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72 | 2018
Varia

Indigenous Reducciones and Spanish Resettlement:

Placing Colonial and European History in Dialogue
O realojamento de indígenas e de espanhóis: pôr a história colonial e europeia em
diálogo
La reinstallation des indigenes et des espagnoles: faire dialoguer l’histoire
coloniale et l’histoire europeenne

Tamar Herzog

Electronic version
URL: http://journals.openedition.org/lerhistoria/3146
ISSN: 2183-7791

Publisher
ISCTE-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa

Printed version
Date of publication: 1 June 2018
Number of pages: 9-30
ISSN: 0870-6182

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 Ler História | 72 | 2018 | pp. 9-30

INDIGENOUS REDUCCIONES AND SPANISH RESETTLEMENT:

PLACING COLONIAL AND EUROPEAN HISTORY IN DIALOGUE

9
Tamar Herzog
Harvard University, USA
therzog@fas.harvard.edu

Arguing for the urgent need to place colonial and European history in dialogue, this text
criticizes the literature that examines campaigns to resettle the native population of Spanish
America in villages, identified as reducciones or congregaciones. It argues that, rather
than a colonial technology aimed at controlling and exploiting the colonized, campaigns
to resettle individuals also took place in Spain and that, in Spanish America, they also
encompassed the Spanish population. The text also takes issue with what urbanization
meant in the early modern period, demonstrating that the main factors that distinguished
communities from non-communities (despoblados) were not material or economic ques-
tions but the relationships that linked residents to one another and the legal regime that
bound them together.

Keywords: colonial history, European history, Indigenous history, congregaciones, reducciones,

despoblados.

Resumo (PT) no final do artigo. Résumé (FR) en fin d’article.

Historians describe the Spanish conquest of the Americas as a process

involving the formation of urban communities. According to this narrative,
even before the territory was under their control, Spaniards proceeded to
found new settlements (Aguilera Rojas 1994; Domínguez Company 1984).
These efforts were accompanied by the reordering of the native world.
Initially, Spaniards divided up natives among conquistadors. Yet, this sys-
tem, known as the encomienda, came into crisis at the end of the sixteenth
century, when it was replaced, at least in some areas, by new arrangements.
These arrangements sought to create two parallel yet separate “republics”.
The first included Spaniards, who lived in Spanish cities and obeyed Spa-
nish law; the second included natives, who resided in native communities,
where native law and native authorities (as long as they did not contradict
Spanish norms) prevailed.
To implement this design, Spaniards launched campaigns to resettle
the Indigenous population in new villages, from which all non-natives were
theoretically excluded (Mörner 1963; Byrd Simpson 1934; Herzog 2006,
 T. Herzog | Indigenous Reducciones

2012). Called congregaciones or reducciones, these villages were to mimic the

Spanish organization of space. They were to follow a Spanish design (with a
main square and a grid pattern) and have members (vecinos), jurisdictional
10 territory, and Spanish-style municipal authorities (cabildos) (Solano 1976,
9-10; García Martínez 1987, 167-170; Morales Padrón 1979, 489-518). By
the early seventeenth century, in the viceroyalty of Peru alone, Spaniards
had established perhaps as many as one thousand new Indigenous villages
with at least 1.5 million residents (Saito and Rosas Lauro 2017, 14).
Despite the striking similarities and the chronological coincidence
between the projects of urbanizing Spaniards and congregating Indians,
historians of Spanish America tend to study these processes separately. Most
imply that they were emblematic of colonialism because, while Spanish
enclaves allowed conquistadors to ensure their communal survival in a
new and hostile environment, the new Indigenous villages were a means to
control the native population.1 Representing a new disciplinary “technology
of state”, the resettlement of natives was justified by reference to the need
to civilize and convert them. However, it mainly targeted harnessing the
conquered population to the needs and desires of colonialists, namely, the
extraction of labor and resources. Native resettlement was also useful for
Spaniards because it allowed for the removal of natives from their ancestral
land, thus making it available to European occupation.2 Whereas Spaniards
voluntarily chose to come to the Americas and to subject themselves to
municipal authorities by becoming vecinos of the new Spanish American
enclaves, natives were forced into compliance and those who refused could
be severely punished.
Because the assumption was that the resettlement of natives was direc-
tly linked to the needs of the colonial state, most historians emphasize the
actual transfer of natives from their original habitat to new villages, and
they insist on the material changes that this removal entailed. If and when
these two characteristics –actual removal and material changes– were lacking,
these historians assume that the resettlement campaign had failed or that
natives had managed to subvert it.
In what follows, I argue that these conclusions are the byproduct of
the way we have reconstructed the past. Most historians tend to separate
the study of Indigenous peoples from the study of Europeans, as well as the

1 See Markman (1972), Málaga Medina (1989), Sullivan (1996), Abercrombie (1998), Scott (2009, 69-74), Rionda
Ramírez (2012), Mumford (2012), and Verdesio (2014, 161-163 and 210-212).
2 See González (1970, 72-75), Sullivan (1999, 47), Gutiérrez (1993, 21-23), Gose (2008, 118-119), Verdesio (2014,
214), and Mumford (2017, 93-95).
 Ler História | 72 | 2018

examination of the Americas from that of early modern Spain. However, if we

seriously engaged with contemporary observations that Indigenous villages were
not substantially different from Spanish enclaves and if we questioned (rather
than asserted) whether reducciones were a uniquely colonial phenomenon or 11
a technique also employed vis-à-vis other social sectors in both the New and
the Old Worlds, we may reach other conclusions. We would discover that
campaigns for resettlement were common all over the Hispanic world and
that they were applied to both Spaniards and natives, both in Europe and
the Americas. We would further conclude that, although the aim of these
campaigns was to ensure subjection to particular religious, social, and cultural
norms, the preoccupation they expressed was deeply political because, according
to contemporaries, belonging to a local community was also a fundamental
precondition for being a member in the Spanish commonwealth. Individuals
who lived in communities were clearly superior to solitary humans not only
because they were more “civilized”, but mainly because they formed part of
the social and political fabric (Cummins 2002, 200).
These perceptions led to forced resettlement, but they also produced
debates regarding what a proper community was and what belonging to
it entailed. Thus, while agreeing in the abstract about the importance of
communal adhesion, contemporaries continually disagreed as to who needed
resettlement, where they should go, what resettlement meant, and how it
could be achieved. Many suggested that enclaves that appeared to sustain a
community in reality lacked one, while others that were hardly in existence
did not. This could happen because at stake were not only, or even mainly,
material concerns. Rather than examining what existed on the ground,
contemporaries engaged with what it meant and what it could guarantee.
In order to explore these issues, I will begin by examining the resettle-
ment of Spaniards in Spanish America. I will then survey similar campaigns
in Peninsular Spain in order to interrogate what tied them together and
what they can teach us about the aims of resettlement. In order to ask
what resettlement consisted of, I will examine debates in Spain regarding
the revival of non-communities (despoblados). These will demonstrate how
contemporaries viewed the distinction between “proper” and “improper”
communities. Closing the circle, I will observe how debates on despoblados
fared in the New World and what they can tell us about Spanish percep-
tions of why the Indigenous peoples required resettlement. My aim is to
question how we understand things, not to study a particular case or place.
I therefore look at large areas over a long time span in order to ask: if we
put these cases together rather than separate them, as is usually the case,
what do we stand to learn that we would not notice otherwise?
 T. Herzog | Indigenous Reducciones

1. Resettling Spaniards: New World Debates

Whereas the literature on Indigenous reducciones habitually assumes

12 that forced resettlement was a policy only affecting natives, there are
plenty of indications that other social sectors were subjected to similar
campaigns. Eighteenth-century Chile, for example, was a territory where
most Spaniards lived in widely dispersed smallholdings and were criticized
for their “disunion”, and “solitary lifestyle”. In the 1700s, the local bishop
suggested that this behavior allowed them to “commit grave crimes without
being punished and without any religious indoctrination”.3 Because they
lived in the countryside at a distance from one another, these Spaniards, he
argued, “live as they wished, only caring about their liberty”. The remedy
the bishop advanced was simple: it was vital to reduce these Spaniards by
forcing them to reside in compact villages. Doing so would ensure that
these Spaniards would “live as rational human beings and not as brutes”.
Congregation would also facilitate their religious indoctrination and allow
teaching them “to respect and fear the magistrates”.4
The Spanish Council of the Indies agreed. In 1703, it ordered all Spa-
niards who resided in farms, ranches, and rural estates to reduce themselves
to existing communities or to new Spanish enclaves that would be built
for them. Giving these Spaniards six months to comply with the order,
the council also specified that those who refused would be punished with
the confiscation of their properties, exile from Chile, and forced labor in
military forts and would be considered as “vagabonds without a recognized
domicile”.5
Because repeated reports from Chile reiterated that nothing had been
accomplished, metropolitan officials again took issue with the resettlement
in 1712. Lamenting what he viewed as a catastrophic situation, the repre-
sentative of royal interests (fiscal) of the Council of the Indies explained
that for many years the council had received reports on the irregular way
in which local Spaniards lived. The council, he argued, was also cognizant
that conscience and justice both required that these Spaniards be made to
congregate (congregar).6 Specifically mentioning that royal laws mandated
that not only Indians but also Spaniards live in compact villages, the fis-

3 The bishop of Santiago de Chile as reproduced in cédula real de 5.5.1716, Archivo General de Indias (hereafter AGI),
Chile 137, fols. 240r-242v. Also see his letter signed 24.2.1710, ibid, fols.1r-2v. The president of the audiencia Juan
Andrés Ustariz mentions a somewhat similar report authored by the Santiago city council in 1708: his letter dated
10.11.1712, ibid, fols. 50r-59v. The Chilean campaign was studied in Schiaffino and Urbina Burgos (1978) and
Schiaffino (1983).
4 Letter of the bishop, 12.7.1712, ibid, fols. 8r-10v.
5 Cédula real de 5.5.1716, ibid, fols. 240v and 241r.
6 Vista fiscal, Madrid, 7.1.1712, ibid, fols. 2v-3r.
 Ler História | 72 | 2018

cal argued that, in both cases, the aim of resettlement was similar. It was
meant to guarantee that all inhabitants live under obedience to civil and
ecclesiastical authorities. Those who refused had to be punished because
they were social outcasts. To ensure the wellbeing not only of the polity 13
but also of the individuals concerned, it was therefore vital to create new
settlements and make sure that the Spaniards dispersed in the countryside
be reduced to them by force.
The order to resettle the Spaniards of Chile provoked lengthy debates.
Although all parties agreed that it was possible, even recommendable, to
congregate Spaniards against their will when such a move was necessary,
some suggested that Chile was not the appropriate case. Writing from
Santiago, the provincial of the Dominican Order argued that the Spaniar-
ds of Chile lived in the countryside only a few months each year, when
their agricultural pursuits so required, and that the rest of the year they
inhabited proper communities.7 The president of the local audiencia (court
and administrative body) agreed with him, also concluding that only a few
lived in truly dispersed farms and arguing that their residence there was
necessary to guarantee the cultivation of the soil.8 Forcing these Spaniards
to abandon the countryside would destroy the local economy, depopulate
the province, and lead to the loss of many fortunes as well as the end of
commerce. Because in Chile there was no other economic pursuit than
agriculture, the reduction of Spaniards would produce havoc and serious
injury. Furthermore, there was no reason to assume that rural Spaniards
were barbarous, uncultivated, or in need of remedy. Many of them were
citizens (vecinos) of Santiago or other cities, where they had houses, wives,
and children and where they resided part of the year. They were not “so
rustic and so barbarous as to become degenerate” to the point that would
justify forcing their resettlement.
Whether the Spaniards of Chile merited reduction or not, the debate in
the 1700s and 1710s demonstrated that all sides agreed that Spaniards could
be forced to resettle. The Spaniards targeted for reduction were individuals
who lived outside the confines of recognized communities. Although most
of them lived permanently in small estates, it was their lack of insertion in a
proper village or town that made them “vagabonds”. As far as contemporary
observers were concerned, this “solitary” residence automatically implied
unruly behavior because, by living on their own, these Spaniards obeyed,
so it was argued, no God, no law, and no authorities.

7 The provincial of Santo Domingo on 25.10.1712, ibid, fols. 26r-30r.

8 President Ustariz on 10.11.1712, ibid, fols. 50r-59v.
 T. Herzog | Indigenous Reducciones

Participants in the debate in both Chile and Madrid also explicitly

tied the resettlement of Spaniards to the resettlement of Indians. For those
favoring the reduction of Spaniards, if Indians who lived dispersed in the
14 countryside merited congregation, so did Spaniards. The instructions of
the main body of colonial royal decrees (Recopilación de Indias) confirmed
this by ordering that both Spaniards and Indians live in villages. For those
opposing resettlement, neither Spaniards nor Indians should be affected
by these measures because, given the particular conditions in Chile, their
dispersed residence was actually a good thing, as it allowed agriculture to
prosper.9
One could argue that the Chilean case was singular. Chile was a fron-
tier territory, dependent on agriculture, reputably poor, and susceptible to
foreign invasions and indigenous uprising. Conditions in Chile might have
also been particularly prone to accommodate a mobile population of indivi-
duals of both Spanish and Indigenous descent (Góngora 1966, 4). It is also
possible that the so-called Spaniards of Chile were not altogether Spanish
or that, despite their Spanish genealogy, their poverty stigmatized them as
the quintessential “other” (Góngora 1966, 16; Schiaffino 1983, 226-227).
Nonetheless, there are plenty of indications that the situation in other
parts of the Americas was not substantially different. To mention just a few
examples, in 1501 Nicolás de Ovando was instructed to found settlements
in La Española “so that the Christians of this island live and continue to
live in the future, not spread out (derramados)” (Solano 1996, 22). Puebla
de Los Ángeles (Mexico) was established in 1531 in order to congregate
“vagabond Spaniards”, hopefully transforming them in this way into use-
ful laborers and permanent residents (Martin 1957, 41-56). Living in the
valleys around Santo Domingo, it was argued in 1538, were more than
one hundred Spaniards whose reduction was necessary.10 In 1567, Juan de
Matienzo recommended the formation of several villages near Cochabamba
(Upper Peru) for the Spaniards who resided next to their farms “very far
from one another” so that they no longer live separately (Matienzo 1967,
chapter 19). In 1593, the king ordered the resettlement of Spaniards living
“disseminated” in the countryside of Zaruma (Audiencia de Quito) in order
to assure that they lived in a proper republic (forma de república).11

9 Letters of president Ustariz dated 24.12.1711 and 26.12.1711, ibid, fols. 4r-5r and 6r-7v; Joseph de la Lastra
Basauri, Santiago, 4.10.1712, ibid, fols. 16r-24r; the provincial of San Francisco on 4.10.1712, ibid, fols. 32r-34v;
fray Alonso de Caso on 15.10.1712, ibid, fols. 36r- 41r and fray Joseph Dote on 11.9.1712, ibid, fols. 42r-45v.
10 Cédula to the audiencia of La Española, 8.4.1538, AGI, Santo Domingo 868, L.1, fol. 125v.
11 Cédula dated 17.10.1593 to the viceroy of Perú, AGI, Quito 209, L.1, fols. 119r-119v. Also see real provisión dated
17.10.1593, giving Zaruma the legal condition of “villa”, ibid, fol. 112V.
 Ler História | 72 | 2018

Spaniards who required their forced reduction were also present in

mid-eighteenth-century Venezuela.12 The governor, who requested their
resettlement, argued that they were dispersed “in deserted places” with no
spiritual guidance. Their reduction would ensure, he sustained, that they 15
live like Christians and in an appropriate republic. In eighteenth-century
Guatemala, Indians, mestizos, and Spaniards who lived in small enclaves
near their farms “without form of a village” were to be reduced to “formal
settlements”, because it was believed that otherwise they were likely to commit
many excesses and crimes (Lujan Muñoz 1976). In 1792, the governor of
Salta (Río de la Plata) also suggested the establishment of a settlement on
the frontier with Jujuy, so that those who “walked confused and miserable
in the other cities of this province” would live in a “republic as all the other
citizens did, respecting both divine and human laws”.13 All these examples
suggest that what happened in Chile might not have been unique.14

2. Resettlement in Spain

Spain’s Peninsular authorities also undertook campaigns, whose aim

was to resettle individuals who were considered dangerous because they
were said to live without submission to law, king, or God.15 Their reduction,
also referred to as “reform”, was therefore necessary (Vives 1920; Pérez de
Herrera 1598). The king and his officials, though insisting on the freedom
of immigration, which all Spaniards enjoyed, nevertheless maintained that
this freedom was contingent on those leaving one community immediately
joining another (Herzog 2003, 25-29). They asserted that no one could
live without a “known citizenship” (vecindad conocida) because that meant
complete personal liberty, which could not be tolerated. People who had
no fixed domicile or local belonging were both useless and dangerous.
To force everyone to comply with these rules, the authorities devised
policies aimed at punishing those who refused by disciplining, interning
or sending them to forced labor or military service. Those, on the con-

12 The governor Carlos de Sucre on 20.4.1735, AGI, Santo Domingo 632.

13 Letter of the governor of the province of Salta to the secretary of state, AGI, Estado 80, No.23 (No.2) and the junta
de real hacienda, Salta, 8.12.1792, AGI, Estado 80, No.23 (No.3), fols. 10r-18v.
14 Mörner (1973, 64) also argues that reduction could be applied to “individuals of any race”. Similarly, Scott (2004,
895) mentions in passing that Spanish mobility was also of concern to the authorities who, on occasions, dealt
with it in “strikingly similar ways”.
15 “Informe de la Real Sociedad Matritense de Amigos del País de 1780 sobre la propuesta de importar extranjeros
a poblar a España”, Archivo de la Real Sociedad Matritense de Amigos del País, Mss. 37/1 and “papeles varios”:
Francisco Antonio de Zamora Aguilar, citando a Floridablanca, Madrid, 1.1.1779, Biblioteca Del Palacio Real (hereafter
BPR), Mss. II/2512 fol.87V. Also see Pérez Esteve (1976) and Cavillac (2002).
 T. Herzog | Indigenous Reducciones

trary, who agreed to mend their ways and fix their domicile in a known
community, were spared. The authorities also elaborated rules restricting
charity, indicating that it could be given to the poor only in their com-
16 munity of citizenship or birth.16 Other measures included the instruction
that all individuals register with the local authorities and notify them of
their intention to change their domicile, receiving passports that would
declare them “honorable individuals” rather than “vagrants” (Pérez Esteve
1976, 309-310). The individuals who were involved in the elaboration and
imposition of these measures regarded them as a herald for the coming
of a new age. They suggested that the situation required urgent remedy
because, according to them, those whom they sought to reform were not
only poor and vagabonds but also heretics and criminals. These individuals
transgressed the good laws and customs, committed sins and excesses, and
their bad habits could even be contagious. Their insertion into local com-
munities, it was argued, would transform them into useful vassals because
life without discipline and control produced thieves and deserters, while
life in a recognized community guaranteed obedient citizens.
Not only the Spanish poor and vagabonds were to be reduced. On
occasions, the same policies were applied to peasants, the civil and eccle-
siastical authorities suggesting that their lamentable state required such
extreme measures. These peasants had to be reduced to settlement because
they were gente bárbara rather than gente política y doméstica (Contreras
1982, 94). These policies, which were generally applied, were particularly
insistent vis-à-vis certain social sectors, which were stigmatized as insuffi-
ciently integrated into local communities. The most obvious example were
the Roma (Gypsies). As early as 1499 and again in 1539, 1586, 1619, and
1633, the Roma were ordered to abandon their nomadic way of life and
establish a permanent domicile.17 From the late seventeenth century, they
were also forced to report periodically to the local authorities and register
their names and places of residence.18 A general expulsion of the Roma from
Spain was decreed in 1695, from which only individuals permanently resi-
ding in municipalities of at least 200 inhabitants and occupied in farming
activities were exempt. The authorities re-issued similar orders throughout

16 Novísima Recopilación, Libro VII, titulo 22 and título 39.

17 These orders were mentioned in a cédula of November 11, 1692 in Archivo de la Chancillería de Valladolid (here-
after ACV), SA, Ced/Prg. C.8-66. The literature on anti-Roma legislation in Spain is extremely abundant. Some of
the most important titles are: Sánchez Ortega (1976, 1977), Leblon (1985, 1986) and Peñafiel (1985). Anti-Roma
perceptions were also mentioned by Herrero García (1996, 641-655) and García Martínez (1976). Also see Herzog
(2003, 128-133).
18 Pragmática of June 12, 1695 in ACV, SA, Ced/Prg. C.8-88.
 Ler História | 72 | 2018

the eighteenth century, as well as drawing up a list of places permitted for

Roma residence.19
Why were the Roma treated this way? According to the decrees, there
17
was no Roma nation, only Gypsy individuals: “Those who are called and
who identify themselves as Gypsies are not Gypsies by origin or nature, nor
do they proceed from any infected root”.20 Instead, being a Roma was a
category taken on voluntarily by people who wished to live badly (mal vivir).
These people were ordinary Spaniards. Born on the Peninsula as vassals of
the king, they nevertheless behaved in an anti-social and illegal manner.21
They managed to do so mainly by maintaining a nomadic way of life and
avoiding integration into local communities. Their constant movement
allowed them to live freely, only obeying their own desires. Unlike all other
Spaniards, who resided permanently in local communities, the Roma who
constantly moved from one place to the next were not under the control
of authorities, magistrates, or the clergy.
This extreme lack of integration required a radical response. The aim
of all anti-Roma legislation, the authorities argued, was to ensure that the
Roma changed their way of life. They were to abandon their vagrancy and,
instead of maintaining their isolation –which was viewed in these decrees
as self-inflicted–, they would be forced to integrate into local communities.
Refusal to do so would automatically lead to their losing the right to remain
in Spain. The Roma who insisted on maintaining a separate existence and
nomadism would be incarcerated, expelled, or even sentenced to death.
Although the legislation mentioned the Roma’s distinct customs, dress, and
language, the most essential point of contention was domicile-establishment.
According to contemporary visions, what made the Roma “dangerous” and
transformed them into a group perceived as external to the Spanish com-
monwealth was their lack of permanent residence in recognized communities.
Operating here, as in the Americas, was the conviction that life outside a
recognized community produced dangerous individuals. Equally constant
was the belief that reduction would solve this problem because it would
(miraculously) convert all those who refused to obey social, religious, and
political norms into good Christians, faithful vassals, and exemplary citizens.

19 Pragmáticas of January 14, 1717; October 1, 1726; October 30, 1745; July 19, 1746; October 28, 1749; and Feb-
ruary 28, 1784, citing that of September 19, 1783 in ACV, SA, Ced/Prg. C.10-88; C.10-139; C.12-8; C.12-18; and
C.12-53 and in Archivo General de Simancas (hereafter AGS), Gracia y Justicia (hereafter GJ) 1004, respectively.
Many of these pragmáticas were reproduced in the Novísima Recopilación, libro 12, titulo 16. AGS, GJ 1005 and
1006 include additional information about the prosecution of the Roma.
20 Chapter 1 of the pragmática of September 19, 1783, cited in the pragmática of February 28, 1784 in AGS, GJ 1004.
21 Pragmática of July 19, 1746 in ACV, SA, Ced/Prg C.12-18. Sancho de Moncada (1619) cited by Borrow (1924,
98-106), expressed similar opinions. Leblon (1985, 226-227, 229-231) includes the contemporary debate.
 T. Herzog | Indigenous Reducciones

3. The Aims and Meaning of Resettlement

What was common to the reduction of Spaniards in both the Old

18 and the New World was the conviction that individuals who did not
belong to a local community were dangerous. This danger was religious
(heresy, sin, and ignorance), civic (crimes and disorder) and political
(disobedience to the authorities or the king). It was as if, by living out-
side the boundaries of a recognized local polity, these individuals also
lived outside all social, political, and religious precepts, only obeying
their own law.
The insistence that all individuals belonged to a recognized community
was linked to the role of communities in early modern Spain. Beginning
in the Middle Ages (mostly the tenth and eleventh centuries), most Iberian
farmers residing in isolated rural estates began congregating in villages.22
These processes were motivated by demographic and economic growth as
well as by new political and military conditions. The communities founded
during this period soon became the main instrument regulating social, eco-
nomic, and political life (García de Cortázar 1995; Martínez Sopena 1995;
Barrios García 1995). Their omnipresence contributed to the emergence
of new methods for physically and socially ascribing individuals. Whereas
before this process took place most individuals were identified mainly by
reference to their kin group, after communities started appearing all over
the Iberian Peninsula, many began taking on an identity that linked them
to a particular local polity, their patria (Rucquoi 1985).
The kingdoms that appeared in Iberia in the late medieval period
were a byproduct of these developments. Defined as aggregates of many
villages, towns, and settlements, they were composite rather than unitary
because they were configured as assemblies of autonomous local polities.
As a result, in the late fourteenth and fifteenth century, when each of the
Iberian kingdoms defined its members (naturales), these were mostly iden-
tified as vecinos of local municipalities (Herzog 2003). The linking of local
insertion (vecindad) to kingdom membership (naturaleza) continued into
the early modern period. In the sixteenth century, it was used to define
who Spaniards were: Spaniards were natives of the Iberian kingdoms, and
natives were citizens of local communities. In other words, it was through
their formal insertion into a recognized local community that individuals
could be classified also as members (naturales) of the various kingdoms
and of Spain.

22 This was a pan-European phenomenon: Toubert (1973), Reynolds (1984), Fossier (1992), and Hubert (2002).
 Ler História | 72 | 2018

Because being classified as native was tied to the condition of local

citizen, individuals who did not belong to a local community were easily
defined as foreigners (Herzog 2003, 74-75). This was what happened to
the Roma who, albeit being born and bred in Spain, were considered alien 19
because of their itinerant lifestyle. The same, however, also happened to
other individuals, such as the poor and vagabonds, who were often suspected
of foreignness. Because of the tight link between local insertion and status
as Spaniard, Spaniards could become aliens if they ceased being integrated
within a Spanish local community. The contrary was also true: insertion
into a local community was a means for naturalization.
These perceptions were also applied to the Roma, whose integration
in a local community could transform them not only from itinerants to
permanent inhabitants, but also from foreigners to natives. The Roma were
aware of these connections. Many argued that local citizenship was a means
to acquire the “constitutions, exemptions and privileges” of natives, while
others rejected their identification as Gypsies protesting that they were not
foreigners (Sánchez Ortega 1976, 248-250). Outside observers tended to
agree. The French consul in Cádiz, for example, explained that the Roma
could be considered natives, but that they were usually not included in this
category as long as they remained vagabonds (Vaux de Foletier 1997, 6-7).
It is therefore fair to say that, although the struggle to ensure that all
individuals formed part of a local community was informed by economic,
religious, legal, and social interests, it was also tied to the understanding
that unless you belonged to a local community you were not a native of
Spain, nor did you form part of the Hispanic commonwealth.
Returning now to the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, their con-
gregation into Spanish-style villages was part of a much wider drive that
required that all individuals, Spanish or Indigenous, in Spain or Spanish
America, be tied to a local community. Thus, while the resettlement of
Indians clearly intensified the hardship inflicted on the native population,
and it definitely served the ambitions of settlers, it was neither invented
nor specifically designed to sustain a colonial situation (Mumford 2012,
7, 42; Verdesio 2014, 215). But, what was “resettlement”, and how was
it to achieve these laudable goals of transforming bad people into good,
foreigners into Spaniards?
Although the literature on Indigenous reducciones insists on the physical
and visible changes that resettlement produced, what made for a proper
community was not necessarily the presence of certain material conditions.
Instead, resettlement was to bring about a legal and political transformation:
 T. Herzog | Indigenous Reducciones

the conversion of foreigners into natives, strangers into members. This

transformation could be facilitated by external and quantifiable changes,
but these were neither necessary nor sufficient. Looking back to Spain may
20 help us appreciate this point.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Spanish royal adminis-
trators began a wide-reaching campaign for the foundation of new com-
munities.23 Particularly targeting despoblados, that is, territories that once
had been populated but no longer were, these campaigns often degenerated
into endless discussions as to which territory and which people justified
royal intervention. In these debates, rather than automatically assuming
that what needed remedy were places without habitation, those favoring
or criticizing the campaigns struggled to define what exactly counted as a
“non-village”.24 Many suggested that the permanent residence of people on
the territory in houses, their classification as vecinos, the cultivation of the
land, tax payment, and the celebration of weddings in ceremonies officiated
by a local priest, could be proof of the existence of a proper community.25
Others nevertheless contested these conclusions, arguing that classification
never hinged on material questions. The presence of individuals who perma-
nently resided on the territory and their self-identification as vecinos, they
suggested, could well be an indicator of the existence of a community, but
what truly distinguished villages from non-villages was whether residents
were “capable of holding council independent of other villages”.26 If they did
not, than despite their permanence and their social and economic activities,
these individuals did not live in a proper community.
The insistence that “community” was the same as self-government
was such that even the presence of local judges who administered econo-
mic activity, verified that neighboring communities were not using local
resources such as water and wood, or punished criminals, was insufficient

23 See Martín Rodríguez (1984), Palacio Atard (1989), Oliveras Smitier (1998), and Helguera Quijada (1995).
24 According to contemporary dictionaries, “despoblado” was a solitary place, with no village or inhabitants (“un lugar
solitario, donde no hay pueblo ni habitación de gente): Covarrubias y Orozco (1995, 419) or “a desert, abandoned or
a place that is not populated” (“usado como sustantivo se toma por desierto, yermo o sitio que no está poblado”):
Real Academia Española (1990, 221).
25 The case of Martín Hernando, discussed in Archivo Histórico Nacional (hereafter AHN), Consejos 4057 and the al-
legations of Cayo Joseph López, vecino of Zafra in 1793, AHN, Consejos 4060, fols. 27R-30R. In RCV, Pérez Alonso
(Olvidados) 415/1, Miguel de Jesús María Ochoa is identified as “cura propio” of the “despoblado of Castronuevo”
(Ávila). ACV, Pérez Alonso (Olvidados) 1247/11, reproduces a discussion over the allocation of an ecclesiastical
rent in the despoblado of San Pedro de Villalonga (León) in 1776. According to ACV, Alonso Rodríguez (Depósito)
0642/2, in the despoblado of Duruelo there was a convent in which daily mass and occasional processions were
celebrated and the residents paid local taxes.
26 Vincente Bello in the 1792 discussion of the resettlement of Villa de San Martín de Caldillo, AHN, Consejos 4090,
fols. 9r.
 Ler História | 72 | 2018

to lead to the conclusion that a proper community was in place.27 While a

non-village could feature many of the characteristics of a true community
though lacking self-government, some “true communities” were practically
a despoblado. Skeletons without flesh, their existence was profoundly phan- 21
tasmagorical. Londres in Río de la Plata was one such place.28 Founded on
several occasions in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it was never
truly populated or inhabited. No Spaniard had ever resided there, nor were
permanent houses ever built. Nevertheless, contemporaries concluded that
it was a true community because it had a town council (cabildo). The proof
was that its so-called vecinos (who habitually resided elsewhere) regularly
met in Londres once a year to elect local officials.29
Londres was not the only phantasmagoric city in existence. In 1684,
the bishop of Popayán insisted that many settlements belonging to his
jurisdiction no longer merited the name of “city” because they hardly had
any citizens or houses. The bishop was particularly concerned about Caloto,
an enclave abandoned by its council members. Although these individuals
continued to act as if Caloto existed, running its city council and distributing
honors, as well as duties, among its so-called citizens, the bishop concluded
that Caloto was an imaginary rather than a real town.30 Similarly, in 1796
the city of Osorno (in Chile) was said to have been repopulated not because
it was rebuilt but because several individuals reconstituted its city council,
thereby entering into “union and society”.31
These debates clarify that the structures to which the Spaniards of
Chile, the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, and the poor, vagabonds,
peasants, and Roma were subjected were not necessarily material. At stake
was not so much where they lived, not even how they lived (though both
things could be useful indicators), but under which legal and political con-
ditions. Communities were primarily legal entities, not physical structures.
Like the church (which was defined not as a building or an organization
but as the community of believers), proper polities were made of the sum

27 ACV, Alonso Rodríguez (Depósito) 0642/2, RCV, Pérez Alonso (Fenecidos) 3225/3, RCV, Pérez Alonso (Olvidados)
680/2 and ACV, Alonso Rodríguez (Olvidados) 1019/5.
28 Letter of Bartolomé González Póveda, president of the audiencia de Charcas dated 30.11.1679, in “Expediente sobre
la mudanza de la ciudad de San Juan de Vera, valle de Londres (Tucumán) a Catamarca, 30.11.1679-27.9.1681”,
AGI, Charcas 23, r.7, v.71, no.1, fol. 1v. This case is also mentioned in Musset (2002, 271-273).
29 The insistence that “urbanism” was present even when the actual settlement was insignificant was also mentioned
in Rama (1984, 15).
30 AGI, Quito 215, no.3, fol. 231v. The governor seconded his description: Cédula al presidente de Quito para que
informe sobre la proposición del gobernador de Popayán Jerónimo de Berrio de suprimir algunas ciudades por tener
poca población, February 16, 1688, AGI, Quito 210, L.5, fols. 243v-246r.
31 The president of the audiencia of Chile, Ambrosio O’Higgins Vallenar, on January 13, 1796, AGI, Chile 316.
 T. Herzog | Indigenous Reducciones

total of relations between authorities and members and between members

among themselves; they did not include houses, or streets. They featured
an adequate legal regime, a local fuero.
22
This understanding of community permeated developments in
both Spain and Spanish America. It clarified why Spaniards could disa-
gree regarding which enclaves were proper communities and which
individuals merited reduction. Back to the reduction of natives, historians
have long struggled to explain why in many cases Spaniards agreed to
leave natives in their original habitat rather than forcing them to leave,
as the instructions on resettlement required. They asked why many Indi-
genous enclaves were only slightly modified rather than radically altered,
and why the authorities allowed for this continuity rather than impo-
sing a complete physical rupture (Saito and Rosas Lauro 2017, 31 and
35). Yet, if communities were legal, social and political realities, none
of the above is surprising. That resettlement could be achieved without
producing physical, material changes, rather than pointing to “failure”
may point to success. At stake was not necessarily a gap between
model and implementation, or the power of natives to negotiate, as many
historians have asserted. Because these campaigns sought to transform
natives from members in ethnic collectivities to residents of municipal
entities, they did not require the restructuring of streets or buildings.
Instead, they could be completed by ensuring the appearance of new
relationships.32

4. American Despoblados

Transposed to the New World, the debate regarding the reformation

of despoblados suffered important mutations. In the colonies, poblados were
identified with Spanish cities, whereby despoblados were associated with the
not-yet controlled (or insufficiently controlled) Indigenous hinterland. The
1739 “Information on the poblados and despoblados of the New Kingdom
of León” may serve as an example. This pamphlet, which discussed how to
convert the native population and, in the process, augment Spanish con-
trol, suggested that the best method would be to found Spanish enclaves
in territories still controlled by “barbarous Indians”.33

32 See Herzog (2003, 61-62), Saito and Rosas Lauro (2017, 24-25), Diez Hurtado (2017, 273), and Zuloaga Rada
(2017, 323-339).
33 Antonio Ladrón de Guevara, “Noticias de los poblados de que se componen el Nuevo Reino de León… despoblados
que hay en sus cercanías y los indios que habitan y causa de los pocos o ningunos aumentos”, [1739], BPR. Mss.
II/2837, fols. 110r-136r, see most particularly fols. 111r and v.
 Ler História | 72 | 2018

If, in Spain, despoblados were places lacking structures of self-government,

in the Americas they also acquired the characteristic of spaces that escaped
Spanish control. In Spanish imagination, this meant that they were chaotic
and barbaric. Considered dangerous because not yet domesticated, their 23
residents were said to live in a state of nature, more appropriate for animals
than humans (Scott 2009; Sluyter 2001, 414).
The linkage between not-yet-Hispanized native territories and despo-
blados permeated colonial documentation. In the Old World, despoblados
were associated with abandonment, sterility, and desert. In the Americas,
they were also equated with inaccessibility and with the continuation
of native control. They were therefore often designated as montes (high
land) and quebradas (uneven and open territory), regardless of what their
geography was. This allowed Spaniards to conclude that whether residing
in fixed locations and engaged in agricultural pursuits or belonging to
nomad tribes; whether living in plains or in high altitude, all non-His-
panized Indians by definition lived in despoblados because all of them,
by definition, lacked membership in “proper communities”. That is to
say, rather than depicting a particular habitat, despoblados, montes, and
quebradas described (as Covarrubias suggested in 1611) things and people
that were a “great hindrance”, caused “inconvenience” or were “difficult
to win over or overcome” (Covarrubias y Orozco 1995, 601). Remote,
uncontrolled, menacing, and resisting change were the characteristic they
communicated, not a specific location.
Applied to different places and circumstances and used in the sixteenth,
seventeenth, and eighteenth century to describe a great variety of peoples in
a surprisingly similar manner, these perceptions led Spaniards to associate
the lack of Hispanized communal structures with barbarity and both with
particular geographies. They thus argued in the early sixteenth century that
the natives of La Española and Mexico lived separately from one another
in montes, sierras and barrancos.34 The natives of Peru, they suggested, could
become members of self-governing polities only if they were taken out of
their “solitude” and brought to “public places that were flat”.35 Living in
the countryside “as barbarians without law or government, separated one
from the other”, they clearly needed remedy. In New Galicia, natives who
inhabited “rough mountains, deserts and montes” and who lived without

34 Instrucción a Nicolás de Ovando, March 29 and 30, 1503, reproduced in Solano (1996, 24-26) and Viceroy Velasco
on several occasions, as quoted in Gerhard (1977, 352, 357).
35 Viceroy Toledo, cited in Durston (1999/2000, 83) and “Memorial que el racionero Villaroel dio al señor virrey Don
Francisco de Toledo”, cited in Coello de la Rosa (2001, 170). On these issues also see Zuloaga Rada (2017, 309,
note 2).
 T. Herzog | Indigenous Reducciones

village or order, also lacked human reason and acted as wild animals (Enciso
Contreras 2017, 648, 653).
The insistence that Indians who had not yet been integrated into
24
Spanish-style municipalities inhabited despoblados or montes continued into
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In 1599, Luis Velasco, viceroy
of Peru, reported to the king that Indians escaped from the newly formed
villages to montes and quebradas (Málaga Medina 1993, 308). During the
same period and hundreds of miles away, a Jesuit remarked that, before
they were reduced, the Indians of Paraguay “lived in their old ways in
montes and sierras and in solitary houses, separated one, two, three or more
leagues from one another”.36 In the 1660s, the Indians of Darien who lived
off agriculture and commerce nevertheless were said to “reside in montes…
with no proper settlement or subjection, but instead each family alone”.37
During the same period, Quito’s bishop complained that local Indians
received no Christian instruction and were unable to forget their “natural
wildness” and live “a political life as humans” because they resided in mon-
tes, quebradas and deserts.38 In Veracruz, natives living in “farms with their
families separated one from the other” were classified in 1695 as inhabiting
the “mountains”.39 In 1724, the natives of Chocó who had escaped to the
montes were reported to live dispersed without subjecting themselves to
settlement and lacking Catholic instruction or proper government.40 In
the middle of the eighteenth century, the Indians of the Seno Mexicano
were found to be “very dispersed in the montes and forests without a clear
destination of place or farm because they were all uncultivated barbarians
without any other economy than the one practiced by animals that eat
herbs and hunt”.41 These natives were a “particularly bad and low class
of barbarians, habituated and hampered by the lack of reason”, they were
“errant, savage and inhuman animals, atrocious and bad to themselves and
to others, living… without sociability, religion, laws or any rules that would
incline them to do good and reject what is bad”.42

36 Antonio Ruiz de Montoya, cited in Tomichá Charupá (2017, 481).

37 “Relación de la provincia del Darién la forma de su conquista…” undated manuscript, inserted in “Expediente sobre
el resguardo fortificación y poblamiento de las provincias del Darién y Tierra firme 1683-1694”, AGI, Panamá 99.
Also see Solano (1976, 13, 53-54), Castañeda Salamanca (2002, 13-14), and Markman (1972, 194).
38 Fray Alfonso de la Peña Montenegro in Itinerario de párroco de indios, cited in Ortiz Crespo and Terán Najas (1993,
205-206).
39 AGI, EC 339B.
40 Consulta dated December 5, 1724, AGI, Quito 103, fols. 680r-722r.
41 Letter of the Colegio Apostólico de San Fernando Extramuros de la Ciudad de México, November 12, 1749, AGI,
México 691, No.1.
42 Report of the auditor general de guerra marquis of Altamira dated August 27, 1746 in “Expediente sobre la población y
pacificación de la costa del Seno Mexicano, años de 1736 al 1750”, AGI, México 690, No. 11, fols. 12r-54v, fol. 18r-18v.
 Ler História | 72 | 2018

By the eighteenth century, the identification between the lack of sub-

mission to the colonial state and residence in despoblados and montes was
such that, in Quito, the resettlement and reduction of Indians was often
referred to as their “exit from the mountains” and, in Chile, their escape 25
from “proper” settlements was characterized as “taking to the monte”.43
Even as late as the early nineteenth century, the authorities of Talamanca
(present-day Costa Rica) could still report that Indians who had escaped to
territories still controlled by undomesticated and unconverted natives have
taken “to the mountains” (Solórzano Fonseca 1999, 77-78).
This accumulation of factors suggests that, rather than Spaniards pre-
ferring valleys and Indians preferring high altitude, as was often argued,
what was at stake in these descriptions was a conviction that Indians,
even when they lived in valleys and in settled agricultural communities
(as was the case in some of the examples above), in fact inhabited montes
or despoblados. This could be the case because these designations did not
describe a particular habitat but instead pointed to a political space that
was insufficiently controlled, civilized, or Hispanized (Mumford 2012,
34). As Inca Garcilaso de la Vega explained in his Royal Commentaries,
while in Spain being of the mountains was a sign of prestige because it
identified the natives of Asturias and Vizcaya, in the Americas it became
a derogatory designation, which classified individuals as savages (Garcilaso
de la Vega 1963, 373).
The consequence of much longer and larger debates, the link between
Indians and despoblados, despoblados and montes, and both with barbarism
and the lack of submission, ended up reaffirming what many Spaniards
already suspected, namely, that not-yet-fully Hispanized Indians were dan-
gerous and their territories hostile. It also implied that these Indians lacked
proper communities because the only legitimate form of settlement was
the Spanish one. These Indians would never become true political beings,
and would never be part of the Hispanic commonwealth, if they would
not be reduced to the right order. The result were resettlement campaigns
that sought to reduce natives, that is to say, not only concentrate them in
new enclaves that would be properly planned and controlled but “convince
them to be under a better order”, have them adopt reason, or pass from an
incomplete immature state of being to a state of perfection (Covarrubias y
Orozco 1995, 350; Hamann 2016, 268-270).

43 Santiago Riofrío in AGI, Quito 401, fols. 20r-20v and Góngora (1966, 28).
 T. Herzog | Indigenous Reducciones

5. Conclusions

In both Spain and Spanish America, reforming people was a complicated

26 affair. If what was at stake in theory were factual questions such as whether
the individuals targeted were truly nomads, criminals, or dangerous, in
practice what drove the resettlement campaigns was, above all, the convic-
tion that what truly improved people was their integration into a formally
constituted, self-governing community. Following this assumption, those who
were not members of local communities were considered to inhabit spaces
external to the social, cultural, and political context. And, while the lack of
local inscription produced disaster, integration in a community could operate
miracles. Spanish and Spanish American archives are full of such examples
that argued that, after they were resettled, both Indians and Spaniards were
transformed from thieves into useful laborers, from heretics into believers,
from barbarians into civilized people, and from foreigners into members.
These processes, which took place on both sides of the ocean, shared
a common conceptual framework. They were not techniques developed
in order to subject a colonial population, but rather an enterprise that
was to guarantee the insertion of all the inhabitants into the Hispanic
commonwealth. Colonialism was certainly a hurricane that left nothing
standing. However, the havoc and destruction it produced was often related
to ideas and practices that also existed in Europe and that were also applied
to its domestic population. These practices produced diverse results on
either side of the ocean and had different effects depending on the targe-
ted population. But, unless we engage in a truly transatlantic analysis, any
description we might offer of colonialism will be hollow, merely a product
of our intellectual imagination.

Acknowledgements
This is a revised, augmented, corrected, and updated version of a text originally published in French in
2007 (“Terres et déserts, société et sauvagerie. De la communauté en Amérique et en Castille à l’époque
moderne”. Annales HSS 62 (3), pp. 507-538).

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 T. Herzog | Indigenous Reducciones

•
O REALOJAMENTO DE INDÍGENAS E DE ESPANHÓIS: PÔR A HISTÓRIA COLONIAL E EURO-
PEIA EM DIÁLOGO
30 Considerando a urgente necessidade de pôr a história colonial e europeia em diálogo, este
texto critica a literatura que tem tratado das campanhas de realojamento da população
nativa da América espanhola em aldeias, ali chamadas reducciones ou congregaciones.
Argumenta-se que, em vez de serem uma tecnologia colonial visando o controlo e a explo-
ração dos colonizados, as campanhas de realojamento também ocorreram em Espanha,
e que, mesmo nas Américas, também abrangeram a população de origem espanhola. O
artigo discute igualmente o que a urbanização significou no período moderno, demons-
trando que aquilo que principalmente distinguia as comunidades das não-comunidades
(despoblados) não eram questões materiais ou económicas, mas sim as relações que
os residentes estabeleciam entre si e o regime jurídico que se lhes aplicava e os unia.
Palavras-chave: história colonial, história europeia, história indigena, congregaciones, reducciones,
despoblados.

LA RÉINSTALLATION DES INDIGÈNES ET DES ESPAGNOLES: FAIRE DIALOGUER L’HISTOIRE

COLONIALE ET L’HISTOIRE EUROPÉENNE
Compte tenu du besoin urgent de faire dialoguer l’histoire coloniale et l’histoire européenne,
ce texte propose une analyse critique de la littérature sur les campagnes de réinstallation
de la population indigène de l’Amérique espagnole dans des villages appelés reducciones
ou congregaciones. Il montre que, plutôt qu’une technologie coloniale visant à contrôler et
exploiter les colonisés, ces campagnes de réinstallation ont également eu lieu en Espagne
et qu’elles ont aussi concerné, en Amérique, la population d’origine espagnole. Le texte
interroge la signification de l’urbanisation à l’époque moderne, en démontrant que les prin-
cipaux facteurs qui distinguaient les communautés des non-communautés (despoblados)
ne dépendaient pas des questions matérielles ou économiques, mais plutôt des relations
entre les résidents et du régime juridique qui les liait.
Mots-clés: histoire coloniale, histoire de l’Europe, historie indigène, congregaciones, reducciones,
despoblados.

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