Indians and the political economy of colonial Central America, 1670-1810

Author / Creator

Patch, Robert

Available as

Physical

Summary

"This book explores the colonial economy of Central America, more specifically the practices that a certain class of colonial Spanish officials, the so-called alcaldes mayores, used to manage their...

"This book explores the colonial economy of Central America, more specifically the practices that a certain class of colonial Spanish officials, the so-called alcaldes mayores, used to manage their districts. Almost invariably, the author notes, these alcaldes made use of a wide variety of questionable practices known collectively as repartimiento. In Central America the repartimiento was a forced system of production and consumption, which integrated the indigenous populations into local and world markets against their will. By looking at specific cases, Patch goes beyond the simple "white" vs. "black" legend dichotomy so common in Spanish colonial studies, as he shows that alcaldes frequently found themselves in profoundly contradictory situations, where they had to choose one avenue of exploitation over another for reasons of pressure from both above and below"--

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