Repartimiento

With the New Laws of 1542, the repartimiento was instated to substitute the encomienda system that had come to be seen as abusive and promoting of unethical behavior. The Spanish Crown aimed to remove control of the Indigenous population, now considered subjects of the Crown, from the hands of the encomenderos, who had become a politically influential and wealthy class, with the shift away from both the encomienda system and the enslavement of the native groups. under the draft labor system known as mita, influenced in part by a similar draft labor system the Inca used also called ''mit'a. The república de españoles "included Spaniards, who lived in Spanish cities and obeyed Spanish law," and the república de indios'' “included natives, who resided in native communities, where native law and native authorities (as long as they did not contradict Spanish norms) prevailed.” == How it worked ==

In practice, a conquistador, or later a Spanish settler or official, would be given and supervised a number of Indigenous workers, who would labor in farms or mines, or in the case of the Philippines might also be assigned to the ship yards constructing the Manila galleons. This would come from Hispanic miners or agriculturalists putting in a weekly application for labor with the district magistrate or a special judge who is in charge of repartimiento labor. Adult males of the community whose turn it was to go were assembled by the jueces reparations (the Amerindians governors of the pueblos de indios) and given to the Spanish official who would move them to a different area to do whatever labor was needed. Legally, these systems were not allowed to interfere with the Amerindians own survival, with only 7-10% of the adult male population allowed to be assigned at any time. These Amerindians were paid wages for their labor, which they could then use to pay tribute to the Crown. Native men, working around 3 to 4 weeks a year, could also be put to work by the local government in public works such as harvests, mines, and infrastructure. Mining, specifically, was a concern for the Crown as well as Peruvian viceroy. Enacted by Don Francisco de Toledo, these mining drafts were brought in Indigenous workers through this draft labor system to do backbreaking work. While there were attempts to guard against overwork, abuses of power and high quotas set by mine owners continued, leading to both depopulation and the system of Indigenous men buying themselves out of the labor draft by paying their own curacas or employers. == Decline of the Repartimiento System in New Spain ==

The diminution of the number of natives in the Americas due to European diseases (smallpox, influenza, measles and typhus) to which the native populations had no resistance, as well as to desertion from the work fields, led to the substitution of the encomienda system and the creation of privately owned farms and haciendas in New Spain. In order to evade these compulsory labor system of encomienda and repartimiento, Amerindians left their pueblos de indios. This was a dangerous venture, as it left them landless and without community. If an Amerindian left their pueblo, they would look for wage labor; others signed contracts (asientos) for six months to a year, during which time the worker was required to be paid a salary, and provided living quarters as well as religious services. In Northern New Spain, this was a frequent occurrence. This area was not greatly populated, and because of this, it was harder for the Spanish to enforce reducciones, meaning they could not create pueblos de indios to pull repartimiento labor from. Northern New Spain had the most silver mines, and because repartimiento labor was unreliable, wage labor was the dominant form of labor used in New Spain. == Capitalist development ==

The repartimiento, for the most part, replaced the encomienda throughout the Viceroyalty of New Spain by the beginning of the 17th century. In Peru, the mita labor system prevailed because the Inca Empire had already established a centralized tribute system, as well as a common identity, and already had experience with a rotational labor system from the Incan ''mit'a. The decline of rotational draft labor in New Spain paved the way for one of the first capitalist societies in the world as Amerindian laborers who left their pueblos de indios'' were landless and instead sold their labor to purchase food and housing. Peru did not experience this same development because the Amerindians remained landed for longer, having access to their own means of production. ==See also==