AP World 19.3
Spanish America was an agrarian society in which perhaps 80 percent of the population lived and worked on the land. Yet in terms of America's importance to Spain, mining was the essential activity and the basis of Spain's rule in the Indies. It was precious metals that first began to fit Latin America into the developing world economy.
Although the booty of conquest provided some wealth, most of the precious metal sent across the Atlantic came from the post conquest mining industry. Gold was found in the Caribbean, Colombia, and Chile, but it was silver far more than gold that formed the basis of Spain's wealth in America.
The Silver Heart of Empire
The major silver discoveries were made in Mexico and Peru between 1545 and 1565. Great silver mining towns developed. Potosí in upper Peru (in what is now Bolivia) was the largest mine of all, producing about 80 percent of all the Peruvian silver. In the early 17th century, more than 160,000 people lived and worked in the town and its mine. Peru's Potosí and Mexico's Zacatecas became wealthy mining centers with opulent churches and a luxurious way of life for some. As one viceroy of Peru commented, it was not silver that was sent to Spain "but the blood and sweat of Indians."
Mining labor was provided by a variety of workers. The early use of Native American slaves and encomienda workers in the 16th century gradually was replaced by a system of labor drafts. By 1572 the mining mita in Peru was providing about 13,000 workers a year to Potosí alone. Similar labor drafts were used in Mexico, but by the 17th century the mines in both places also had large numbers of wage workers willing to brave the dangers of mining in return for the good wages.
Although indigenous methods were used at first, most mining tech- niques were European in origin. After 1580, silver mining depended on a process of amalgamation with mercury to extract the silver from the ore-bearing rock. The Spanish discovery of a mountain of mercury at Huancavelica in Peru aided American silver production. Potosí and Huan- cavelica became the "great marriage of Peru" and the basis of silver produc- tion in South America.
According to Spanish law, all subsoil rights belonged to the crown, but the mines and the processing plants were owned by individuals, who were permitted to extract the silver in return for paying one-fifth of production to the government, which also profited from its monopoly on the mercury needed to produce the silver (Figure 19.6).
Mining stimulated many other aspects of the economy, even in areas far removed from the mines. Workers had to be fed and the mines supplied. In Mexico, where most of the mines were located beyond the area of settled preconquest populations, large Spanish-style farms developed to raise cattle, sheep, and wheat. The Peruvian mines high in the Andes were supplied from distant regions with mercury, mules, food, clothing, and even coca leaves, used to deaden hunger and make the work at high altitudes less painful. From Spain's perspective, mining was the heart of the colonial economy.
Haciendas and Villages
Spanish America remained predominantly an agrarian economy, and wher- ever large sedentary populations lived, indigenous communal agriculture of traditional crops continued. As populations dwindled, Spanish ranches and farms began to emerge. The colonists, faced with declining indigenous populations, also found land ownership more attrac- tive. Family-owned rural estates, which produced grains, grapes, and livestock, developed through- out the central areas of Spanish America. Most of the labor force on these estates came from Native Americans who had left the communities and from people of mixed Native American and European heritage. These rural estates, or haciendas, producing primarily for consumers in America, became the basis of wealth and power for the local aristocracy in many regions. Although some plantation crops, such as sugar and later cacao, were exported to Europe from Spanish America, they made up only a small fraction of the value of the exports in comparison with silver. In some regions where Native American communities continued to hold traditional farming lands, an endemic competition. between haciendas and village communities emerged.
Industry and Commerce
In areas such as Ecuador, New Spain, and Peru, sheep raising led to the development of small textile sweatshops, where common cloth was produced, usually by women. America became self-sufficient for its basic foods and material goods and looked to Europe only for luxury items not locally available.
Still, from Spain's perspective and that of the larger world economy taking shape in the early mod- ern centuries, the American "kingdoms" had a silver heart, and the whole Spanish commercial system was organized around that fact. Spain allowed only Spaniards to trade with America and imposed tight restrictions. Almost all American trade from Spain after the mid-16th century passed through the city of Seville and, after 1710, through the nearby port of Cadiz. A Board of Trade in Seville controlled all commerce with America, registered ships and passengers, kept charts, and collected taxes. It often worked in conjunction with a merchant guild, or consulado, in Seville that controlled goods shipped to America and handled much of the silver received in return. Linked to branches in Mexico City and Lima, the consulados kept tight control over the trade and were able to keep prices high in the colonies.
Other Europeans looked on the West Indies trade with envy. To discourage foreign rivals and pirates, the Spanish eventually worked out a convoy system in which two fleets sailed annually from Spain, traded their goods for precious metals, and then met at Havana, Cuba, before returning to Spain.
The fleet system was made possible by the large, heavily armed ships, called galleons, that were used to carry the silver belonging to the crown. Two great galleons a year also sailed from Manila in the Philippines to Mexico loaded with Chinese silks, porcelain, and lacquer. These goods were then shipped on the convoy to Spain along with the American silver. In the Caribbean, heavily fortified ports, such as Havana and Cartagena (Colombia), provided shelter for the treasure ships, while coast guard fleets cleared the waters of potential raiders. Although cumbersome, the convoys (which con- tinued until the 1730s) were successful. Pirates and enemies sometimes captured individual ships, and some ships were lost to storms and other disasters, but only one fleet was lost-to the Dutch in 1627. While the convoy system was relatively effective, Spanish colonists in the Americas still wanted more freedom to trade, and contraband with foreigners flourished despite Spanish efforts to stop it.
In general, the supply of American silver to Spain was continuous and made the colonies seem worth the effort, but the reality of American treasure was more complicated. Much of the wealth flowed out of Spain to pay for Spain's European wars, its long-term debts, and the purchase of manu- factured goods to be sent back to the West Indies. Probably less than half of the silver remained in Spain itself. The arrival of American treasure also contributed to a sharp rise in prices and a general inflation, first in Spain and then throughout western Europe during the 16th century. At no time did the American treasure make up more than one-fourth of Spain's state revenues; the wealth of Spain depended more on the taxes levied on its own population than it did on the exploitation of its Native American subjects. However, the seemingly endless supply of silver stimulated bankers to continue to lend money to Spain because the prospect of the great silver fleet was always enough to offset the falling credit of the Spanish rulers and the sometimes bankrupt government. As early as 1619, Sancho de Moncada wrote that "the poverty of Spain resulted from the discovery of the Indies." But there were few who could see the long-term costs of empire.
Ruling an Empire: State and Church
Spain controlled its American empire through a carefully regulated bureaucratic system. Sovereignty rested with the crown, based not on the right of conquest but on a papal grant that awarded the West Indies to Castile in return for its services in bringing those lands and peoples into the Christian com- munity. Some Native Americans found this a curious idea, and European theologians agreed, but Spain was careful to bolster its rule in other ways. The Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) between Castile and Portugal clarified the spheres of influence and right of possession of the two kingdoms by drawing a hypothetical north-south line around the globe and reserving to Portugal the newly discovered lands (and their route to India) to the east of the line and to Castile all lands to the west. Thus, Brazil fell within the Portuguese sphere. Other European nations later raised their own objections to the Spanish and Portuguese claims.
The Spanish empire became a great bureaucratic system built on a juridical core and staffed to a large extent by letrados, university-trained lawyers from Spain. The modern division of powers was not clearly defined in the Spanish system, so that judicial officers also exercised legislative and administrative authority. Laws were many and contradictory at times, but the Recopilación (1681) codified the laws into the basis for government in the colonies.
The king ruled through the Council of the Indies in Spain, which issued the laws and advised him. Within the West Indies, Spain created two viceroyalties in the 16th century, one based in Mexico City and the other in Lima. Viceroys, high-ranking nobles who were direct representatives of the king, wielded broad military, legislative, and, when they had legal training, judicial powers. The viceroyalties of New Spain and Peru were then subdivided into 10 judicial divisions controlled by superior courts, or audiencias, staffed by professional royal magistrates who helped to make law as well as apply it. At the local level, royally appointed magistrates applied the laws, collected taxes, and assigned the work required of American Indian communities. It is little wonder that they often were highly criticized for bending the law and taking advantage of the native peoples under their control. Below them were many minor officials who made bureaucracy both a living and a way of life.
To some extent, the clergy formed another branch of the state apparatus, although it had other functions and goals as well. Catholic religious orders such as the Franciscans, Dominicans, and Jesuits carried out the widespread conversion of the Indians, establishing churches in the towns and villages of sedentary Indians and setting up missions in frontier areas where nomadic peoples were forced to settle. Taking seriously the pope's admonition to Christianize the peoples of the new lands as the primary justification for Spain's rule, some de Sahagún (1499–1590) became an expert in the Nahuatl language and composed a bilingual encyclopedia of Aztec culture, which was based on methods very similar to those used by modern anthropologists. Other clerics wrote histories, grammars, and studies of native language and culture. Some were like Diego de Landa, Bishop of Yucatán (1547), who admired much about the culture of the Maya but who so detested their religion that he burned all their ancient books and tortured many Maya suspected of backsliding from Christianity. The recording and analysis of Native American cultures were designed primarily to provide tools for conversion.
In the core areas of Peru and New Spain, the missionary church eventually was replaced by an institutional structure of parishes and bishoprics. Archbishops sat in the major capitals, and a complicated church hierarchy developed. Because the Spanish crown nominated the holders of all such positions, the clergy tended to be major supporters of state policy as well as a primary influence on it.
The Catholic Church profoundly influenced the cultural and intellec- tual life of the colonies in many ways. The construction of churches, espe- cially the great baroque cathedrals of the capitals, stimulated the work of architects and artists, usually reflecting European models but sometimes taking up local themes and subjects. The printing presses, introduced to America in the early 16th century, always published a high percentage of religious books as well as works of history, poetry, philosophy, law, and language. Much intellectual life was organized around religion. Schools- such as those of Mexico City and Lima, founded in the 1550s-were run by the clergy, and universities were created to provide training primarily in law and theology, the foundations of state and society. Eventually, more than 70 universities flourished in Spanish America. A stunning example of colonial intellectual life was the nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1651- 1695; Figure 19.7), author, poet, musician, and perceptive commentator on her society. Sor Juana was welcomed at the court of the viceroy in Mexico City, where her beauty and intelligence were celebrated. She eventually gave up secular concerns and her library, at the urging of her superiors, to concentrate on purely spiritual matters.
To control the morality and orthodoxy of the population, the tribunal of the Inquisition set up offices in the major capitals. Although American Indians usually were exempt from its jurisdic- tion, Jews, Protestants, and other religious dissenters were prosecuted and sometimes executed in an attempt to impose orthodoxy. Overall, church and state combined to create an ideological and political framework for the society of Spanish America.