Indians Merchants, and Markets: A Reinterpretation of the Repartimiento and Spanish-Indian Economic Relations in Colonial Oaxaca, 1758-1821

by Jeremy Baskes

This book explores market participation of indigenous peasants in late colonial Oaxaca, Mexico.  In the traditional historiography, peasant engagement in markets is almost universally explained as the response to coercion by Spaniards.  This study of the repartimiento de mercancias (distribution of goods) challenges the conventional portrayal of Indian-Spanish economic relations arguing that Indian market behavior was economically rational and voluntary.  It further argues that the repartimiento was an institution designed to overcome market imperfections inherent in Mexico’s colonial economy and to facilitate the informal extension of credit in this cross-cultural environment. 

The repartimiento is universally described as a forced system of production and consumption in which officials of the Spanish Crown compelled Indians to buy undesired products or to produce goods marketable in the Spanish economy.  Examining repartimiento production of cochineal, a dyestuff produced exclusively by Oaxacan Indians and representing Mexico's most valued colonial export after silver, this study shows that Indians produced cochineal for the market voluntarily because it provided needed income.  The primary role of the repartimiento was to provide credit to Mexico's indigenous peasantry.  Owing to their poverty, (resulting, in part, from their subordinate position in an exploitative colonial society) the ability of most Indians to participate extensively in the market as producers and consumers necessitated access to credit.  Few merchants, however, extended credit to peasants because collecting debts was too difficult.  Consequently, credit provision was monopolized by agents of the Crown who personally possessed the legal leverage needed to enforce debts.  Spanish officials possessed sufficient authority and power to collect debts rightfully contracted but lacked the state backing that would have been necessary to force peasants into the market against their wills.  The Spanish state was simply too weak and its penetration of indigenous society too superficial.  The manuscript concludes with an examination of the transatlantic trade in cochineal, especially its late colonial decline