Colombia The Colonial Economy
Colonial entryway, Bogotá
Courtesy Embassy of Colombia, Washington
The Spanish system encompassing the audiencia
was
extractive and exploitative, relying heavily on cheap
native labor.
Domestic industry was constrained during the colonial
period
because the audiencia was bound to Spain as part of
a
mercantile system. Under this arrangement, the colony
functioned as
the source of primary materials and the consumer of
manufactured
goods, a trade pattern that tended to enrich the
metropolitan power
at the expense of the colony.
Because Spaniards came to the New World in search of
quick
riches in the form of precious metals and jewels, mining
for these
items became the pillar of the economy for much of the
colonial
period. Indeed, the extraction of precious metals--such as
gold and
copper--in the American colonies formed the basis of the
crown's
economy.
Spain monopolized trade with the colonies. The crown
limited
authorization for intercontinental trade to Veracruz (in
presentday Mexico), Nombre de Dios (in present-day Panama), and
Cartagena.
Direct trade with other colonies was prohibited; as a
result, items
from one colony had to be sent to Spain for reshipment to
another
colony. The crown also established the routes of transport
and the
number of ships allowed to trade in the colonies.
Merchants
involved in intercontinental trade had to be Spanish
nationals.
Finally, the crown circumscribed the type of merchandise
that could
be traded. The colony could export to Spain only precious
metals,
gold in particular, and some agricultural products. In
return,
Spain exported to the colonies most of the agricultural
and
manufactured goods that the colonies needed for survival.
Domestic
products supplemented these items only to a minor degree.
Agriculture, which was limited in the 1500s to
providing
subsistence for colonial settlements and immediate
consumption for
workers in the mines, became a dynamic enterprise in the
1600s and
replaced mining as the core of the Colombian economy by
the 1700s.
By the end of the 1700s, sugar and tobacco had become
important
export commodities. The growth in agriculture resulted in
part from
the increasing exhaustion of mineral and metal resources
in the
seventeenth century, which caused the crown to reorient
its
economic policy to stimulate the agricultural sector.
As commercial agriculture became the foundation of the
Colombian economy, two dominant forms of agricultural
landholdings
emerged--the encomienda and the hacienda. These
landholdings
were distinguishable by the manner in which the
landholders
obtained labor. The encomienda was a grant of the
right to
receive the tribute of Indians within a certain boundary.
In
contrast, the hacienda functioned through a contract
arrangement
involving the owner--the hacendado--and Indian laborers.
Under a
typical arrangement, Indians tilled the land a specified
number of
days per week or per year in exchange for small plots of
land.
The encomendero, or recipient of the
encomienda,
extended privileges to de facto control of the land
designated in
his grant. In effect, the encomendero was a deputy
charged
by the crown with responsibility for the support of the
Indians and
their moral and religious welfare. Assuming that the land
and its
inhabitants were entirely at its disposal, the monarchy
envisioned
the encomiendas as a means of administering humane
and
constructive policies of the government of Spain and
protecting the
welfare of the Indians. The encomenderos, however,
sought to
employ the Indians for their own purposes and to maintain
their
land as hereditary property to be held in perpetuity. Most
encomenderos were private adventurers rather than
agents of
the empire. The remoteness of the encomiendas from
the
center of government made it possible for the
encomenderos
to do as they pleased.
Under the influence of church figures such as Bartolomé
de las
Casas, the crown promulgated the New Laws in 1542 for the
administration of the Spanish Empire in America. Designed
to remove
the abuses connected with encomiendas and to
improve the
general treatment of Indians, the laws called for strict
enforcement of the existing regulations and freedom for
the
enslaved Indians, who were placed in the category of free
subjects
of the crown. They further provided that
encomiendas would
be forfeited if the Indians concerned were mistreated;
that the
tribute paid by Indians being instructed in religion
should be
fixed and in no case required in the form of personal
service; and
that public officials, congregations, hospitals, and
monasteries
could not hold encomiendas. Additional provisions--
especially resented by the encomenderos--prohibited
the
employment of Indians in the mines, prevented
encomenderos
from requiring Indians to carry heavy loads, forbade the
granting
of any future encomiendas, ordered a reduction in
size of
existing encomiendas, and terminated the rights of
wives and
children to inherit encomiendas.
Encomenderos opposed the royal government's
attempts to
enforce these regulations. A formula was adopted according
to which
the laws would be "obeyed but not executed." The
encomenderos also had the opportunity to send
representatives to Spain to seek modifications of the
laws--
modifications that the crown eventually granted. The
tensions
between the royal authority and the colonists in the new
empire
were never entirely removed.
The institution of the hacienda with its associated
mita
(ancient tribute) system of labor began in the late
sixteenth
century. After 1590 the crown started to grant titles of
landownership to colonists who paid the crown for the land
and
reserved the right to use Indian labor on their haciendas.
Under an
agrarian reform in 1592, the crown established
resguardos,
or reservations, for the Indians to provide for their
subsistence;
the resulting concentration of Indians freed up land to be
sold to
hacendados. The purchase of land as private real estate
from the
crown led to the development of latifundios.
The new hacendados soon came into conflict with the
encomenderos because of the ability of the latter
to
monopolize Indian labor. The Spanish authorities
instituted the
mita to resolve this conflict. After 1595 the crown
obliged
resguardo Indians to contract themselves to
neighboring
hacendados for a maximum of fifteen days per year. The
mitayos (Indians contracted to work) also were
contracted
for labor as miners in Antioquia, as navigational aides on
the Río
Magdalena, and as industrial workers in a few rare cases.
Although
the mitayos were considered free because they were
paid a
nominal salary, the landowners and other employers
overworked them
to such an extent that many became seriously ill or died.
Because the mitayos could not survive their
working
conditions, the crown sought an alternate source of cheap
labor
through the African slave trade. The crown sold licenses
to
individuals allowing them to import slaves, primarily
through the
port at Cartagena. Although the crown initially restricted
licenses
to Spanish merchants, it eventually opened up the slave
trade to
foreigners as demand outstripped supply. The mining
industry was
the first to rely on black slaves, who by the seventeenth
century
had replaced mitayos in the mines. The mining
industry
continued to depend on slave labor into the eighteenth
century.
Despite the decline of the mining industry, slavery
remained the
key form of labor; from the second half of the seventeenth
century
through the eighteenth century, plantation-style
agriculture rose
in prominence and raised the demand for slave labor on
sugar
plantations and ranches. Minor segments of the economy
also
supported slavery and used slaves as artisans, domestic
servants,
and navigational aides.
Slaves had no legal rights in the colonial system. The
crown
enacted laws to separate the slaves from the Indians so
that the
two groups would not join against the Spanish and criollo
ruling
classes. Slaves, however, often revolted against their
subhuman
living conditions, and many escaped to form
palenques
(towns) high in the mountains where they could maintain
their
African customs. These palenques separated
themselves from
colonial society and thus were among the first towns in
Spanish
America to be free of Spanish authority. The
palenque
movement was strongest in the eighteenth century. At this
time,
there was a crisis in the institution of slavery as it
existed in
the Spanish colonies. By the end of the 1700s, the high
price of
slaves along with increasing antislavery sentiment in the
colony
caused many to view the system as anachronistic;
nonetheless, it
was not abolished until after independence was achieved.
Data as of December 1988
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