was then permitted to sell it at the alhóndiga, but nowhere else. The object was to control the retail price of grains by ensuring that all transactions took place under supervision; so reducing, it was hoped, possibilities of cornering the market and profiteering.

aljófar: small, irregular pearls.

allegado, ‑da: in the islands, an Indian follower or hanger‑on.

almojarifazgo: customs duty. The almojarifazgo was a tax of 7.5 percent on all imports and exports, so the crown was paid twice for goods moving between Spain and her colonies, for a total income of 15 percent. (In Venezuela: The almojarifazgo was a royal customs duty which levied a 5 percent charge on imports and exports to and from Seville, and in the Indies assessed a 10 percent tax on imports and 2½ percent on exports.)

alteptl ("water and mountain"): A provincial unit in precolumbian Mesoamerica which referred to both to the people and to the entire territory. In colonial times in Mexico one clear trend was for fragments of the alteptl (large city-state or large provincial unit) to attain greater independence.

alternativa: an arrangement in which provincial superiors were elected alternatively between creoles and peninsulares.

amancebado, ‑da: man or woman living out of wedlock with a person of the opposite sex.

antiguedad: a concern of who was in a certain colony first.

arancel: rate‑book, official scale of legal charges.

armada de barlovento: The armada de barlovento in the seventeenth centur was a fleet of warships which was suppose to protect the Spanish Caribbean. However, the fleet proved practically useless. It could not cover such a vast area and was undermanned, made up of aged hulks and never around when needed.

arrieros: Muleteers.

arroba: a measure of weight; approximately 25 pounds.

asentado: established, settled, permanent.

asentista: a holder of an asiento.

asiento: agreement or contract; specifically, a contract for the supply of slaves from Africa.

asientos: 1. contracts for the actual defraying of expenditure at home and abroad. 2. defense contracts.

atunluna: adjective describing an office held by election for one year.

audiencia: court of appeal. In Spain, audiencias were courts of justice only, but in the New World they assumed executive and legislative functions as well. In the early years, the judges (oidores) in Santo Domingo were the most powerful individuals in the Indies.

audiencia: high court of appeal, with power to exercise administrative responsibility in some circumstances as well. Ten such courts were established in the Indies in the sixteenth century: Santo Domingo, 1526; Mexico (New Spain), 1527; Panama, 1535; Lima (los Reyes), 1542; Santiago de Guatemala (los Confines), 1543; New Galicia, 1548; Santa Fe (New Granada), 1549; La Plata (los Charcas), 1559; San Francisco de Quito, 1563; Manila (los Filipinos), 1583.

averia: duty levied on goods carried in transatlantic convoys, to defray the cost of escort.

aviador: A supplier of goods to miners. He might supply goods on credit, if necessary; or extend credit in cash.

avío: Mining supplies: goods or cash credit.

ayllu: ayllo: (Quechua) clan. Permanent site agriculture meant that the local social-political unit held specific arable lands on a long-term basis, and individual families tended to retain the same plots for a lifetime or over generations. The Inca state structure, with its insistent and meticulously regulated demand for labor, pressed heavily on the ayllus, the village clan communities, creating a subject population that, while docile, was also resentful, especially in the Quito region where Inca rule was relatively recent. As the area of conquest widened, so the problems of central control from Cuzco increased, for all the carefully sited garrisons and the elaborate communications network. This rigid system of uniform control maintained by an Inca ruling caste could only function effectively as long as that caste itself maintained its internal cohesion and unity.

ayuda de costa: expense account.

azoguero: a mercury man who directed the timing and mix of the amalgamation or ores. In many ways he was the most important person in the whole enterprise, capable of doubling or halving the profit level through his decisions.

bandas: organized warrior bands of the Spanish conquerors. Synonym: compañas.

barretero: A mine laborer employed in cutting ores with a barra, or crowbar.

batea: wooden trough used in washing for gold.

bergantin: (naut.) small sailing vessel, launch.

bozales: blacks brought directly from Africa. The term often connoted "wild" or savage blacks.

bohíos: hut, shack

braza: a measure of length, equal to two outstretched arms; one fathom.

cabalgada: troops of riders; cavalry raid.

cabalgador -- rider, horseman

cabalgadura -- mount, horse; (de carga) beast of burden

caballeria: grant of land; theoretically, the area required to support a horseman and his mount. Archaic in sixteenth‑century Spain; in New Spain, a unit of area equal to about 105 acres.

caballerías: areas given out to encomenderos for intense farming--stands in contrast to estancias, which were large tracts of land for stock raising.

caballero villano: Common in the reconquered towns of Castile were the caballeros villanos, which translates to knights-commoners--that is, knights who had not won hidalguía. Caballeros villanos typically dwelled in reconquered towns, where they maintained a horse, military accoutrements, and--the wealthier among them--bands of retainers. According to McAlister, "they stood ready to serve in the king's cavalry and in returned gained exemption from personal taxes and a virtual monopoly of municipal offices. Neither nobles nor burgers, they constituted an urban patriciate of military origin and function and of knightly mentality."

cabecera ("head town"): A large nucleated settlement or capital of a province (or altepetl), typically containing several calpullis each. Cabeceras had a public market where the outlying sujetos exchanged goods. Cabeceras also contained the palace of the dynastic ruler and the province's chief temple with its priesthood; on both counts, the area's tribute was channeled in toward the cabecera.

cabecera: chief settlement and center of administration of a group of neighboring villages.

cabildo: town council. In his The Cabildo in Peru under the Hapsburgs, John Preston Moore has resumed the powers of town councils in the America under three headings (p. 75). They had political authority in their right to select certain municipal officers, in their right to send representatives (procuradores) to the royal and viceregal courts, and in their ability to convene a cabildo abierto (an open meeting of vecinos to debate matters of general concern). They held economic authority in their power to make land grants and issue regulatory Ordinances for trade and business. And they had social authority of various sorts: they could improve the conditions of the poor, encourage education by fostering schools, and sponsor fiestas in celebration of important events. (Bakewell, p. 100.)

cacique: (Arawak) chieftain. Indian chief or ruler; the word, originally from the Antilles, was subsequently used by Spaniards to describe any chief, in the Indies.

caja: chest, strongbox; hence, a provincial treasury.

cajas de comunidad: community treasury chests. The Indians congregated into settlements [in the late 16th and early 17th centuries] did assimilate certain elements of Christianity; they appropriated for their own use European techniques, plants and animals and entered the monetary economy of the surrounding world. At the same time they preserved many of their indigenous characteristics, so that they remained genuinely Indian communities, conducting their own lives under the supervision of royal officials but through their own largely autonomous municipal institutions. The more successful of these Indian municipalities developed their own forms of resistance against encroachments from outside. Their cajas de comunidad, or community chests, allowed them to build up financial reserves to meet their tribute and other obligations. They learned how to secure their lands with legal titles ad how to engage in the petitioning and lobbying techniques which were essential for political survival in the Hispanic world. As a result, these indigenous communities, consolidating themselves during the seventeenth century, came to act as breakwaters against the engulfing tide of the large estate, or hacienda, which swept around them without ever quite submerging them.

calpixque ("stewards, literally guarders of the house"): In Mexico the underlings of the Spanish encomenderos were called calpixque, the Nahuatl name given previously to tax collectors of the Aztecs.

calpulli: Permanent site agriculture meant that the local social-political unit held specific arable lands on a long-term basis, and individual families tended to retain the same plots for a lifetime or over generations.

calumnia: false accusation, slander.

capellanía: An arrangement in which in return for income derived from the lease of property willed to it, the monastery undertakes to say a number of masses every year for the deceased. Ecclesiastical benefice; a grant to support certain ceremonies of the Church, such as the periodic celebration of mass in honor of the donor.

capitulación: a patent/contract which licensed an impresario to undertake one or more missions in lands described as accurately as contemporary geographical knowledge permitted, generally at this won expense. Types of enterprises specified included not only discovery, conquest, and settlement but trade, a concept expressed in the word rescatar. In return for his investments and services, the impresario received titles and privileges whose amplitude depended on his influence and power of persuasion, the crown's perception of the importance of his undertaking, or simply on the usages and mod of the moment.

captain: The leader of an expedition or entrada (i.e. Cortés and Pizarro). The title "captain," which was not a rank in a hierarchy but simply meant "leader in an expedition." He and some associates who became subsidiary captains made the largest investments, usually in ships, clothing, weapons, and horses.

carne de novillo (often just seen as "novillo"): young beef.

casa de afinación: An assay office (an institution of the royal Treasury).

casos de corte: major criminal charges, originally those reserved for the King's courts. The Nueva Recopilación de Leyes de Espaiia, the code [of royal decrees] compiled in 1567, lists them as: Muerte segura, mujer forzada, tregua quebrantada, casa quemada, camino quebrantado, traición, aleve, riepto, pleito de viudas y huérfanos y personas miserables, o contra corregidor o alcalde ordinario o otro oficial de tal lugar.

casos de gobierno: see Gobierno.

casta: All the intermediary types had much in common, and they were constantly intermingling with and assimulating to each other; mestizos, mulattoes, and Blacks (in other words, everyone not considered a Spaniard or an Indian) in a sense were a single intermediary category and as such were sometimes referred to as castas.

castellano: in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, a Castillian gold coin; also known as excelente de Castilla.

castizo: The child of a Spaniard and a mestizo woman was classified as a castizo and often passed as a criollo.

caudillo: The conquistador, although highly individualistic, was never alone. He was one of a group under a caudillo, a leader, whose capacity for survival would be tested in the first instance by his skill in mobilizing men and resources, and then by his success in leading his men to victory. The caudillo had at one and the same time to meet the requirements of his backers, and to satisfy the demands of the no less individualistic body of men who had placed themselves temporarily under his command. Tension was therefore built into every conquering expedition--tension about aims and objectives and about the distribution of the spoils. The discipline, such as it was, came on the one had from the capacity of the leader to impose himself on his men and, on the other, from the collective sense of commitment to a common enterprise.

cédula: royal decree.

censo: Mortgage or loan. Ecclesiastical bodies frequently negotiated long-term loans with laymen, in the form of a censo agreement. These censos usually provided for 5 percent interest, subject to a mortgage guarantee by the borrower and his promise to make regular payments. Most of the loans went to rural landowners, who offered their holdings as collateral for the loan.

chacra: parcel of Indian agricultural land; small Spanish farm.

chácras: In Peru the word for estancia. According to Andrien, it was a small estate It is a Quechuan term. On chácras Spaniards raised wheat and other European varieties, as well as livestock, for the urban market. Andrien: Chacras throughout Spanish Peru supplied a variety of crops for strong regional and local markets. Small holdings in the Cochabamba Valley concentrated on growing wheat sold in the marketplaces of Potosí, while those in the highlands of Upper Peru often grew coca. Chacras on the rich coastal soil of southern Peru specialized in producing grapes for the local wine industry.

chicha: a common Peruvian alcoholic drink.

chinampas: floating gardens, found in Tenochtitlán

cimarrones: runaway slaves.

cofradía: a lay brotherhood that had the function of raising funds for the construction and support of the church; providing aid to the poor, aged, or infirm and to widows and orphans; and, by no means the least, organizing merry processions and festivities on the numerous saints' days that sprinkled the Hispanic religious calendar.

compañas: Spanish warrior bands, of a strongly egalitarian character. These warrior companies, based on a prior agreement for equal distribution of the plunder, were well suited tot he king of raiding warfare pursued in the Caribbean, the isthmus of Panama and frontier zones like Venezuela. Indeed they were very much the product of frontier conditions, and it is not surprising that they should have reappeared in a very similar form in Portuguese Brazil in the bandeiras which flourished in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Small, cohesive bodies of men, they possessed, thanks to their horses, the supreme advantage of mobility. Their expenses, apart from the cost of horses, were slight. Firearms, which were costly, and which anyhow rapidly corroded in the humid jungle, were hardly needed against the kind of opposition they were likely to meet. Armed with steel swords, and accompanied by powerful mastiffs they hunted down the terrified Indians, killing, enslaving and seizing all the gold they could find.

composición de tierras: titles of land already illegally setted. From the last decades of the sixteenth century the crown attempted to raise its American revenues by selling land, or else the titles to land already illegally settled (a form of sale known as composición de tierras).

composición: land title verification.

congregaciones: policy of congregaciones (also called reducciones): a policy in which Indians scattered through the countryside were congregated into larger settlements where they could be more easily governed and Christianized. Efforts were made by the crown in the early seventeenth century to legislate against e worst abuses of the labor system, but without success. In so far as the deployment of labor was at least more tightly controlled, this was facilitated by the vast reorganization of the declining Indian population which had taken place in both New Spain and Peru during the second half of the sixteenth and the first decade of the seventeenth centuries.

contador: accountant, the second in seniority of the officials of a provincial treasury.

conuco: in the islands, a cultivation.

conucos: (Arawak) A series of large mounds where mostly cassava, but also maize and other seed crops were cultivated.

corregidores de indios: magistrate or district officer of an Indian town or group of villages, including the surrounding country. Corregidores de indios were responsible for administering Indian towns. The natives had been gathered into new villages to facilitate their conversion and acculturation, and the corregidor de indios was charged with the good order of those within his district, including those towns paying tribute to the crown rather than to an individual encomendero. These Spanish district supervisors, or their agents, collected the king's tributes in the "crown towns" and supposedly guaranteed justice. In fact, they were the greatest enemies of the Indians, defrauding them in a variety of ways, often in collusion with the native chiefs.

corregidor: chief magistrate of a Spanish city or town. Corregidores were appointed for five or six years at a salary of some 1,630 pesos (1,000 pesos de oro de minas). Their term was therefore far longer than that of the alcaldes mayores and their salary far greater, although not large. The post was one of some honor and it may well have been partly to hold in its gift the considerable patronage of the corregimiento of Zacatecas that the Crown began to appoint to the office. The only other town corregimientos in New Spain lying in the direct gift of the Crown were those of Mexico City and Vera Cruz.... Corregidores were almost always hombres de capa y espada, as were most executive officers in the Empire, and not lawyers. Unlike the alcaldes mayores they were almost all appointed from posts in Spain. Of seven corregidores nominated between 1605 and 1632, only one had previously held office in New Spain....

corregidores: Corregidores were responsible for the good order of their districts, but their judicial and legislative responsibilities were limited, as they were subject to higher authorities in all matters. In the early years of the system these positions often went to conquerors or their sons, or other early settlers, as a form of pension in lie of encomiendas. As can be imagined, most appointees had little or no training for administrative posts, with the result that the office was held in low esteem and was rewarded with a corresponding low salary. It came to be accepted that these provincial officials would supplement their salaries where they could--which usually meant cheating the natives or other lower-class groups.

corregimiento: office or area of jurisdiction of a corregidor (q.v.).

cruzada: crusade; hence, the tax levied by the Crown, by papal concession, ostensibly to support the cost of crusade.

cruzado: Portuguese gold coin having a value, fixed in 1517, of 400 reis (q.v.).

cuadrilla: A miner's labor force, generally living in his hacienda de minas, and working his plant and his mines.

cuatequil (or) repartimiento: In 1549 the Indian's labor obligations to the encomenderos was abolished, and labor in lieu of tribute was forbidden. Without slaves and forced labor, who was then to carry out the necessary tasks of labor? The policy makers in Spain reasoned that if Indians were paid a fair wage for their work, and if they were treated humanely, they would volunteer. But few Indians stepped forward to assume the burden. /P/ Consequently the crown decreed a system of forced labor called the repartimiento or cuatequil. Under this system each adult male Indian had to contribute about forty-five days of labor a year, usually a week at a time at various intervals. Only a small percentage of the men from any village were to be absent simultaneously, and the head of a family was to have time free to cultivate his own fields. Provisions stipulated that each laborer was to be paid for his work and treated with consideration. In practice, however, Indians were forced to work twelve hours a day, and they were frequently mistreated and cheated of their pay. Numerous abuses of the system kept the natives in abject misery until, finally, in the early seventeenth century the cuatequil was abolished, except for mine labor.

curaca: Indian chief or local ruler in Peru; local lords in Peru. Also spelled "kuraka."

demora: On early Hispaniola, the period during which the Indians were permitted to cease their work in the mines and return home, and when the gold was brought to the foundries for smelting. In Chile, the period, eventually established at eight months, during which the Indians were compelled to work in the mines.

depositaría general: The depositario general was the custodian of goods embargoed by by the justices during litigation and also of the goods of people dying intestate.

despoblado: unpopulated territory.

diezmo: A tenth: the tax levied by the royal Treasury on silver produced by recognized miners.

diezmo: one tenth; a tax of that proportion: e.g., ecclesiastical tithe, or the silver quinto collected at the rate of one tenth from newly discovered mines.

doctrina: The doctrina was a rural parish erected directly on the Indian provincial unit, from which, like the encomienda, it took its size, shape, and structure; its local headquarters too was in the chief Indian settlement, or cabecera town, and it used the cacique's authority to help build churches and assure attendance.

doctrinero: a person dispensing (Christian) instruction to the Indians.

donatdrio: lord‑proprietor of a captaincy in Brazil.

donativos: forced loans demanded by the crown.

ejecutoria: executive writ; e.g., for enforcing a court order.

ejido: common lands.

encabezonamiento: the farming out of taxes, espcecially the alcabala.

encomendero: individual holding an encomienda (q.v.).

encomienda: Indian village or group of villages commended to the care of an individual Spaniard, an encomendero, who was required to protect his Indians, provide for their religious instruction, maintain horse and arms, and turn out for the defense of province or kingdom when called upon. In return, the encomendero was entitled to collect tribute, originally in labor and in kind; after the middle of the sixteenth‑century, the exaction of tribute labor became illegal, and tributes in kind were increasingly commuted to money payments. Encomienda implied no grant of land and no delegation of jurisdiction. Grants of encomienda were normally for the life of the recipient and of one successor, but concessions were sometimes made for additional lives. About 200 encomiendas were granted in New Spain after the conquest. The usual grant to a leading conqueror involved about 2,000 tributary heads of households. Some of the Peruvian grants were large, but in more sparsely inhabited areas the number of Indians might be only a hundred or so.

entrada: lit. entry; armed expedition for the purpose of conquest or plunder. The entrada, or "entry" (into new lands), could serve equally well to trade, raid or conquer, according to what was found.

escribano: notary. Thus, escribano del numero or escribano real: notary public; escribano de camara: clerk of the court (in an audiencia, q.v.); escribano de cabildo: town clerk; escribano de gobierno: colonial secretary; etc. etc.

escudero: lit., shield‑bearer; squire, attendant in battle.

espolios: property inherited by the Church at the death of a cleric.

estado: a measure of height; approximately six feet, the height of a man.

estancia: livestock ranch. From a very early time the word estancia was used for private land-holdings of Spaniards and also for any agricultural enterprise undertaken there--though over time the connotation was increasingly that of the European livestock which were the item most in demand.

estanco: monopoly. The word is often used to just mean the tobacco monopoly.

estanquillo: a small tobacco store, found in Mexico in the thousands in the late 18th c.

estrados: lit., stagings; dais in a court room: hence, judicial bench.

factor: one of the officials of a provincial treasury, chiefly responsible for selling the yield of tributes in kind and for paying the proceeds into the Caja (q.v.).

fanega: a measure of capacity: approximately one and a half bushels.

fanegada: in Peru, a unit of land area: about 7 acres.

feitoria: (factory) The most characteristic feature of the Portuguese style of expansion was the feitoria (factory), the fortified trading-post of the kind established at Arguin or Sao Jorge de Mina on the African coast. The use of the feitoria made it possible to dispense with large-scale conquest and settlement and enabled the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Portuguese to establish their presence over large stretches of the globe without the necessity for deep penetration into continental hinterlands. It was a style of settlement which Columbus, with his Genoese background and his Portuguese experience, had come to know well, and which would provide him with an obvious model when he reached the Caribbean islands.

fiel ejecutor: inspector of weights, measures, and prices.

fiscal: a general Indian aid and steward. (of an audiencia) public prosecutor, proctor for the Crown.

forasteros: In Peru, migrants and their decendants. They remained outside the ayllu, or permanent community. Over the centuries the proportion of forasteros, as the outsiders were called, increased greatly, whereas the proportion of ayllu members performing public obligations correspondingly decreased.

fueros: law code or charter granted by the Crown.

fuerza: lit., force, violence; a wrong done to a layman by an ecclesiastical court; an illegal extension of ecclesiastical jurisdiction.

fundición: smelting house.

gachupines: a derisive term for Spaniards in Mexico.

gobernador: governor. In the first years of the conquest the principal representatives of the crown in the Indies were the gobernadores. The title of governor, usually combined with that of captain-general, was given to a number of the early conquistadores, like Vasco Núñez de Balboa, appointed governor of Darien in 1510. The gobernador, like the donatário in Portugal's overseas territories, was given the right to dispose of Indians and land--clearly a major inducement to undertake further expeditions of conquest. The governorship was therefore an ideal institution for extending Spanish rule through the Indies, particularly in remote and poor regions like Chile, where the rewards of conquest were otherwise exiguous. Since the crown had firmly set itself, however, against the creation of a race of feudal lords in the Indies, the days of the governorship seemed to be numbered. Appointments were made short-term--from three to eight years--and came to be non-hereditary. This principle was firmly established once Columbus' grandson, Luis Colón, was finally induced in 1536 after long and complicated legal proceedings to renounce the family claim to a hereditary governorship, retaining only the purely honorific hereditary title of Admiral. ¶ Governorships, however, did not disappear from the Indies once the conquest was completed. They had proved their usefulness as an institution for administering and defending outlying regions. Instead of being abolished, therefore, they were permitted to survive; but, like other institutions which succeeded in surviving the transitional stage of conquest, they were gradually bureaucratized. The new breed of governors of the post-conquest period were administrators, not conquistadores, and they had judicial as well as administrative and military functions. Thirty-five provincial governorships existed at one time or another in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries--the number was not constant because of mergers and boundary changes.

gobierno: government, administration; thus, casos de gobierno: administrative, as distinct from judicial, cases or questions.

gold, glory and the gospel: The objects of common dedication which, according to historians like Elliott, impelled the Spanish conquerors to triumph over the indigenous population.

Gracias al sacar: Cedulas de gracias al sacar: were given out by Charles III of Spain to people born in America. They were slips of paper (legal documents) people could buy to basically buy the race they wanted to by. A mestizo could buy themselves a cedula decreeing them white or espanoles so they could move up the hierarchy ladder. It was only legally binding and would allow the people of the right race to buy land, vote, etc. It still didn't affect the social scene because your skin was still a certain color. These were in the late 1700s early 1800s.

gremios: guilds. There were gremios for tailors, blacksmiths, cobblers, candlemakers, goldsmiths, and so on. Well established by the late sixteenth century, the guilds, or gremios, fixed both the quality of goods and the prices of work. People of the colored classes were allowed to join the gremios, but only whites were allowed to attain the rank of master, which followed successful completion of examinations and the presentation of the "masterpiece" that demonstrated the applicant's skill. In a more positive sense, the gremios were protective of their members, making provisions for those who suffered accidents and illness as well as extending help to widows. They were also active in promoting religious celebrations and philanthropic undertakings for the community. Eventually there were about a hundred guilds in Mexico City. A professional merchants' guild, the Consulado, was established in the capital in 1592. Its function was to arbitrate commercial disputes, to protect the interests of merchants, to establish rules of business conduct, and to foster the interests of the community.

grumete: (naut.) grummet, apprentice, ordinary seaman.

guanín: alloy of gold and copper common among the Indians of northern South America and the Antilles.

hanega: see Fanega.

hatunruna: In the Inca empire, a commoner and head of a family. In Peru, Indians of the communities who were subject to the tribute and the mita. The bulk of the Andean population was divided into two categories, the hatunrunas and the yanaconas. Yanaconas were considered to be of lower social status, but in practice free from the obligations owed by the other Indians.

heredad: Rural estate in Arequipa.

heredado: Owner of an heredad in Arequipa.

hidalgo: An hidalgo was the lowest and most common type of noble. The Crown could raise praiseworthy commoners to hidalgo status by an act of a royal reward (merced). Naturally the military-aristocratic element in peninsular society was well represented in the conquest of America, although the great nobles of Castile and Andalusia were conspicuous by their absence. This is partly to be explained by the determination of the crown to prevent the establishment in the new lands of a magnate-dominated society on the peninsular model. But men with some claim to gentle birth--men from the lesser gentry or hidalgo class--were present in substantial numbers throughout the conquest, as was only to be expected. It was not easy for a poor man with pretensions to nobility to survive in the status-conscious world of Castile or Extremadura, as Cortés and Pizarro could testify.

huayra: the traditional native foundry, usually placed in the hills to make use of the wind.

incorporadero: The yard of an hacienda de minas in which amalgamation took place: the Zacatecan term for the more usual 'patio', as in 'beneficio de patiio'.

indianos: Spaniards who had made their fortunes in the Indies and came back to Spain to lead a life of suitable ostentation.

indios de faltriquera: ('Indians in the pocket'): Indians who bought themselves out of the mita by hiring replacements, or paying their own caracas or employers the cash necessary to do so. Many miners in the seventeenth century liked this practice of cash payments in lieu of labor, for if a mine were exhausted or a mill dilapidated, the sum of the mitayos paid to avoid working might be greater than the value of the silver they would produce if they were working. To these case payments the Spaniards gave the cynical title indios de faltriquera--'Indians in the pocket'. This common practice was illegal, as was the equally common custom of including the mitayos assigned to a mine or mill in any sale made of these. The law strove to uphold the theoretical freedom of the Indian; but the mitayo was often treated--as when he was made part of a sale transaction--as a near-slave, while being deprived of the material benefits of slaver and of exemption from tribute.

ingenios: stamp mills of silver.

jornaleros: Landless laborers in Spain, who formed more than half the rural population of New Castile and lived more like beasts than human beings, in mud or wooden huts, with no furniture and few belongings, the hole family sleeping on the earth. The jornaleros were seasonal laborers, moving from place to place in search of work and bread, and in the intervals turning their hands to some rough craft or begging for charity.

Juez de bienes de difuntos: administrator of property of persons dying in the Indies, leaving heirs in Spain.

juicio de residencia: a judicial review, or trial, of a viceroy or other high functionaries, so called because the official being reviewed was required to remain in residence during the trial. A residencia usually came at the end of an official's term of office, although in the case of those who served for many years, a review was sometimes taken periodically. Notice of an impending review was made public, so that all within the official's jurisdiction with grievances could bring charges.

Juez de residencia: see Residencia.

Juez repartidor: official responsible for distributing repartimiento labor (q.v.).

Juez: judge.

juristas: owners of state bonds.

juros: state bonds.

la raza cósmica: In a true fusion of races, the modern Mexican emerged. He became what has been called la raza cósmica--the cosmic race.

labor: Small landed estate devoted largely to argiculture (Oaxaca)

labradores: Labradores (whose status was above jornaleros) were Spanish peasant farmers who had actual possession of land by ownerships or more commonly on lease. In New Castile they formed 25-30 per cent of the rural population, and most of them were wretchedly poor, their joyless lives containing few hopes. These were the only dynamic group among the peasants and they fought to preserve their modest fortunes in the midst of rural crisis, looking down on the jornaleros below and resenting the hidalgos above. But they were not agents of change, for they themselves aspired to hidalgo status and in some cases secured it. So the one vigorous element in the countryside worked not to dissove the social structure but to reinfoce it.

ladino: a hispanicized black. Hispanicized blacks were also called criollos.

lavadero: The part of an hacienda de minas in which the crude mixture of amalgam and waste earth and rock material was washed.

legítima: the equal share of the parents' property guaranteed to each child, female and male. The law dictated that a parent with legitimate children should divide four fifths of the estate equally among them. The testator was free to bequeath the remaining fifth (the quinto) as he or she wished. Some children could therefore inherit more than others by receiving part of the unrestricted fifth. The proportion of the estate distributed by law was smaller when there were no surviving legitimate descendants.

Legua: league: an approximate measure of distance, originally the distance a man could walk, or a ship could sail, in one hour in average conditions; hence, a land league was about three statute miles, a sea league about 31/2 nautical miles.

letrados: University-trained lawyers who game legal advice concerning Audienia cases to litigants of all kinds, from encomenderos to Indian towns. At the next lower level, antoher corps of procuradores, or untitled lawyers, did most of the actual court representation.

macehual: In Aztec Mexico, a commoner and head of a family.

macehualtin, (pl.) macehualli: Direct dependents of others in precolumbian Mesoamerica, who shared neither the duties nor the rights of ordinary commoners and were not full members of the local calpulli or ayllu group. In Mexico the macehualli were a subclass of the ordinary commoners; over time they seem to have been constantly reconverging with the calpulli commoners. They did not participate in community draft labor. (According to William Taylor, a macehual was an Indian commoner.)

magistral: Probably a mixture of copper pyrites and iron pyrites; and essential reagent in the amalgamation process, discovered in the first decade of the seventeenth century.

maguey: Agave; the source of pulque.

mandoncillo: foreman.

maravedi: a small unit of account (not, in the fifteenth century, a coin).

marquesado: see Seiiorio.

mayeque: indian of a subordiante class, below a macehual and usually dependent on an Indian noble. (W. Taylor)

mayorazgos: entailed estates. Mayorazgos usually decended by primogeniture; though conditions attaching to mayorazgos were variable.

mayordomo: steward, bailiff.

Meat asientos: Asientos (contracts) were drawn up with breeders for provisioning the city over a specific period of time. The asientos were auctioned off to a single breeder by which he was to provide meat at a fixed price. In return for this virtual monopoly of the city's meat market, the breeder was to pay a cash sum (prometido) to the city. The usual privileges attached to the contract were that no-one else was to be allowed to slaughter cattle, either for his own use or for sale. Nor might anyone sell tallow candles; this was a valuable concession for cities such as Zacatecas, for the demand for candles to light the mines was always high. No other abattoir should be permitted in the city or in its jurisdiction. The only exceptions made to these conditions were that miners were normally allowed to buy cattle from stock-raisers other than the asentista and kill them for consumption in their own haciendas, providing that purchases were registered before the corregidor. Occasionally miners were also given permission to manufacture candles for their own use. ¶ The auctioning of the contract to the best bidder did at least assure a supply of meat at a fixed price, even if free-market prices might have from time to time been lower still. In Zacatecas, bidding appears to have been conducted fairly by the cabildo, which showed itself active in seeking provisions.

mercader de plata: A large-scale dealer in silver. Generally based in Mexico City, he bought finished silver for coin, iperating through agents--aviadores and rescatadores--in mining towns. The source of much mining capital in the seventeenth century. //// Zacatecas did not recover until new sources of finance for miners were tapped [in the second half of the seventeenth century.] These sources were the mercaderes de plata, natives of New Spain, and the possessors of capital held in Mexico City. Their reward for participation in mining was a part of the silver formerly paid to the Crown. By establishing claims over miners through credit concessions, they inserted themselves into the process of silver production and deprived the Crown of part of its tax income. They, or their aviador agents, produced silver taxable at a fifth, and either neglected to tax it altogether or obliged miners to tax it at a tenth.

mestizaje: miscegenation

mestizo: European‑Amerindian half‑caste.

millones: A tax in Spain on basic foodstuffs. An extraordinary subsidy first conceded by the Cortes in 1590 and renewed periodically from 1601 on. The subsidy came in the wake of the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, and was only conceded to by the Cortes after two years of intensive negotiation. The tax had to be granted to the crown by the cortes. The servicios de millones were first voted by the cortes were designed to raise 2 million ducats a year, by means of taxes on the cuatro especies, that is on wine, meat, oil and vinegar. These subsidies were generously renewed throughout the reigns of Philip III and Philip IV, and under pressure of the crown they showed a tendency to rise and to be extended to further commodities. In 1626 the cortes raised the millones subsidy from 2 million to 4 million ducats a year, by means of new taxes on paper, salt and ship anchorage. In 1632 they granted an extra subsidy of 2.5 million ducats every six years. And temporary subsidies were voted form time to time for specific items of expenditure and charged on various consumer goods. In conjunction with the alcabala and local excise duties the millones were an intolerable burden on agriculture and on the farmers and peasants who practiced it. Through their control of local government, the nobility were able so to administer the millones that they themselves paid as little as possible and even in some cases made a profit out of them, as did those officials who actually handled the tax and those nobles who sold untaxed goods from their own estates in their own houses in a respectable form of contraband. In the course of the 1650s, however, the king wrested the millones from municipal control, and in 1658 he finally succeeded in annexing the commision of millones to the Council of Finance.

milreís: see real.

mingas: voluntary, wage-earners in the labor force working the mines of Potosí. Undoubtedly many mingas were from the two-thirds of the mita gruesa that were 'off duty' (de huelga); but there is clear evidence that a permanent corps of mingas existed in Potosí by this time, consisting largely of mitayos who had stayed on after their year of draft. Their pay was up to five times that of the mitayo: for mine workers, 88 reales a week as opposed to seventeen. The case wage of skilled ore cutters, who were normally salaried, was augmented in both Potosí and New Spain by ore which they took from the mines, legally or otherwise.

mita: draft labor regimen in Peru.

mita: draft labor system in Inca and colonial Peru.

mitayo: an Indian drafted for a mita (q.v.).

mitmaq: The extension of the mitmaq system, already applied within the framework of he ethnic group, constituted one of he most remarkable achievements of the Inca Empire. We know that the nuclear settlements on the highlands--devoted to the rearing of animals and production of tubers--realized their ideal of self-sufficiency by sending 'colonists' (mitmaq) to settlements at lower altitudes, in order to have access to the produce of the warm valleys (maize, cotton, coca, etc.). In these complementary 'colonies' members of widely separated highland groups found themselves living alongside each other in the lowlands, so that the population of the little 'islands' became intermingled; but the centers form which they originated did not exercise political control over the territories lying in between, and in this way they formed 'vertical archipelagos' of varying size. The Inca state took up this method of organization for its own purposes, in order to carve out vast areas of cultivation, whether of coca, or, above all, of maize. ¶ Recent research makes it possible, in the case of Cochabamba, to analyze this process of colonization in detail: Huayna Capac, the last Inka but one, expelled almost all the indigenous populations from the valley, and settled them at Pocona, further east, to protect the 'frontier' against the Chiriguanos; and he seized their lands for the state. To cultivate this land he transferred into the valley 14,000 workers of all nations', mostly from the altiplano, but sometimes from even further afield, from the Cuzco region, and even from Chile. Some were supposed to live permanently (perpetuos) near the fields and granaries of Cochabamba (these were mitmaq in the proper sense of the term) while others made the journey every year, as mita. Each 'nation' or ethnic group was given responsibility for a certain number of plots, or suyus. All the maize grown was earmarked essentially for the army. But certain number of plots were set aside for the subsistence of the workers, and other were accorded to different curacas who could redistribute the products among their subjects. The Indians who were transplanted to the Cochabamba Valley thus acquired new lands at the expense of the old inhabitants.

moio: (Portuguese) moyo (q.v.).

molino: a stamp mill (in an hacienda e minas)

montepíos--state-run agencies that provided pensions for the families of deceased government employees, is a welcome addition to the literature on colonial Latin America. Montepíos were created in the 1770s.

moyo: a measure of capacity: approximately 4 bushels or 32 gallons.

mulato: European‑Negro half‑caste.

naborías: (Arawak) Ordinary Indian commoners; Later: naborías were, roughly speaking, free workers. They were Indian servants and employees of Spaniards who soon became the major element in Spanish cities and mines. Some lived with their masters, and others, not all steadily employed, lived in slight and irregular structures on the edge of town. Their movements back and forth to their home provinces represented a vital urban-rural tie and mechanism of incipient cultural change. /P/ In preconquest Arawak society "naboría" was the name for a permanent dependent of a noble or chieftain, not subject to general community duties and privileges. Through commandeering, voluntary adhesion, and actual assignment by the authorities, Spaniards quickly began to acquire naborías as their own personal servants. Both encomenderos and nonencomenderos did this, soon using their aides in any number of tasks requiring stability and new skills not to be expected of shifting encomienda laborers. Though the naborías bore no formal relationship to the encomienda, the system at its height could hardly have functioned without them. It is not to be imagined that all or even most of the Spaniards' naborías had had that status from birth; rather, many seem to have been encomienda Indians subtracted from their villages. The important thing is that because of the existence of this role in preconquest society, both Indians and Spaniards had well-defined expectations concerning it. Before the culmination of the demographic disaster, the naborías new and old were on their way to becoming a group apart, in cities and in association with Spanish enterprises. On the mainland this movement was to be resumed under more stable conditions. ...they were a major group, important to conquest society and even more important for the Spanish American future. (In Peru naborías were called yanaconas.)

naborío, -ía: an unfree, landless Indian, not personally enslaved but required to render labor services; a pre‑conquest status, retained after the conquest.

nitainos: (Arawak) Indian nobles

obedezco pero no cumplo: I obey but do not execute. Given the difficulty of communication and the time lapse between a request for instruction and the response from Spain, a certain amount of autonomy was implicit.

obrajes: textile mills. Obrajes were "sweatshops" that were notorious for the unconscionable manner in which the Indian workers were treated. They were placed behind locked doors and forced to work long hours, breathing the lint that caused respiratory problems. Often they were locked in the mill at night, and married workers were allowed to see their families only on Sundays.

oficiales reales: officials of a provincial treasury; thus, tesorero, contador, factor, veedor (all q.v.).

oficiales: officials; (naut.) petty‑officer; tradesmen: e.g., carpenter, cooper, etc.

oficios perpetuos: offices granted, or more commonly sold, by the Crown for life.

oidor: lit., hearer; a judge in an audiencia (q.v.).

oidores: judges

paje: page; (naut.) cabin boy.

paniaguados (from pan y agua, "bread and water"): Those who received their sustenance from a patron. Direct dependents and employees of a patron. These ranged from literate, influential majordomos who had practical management of the affairs of important noblemen to hangers-on, pages, henchmen, and stableboys. Varying from noble to the lowest commoner, these retainers were in no sense a social class, but the function, the client relation to a patron or family, was quite constant.

pardos: free blacks and others with African blood.

pareceres: Information and counsel from the subjects of the Crown to the king, so that the Crown may stay informed as to the happenings in its colonies.

patria chica: home province or town, often used to refer to Spaniards' and Latin Americans' strong regional sense of identity.

pepena: The pepena was a bagful of high quality ore suitable for smelting, which the mine-workers were permitted to collect for themselves once they had fulfilled the day's tequío. They sold it to the highest bidder, who was usually the owner of a small smelting plant. Occasionally, though, a mine-owner might himself buy the pepena from his own workers; or the Indian might reduce the ore himself and sell or spend the silver. The pepena was undoubtedly worth far more to the Indian than his pay. And although it meant that the miner lost a port of the ores in his mine, it also meant that Indians were always anxious to explore and extend mines to their own, and incidentally the miner's, advantage. Pepena could therefore be seen as a primitive productivity bonus. It brought certain disadvantages, naturally. Workers had no compunction about cutting away supporting pillars left in mines, if they contained good ores. And Indians went where pepenas were richest; so that if a mine was going through a lean spell, it was likely to lose its labor force.

perpetuo: perpetual; i.e., hereditary: used of an office, encomienda (q.v.), or other privilege in a gift from the Crown.

perulero: Peruvian merchant who traded directly with markets in Europe, the Indies, and the Far East. They were Lima merchants who circumvented the Seville monopoly and royal taxes by trading directly with foreign and Spanish merchants.

peso de oro: see Peso.

peso ensayado: see Peso.

peso: lit., weight; a coin or monetary unit in the Spanish Indies. The gold peso or peso de oro was originally an uncoined unit created by the settlers on Hispaniola to approximate the castellano (q.v.) with which they were familiar in Spain, and it was carried from the islands to other regions where gold was obtained, becoming the basic monetary unit of Spanish America in the first half of the sixteenth century. The true peso de oro was considered to be worth 450 maravedis (q.v.), but pesos of less pure gold, which were worth considerably less, also circulated in many regions. After the discovery of the great silver mines and the establishment of mints in the main centers of the Indies in the middle of the century, the silver peso became the standard large coin, being nominally one ounce of silver, valued at 272 maravedis or 8 reales (see Real). The peso ensayado of 425 maravedis or 121/2 reales was a unit of account employed primarily by the treasury officials.

pesquisa: ad hoc inquiry into alleged misconduct by officials.

pícaros: parasitic transients of Spain and a bane to society.

pieza de Indias: a unit of labor equivalent to a prime young male. piezas were used to calculate the value of black slave cargo. Males and females who did not meet the standard counted as fractional parts, but asientos (contracts for the introduction of slaves) do not report fractions. Since cargos always included blacks who were not prime, theoretically the number of heads delivered invariably exceeded the piezas contracted for. Historian Philip Curtin believes that on the average piezas equated with heads.

pipiltin: An Aztec noble. Only pipiltin could own land in Aztec soceity.

piragua: Indian dugout canoe.

plata del diezmo: Silver produced by a recognized miner, generally with ores from his own mines, and in his own hacienda de minas; and therefore assessable at a tax rate of one tenth (diezmo).

plata del rescate: In general, silver produced from bought or stolen ores, and refined by men who were not recognised miners. It was taxable at a full fifth (quinto).

plata dezmada: Solver that had been taxed at one tenth.

plata quintada: Any silver that had been taxed (see quintar).

pósito: a grain storage store/warehouse. Pósitos were used by some Spanish American towns as a measure to guard against a sudden shortage of cereals. In Zacatecas (and presumably other towns as well) the pósito was more than a mere store. It was also a depository of public or municipal capital, to be used for buying in grain when markets were most favorable, and distributing it at times of scarcity with the specific aim os suppressing prices to a level accessible to poorer members of the community. The initial working capital of the Zacatecas pósito was a loan of 6,100 pesos made by the corregidor and various important citizens. With this sum an alcalde ordinario was dispatched to buy maize in the Canyons and as far off as León and Lagos.

Pregón: proclamation.

Pregonero: herald, crier.

Principal: an Indian notable or headman.

principal: Member of the Indian upper class; a hereditary status. (W. Taylor)

Probanza de méritos y servicios: evidence of services to the Crown, forwarded in support of a petition for recognition and reward.

Probanza: document recording sworn evidence.

Procurador fiscal: see Fiscal.

procurador general (or síndico) the attorney and spokesman for a town.

procurador: proctor, attorney.

propios: land or buildings owned by a municipality and yielding an income for public works.

provisión: royal enactment or decision; less formal than a cédula (q.v.).

pulque: Liquor obtained from maguey.

pundonor: extreme sensitivity to points of personal honor and dignity.

Quechua: Along with Aymara, a major Indian language in Peru.

Quetzalcóatl: The mythical civilizing god of the in precolumbian Mexico who, after his benevolent reign, disappears mysteriously, promising men that one day he will return. Quetzalcóatl departed towards the east, and was suppose to return in a ce-acatl (one reed) year, based on a 52-year cycle. In Mexico the Spaniards came from the east, and indeed 1519 was a ce-acatl year. Peru had a similar god called Viracocha. (See Viracocha)

quintal: a measure of weight; approximately one hundredweight.

quintar: The common term for "to tax", with reference to silver. Its meaning was not restricted to taxing at the rate of a fifth. The expression "quintar del diezmo" is frequently found.

quinto: A fifth: the tax levied by the royal Treasury on silver not produced by recognized miners. (royal fifth tax) The royal quinto of American riches applied to Indian treasure, precious metals, and jewels, and the sale of slaves, to cite a few examples. The crown was, therefore, no less anxious to promote the search for gold and silver than the most avaricious colonist. The crown's quinto was eventually reduced to a tenth, but it still constituted a substantial source of royal income.

quinto: lit., fifth; tax on precious metals, normally levied at that rate, but in newly found mines often at one tenth and occasionally, by special concession, at one twentieth.

quipu, ‑po: (Quechua) abacus or mnemonic device made of knotted cords; used in Peru for calculating and recording tribute payments and other transactions.

real: in Spanish America, a small silver coin valued at 34 maravedis (q.v.): pl. reales; in Portugal and Brazil, a small copper coin abolished during the sixteenth century as coinage but retained as a unit of account (pl. reis: one milreis was 1,000 reis).

receptor de penas: collector of fines.

receptor: notary instructed to collect written testimony from the witnesses in a suit pending before an audiencia (q.v.).

receptoria: writ empowering a receptor (q.v.) to act.

recuas: trasport (trade) by mule train.

recusa: formal challenge of the competence (in the legal sense) or impartiality of a judge.

reducciones (also called congregaciones): a policy in which Indians scattered through the countryside were congregated into larger settlements where they could be more easily governed and Christianized. Efforts were made by the crown in the early seventeenth century to legislate against e worst abuses of the labor system, but without success. In so far as the deployment of labor was at least more tightly controlled, this was facilitated by the vast reorganization of the declining Indian population which had taken place in both New Spain and Peru during the second half of the sixteenth and the first decade of the seventeenth centuries.

regidor: town councilor, alderman, member of a cabildo. Most cabildos had twelve regidores, but the viceregal capitals each had twenty‑four, and many small places only six or eight. Regidores in newly founded settlements were usually nominated for one year by the adelantado, governor, or leader of the entrada; in small places, they might thereafter be elected by the householders, also for annual terms, but in most towns, regimientos soon came to be offered for sale for life by the Crown. ¶ regidores: town councilors, who were responsible for municipal provisioning and administration and represented the municipality in all those ceremonial functions which occupied such a substantial part of urban life.

regimiento: aldermenship; the office of regidor.

registros: individual ships sailing under license from Cádiz. The War of Jenkins' Ear (1739-48) marked a watershead in the development of colonial trade. For Vernon's destruction of Portobelo put an end to any further hopes of reviving the Tierra Firme fleet. Henceforth all legal trade with the Caribbean islands and South America was by registros, individual ships sailing under license from Cádiz.

Reis: see Real.

Relación: a. narrative or report: e.g., the summary of his services submitted by a petitioner for favor, or the report of a delegate to his principal. b. description: e.g., the Relaciones geogrdficas prepared by provincial governments for use by the Council of the Indies. c. legal usage: the summary of allegations and supporting testimony on both sides of a suit, prepared by a relator (q.v.) for use by the judges before the hearing.

Relator: court official responsible for preparing relaciones (q.v.) in an audiencia (q.v.).

remesas: official silver remittances. Official silver remesas, or remittances, to Spain, seem to have peaked in 1595. They held up fairly well at a lower level until 1619, then fell off steadily, despite an occasional good fleet, usually an accumulation of the mine production of several years, until the trade became small and intermittent in the 1640s and 50s. Apart from a small a small revival in the 1670s, the downward slide in official imports continued until the end of the century. Unofficial bullion was, of course, another story.

Renunciación: the practice of resigning a proprietary office in favor of a successor chosen by the resigning official; usually, in practice, a private sale, confirmed by the Crown on payment of a prescribed fee.

Repartimiento: lit., division: either the act of division or the thing divided; thus repartimiento de butin: the division of obtained booty among the participants in an expedition of conquest in accord with their shares; repadimiento de indios: on the islands and the isthmus, the distribution of Indians among the Spaniards, and by extension a group of Indians thus distributed, later called an encomienda (q.v.); repartimiento de tierras: the act of distributing land, both building lots and land for cultivation, among the settlers of a town.

reparto de efectos: the monopoly of the Spanish corregidor de indios on certain goods in his jurisdiction.

reparto de mercancías: the forced sale of goods to the Indians by the corregidor de indios.

república de los indios : república de los españoles : castas: The separate development of the republica de los indios, ministering to the needs of the república de los españoles without forming a part of it, implied the development of Spanish America itself as two worlds, indigenous and European, linked to each other at numerous points but preserving their distinctive identities. Between them, belonging wholly neither to one nor the other, were the mestizos, rapidly increasing in numbers and acquiring during the course of the seventeenth century some of the characteristics of a caste. But, inevitably, in this tripartite society now in the process of constitution it was the republica de los españoles which dominated.

requerimiento: A document written by Palacios Rubios, and used by the conquerors to justify war and conquest against Indians. It informed the Indians that they must accept the pope and, by virtue of donation, the king of Castile as their ruler. If they did not accept this war against them was just and their fault, and they would be deprived of their liberty and property.

requerimiento: proclamation to be read aloud to independent or rebellious Indian groups before hostilities began, calling upon them to accept the authority of the Pope and the King of Spain.

requisitoria: writ or court order requiring the recipient to surrender information, papers, or other objects to the person presenting the writ.

Rescatador: A man who bought unfinished silver, in order to refine it himself; or one who bought finished silver from a miner, for coin, at a discount rate.

rescatar: In some cases rescatar meant "to ransom," but in the Indies in the early sixteenth century it more commonly meant "to barter". More specifically it referred to trading at an advantage, the most common form of commercial intercourse between Europeans and primitive folk who had no appreciation of the money value of things and who looked on such transactions as exchanges of gifts. The meaning of rescatar also came to include, surreptitiously, the direct taking of Indian slaves. ¶ With reference to silver, purchase: purchase either of finished silver, or of ores.

rescate and resgate: The Spaniards in America abandoned the Portuguese African trading tradition of trading with indigenous people as a principal technique in favor of direct occupation, primarily because that was what the situation demanded. But sill there were many echoes of the Portuguese resgate. The Spanish cognate rescate appears in many connections, with the same connotations of a trade with an indigenous non-European people, mixing barter and force or the threat of it. Slave raiding was rescate; the Spaniards were willing either to trade or to fight and were as interested in gold or pearls as in slaves. The term was also used for unofficial individual trading with any Indians, and it continued in this sense on the mainland. Above all, though, rescate was the mode of dealing with the mobile peoples. Thus before the end of the Caribbean phase the principal modes of Spanish interaction with the peoples on the fringes had been established: enslavement, barter, and intermittent raiding without full conquest.

residencia: routine formal inquiry into the conduct of an official, held at the end of his term of office and usually conducted by his successor; thus, juez de residencia: a judge appointed ad hoc to conduct such an inquiry.

Santa Hermandad: In country districts beyond the reach of the alcaldes mayores, the supervision of justice and the pursuit of criminals were entrusted to officials of the Santa Hermandad, a volunteer rural constabulary.

Señorío: lordship, particularly of a very large holding; thus, the Cortes marquesado, though possessing many of the characteristics of an encomienda (q.v.) is more properly described as a seftoilo: it was far larger than any encomienda, officially with 23,000 tributaries but in fact with many more; in included jurisdiction as well as tribute; and it was hereditable in perpetuity.

servicio gracioso: forced dontation to the crown.

servicios & mercedes: The conquistadors, whether professional soldiers or not, who had lived and fought side by side and achieved heroic feats, naturally felt themselves entitled to special consideration by a grateful monarch. Servicios (service rendered to the king), as always, deserved mercedes (reward or favor from the crown), and what greater servicio could any man render his king than to win for him new territories? To have been first to advance into unconquered regions was a special cause for pride--the 607 men who first accompanied Cortés jealously guarded their pre-eminence against the 534 who only joined him later. (See the bottom of "Siete Partidas.")

Siete Partidas: Inevitably the effective authority of the crown fluctuated from generation to generation, but kingship itself was central to the whole organization of medieval Castilian society and was accorded an exalted position in that great compilation of Castile's legal tradition, the thirteenth-century Siete Partidas of Alfonso X. The vision of a harmonious society enshrined in the Siete Partidas is one in which the king, as God's vicar on earth, exercises a constant and active supervision within the framework of the law. It was for the monarch, as the natural lord of this society, to provide good government and justice, in the sense of ensuring that each vassal received the rights and fulfilled the obligations that were his by virtue of his station. A contractual relationship between king and vassals is implicit i this theory: kingship degenerates into tyranny if the king, or his appointed agents, disregard the common weal. The good king, as distinct from the tyrant, sees to it that the evil are punished and the just rewarded. As the dispenser of patronage he recompenses the services of deserving vassals with offices and honors in consonance with a carefully calibrated system, at least in theory, every servicio by a vassal finds its due compensation in a merced, or favor, from the king.

síndico: (or procurador general) the attorney and spokesman for the town.

sitio de ganado mayor: An area of land 5,000 varas square; about 4,338 acres.

sitio de ganado menor: An area of land 3,333 varas square; about 1,928 acres.

situado: The situado was a remittance of coined money that was to be make annually by the cajas reales (royal treasuries) of Potosí to Buenos Aires. This money was intended to pay the salaries of the garrison; the greater part of these spent by the troops in Buenos Aires itself. However, the silver coins were rarely placed in the pockets of the soldiers. Generally, they went directly to those of the merchant-supplies and some high officials.

sujetos ("subjects"): Scattered outlying hamlets, typically containing one calpulli each.

tacha: disqualification of a witness in court proceedings.

tamemes: porters. Indian tamemes were the traditional bearers of cargo, transporting goods to all corners of the colony.

tenatero: A mine laborer carrying ores from the face to the surface in a 'tenate' (hide bag).

Tenochtitlán: Preconquest Mexico City

tequío: The amount of ore to be extracted in a given time by a mine laborer contracted to a miner; by extension, the contract itself. After a mine worker had fulfilled the day's tequío, he was allowed to collect his pepena.

término: Town limits. Municipal boundaries were defined only in lose metes and bounds, and, as new settlements filled in interstices, frequent jurisdictional disputes among cabildos occurred.

tesorero: treasurer; senior official in a provincial treasury.

testaferros: merchants of the Seville consulado who were little more than testaferros, or straw-men, for Genoese or Dutch bankers and merchant houses.

tipuzque: in Aztec Mexico, an alloy of gold and copper.

trajín: The trade across the isthmus of Panama.

trapiche: sugar mill; primitive sugar mill in which the rollers are turned by animal power.

tratantes: petty dealers, at the lowest level of Spanish commerce. They were the commercial world's equivalent of the humble estanciero. Recently arrived, little educated, of foreign extraction--always in some fashion marginal--they were not part of any larger network and dealt mainly in locally produced goods. Their specialty, indeed, was to sell Indian products to a clientele that was mainly Indian but had some buying power in silver as a result of work and residence in Spanish cities or mines. Often the products came through irregular individual trading with the Indians in the countryside (still called rescate), to the disgust of the encomenderos of those regions. As marginal as it was, this kind of activity was at times lucrative (especially near Potosí, where large numbers of Indians were in close proximity to a large silver supply), and it was to have an ever-growing role in the Spanish American scheme of things.

traza: The "layout" of a Spanish town or city--the gridiron plan, the central square, an the concentration of wealth and function around it.

tributo: tribute, in kind or labor, rendered by Indians to their pre‑conquest rulers and, subsequently, to their Spanish conquerors, either directly to the Crown or, by concession, to encomenderos (q.v.): during the sixteenth century, tribute labor became illegal, and tributes in kind were increasingly commuted to money payments.

unwritten constitution: An informal decision making process most prevalent during the reign of the Hapsburgs. In this process decision would be worked out by the creole elites and nonelites with the authorities in order to attain a working compromise. (See Phelan in Historiography.Lat.)

valimiento: the office of favorite.

vecino: lit., neighbor: a householder in a Spanish settlement. Residents who owned houses and freeholds and whose names were inscribed in registers maintained by municipal councils.

veedor: inspector of mining. Often a veedor supervised the the stamping and taxing of silver. Overseer, the fourth in seniority of the officials of a provincial treasury: many treasuries had no veedor, and in the course of the sixteenth century the office became obsolete.,

Viracocha: In the Andes Viracocha was the mythical civilizing god who, after his benevolent reign, disappears mysteriously, promising men that one day he will return. Viracocha disappeared in the western Sea. It was prophesied that the Inca state would end during the reign of the twelfth emperor. In Peru the Spaniards came from the west, and Atahualpa was indeed the twelfth Inca.

visita: tour of inspection by a judge or other official.

Visitadores and visitas: In order to ascertain the true state of affairs, the crown occasionally sent a royal inspector (visitador) to make an on-the-spot investigation (visita). The crown visitador had great authority: on arrival, he usually assumed rule of the colony for the tenure of his inspection, which could take weeks or months. The visita was sometimes undertaken in response to a specific set of charges emanating from the colony, but in other circumstances it was more routine in nature. In some instances the visitador traveled incognito, taking officials by surprise, before adequate cover-ups could be arranged. At other times the imminent arrival of the inspector became known in time for precautionary measures on the part of local officials. Visitadores, usually men trained in the law, were responsible for correcting abuses and instituting reforms. Moreover, their charges included judging the performance of the viceroy and other high functionaries. /P/ It was the double misfortune of the subjects of these investigations that they had to pay not only the penalties that might be imposed, but also the salaries of the inspecting official.

wayra (Quechua: "air") the unique Peruvian Indian method of smelting that used wind to kindle the smelting process.

yana: A direct dependent of others in the precolumbian Andes, who shared neither the duties nor the rights of ordinary commoners and were not full members of the local ayllu group. As the macehualli in Mexico, the did not hold ayllu lands or participate in community draft labor.

yanacona: (Quechua) an unfree landless Indian not a slave; in Peru, analogous to a naborio (q.v.) of New Spain or the islands. Yanaconas are the peruvian equivalent to naborías. They were Indian servants and employees of Spaniards who soon became the major element in Spanish cities and mines. Some lived with their masters, and others, not all steadily employed, lived in slight and irregular structures on the edge of town. Their movements back and forth to their home provinces represented a vital urban-rural tie and mechanism of incipient cultural change.

zambos: the offspring from the mixed union of black and Indian parents.