Indian reductions in the Andes () were settlements in the former Inca Empire created by Spanish authorities and populated by the forcible relocation of indigenous Andean populations, called "Indians" by the Spanish and "Andeans" by some modern scholars. The purpose of the Spanish Empire was to gather native populations into centers called "Indian reductions" (reducciones de indios), to Christianize, tax, and govern them to comply with Spanish customs and economic interests.
Beginning in 1569, the viceroy Francisco de Toledo presided over the resettlement of about 1.4 million native people into approximately 840 reductions. The resettlement was carried out in the Royal Audiences of Lima and Charcas, modern day Peru and Bolivia, roughly speaking. The native populations, who had adapted to a way of life suitable to the many microclimates throughout the Andes, experienced immense hardship in the transition to life in these new settlements. Despite the hardships, they preserved by their own agency aspects of native Andean culture and life in the reductions reflected a complex hybrid of forced Spanish values and those preserved from the older native communities.
Background
Reducciones were not new to Latin America, and had been a Spanish policy in many other regions, starting in the Caribbean as early as 1503. From 1532 when Francisco Pizarro invaded the Inca empire until the arrival of Francisco de Toledo as Viceroy in 1569, Spanish rule of the Andean population had largely been indirect. Except for Roman Catholic priests, Spaniards were forbidden from living among the Indians and the Spanish extracted tribute and labor from the Andean population through their indigenous leaders, the caciques or kurakas. Although the Andean population was devastated by the internal wars of Spaniards and Incas, the ravages of European diseases, and forced, brutal labor in silver and mercury mines, the Andean Indian cultures remained in many ways little changed from the days when the Incas ruled.
By the late 1560s, Spanish rule of the Andes was in crisis. Both Spanish residents and Indians threatened revolt, production from rich silver mines had declined, the diminishing Indian population meant less labor and tribute, and civil and religious authorities were in conflict. The new Viceroy Francisco de Toledo aimed to reverse the fortunes of Spanish rule in the Andes and to "aggrandize Spanish power by consolidating viceregal rule and to revive the flow of Andean silver to the metropolitan treasury." In order to achieve these economic and political goals efficiently, one of the measures Toledo proposed was to relocate the scattered indigenous populations of the Andes into larger settlements, called "reductions."
Early in his assessment of the Andean region, Francisco de Toledo idealized a universal resettlement to transform Andeans “from savages to men and from barbarians to civilized people.” The campaign that took place in the Andes was part of the larger reforms he had been conceptualizing since 1567 and consulting about with Spanish authorities. Toledo himself conducted a massive inspection of the Andean heartland from 1570 to 1575 and brought the entire viceregal court on the journey. Trekking through mountains in the central and southern highlands, he took detailed observations to legitimize his plan and motivated the inspectors and administrators of the project. The selection of “appropriate” sites for the reducciones often fell within “areas of proven or potential economic benefit to the Crown”, which was often near mining zones and agricultural valleys. Toledo also developed an immense and thorough body of rules that would set the framework for the colonial ambition of reorganizing Andean society.
Purpose
Before the construction of the relocation towns, indigenous peoples throughout the Andes lived in small, localized and dispersed villages, which were difficult for Spanish colonial authorities to oversee. A primary motivation for the massive resettlement program "was to establish direct state control and facilitate the church's Christianization of the native population, while enhancing the collection of the tribute tax and the allocation of labor."
