Travels in Peru and India / While Superintending the Collection of Chinchona Plants and Seeds in South America, and Their Introduction into India.

by Sir Clements R. Markham

CHAPTER VIII.

THE PERUVIAN INDIANS:

Their condition under Spanish colonial rule.

In reviewing the deplorable results of Spanish domination in South America, it may at once be conceded that the legislation which originated from the councils of the kings of Castile was always, except in matters connected with religion, remarkable for beneficence and liberality in all that concerned the natives; and that, in the words of Mr. Helps, "those humane and benevolent laws, which emanated from time to time from the Home Government, rendered the sway of the Spanish monarchs over the conquered nations as remarkable for mildness as any, perhaps, that has ever been recorded in the pages of history."[160] It may also be allowed that the Viceroys of Peru were generally earnest and zealous statesmen, who conscientiously strove to enforce the regulations which they from time to time received from the council of the Indies.

But it was almost as impossible for the viceroys to exercise efficient personal supervision over the government of so enormous a country, while residing at Lima, as it would have been if they had remained at the council-table in Seville; and their subordinates were, as a body, untrustworthy, extortionate, rapacious, and often remorselessly cruel. Thus the benign laws of the Spanish kings became a dead letter in South America, and the natives groaned, for three centuries, under a yoke which crashed them to the earth, and converted vast tracts of once thickly populated country into uninhabited deserts.

Yet the humane intentions of the Spanish government, and the labours of the Peruvian viceroys, were not wholly without results; and it is partly due to them that a system of worse than African slavery was not established in Peru, and that the native race has not long ago become entirely extinct.

At the time of the Spanish conquest Pizarro was empowered, in 1529, to grant "encomiendas," or estates, to his fellow-conquerors, the inhabitants of which were bound to pay tribute to the holders of the grants; and in 1536 these encomiendas were extended to two lives. The consequent exactions and cruelties were so intolerable that the good Las Casas, and other friends of the Indians, at length induced the Emperor Charles V. to enact the code so well known as the "New Laws," in 1542; by which the encomiendas were to pass immediately to the Crown after the death of the actual holders; all officers under government were prohibited from holding them; all men who had been mixed up in the civil wars of the Pizarros and Almagros were to be deprived at once; a fixed sum was to be settled as tribute to be paid by the Indians; and all forced personal labour was absolutely forbidden.

The promulgation of these beneficent laws excited a howl of furious execration from the conquerors,—the wolves who were thus to be dragged away, when their fangs were actually fixed in the flesh of their victims. Gonzalo Pizarro rose in rebellion in Peru, and defeated and killed Blasco Nuñez de Vela, the viceroy who had arrived to enforce these "New Laws;" while the more politic Belalcazar, at Popayan, though professing obedience, contrived to evade the execution of his orders, after a fashion which gave rise to the well-known saying—"se obedece, pero no se cumple"—"he obeys, but does not fulfil." Their unpopularity was so great that it was considered unsafe to persist in the attempt to enforce them, and they were revoked in 1545. The President Gasca re-distributed the "encomiendas" in 1550, and they were granted for three lives in 1629. Gasca, who showed more regard for his own safety and convenience than for the public service, arranged that his settlement of the encomiendas should not be promulgated until he had sailed for Spain, and he suspended the law prohibiting the forced personal service of the Indians. The latter enactment, however, was boldly promulgated by the Judges of the Royal Audience in 1552, and was, as might have been expected, immediately followed by a ferment amongst the conquerors and a formidable rebellion. Finally the Marquis of Cañete arrived in Peru, as viceroy, in 1554; and, by a mixture of severity and prudent conciliation, trod out the last sparks of revolt amongst the Spaniards.

In 1568 the viceroy Don Francisco de Toledo established the system under which the native population of Peru was professedly ruled for the two succeeding centuries. Toledo was a bigot, without pity, and inexorably cruel. Justice or humanity had no weight with him if they stood in the way of any policy which he deemed to be advisable, as was shown in the judicial murder of the young Inca Tupac Amaru. But he was a faithful servant of his sovereign, and resolutely determined to enforce the edicts of the Council of the Indies; a statesman of considerable ability and untiring industry. He was so prolific in legislation that, on the subject of coca-cultivation alone, he issued seventy ordinances; and future viceroys referred to his rules and enactments as to a received and authoritative text-book. The viceroy Marquis of Montes Claros, in 1615, declared that "all future rulers of Peru were but disciples of Francisco de Toledo, that great master of statesmanship."