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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
p. 9-30
https://doi.org/10.4000/lerhistoria.3146

Resumos
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English Português Français
Arguing for the urgent need to place colonial and European history in dialogue, this text
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the literature e examines campaigns to resettle the native population of Spanish
that
dá-lhe controle sobre o que
America in villages, identified as reducciones or congregaciones. It argues that, rather than a
colonialquer ativar aimed at controlling and exploiting the colonized, campaigns to resettle
technology
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
OK, aceitar tudo
non-communities (despoblados) were not material or economic questions but the
relationships that linked residents to one another and the legal regime that bound them
together.
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Considerando a urgente necessidade de pôr a história colonial e europeia em diálogo, este
texto Personalizar
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
Política
exploraçãodedos
Privacidade
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, demonstrando 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.
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
principaux 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.

Entradas no índice
Mots-clés : Histoire coloniale, Histoire de l’Europe, Historie indigène, Congregaciones,
Reducciones, Despoblados
Keywords: Colonial history, European history, Indigenous history, Congregaciones,
Reducciones, Despoblados
Palavras-chave: História colonial, História europeia, História indigena, Congregaciones,
Reducciones, Despoblados

Notas do autor
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).

Texto integral
1 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 system, 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

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“republics”. The first included Spaniards, who lived in Spanish cities and obeyed
Spanish 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)
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2 To implement
dá-lhe controle sobrethis design, Spaniards launched campaigns to resettle the
o que
Indigenous population in new villages, from which all non-natives were
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theoretically excluded (Mörner 1963; Byrd Simpson 1934; Herzog 2006, 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 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).
3 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.
4 Because the assumption was that the resettlement of natives was directly 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.
5 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 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 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

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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).
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perceptions e to forced resettlement, but they also produced debates
led
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regarding what a proper community was and what belonging to it entailed. Thus,
while quer ativarin the abstract about the importance of communal adhesion,
agreeing
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.
7 In order to explore these issues, I will begin by examining the resettlement 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 perceptions 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?

1. Resettling Spaniards: New World Debates

8 Whereas the literature on Indigenous reducciones habitually assumes 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
9 The Spanish Council of the Indies agreed. In 1703, it ordered all Spaniards 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

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10 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 representative of royal
interests (fiscal) of the Council of the Indies explained that for many years the
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council had received reports on the irregular way in which local Spaniards lived.
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The council, he argued, was also cognizant that conscience and justice both
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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 fiscal 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 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.
11 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 Spaniards 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.
12 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.
13 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 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

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14 One could argue that the Chilean case was singular. Chile was a frontier 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 individuals of both Spanish and Indigenous
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descent cookies
(Góngora 1966,e4). It is also possible that the so-called Spaniards of Chile
dá-lhe
were not altogether oSpanish
controle sobre que or that, despite their Spanish genealogy, their poverty
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stigmatized them as the quintessential “other” (Góngora 1966, 16; Schiaffino 1983,
226-227).
15 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 useful 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
16 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 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
17 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.
18 To force everyone to comply with these rules, the authorities devised policies

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aimed at punishing those who refused by disciplining, interning or sending them to
forced labor or military service. Those, on the contrary, 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
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only in their community of citizenship or birth.16 Other measures included the
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instruction that all individuals register with the local authorities and notify them of
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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 communities, 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.
19 Not only the Spanish poor and vagabonds were to be reduced. On occasions, the
same policies were applied to peasants, the civil and ecclesiastical 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 insufficiently 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 residing in municipalities of at
least 200 inhabitants and occupied in farming activities were exempt. The
authorities re-issued similar orders throughout the eighteenth century, as well as
drawing up a list of places permitted for Roma residence.19
20 Why were the Roma treated this way? According to the decrees, there 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.
21 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,

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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
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Spanish cookies e was their lack of permanent residence in recognized
commonwealth
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communities. Operatingo quehere, as in the Americas, was the conviction that life
outsidequer ativar
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.

3. The Aims and Meaning of Resettlement

22 What was common to the reduction of Spaniards in both the Old 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 outside the boundaries of a recognized local polity, these
individuals also lived outside all social, political, and religious precepts, only
obeying their own law.
23 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, economic, 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).
24 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 identified 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.
25 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 because of their itinerant
lifestyle. The same, however, also happened to other individuals, such as the poor

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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.
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perceptions e also applied to the Roma, whose integration in a local
were
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community could transform them not only from itinerants to permanent
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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).
27 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.
28 Returning now to the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, their congregation 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?
29 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: 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 help us appreciate this point.
30 In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Spanish royal administrators began
a wide-reaching campaign for the foundation of new communities.23 Particularly
targeting despoblados, that is, territories that had been once 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 permanently 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

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their social and economic activities, these individuals did not live in a proper
community.
31 The insistence that “community” was the same as self-government was such that
even the presence of local judges who administered economic activity, verified that
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neighboring cookies e were not using local resources such as water and wood,
communities
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or punished criminals, o quewas insufficient to lead to the conclusion that a proper
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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 phantasmagorical. 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
32 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
33 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 conditions. 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 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.
34 This understanding of community permeated developments in both Spain and
Spanish America. It clarified why Spaniards could disagree 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
Indigenous enclaves were only slightly modified rather than radically altered, and
why the authorities allowed for this continuity rather than imposing 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

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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

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dá-lhe controle sobre o que
4. American Despoblados
quer ativar
35 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 control, suggested that the best
method would be to found Spanish enclaves in territories still controlled by
“barbarous Indians”.33
36 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 residents were said to
live in a state of nature, more appropriate for animals than humans (Scott 2009;
Sluyter 2001, 414).
37 The linkage between not-yet-Hispanized native territories and despoblados
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-Hispanized 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.
38 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 village or order, also lacked human reason and acted as wild
animals (Enciso Contreras 2017, 648, 653).
39 The insistence that Indians who had not yet been integrated into 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
Este siteremarked
Jesuit utiliza cookies e
that, before they were reduced, the Indians of Paraguay “lived in
dá-lhe controle sobre o que
their old ways in montes and sierras and in solitary houses, separated one, two,
three orquer ativar
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 montes, 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
40 By the eighteenth century, the identification between the lack of submission 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 from “proper” settlements was
characterized as “taking to the monte”.43Even 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).
41 This accumulation of factors suggests that, rather than Spaniards preferring
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).
42 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 dangerous 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
Este
fromsite
anutiliza cookies
incomplete e
immature state of being to a state of perfection (Covarrubias y
dá-lhe controle sobre o que
Orozco 1995, 350; Hamann 2016, 268-270).
quer ativar

5. Conclusions
43 In both Spain and Spanish America, reforming people was a complicated 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 conviction 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.
44 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
targeted 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.

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Notas
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).
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.
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.
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.
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).
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 (hereafter 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.
19 Pragmáticas of January 14, 1717; October 1, 1726; October 30, 1745; July 19, 1746; October
28, 1749; and February 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

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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.
Este site utilizaofcookies
21 Pragmática e in ACV, SA, Ced/Prg C.12-18. Sancho de Moncada (1619) cited by
July 19, 1746
Borrow
dá-lhe (1924, sobre
controle 98-106),oexpressed
que similar opinions. Leblon (1985, 226-227, 229-231) includes
the contemporary debate.
quer ativar
22 This was a pan-European phenomenon: Toubert (1973), Reynolds (1984), Fossier (1992),
and Hubert (2002).
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 allegations 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.
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.
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.
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).
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).

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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.
Este site utiliza
42 Report of thecookies e
auditor general de guerra marquis of Altamira dated August 27, 1746 in
dá-lhe controle sobre o que
“Expediente sobre la población y pacificación de la costa del Seno Mexicano, años de 1736 al
querMéxico
1750”, AGI, ativar 690, No. 11, fols. 12r-54v, fol. 18r-18v.
43 Santiago Riofrío in AGI, Quito 401, fols. 20r-20v and Góngora (1966, 28).

Para citar este artigo

Referência do documento impresso
Tamar Herzog, «Indigenous Reducciones and Spanish Resettlement: Placing Colonial and European
History in Dialogue», Ler História, 72 | 2018, 9-30.

Referência eletrónica
Tamar Herzog, «Indigenous Reducciones and Spanish Resettlement: Placing Colonial and European
History in Dialogue», Ler História [Online], 72 | 2018, posto online no dia 26 junho 2018, consultado
 no dia 12 outubro 2023. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/lerhistoria/3146; DOI:
https://doi.org/10.4000/lerhistoria.3146

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Autor
Tamar Herzog
Harvard University, USA

therzog@fas.harvard.edu

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