Contexts - The Rough Guide to Bolivia - page 463

and most took indigenous wives and concubines: soon they were surrounded by an ever-in-
creasing number of mixed-race children - known as mestizos (or cholos ). A complex sys-
tem of class and caste developed, with Spanish-born peninsulares on top, followed by Span-
iards born in the Americas - criollos . The middle orders comprised several different mestizo
classes, while at the bottom was the indigenous majority.
The initial colonial settlement was undermined by the catastrophic decline in the indigenous
population caused by European epidemics and diseases, as well as by the harsh burden of
the encomienda system. With the indigenous tribute base falling each year and the supply
of labour for the mines in decline, and fearing that the encomenderos were becoming over-
powerful, in the 1570s the representative of the Spanish king in Peru, the Viceroy Francisco
Toledo , launched a major reform of the empire's social and economic structures.
THE HUMAN TOLL OF TOLEDO'S REFORMS
During the 1570s the wide-ranging reforms of Viceroy Francisco Toledo , the Spanish
king's representative in Peru, had a dramatic impact on what is now Bolivia. The en-
comiendas were gradually phased out, and the indigenous population moved into large
communities ( reducciones ), where tribute payments could be more easily collected. To ad-
dress the labour shortages in the Potosí mines, Toledo revived the Inca system of labour
service, the mita . Under this regime, an area stretching from Cusco to northern Argen-
tina was divided into sixteen districts, each of which had to send one-seventh of its male
population to the mines each year. Among Toledo's other reforms was the establishment
of a royal mint to ensure the Crown received its share of mining revenues. These reforms
launched a century-long boom that turned Potosí into one of the world's biggest cities and
the single most important source of wealth in the Spanish empire. For the indigenous pop-
ulation, however, the mita labour system was a catastrophe. Of the thousands of mitayos
who went to the mines each year only a few ever returned to their home communities: un-
der colonial rule, up to nine million indigenous workers and African slaves are thought to
have died in the mines.
The Great Rebellion
Indigenous resistance to Spanish rule continued throughout the colonial period. Generally,
these revolts tended to be local in nature, rather than wide-scale rebellions, and were usually
easily crushed. In 1780-82, however, the Andes were swept by a massive indigenous rebelli-
on that shook the Spanish colonial regime to its foundations. This so-called Great Rebellion
encompassed the southern Peruvian highlands and Alto Peru. It was in part provoked by the
Bourbon reforms ,atightening ofthetribute system aimed atcentralizing administration and
boosting royal revenues, which had declined substantially during a long period of economic