The Other Slavery (12 page)

Along with the Indians were a handful of African slaves who performed specialized tasks. Immediately after conquest, Indian slaves were abundant and cheap, while African slaves were rare and expensive. Thus the cuadrilla of Pedro de Sepúlveda and Martín Sánchez in 1528 consisted of twenty Indian slaves along with four Africans who operated a blacksmith shop to make crowbars. Tellingly, one of the provisions of their contract was that should the four black slaves die or run away, both partners would absorb the loss. As the century progressed, the share of African slaves in the cuadrillas increased, but Indians continued to make up the majority of slaves.
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As in many other things, the ubiquitous Cortés led the way in mining. After toppling the Aztec empire, he turned his formidable energy and resources to this enterprise. As is evident from notarial documents, mining was not just a matter of digging holes in the ground. It also required a large number of workers, all of whom needed to be fed, clothed, and supplied with tools. Cortés was in the best position to invest in mining because he owned the largest encomiendas in all of Mexico. On November 20, 1536, the celebrated Spanish leader acquired one-fourth of a mine called Mina Rica de la Albarrada in Sultepec, along with twenty Indian slaves of both sexes. Later in the day, he paid 10,000 pesos for another fourth of Mina Rica de la Albarrada, which also came with “a certain number of Indian slaves and their tools.” And before the day was over, he disbursed 6,230 pesos to acquire yet another nearby mine, which came with seventy Indian slaves. Altogether, he spent more than 20,000 pesos and acquired between one hundred and two hundred Indian slaves in a single day. Ultimately, not only was Cortés the richest man in Mexico, he was also the largest owner of Indian slaves. And wherever Cortés led, others followed.
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A New Regime

Mexico’s economic promise lay in the extraction of gold and silver based on Indian labor. Yet across the Atlantic, Spanish reformers wished to do away with both encomiendas and Indian slaves. The struggle between reformers and slave owners had been brewing for decades, but things finally came to a head in 1539 when King Charles I ordered the Audiencia of Mexico to free all Indians held in bondage. Spanish colonists and officials in Mexico were stunned. After days of heated discussions, the audiencia wrote back to the monarch imploring him to reconsider. Along with their petition, they included questionnaires filled out by some of the oldest and most respected colonists, who had answered leading questions that sometimes ran half a page or more. For example: “Do you know that when Hernán Cortés first came to Mexico, he found a Spaniard named Jerónimo de Aguilar who had been shipwrecked before and had been held as a slave by the Indians for many years in a land called Yucatán?” “Do you know that the Indians of Mexico have had and continue to have many slaves in their power, and that they ordinarily buy them and sell them peacefully in their
tianguis
?” Questions such as these were intended to show that Indians had enslaved other Indians long before the Spaniards arrived. Other questions were meant to draw attention to the beneficial effects of the institution, including the following: “Do you know that the Indians of the outlying areas are idolaters and eat human flesh?” “Do you know that the slaves held by the Indians of Mexico are well treated and are being instructed in our Holy Catholic Faith?” The last section of the questionnaire touched on economic matters: “Do you know that in Mexico there are not enough workers and slaves are needed to extract gold and silver and grow food and other things . . . and [that] if His Majesty were to free the slaves this land would be lost and such a great and rich kingdom as Mexico would become depopulated?” In spite of the audiencia’s objections, Charles reaffirmed his previous order and went on to promulgate the New Laws of 1542, thus prohibiting new encomiendas and abolishing Indian slavery in all cases.
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In Spain the New Laws produced discontent, but in the Spanish colonies they caused outright rebellion. In Peru a group of colonists murdered the official sent from Spain to enforce the laws and then decapitated him. For a time it seemed that Peru might even break away from the empire. Spanish slave owners in Mexico were no less determined. As in Peru, the Spanish crown did not entrust the execution of these unpopular laws to Spanish authorities in Mexico, but instead sent a high-ranking officer directly from Spain. Francisco Tello de Sandoval, a member of the Spanish Inquisition and the Council of the Indies, crossed the Atlantic Ocean, disembarked in Veracruz, and made his way to the viceregal capital of Mexico City, all the while sensing the tremendous opposition to the New Laws. When he entered the city in 1544, he saw that some local officials were wearing mourning garb to greet him. As he met with the highest civil and religious authorities, the economy came to a standstill pending the outcome of these meetings. Tello de Sandoval could well have suffered the same fate as his Peruvian counterpart, but after much pleading by Mexican slave owners, and perhaps sensing a fatal end to his tour of duty, the Spanish envoy agreed to suspend the New Laws until he received further instructions from the king. Charles and the members of the Council of the Indies considered the situation and eventually consented to the granting of more encomiendas. It was a major victory for slave owners. Encomiendas remained in existence for another century and a half, affecting tens of thousands of Indians. Other provisions of the New Laws were not suspended, however, and the crown continued to press for the abolition of Indian slavery in the New World.
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Thus a new regime emerged in the 1540s and 1550s, a regime in which Indians were legally free but remained enslaved through slight reinterpretations, changes in nomenclature, and practices meant to get around the New Laws. All over the Americas, the other slavery took shape as Spaniards struggled to implement the laws. Two opposing camps came into existence. On one side were the ardent reformers led by Las Casas, who advocated for a broad, categorical, and literal interpretation of the provision that abolished Indian slavery without any exceptions or qualifications. On the other side stood officials and clergymen who understood that abolition was a noble goal but insisted on certain exceptions and limitations to make it viable. The two camps tried to resolve their differences at a high-level council held in Mexico City in December 1546. It was attended by Tello de Sandoval, Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza, and the highest religious authorities in Mexico, including none other than Friar Las Casas, who at the time was serving as bishop of Chiapas. The stakes were enormous. Bishop Las Casas and his allies pressed for an unconditional and immediate liberation of all Indian slaves, while Viceroy Mendoza and other officials resolutely avoided making any pronouncements on the subject. When Las Casas expressed his displeasure at the lack of resolution, the viceroy reportedly said that “he wished to remain silent on the matter because of
reasons of state.
”
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The war of the mountaintops, as depicted twenty years after the event in a manuscript painting known as the
Codex Telleriano-Remensis
. The top left square shows the year “ten house,” or 1541. Below is a dead conquistador identified as Pedro de Alvarado. He was nicknamed “Tonatiuh” (the Sun) because of his striking red hair, thus his body is appropriately linked to a little sun. Below the corpse is a naked warrior standing on a mountaintop, surrounded by a stream. He is shooting arrows at a Spaniard below.

Viceroy Mendoza’s reasons for circumspection are obvious. Just six years earlier, Mexico had suffered its first massive Indian insurrection. What had started as isolated attacks on Spanish ranches in the coastal plains of western Mexico had grown into a major anti-Christian movement in 1540–1542, eventually involving fifteen thousand rebels who nearly dislodged the Spanish presence all along the Pacific coast. The Spaniards called it
la guerra de los peñoles,
the war of the mountaintops, because the rebels took up fortified positions in the mountains. It was also called the Mixtón War. Scores of Spaniards lost their lives in this upheaval, among them Pedro de Alvarado, Cortés’s main captain (military leader) and reputedly the most daring and capable of all the conquistadors. Only a massive offensive organized in Mexico City involving thirty thousand Indian allies and led personally by Mendoza finally succeeded in quelling the rebellion.
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Spanish colonists took at least 4,700 slaves during this bloody war. Moreover, in 1543 they sent a petition to the king asking for encomiendas in perpetuity along a three-hundred-mile stretch of coastal plain between Compostela and Culiacán. They also requested permission to undertake
entradas
(exploring expeditions) and to enslave nomadic Indians who had been sympathetic to the rebels. These Spaniards were not about to agree to a royal order abolishing Indian slavery “under any circumstance including wars [and] rebellions.” Members of the Audiencia of Mexico wrote as much to the king in the spring of 1545. The only way
to induce settlers to fight against the Indians was with the promise of spoils of war, they argued. How could the land be pacified and the Spanish settlers mobilized without the inducement of taking slaves? This became a major quandary as the entire northern region of Mexico burst into open rebellion during the second half of the sixteenth century.
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Other doubts about the application of the New Laws revolved around the new silver discoveries. In September 1546, Spanish prospectors climbed a promontory crowned by a semicircular rock formation that would become the mine of Zacatecas. For two years, it was unclear whether this venture would be different from many other fleeting strikes. But the discovery of the
veta grande
(large vein) finally turned this promontory in the middle of the desert into a major pole of attraction. By 1550 Zacatecas had taken its place as the brightest star in a new constellation of mines that included Guanajuato, Chalchihuites, Avino, Sombrerete, and others.
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Workers were urgently needed at all of these mines, and the New Laws were a stumbling block. All along King Charles had been committed to abolishing all forms of Indian enslavement. But when it came to protecting the silver that had started flowing into the royal coffers, he and, above all, his son and successor, Prince Philip, were willing to find a compromise. In 1552 Philip drafted a remarkable plan aimed at reconciling the New Laws with the empire’s needs. Indian slavery would be abolished, and the Indians working in the mines would be set free. To prevent disruptions in the production of silver, however, the officials freeing the slaves would explain to them that although they were no longer subject to servitude of any kind, “they would still be required to work for their sustenance, and, if they did not wish to work, they would be compelled to do so as long as they were paid.” In this way, unemployed or “lazy” Indians would be rounded up and distributed to the miners in exchange for a nominal wage. Only the elderly and the ill would be spared. Philip’s proposal had far-reaching consequences. During his long reign as king of Spain (1556–1598), this system of remunerated but compulsory work and the distribution of Indians known as
repartimiento de indios,
or simply
repartimiento,
became widely used. The Indians were free, but they were still compelled to work.
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Since the New Laws had been introduced in Spain in 1542, no legal procedure had been in place in Mexico to allow Indians to sue for their freedom. Finally, in 1550, a new viceroy, Don Luis de Velasco (1550–1564), arrived in Mexico City bearing pointed instructions about liberating the Indians. He was an affable man, perhaps genuinely concerned about the Indians’ condition. In the spring of 1551, Velasco appointed as procurador a respected lawyer named Bartolomé Melgarejo, who held a position at the Royal and Pontifical University of Mexico. Melgarejo’s vast new duties included publicizing the abolitionist provision of the New Laws, assisting Indians in their lawsuits, liberating all Indian minors held as slaves, and making sure that freed Indians who had been brought from distant places such as Yucatán or Guatemala be restored to their communities. All of this made for a tall order, but the learned Melgarejo seemed up to the task.
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First and most important, Melgarejo had to decide whether to adopt a literal interpretation of the abolition of Indian slavery “under any circumstance” and without exceptions or qualifications, as Bishop Las Casas wanted, or to opt for the more nuanced and practical approach favored by many mine owners and officials. As Melgarejo began his deliberations, he felt the need to write a letter to the Spanish king laying out his position. Ever the university professor, Melgarejo was drawn to fine distinctions and complex reasoning involving divine and human law. After his opening remarks, the procurador concluded that “some Indians had been made into slaves properly and justly while others had not.” He thus took the side of the pragmatists. Rather than pushing for a blanket abolition of Indian slavery, he spent years considering each case on its own merits.
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