Is It Fair Essay - 867 Words
“Is it Fair”
Introduction
Cohen (1986) argues that corruption has been described as “acting on opportunities, created by virtue of one’s authority, for personal gain at the expense of the public one is authorized to serve.” Cohen felt that it can be dangerous that the officers accept these gratuities because what might start without intent on the part of the officer may be become a patterned expectation and can lead to targeting and misuse of power if the gratuity stops. On a different view, Kania (1988) writes that police "should be encouraged to accept freely offered minor gratuities and ... such gratuities should be perceived as the building blocks of positive social relationships between our police and the public."
This paper therefore is constructed to analyze the positive and negative effects of taking gratuities and the power of discretion in
police work. It will show the ethical issues police officers face on a daily shift and the ways it affects society.
"To Take or Not To Take...That Is The Question"
Officers commonly get gratuities from
local convenience store that belongs to the sector or area in which they patrol on a daily basis. Most officers that enter these stores begin to build a relationship with not only the employees and owner of the store but also with the "regulars" that enter the store more frequently. This can be observed in one of two ways, first it gives the employees and patrons a sense of security from knowing that a police officer is always around and the chances from being a victim if a crime is less likely. On the other hand some people that drive by and see the a police car or police officer at the same store every day have the mindset that, "no wonder my house got broken into, the officer only drinks coffee and eats doughnuts at the corner store."
One of the positives from taking gratuities from a specific store can prevent from that store being targeted from being burglarized or being robbed.
They can...
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Personnel management refers to the functions that many employers now refer to as . These are the functions that the human resources staff perform relative to the organization's employees. These functions include recruiting, hiring, compensation and benefits, new employee orientation, training, and performance appraisal systems.
Personnel management also includes developing and implementing policies and processes to create an orderly, employee-supportive work environment. It is an older term that is falling into disuse in modern organizations.
Traditionally, the personnel department took care of things related to employment but on a rather low level. Tasks consisted of a lot of filling out forms and checking off boxes. Many people still think of this department that way, even though most companies no longer have personnel departments and instead have human resources departments. Companies also talk about HR management rather than personnel management today.
While becoming extinct, personnel management is a term that is still used in many government agencies, and primarily in the nonprofit sector, to describe functions that deal with the
within an organization.
In terms of functionality, a personnel department handles the more transactional and administrative aspects of the HR management team. However, there are those that still use the term to refer to the whole gamut of HR responsibilities and services.
To understand the difference between personnel management and HR management, consider the following:
Hiring across many organizations which are done by a single person or group of persons. Recruiters look at checkbox lists and match candidates' resumes to that list.
Compensation and benefits departments which create . For instance, enforcing a limit on annual increases of no more than 10 percent and preventing promotions of more than one salary grade. The important part is to create consistency.
New employee orientation which consists of helping employees fill out their benefits paperwork, showing them where the break room is, and handing out a copy of the employee handbook. The focus is on getting the paperwork properly completed and filed away.
Hiring which is done by specialists who have a deep understanding of the needs of the organization.
to find people who not only have the skills necessary to do the job but fit the culture of the organization. They implement
to ensure great hires.
Compensation and benefits departments which recognize the need to not only have fairness and consistency across the company but understand the need to meet individual employees' needs. Their primary point of focus is always, “what is best for the business?”
This may mean that an employee with a specialized skill set gets a new title and pay grade so that her
and not leave to work for a competitor. They recognize that while pay is critical, many employees consider a benefits package as the reason to join or leave a company. It's not just health insurance that great employees want, it's , , and .
New employee orientation which consists of orienting the employee to the company. While paperwork is still important–and everyone wants their health insurance paperwork filled out correctly–the HR department focuses on setting up the employee for success. New employee orientation might even include a formal mentoring program. Or, it might involve opportunities for a meet-and-greet so the new employees get to know people they will be working with as well as those in different departments.
Small companies often prefer to save money by having an employee take on HR responsibilities, even if this is not their background. Big companies, on the other hand, are prone to outsource HR duties to companies or consultants well-versed in the field.
Think long and hard about the amount of money you invest in your employees and ask yourself if you really want to cut corners in how employees are treated and managed. Focusing on the human side of your business can create a stronger company with higher morale and lower turnover. Ultimately, this saves money and increases productivity.
Continue ReadingLatin America.Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.Latin America is generally understood to consist of the entire continent of
in addition to , , and the islands of the Caribbean whose inhabitants speak a . The peoples of this large area shared the experience of conquest and colonization by the
from the late 15th through the 18th century as well as movements of independence from
in the early 19th century. Even since independence, many of the various nations have experienced similar trends, and they have some awareness of a common heritage. However, there are also enormous differences between them. Not only do the people live in a large number of independent units, but the geography and climate of their countries vary immensely. The inhabitants’ social and cultural characteristics differ according to the constitution of the occupants before the Iberian conquest,
the timing and nature of European occupation, and their varying material endowments and economic roles.Since the Spanish and Portuguese element looms so large in the history of the region, it is sometimes proposed that Iberoamerica would be a better term than Latin America. Latin seems to suggest an equal importance of the French and Italian contributions, which is far from being the case. Nevertheless, usage has fastened on Latin America, and it is retained here.This article treats the history of Latin America from the first occupation by Europeans to the late 20th century, with an initial consideration of the
background. For more-detailed coverage of the area prior to European contact, see . For additional information about the
and colonization of Latin America, see . For information about the individual countries of Central America and South America as well as the Romance-language-speaking Caribbean countries, see specific country articles by name: for Central America, see, , , , , , for South America, see , , , , , ,
(a départément of ), , , , , , and, for the Caribbean, see , the , and . See also the articles on the dependencies and
entities , , and . The physical and human geography of the continents, with some historical overview, are provided in the articles
and . There is also a separate article . For discussion of major cities of Latin America and their histories, see specific articles by name—e.g., , , and .
The background
Though the conditions of
and 15th-century Iberia are beyond the scope of Latin American history proper, they must be given consideration in that connection. Not only did the geography of precontact America persist, but both the new arrivals and the indigenous inhabitants long retained their respective general characteristics, and it was the fit between them that determined many aspects of Latin American evolution.
The indigenous world and the word “Indian”
From the time of
and the late 15th century forward, the Spaniards and Portuguese called the peoples of the Americas “”—that is, inhabitants of India. Not only is the term
by origin, but it did not correspond to anything in the minds of the indigenous people. They had no word meaning “inhabitant of the Western Hemisphere,” and most of them seem not to have adopted any equivalent even after centuries of contact. Any such word refers to commonalities seen from the outside and not to any unity perceived by the inhabitants of the Americas themselves. The indigenous peoples were greatly varied, far more so than the E they were spread over a vast area and only faintly aware of each other from one major region to the next.
Nonetheless, the indigenous peoples had several things in common. They were closely related to one another in biological terms, and their languages, though they cannot be shown to have a common origin, tend to share many general features. All shared an isolation from the great mass of humanity inhabiting Eurasia and Africa, who were in some way in contact with one another. The inhabitants of America all lacked immunities to diseases common in
and . They had some impressive
to their credit, including the domesticated plants of
and the , but all had been kept apart from things that had long since spread over much of the rest of the globe, including steel, firearms, horses, wheeled vehicles, long-distance shipping, and alphabetic writing. As a result, the indigenous peoples, once in contact, were very
to the outsiders.
raged whereve with their materials and techniques the Europeans were able to conquer whenever they felt it
to do so. There is, then, at times, a need for a common term, and if one realizes its limitations, “Indian” may do as well as another.
Types of Western Hemisphere societies
The Europeans were sedentary, living in nations and districts with distinct borders, relying on a permanent
to sustain many people in a variety of pursuits who lived in both urban and rural . One large section of the
population, in fact the most numerous, based in Mesoamerica (central and southern Mexico and Guatemala) and the central Andes, was also . Indeed, these peoples and the Europeans tended to have more in common with each other than either had with other peoples indigenous to the Americas. Another type of indigenous peoples may be called semisedentary. They lacked the permanent-site agriculture and the fixed borders of the sedentary peoples and were apparently far less numerous, but they had
and sizable, if frequently moving, settlements. They were found above all in relatively temperate forested areas. The third category that can be established is that of the nonsedentary peoples, who had little or no agriculture and moved annually in small bands over a large territory, hunting and gathering. They were located primarily in areas that under the then-existing technologies were not propitious for agriculture, especially plains and dense tropical forests.
Sedentary peoples
The sedentary peoples shared with the Europeans not only an agricultural base and dense, quite concentrated populations but also territorial states, hereditary rulers, state religions with priesthoods, specialized craft groups, social classes including a nobility distinct from commoners, and regularized taxes or tributes. Among some sedentary groups, large political structures—confederations or empires—had come into existence, collecting tribute and engaging in trade over long distances. The most famous of these are the
empire in the Andean region and what is often called the
empire in Mexico (although the word Aztec was little known at the time). These empires were not nations but had at their centre one small ethnic state (or a few) that exercised dominance over a large number of similar states. The subject states retained their ethnic identity, their own rulerships, and their general way of life despite owing tribute to the imperial power. It was these subject entities that were to survive the conquest and serve as the base of the European presence. They had different names in different places, and indeed their structures varied, but they were everywhere enough like European small principalities, counties, or provinces to be able to function within a European framework.
Among the sedentary indigenous peoples, as in the Iberian system, the household held and worked land and paid taxes. In both,
were in some ways subordinate to men. But in both
they could hold and
personal and
and carry out various kinds of economic transactions, retaining many rights within marriage. In the matter of marriage alliances, crucial to the organization of both kinds of societies, the woman and her property and rank were as important as the man and his.
Semisedentary peoples
Among the semisedentary peoples, much of the above structure was missing. Without well-defined permanent local political units, strong rulers, or tax mechanisms, they did not offer the Europeans the same kind of potential foothold. They lacked social classes, depending on gender and age for their primary social distinctions. Even their household and family structures were different. Settlements or villages shifted over time both in locati the largest strongly defined unit was a household often containing scores of people related by blood and marriage, headed by the eldest male, and the best-defined duties in the society were internal to the household.
Among the sedentary peoples,
did most of the heavier agricultural work, with help only at times of peak workload from women, who were principally involved in processing and distributing the product, much as in Europe. Among the semisedentary peoples, men mainly hunted, only clearing the fields for the women, who did the bulk of the agricultural work. Warfare was highly developed among both the sedentary and the semisedentary peoples, but the semisedentary were more mobile, were better able to protect themselves in forests and other hazardous , and had more effective weapons. Their foods were less attractive to Europeans, and in any case they had less surplus and were fewer in number. They offered Europeans less incentive to invade and more effective resistance when they did.
Nonsedentary peoples
With the fully nonsedentary peoples, these factors were multiplied yet again. No agricultural stores at all were available to an invader, nor was there anyone who could readily be compelled to do agricultural work after conquest. The people were extremely few and spread over an enormous territory, able to move long distances at short notice. Their military potential was much greater than that even of the semisedentary peoples. With so little incentive for the Europeans to subdue them, so few points of contact between their societies, and such great ability and will on the part of the nonsedentary peoples to resist conquest, the main patterns between the two groups became avoidance and long-continuing conflict.
The Iberians
In most ways the Spaniards and Portuguese shared the characteristics of other European peoples. They did, however, have some special features as inhabitants of the
region and the southwestern part of Europe.
In the late 15th century most of Iberia was consolidated into three kingdoms—Portugal, , and —of which the last two were united through royal marriage. But
itself was still quite provincial. The most important entity for purposes of organization and affiliation was the city and the large territory attached to it. More people were engaged in agricultural and pastoral pursuits than anything else, yet society was urban-centred. Each province focused on a city where not only most governmental, , professional, commercial, and craft personnel congregated but where even the families who controlled the largest rural estates resided. The town council, or , united representatives of the most prominent families of the whole province, which was thus not divided along urban and rural lines. Rather, a strong solidarity prevailed, with the less successful flowing to the edges, the more successful back to the centre. The cities that the Iberians established in the Americas had the same characteristics, becoming the means of organizing huge territories around a European settlement.
Some characteristics of the Iberian family differed from those found in the northern European family, and these were to have profound effects on relations between Iberians and indigenous people in the Americas. In the Iberian tradition, families were multilinear and existed at different levels. A
did not subordinate the wife’s family to the extent common in the north of Europe.
kept their maiden names after marriage, and the dowry given with them remained their own property. Some of the children of a given pair might take the name of one parent, some the name of the other, the choice often being determined by who ranked highest socially. Rather than counting only from father to son to grandson, the Iberians kept track of a network of connections, as many made through the female line as the male.
Formal marriage was undertaken only when the partners, and especially the male, considered themselves fully established. Men often married quite late, whereas women, for whom the possibilities of advance were severely limited, tended to marry earlier. Many couples never married at all, so that their children were in the strict legal sense . While they were waiting, late-marrying men would have relationships with women of lower rank, and children were born of these informal unions. The result was that, despite the
disapproval of the church, Iberian society was full of informal partners and
A complex set of practices had grown up for the treatment of the women and children involved in informal unions. When the man finally decided to marry, he would often provide for his informal partner, giving her something as a dowry so that she could herself get married to someone of lower rank. The father might recognize the children of these unions, giving them his name and some sort of protection. They were not at the level of his
children, but they were useful as trusted aides or , and he might arrange marriages between the female children and his subordinates. In the , the lower-ranking women with whom Iberians had informal unions were often indigenous or African, and the children were racially mixed, but the Iberian patterns of treatment of those involved in the informal unions remained much the same, allowing for a vast amount of social and cultural contact and mixture.
diversity and its results
speaking closely related
made up the majority of the inhabitants of the , but they had long coexisted with a larger element of starkly distinct peoples than most of the other nations of Europe. Not only were the
in the northeast of different stock, but Iberia had been largely conquered in the early
speakers coming from northern Africa across the . In a long process of reconquest, called the , the Iberians had gained back all of the peninsula by the late 15th century, but the , as they called them, were still the majority of the population in several areas along the southern coast, and as servants, slaves, and craftspeople they were to be found in many parts of the peninsula. A substantial number of
had also long made Iberia their home. For many decades the Portuguese had been exploring along the coast of Africa, bringing back many Africans as slaves. By the late 15th century Africans were present in considerable numbers in Portugal and also in the south of Spain.
The Iberian Christians’ relations with the other peoples, above all the Moors, were to be the precedent for their treatment of the inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere. In the Reconquest (Reconquista) the Christians had pushed their rivals back th those who carried out the conquests often went to settle among the Moors and were rewarded by the government with grants of land and other benefits. But the newly subjugated Muslims retained much of their organization and civilization for long periods, only gradually being Christianized and absorbed. As for the Jews, on the one hand they were resented and sometimes persecuted by Christian Iberians while on the other hand those who converted to
often rose high in professional and political life and married well within Christian Iberian society.
The Africans had become a well-known group especially in the southern part of the peninsula, with accepted roles as house servants, craftspeople, and field workers. Possession of African slaves was part of general economic life and of social ambitions. Also, manumission was possible, and communities of freed Africans, many of them racially mixed, existed on the edges of society.
represented a
challenge to the movement toward the creation of unified Christian nation-states that was coming to a head in the late 15th century. Those of the Jews and Moors who had refused to convert were in time forcibly expelled, and the Inquisition became active in the attempt to enforce the orthodoxy of those who had accepted conversion. Negative
concerning the other
were rife in Iberian , but over the centuries Iberia had seen diversity, close contact with different peoples, and their gradual absorption.
All Iberia’s coastal peoples had maritime experience. Yet farther inland the occupation of
expansion was deemed a matter of conquering and occupying
territory rather than of far-flung commerce. It was the Italians, above all the , who brought the lore of overseas activity to the Iberians. From the eastern Mediterranean they carried the sugar industry, the use of foreign slaves in it, and the trinket trade with distant peoples first to Spain and Portugal and then on out into the Atlantic, where they were involved together with the Portuguese on the West African coast and the islands lying off it. By the time of contact with the Americas, the Spaniards had been affected by these developments to the extent that Sevilla (Seville) and some other ports were heavily engaged in overseas commerce, often under Genoese direction, but they still mainly adhered to the tradition of conquest and settlement, reinforced by their final defeat of the Spanish Moors in 1492. The Portuguese, on the other hand, partly because of Italian influence and partly because of their own geographic situation, had gone over thoroughly to the commercial-maritime tradition, emphasizing exploration, commerce, tropical crops, and coastal trading posts rather than full-scale occupation.
It is no accident, then, that
was a Genoese who had long been in Portugal and had visited the Atlantic islands. His projects were entirely within the Italian tradition.
Early Latin America
Spanish America
The Spaniards were not only the first of the Europeans to reach the Americas in early modern times, but they also quickly located and occupied the areas of greatest indigenous population and mineral resources. They immigrated in force and created a far-flung, permanent network of new .
The islands of the Caribbean would soon become a backwater, but during the first years of Spanish occupation they were the arena of the development of many practices and structures that would long be central to Spanish-American life.
returned to Spain from his voyage of 1492, having hit upon the island of Hispaniola (now divided between the Dominican Republic and Haiti) as his base, his concept of what should be done thereafter was in the Italian-Portuguese maritime tradition. He wanted to explore further for trading partners, and he considered all who came along with him to be employees of an enterprise headed by himself. The Spaniards, however, immediately started moving in the direction of their own traditions. The expedition that returned to Hispaniola in 1493 was far more elaborate than it needed to have been for Columbus’ purposes, containing a large number and variety of people, animals, and equipment for a large-scale, permanent occupation of the island. A conflict of purpose between the Spaniards on the one hand and Columbus with his Italian relatives and associates on the other soon ensued. By 1499 the royal government was intervening directly, naming Spaniards to the governorship and sending further large parties of settlers. Spanish ways soon gained the upper hand.
, founded on the southeastern coast of Hispaniola in 1496, became a real city, with a rash of
secondary Spanish cities spread over the island. These were oriented to gold-mining sites, which were soon at the base of the Spanish economy. Indigenous
loss in this hot, humid area was quick and catastrophic, and placer mines (primarily in streams, where unconsolidated deposits of heavy, valuable minerals settled) also soon began to run out. In the second decade of the 16th century the Spaniards pushed on to the other large islands, where the cycle began to repeat itself, a around the same time, expeditions to the mainland began, partly to seek for new assets and partly to try to replace the lost population on the islands.
became a type of entity that would reappear in every major area of Spanish occupation. The central city formed a stable headquarters for the Spaniards in the midst of a
of population loss and economic shifts in the countryside. The majority of all the Spaniards in the country lived there, at least when they could. Everyone of importance was there, with only underlings doing essential tasks located in the country. Governmental offices, churches, large private dwellings, and shops soon materialized around the city’s central square, together with all the people required for them. The urban core was well laid out and well built up. On the city’s edge everything was different. Here were the ranchos, impermanent structures inhabited mainly by Indians temporarily in town for work purposes. The Spanish-American city remained like this for centuries—Spanish in the centre, Indian on the edges, growing indefinitely without changing at the core, the site of an enormous process of cultural change.
and Spaniards
In the Caribbean phase several mechanisms developed, combining indigenous and Spanish elements, that long formed the main structural ties between Indians and Spaniards on the mainland as well. The primary form through which Spaniards attempted to take advantage of the functioning of the indigenous world was what came to be known as the , a governmental grant of an indigenous sociopolitical unit to an individual Spaniard for him to use in various ways. On the Spanish side, the institution grew out of the Reconquest tradition. Pressure among the Spaniards on the scene le Columbus, while governor, had opposed it, and Spanish royal authorities tried to restrict it as much as they could. On the indigenous side, the encomienda rested on an already existing unit and the powers of its ruler. The size and benefits of the encomienda thus depended on the local indigenous situation: there could be only as many encomiendas as there w the
(holder of the grant) could at least initially receive only what the ruler had received before him. The larger islands were inhabited by the , a sedentary if modestly developed people with kingdoms, rulers, nobles, and obligatory labour mechanisms. Their ruler was called a , and the Spaniards adopted the word and carried it with them wherever they went in the Americas. The cacique received labour but not tribute in kind, and the encomendero, in practice, followed suit.
The encomendero used the indigenous labour in various ways: to construct houses in the Spanish city where he lived, to provide servants, to produce agricultural products on properties he acquired, and above all to work in the growing gold-mining industry. The encomienda set up most of the main forms of Spanish-Indian contact. Although based on traditional mechanisms, it involved major movements of people and new types of activity. Through these dislocations and the exposure of the Indians to new diseases, the encomienda was instrumental in the quick virtual disappearance of the indigenous population on the large islands.
The encomienda was primarily a transaction between the encomendero, the cacique, and his people, but it could not stop there.
with European skills were needed to run mining operations and supervise the growing of European crops and livestock. The encomendero would hire some Spaniards in supervisory capacities, augmented by African slaves when possible, but the limits of his resources were soon reached. He needed permanent indigenous employees who could learn needed skills and act as a cadre. The indigenous world already knew the , a person directly and permanently dependent upon the ruler or a noble. This role was appropriated by the Spaniards, who commandeered substantial numbers of Indians for their permanent employ, calling them naborías. On the mainland the permanent indigenous worker was to become an ever-growing element of the equation, the locus of the greatest cultural change, and a channel between the Spanish and indigenous worlds.
In the Reconquest tradition, the Spaniards believed that non-Christians taken in battle could properly be . Nevertheless, the bulk of the sedentary population in the Caribbean and on the mainland was not enslaved. Only as the population declined seriously did slave-raiding around the edges of the Caribbean become a major factor, the Spaniards attempting in vain to replace the losses. All over Spanish America, Indian
was to be a secondary factor, brought into play mainly with less-than-sedentary peoples and under economic pressures—that is, the lack of other assets. The slaves were always, as in this case, employed far from their place and culture of origin.
A new Spanish subculture
Cacique was not the only word and concept incorporated into local Spanish culture in the Caribbean and spread from there wherever the Spaniards went. Some of the new cultural goods were the result of Spanish action, like the encom others were straight out of the indigenous world, including naboría, maíz ( maize), canoa (canoe), coa (digging stick), and barbacoa (grill, palisade, anything with pointed sticks, the origin of the English word ). Still others came out of the Portuguese Atlantic tradition, like rescate (literally rescue or redemption), a word for informal trading with indigenous people often involving force and taking place in a setting where conquest had not yet taken place. This whole new overlay on Hispanic culture maintained itself partly because it was adjusted to the new situation but above all because each set of new arrivals from Spain readily adopted it from the old hands already there.
Conquest in the
mainland areas
The Spanish occupation of the larger Caribbean islands did not entail spectacular episodes of military conflict. Yet force was involved, and the Spaniards developed many of the techniques they would use on the mainland. One of the most important was the device of seizing the cacique in a parley, then using his authority as the entering wedge. The Spaniards also learned that the indigenous people were not a solid unit but would often cooperate with the intruders in order to gain advantage against a local enemy.
Also during the Caribbean phase an expeditionary form evolved that was to carry the Spaniards to the far reaches of the hemisphere. Spanish expansion occurred under royal , but expeditions were conceived, financed, manned, and organized locally. The leaders, who invested most, were senior people with local we the ordinary members were men without encomiendas, often recently arrived. The primary leader of an important expedition was often the second-ranking man in the base area, just behind the governor, ambitious to be governor himself but blocked by the incumbent.
There was no permanent organization and no sense of rank. The word “” was hardly used, and the word “soldier” still, the possession of steel helmets, steel swords and lances, and horses gave the Spaniards an overwhelming technical advantage over any indigenous force they were likely to meet. On flat, open ground, two or three hundred Spaniards often defeated indigenous armies of many thousands, suffering few casualties themselves. The conquering groups showed a surprising diversity, coming from many different regions of Spain (plus some foreign countries) and representing a broad
of Spanish pursuits. It was they who founded and settled in the new cities, and the later stream of immigration initially consisted primarily of their relatives and compatriots. Conquest and settlement were a single process.
Having in about one generation largely exhausted the demographic and mineral potential of the , the Spaniards began a serious push toward the mainland in two approximately contemporary streams, one from Cuba to central Mexico and surrounding regions and the other from Hispaniola to the
region and on to Peru and associated areas. The Peruvian thrust started first, in Tierra Firme (the area of
and present northwestern Colombia) in the years 1509–13. The results were appreciable, but the Panamanian occupation was thrown somewhat in the shadow for a time by the spectacular conquest of central Mexico in 1519–21.
Conquest of
The leader of the Mexican venture, , had some university education and was unusually , but he conformed to the general type of the leader, being senior, wealthy, and powerful in Cuba, and the expedition he organized was also of the usual type. Passing by the Maya of the , the Spaniards landed in force on the central coast, almost immediately founding , which despite small shifts in location has been the country’s main port ever since. The
empire, or , of the city-states of , Texcoco, and Tacuba, centring on the Mexica (Aztec) of Tenochtitlán, dominated central Mexico. The coastal peoples among whom the Spaniards landed, however, had only recently been incorporated in the Aztec tribute system, and they offered the Spaniards no open resistance.Hernán Cortés with Montezuma II.(C) Historical Picture Archive/Corbis
Moving inland, the invaders encountered the second power of the region, the Tlaxcalans. Tlaxcala briefly engaged the Spaniards in battle but, suffering heavy losses, soon decided to ally with them against their traditional enemy, the Aztec. As the Spaniards moved on toward Tenochtitlán, many of the local subordinate states (altepetl) also came to terms. Even in Tenochtitlán itself fighting did n the Spaniards as usual seized the cacique (that is, the king of Tenochtitlán, often called the Aztec ,
or Moteuc?oma) and began to exercise authority through him.
The expected secondary reaction was not long in coming, and fighting broke out in the capital. At this point the most unusual part of the process began, for Tenochtitlán was on an island in the midst of a lake, shot through with canals and extensively built up. Here the Spaniards lost much of their usual advantage. They were forced from Tenochtitlán with severe casualties. Although they retained their superiority in the open country, they had to retire to Tlaxcala, accumulate reinforcements, and then come back to Tenochtitlán to carry out a unique full-scale siege, including the use of European-style vessels with cannon on the lake. After four months the Spaniards captured the Aztec capital and began turning it into their own headquarters as Mexico City.
Other parts of central Mexico came under Spanish control more easily, and several Spanish cities were established in the region. Soon successor conquests were under way, to Guatemala, Yucatán, and the north. Those to the north led to little in the short run because that area was inhabited by less-sedentary peoples. Cortés acted as governor for a time and was given great rewards, but rivalries among the Spaniards soon made it possible for the royal government to replace him, first with an , or high court, and then also with a viceroy, direct representative of the Spanish king.
Conquest of
The Spanish thrust toward Peru through Panama was diverted for some years by the attractions of nearby Nicaragua. No one knew what lay along the southern coast, which because of contrary winds was very d the coastal climate was hostile, and little wealth was discovered among the people dwelling there. Attempts in this direction were led by , who despite being illegitimate and illiterate had all the other familiar character not only was he the illegitimate son of a prominent family but he also was one of the first captains on the American mainland, by the 1520s a wealthy encomendero and town council member of Panama. At length Pizarro’s group came into contact with central Andean coastal people connected with the
and saw evidence of great wealth and development. Acquiring from the crown the governorship of the new region, which now began to be called Peru, Pizarro, in 1530, led an expedition that proceeded into Inca territory. In 1532, at the north-central site of Cajamarca, the Inca emperor
was captured in the usual fashion, a parley and surprise attack. In 1533, after much treasure had been collected, the Spaniards had Atahuallpa executed.
The process of conquest and occupation was much as in Mexico, though Pizarro was not thinking of Mexican precedents. Again, once the Spaniards were in the fully sedentary lands of the Inca, the local people hardly attacked them, allowing them to proceed unhindered into the very presence of the imperial ruler. In addition to a localism similar to that of Mexico, the situation was defined by a large-scale Inca civil war that was just ending as the Spaniards arrived. A faction based in , headed by Atahuallpa, had defeated a faction based in , the traditional Inca capital, but the victory had not been entirely , and the parties were still very bitter. After the events at Cajamarca, the Spaniards faced a certain amount of fighting as they advanced to Cuzco, especially from adherents of Atahuallpa, but his enemies, who seem to have been the majority on the ground, tended to
for the time being.
The Spaniards founded a major Spanish city in Cuzco, but they stopped short of making it their capital as their compatriots had Tenochtitlán in Mexico. Deterred by the rigours and inaccessibility of the southern Peruvian highlands, after a bit of experimentation they established the new settlement of , on the central coast, as capital of Peru. The move was of vast significance. In Mexico the bulk of the Spanish population concentrated in the area of highest indigenous population density, favouring contact, cultural change, and merging. In Peru, the highland centre of indigenous population was separate from the centre of Spanish population on the coast, which, in addition, quickly lost most of its indigenous inhabitants to disease. In consequence, the two peoples and cultures underwent an overall slower and less thorough process of amalgamation.
As in Mexico, conquering expeditions soon went out from central Peru, in all directions: to Quito and on north to Colombia, to Chile and Argentina to the south, and even to the Amazon. Peru proper seemed to be securely conquered, but a countrywide uprising took place in 1536, centring in Cuzco, where the Spaniards were kept surrounded for more than one year, until an expedition returning from Chile lifted the siege. After that, the conquest was definitive, although the successor to the Inca ruler and a group of followers took refuge in a remote region, where they held out for more than a generation.
Peru’s history continued to be less placid than that of Mexico. Peru was much harder to reach from Spain, and travel within the country was extremely difficult. In the conquest period and long after, Peru was far richer in
metals than Mexico, since the Spaniards profited from the silver mining already developed by the Inca. Thus there was more to fight over, and struggles arose between the Pizarro brothers (Francisco had three) and a faction led by , Pizarro’s junior partner. Spaniards flooded into the country, eager for encomiendas and ready to rebel in order to get them. Four large-scale civil wars among the Spaniards rocked the country in the time between the late 1530s and early 1550s.
Like Cortés and like most leaders of successful expeditions, Pizarro became governor of the country he had conquered and actually held that position longer than Cortés. In 1541, however, he was assassinated, brought low by the second of the Almagrist rebellions. A royally appointed governor from outside took over, followed in 1544 by a viceroy and audiencia based in L the first viceroy was in turn killed in a civil conflict, but his successors became more firmly established.
Conquest society in the central mainland areas
In the generation or two subsequent to the military phase of the conquest, Spanish
poured by the thousands into Mexico and Peru. Although still a small minority compared with the indigenous population, they
the great majority of all Europeans in the hemisphere, so that these two regions could now be doubly called central areas. They combined the largest European and indigenous populations with the liveliest economies, for they proved to be the sites of the richest deposits of precious metals then known. The immigrants continued to come from all parts of Spain,
an even broader cross section than had the conquerors, for women were now a standard part of the stream.
The central-area encomienda
Already crucial in the Caribbean, the encomienda now developed even further. The Mexican and Andean indigenous units on which it was based were much larger, with stronger authorities who could collect tribute in kind as well as labour. Moreover, the products could circulate in an economy with a great deal more liquid wealth, and there were now many more non-encomenderos, who soon formed the great majority of all Spaniards. The encomenderos greatly enlarged their staffs and followings, with various levels of stewards and many more African slaves, whom they could now afford. The ecclesiastics who now began serious work with the indigenous people of the countryside operated within the framework of the encomienda and received their remuneration from it. The encomenderos went not only into mining and local agrarian activity on a larger scale than before but also into a large variety of
enterprises. Their establishments in the city centre were often palatial, including shops rented to merchants and artisans, of whom they were the best customers. They married Spanish women, ideally relatives of other encomenderos or of high local officials, if only to have legitimate heirs to inherit the encomienda. They became an interlocking group dominating local Hispanic society and virtually monopolizing the municipal councils of the Spanish cities. The process whereby Hispanic society penetrated into the hinterland was begun by their usually humble rural employees, who combined tax collecting, labour supervision, farming, and livestock growing.
The Spanish crafts flourished in the encomenderos’ cities, practiced by artisans who had a far humbler social profile than the encomenderos but were like them in being tied to the locality. They, too, frequently married Spanish women and acquired urban and rural property. To increase their productivity, they bought African slaves, whom they trained the Africans in turn helped train the larger number of Indian apprentices to be found in many shops. In this way the artisans were important in the gradual creation of an ever-growing African, indigenous, and mixed group in the cities, able to speak Spanish and practice the Spanish trades.
Spanish women were an important element in the sedentary
growing up in the central areas. The women were above all relatives of Spanish men already present, brought from Spain explicitly to marry some local associate. As wives of encomenderos and artisans, they managed households that included many Spanish guests and employees and even larger numbers of Africans and Indians, whom they attempted to mold to their purposes. They also brought up both their own fully Spanish children and the racially mixed children they often took or were given to raise. As widows and sometimes spinsters, they actively participated in economic life, though women’s independent activity tended to be channeled into certain conventional directions, from indirect investment and owning urban real estate at the higher levels to running bakeries and taverns at the lower. Women were at first a small minority of the Spanish population, but their relative numbers steadily increased, reaching effective parity with men by the second or third generation after conquest.
Africans also were important to the society. As stated, encomenderos and artisans acquired African , and any Spaniard of means would try to own at least one or two. Thus Africans were soon a significa on the Peruvian coast, at least, it is thought that after several decades they equaled the Spaniards in numbers. Spaniards needed auxiliaries serving as intermediaries between themselves and the much larger indigenous population. Africans, who shared the Spaniards’ Old World immunities and much else, survi the main limitation on acquiring them was the great expense involved.
The gender ratio strongly favoured males, but females were present too, usually in household service, food trades, and petty commerce. The women were frequently mistresses of their owners, to whom they bore
children, with the result that mother and children were sometimes freed. Other African slaves bought their freedom, and a mainly urban class of free blacks began to emerge. Their roles were similar to those of the slaves, except for being exercised more independently.
In this society, the slave, or at least the African slave, was not at the bottom of society but ranked in Spanish terms higher than the general Indian population. Africans were more closely associated with the Spaniards than Indians, culturally more like them, given more skilled and responsible tasks, and in cross-ethnic
were normally in charge of indigenous people.
among Spaniards
Spanish cities, from the very beginning, were full of Indians working for Spaniards in a great number of capacities, sometimes temporarily, sometimes for long periods, but usually at a low level. One of the most important features of life in the first postconquest decades was the prevalence of Indian servant-mistresses of Spaniards, the result of the fact that Spanish women were still much less numerous than men, not to speak of the pattern of men waiting for full success before marrying. These indigenous women retained many aspects of their traditional culture, but they had to learn good Spanish and master skills of Spanish home and family life. They bore the Spaniards
children, who were to become a very important feature of postconquest society.
Merchants were present in force and vital to the existence of the overall complex. But as members of a far-flung network that required high geographic mobility, they were at first less a part of local society. Once the wealth of the central areas became apparent, -based firms began to dominate the import-export trade—the exchange of American precious metals for European cloth, iron, manufactures, and other goods. The representatives at American ports and capitals were junior partners in transatlantic firms and in time hence they seldom married or bought property locally. The aim was to get silver back to Sevilla in order to pay debts and reinvest in merchandise. Second-rank merchants, however, without direct ties to Sevilla, were more likely to develop local roots.
Commerce in local goods, often but not always of indigenous origin, was carried on by members of a well-defined social type, sometimes called tratantes, with a profile sharply distinct from that of the long-distance merchants. Often illiterate, and furthermore without capital, they were recruited from among the most marginal members of local Hispanic society. They, too, were they were prone to move to another area or into other kinds of activity because their status was so precarious.
The mining sector drove the economy of the Spanish world and was an indispensable component of it, yet in several ways it stood apart. It employed only a relatively small proportion of the total Spanish population. Mining complexes were often remote from the main centres of indigenous settlement and hence also from the network of Spanish cities. Turnover was quick, whether in terms of sites, mining enterprises, or individuals.
mining was often virtually an ex a gang of Indians, joined perhaps by some blacks and led by one or two Spanish miners, might spend only days or weeks at a given river site. An encomendero, not himself physically involved, would likely supply the finances and take most of the profit. In many regions gold mining was seasonal, with miners having neither special training nor a full commitment to the industry.
In most regions placer gold was soon exhausted, though Mexico relied on it for a generation, and it eventually became the principal export of New Granada (present-day Colombia).
mining was the successor, and it became the main export asset of the central areas until the time of independence. Here too the encomenderos were the greatest investors and mine owners in the beginning, but their dominance was short-lived. Silver mining was the type of technically demanding, capital-intensive enterprise that called for close attention and much expertise on the part of owners. Very soon true silver mining experts began not only to operate the mines but to become the owners as well.
Spanish law granted the crown residual ownership of mineral deposits, giving it the right to levy substantial taxes on the industry. There was always a governmental presence at mining sites, and the silver tax was the crown’s principal source of revenue. Silver mining camps began to resemble ordinary Spanish municipalities, with councils (dominated by local mining entrepreneurs) and strong
of merchants, craftspeople, and professionals.
By 1550 strong differences had developed between the
silver mining industries. In the Andes the great deposits, of which those of
(in present Bolivia) were overwhelmingly predominant, were within the territory of sedentary i moreover, the Andeans had a strong tradition of long-distance labour movements. Thus indigenous labour obligations, channeled first through the encomienda and later through other arrangements, could supply a large stream of temporary workers. In addition, there were a number of permanent indigenous workers, some of whom possessed skills inherited from the preconquest period, and, in an industry as technical as mining, this group was constantly growing. Even so, the Peruvian mines used
of temporary labourers under governmental obligation, and their presence greatly slowed down cultural change among the indigenous mine workers.
In Mexico, most of the largest silver mining sites were discovered well to the north of the zone of sedentary population. Traditional labour obligations could not be used, and the bulk of the
consisted from the beginning of sedentary Indians from the centre acting as free agents, , or permanent workers. The Mexican mines also used far fewer people, so that the Hispanic element predominated more than in Peru, and the north of Mexico was soon on its way to having a Hispanized, mobile population very different from that in the central part of the country.
Institutional, legal, and intellectual developments
From early in the Caribbean phase the crown had established the , or board of trade, in Sevilla, apparently originally intended to operate the entire overseas enterprise on an Italian model. In fact, it soon became a customs and
office, involved also in the organization of Atlantic convoys. Direction of the governmental aspect of overseas life went to a
constituted much like others, the
(as the Spaniards continued to call America), which issued decrees, heard appeals, and above all made appointments to high offices. Distances were such that almost everything governmental depended on the officials actually in America.
During the conquest and immediately thereafter, royal government was
in the sense that the governor was invariably merely the leader of the conquering expedition. But in the central areas, with the rivalries and wars among the conquerors and continued strong Spanish immigration, the royal government was soon able to install its own institutional network, with the support of many local Spaniards. As stated earlier, before 1550 both Mexico and Peru had a viceroy and an audiencia, based in the respective capitals, and some secondary there were substantial treasury offices as well, for the crown’s most urgent interest in the new areas was getting silver revenue. A host of lawyers and notaries assembled in the capitals around these nuclei and their branches in the secondary Spanish cities. The viceroys brought with them retinues including an element of high nobility. Marriage alliances and business deals soon brought the officials into connection with the more important encomenderos.
organizations, which in the Spanish scheme of things were part of the overall governmental framework (the crown appointed bishops and many other high officials of the church), also came into the central areas in force on the heels of the conquest. Few clerics of any kind were with the actual conquering expeditions, but soon parties of friars arrived. They were followed by bishops and cathedral chapters, established first in the capitals and then the culmination of the process was the seating of archbishops in Lima and Mexico City. Both the friars and the priests began to penetrate the countryside, operating through the encomiendas, with the ideal (long unrealized) of having one cleric for each encomienda. Like the governmental officials, ecclesiastics were closely connected wi some were appointed in the first place because of family connections, and many tried to marry female relatives to encomenderos.
These institutions were an important part of the general scheme, but they depended on local Hispanic
and reflected its relative strength or weakness. Governmental and ecclesiastical hierarchies were as urban-oriented as all other aspects of S they were based in the cities, above all the largest cities, where one could find not only the largest concentrations of personnel but all those of high rank. The religious orders were a partial exception, rotating thei nevertheless, the most famous figures spent the bulk of their lives in larger centres. As for the government, it hardly existe the local magistrates who gradually came to be appointed in the Indian areas were mainly laymen, often unsuccessful candidates for encomiendas.
In the aftermath of the conquests, as they became
into the local situation, some ecclesiastics began to criticize Spanish institutions, especially the encomienda. However, the various representatives of the church were not entirely unified. The among the orders, the
wanted a higher
tone and better treatment of the Indians but were prepared to work th the more doctrinaire , of whom Bartolomé de las Casas was the most famous and most persistent, spoke for the total abolition of the encomienda, with the clergy to be in charge of the Indians. At the same time, the Spanish royal government was seeking to find ways to increase its authority and in alliance with the Dominicans passed antiencomienda legislation. Resistance among the settlers and conquerors was fierce (the greatest of the Peruvian civil wars was in direct reaction to the strongest legislation, the
of 1542). But in combination with other factors (of which indigenous population loss and the presence in the central areas of many non-encomenderos were the most essential), in the course of the 16th century the encomienda lost its labour monopoly and had its tribute in kind curtailed, while many encomiendas without legal successors reverted to direct crown administration.
The conquerors and early settlers produced a large number of histories describing and praising their exploits. The ecclesiastics, as they came in, began to write similar documents about their own activities, but they also went much further. Some, with the Franciscans most prominent, showed a strong interest in the study of indigenous history, language, others, especially the Dominicans, wrote in a m and sometimes the two currents converged. The arts of literacy were much prized by the upper levels of the Spanish population, and universities, mainly for professional training, were soon established in the viceregal capitals.
Trunk lines
Not only were the central areas different from the fringes in early Latin America, but important distinctions existed within the central areas themselves. In some ways the centre was more a line than a region—that is, a line from Atlantic port to capital to mines, along which European people and products flowed in and silver flowed out. For Mexico, the line went from Veracruz to Mexico City and on to Zacatecas and other mines of the north. In the more complex Peruvian scheme, the line went from the Isthmus of Panama to Lima and on to Potosí. It was along these routes that the Spanish and African populations concentrated, that social, economic, and governmental institutions were first created, then gelled and thickened, and that cultural and
proceeded most quickly.
Postconquest indigenous society
Although the majority of the indigenous population continued to live in their traditional units across the countryside, their lives were nonetheless profoundly affected by the conquest and its aftermath. The most obvious development was dras in a process marked by periodic large epidemics, the population declined through the 16th century and on into the 17th century to a small fraction (impossible to determine with precision) of its precontact size. Only in hot, low-lying areas, such as the Peruvian and Mexican coastal regions, however, were losses as disastrous as those of the Caribbean islands. The peoples of the temperate highlands, however much they may have diminished in numbers, survived in the sense of retaining their local units, their language, much of their cultural heritage, and the essence of their social organization.
of central Mexico are the people whose postconquest experience is best understood because of the voluminous records they produced in their own language. These records reveal that the Nahuas were not overly concerned with the Spaniards or the conquest, which seemed to them at first much li they remained preoccupied to a large extent with their internal rivalries. The local state, the altepetl, with its rotating constituent parts, remained viable as a functioning
unit and as bearer of all major Spanish structural innovations, not only the encomienda but also the parish and the indigenous municipality. The Nahuas accepted Christianity and built large churches for themselves, but those churches had the same function as preconquest temples, acting as the symbolic centre of the altepetl, and the saints installed in them had the same function as preconquest ethnic gods. The status and duties of the commoners remained distinct from those of the nobles, who manned the local Hispanic-style government of the altepetl as they had filled offices in preconquest times.
The household and land regime remained much the same in its organization despite reductions and losses. Household complexes, for example, continued to be divided into separate dwellings for the constituent nuclear families. The Spanish concept “family” had no equivalent in Nahuatl, and none was ever borrowed. The greatest internal social change was a result of the end of warfare, which had been
in preconquest times. Performance in war had provided degrees of social differentiation, avenues of mobility, and a large supply of slaves. Formal slavery among Indians soon disappeared, while internal
tended to take the form of commoners claiming to be nobles or denying specific rights to specific lords. However, the categories themselves were not challenged: the strong distinction between commoner and noble was not soon erased. An entirely new type of mobility had come into existence—movement of Indians away from the whole realm of indigenous society in the direction of the Spanish world to become naborías or city dwellers.
The peoples from central Mexico to Guatemala had forms of recordkeeping on paper in preconquest times, and after the arrival of the Spaniards a remarkable cooperation between Spanish ecclesiastics and indigenous aides led to the
to indigenous languages and subsequently to regular record production. In the case of , the main language of central Mexico, the records have allowed the tracing of some basic lines of cultural and linguistic evolution in three stages. During the first generation, although cataclysmic change was occurring, Nahua concepts changed very little, and their language could hardly be said to have changed at all, using its own resources to describe anything new. In a second stage, beginning about 1540 or 1545 and lasting for nearly 100 years, Nahuatl
many hundreds of Spanish words, each representing a cultural loan as well. But all were other innovations in the language were minimal. This was a time of change in a familiar corporate framework, centring on areas of close convergence between the two cultures. A third stage began about the middle of the 17th century, when Spaniards and Nahuas had come into closer contact, and many Nahuas were bilingual. Now there were no limitations on the kinds of things introduced into the language, and change increasingly took place at the level of the individual, with mediation no longer necessary.
The Nahuas had structures perhaps more similar to those of the Spaniards than any other indigenous group, and nowhere else was there such massive interaction of Spanish and indigenous populations, but broadly similar processes were at work across the central areas. Among the Maya of Yucatán, the direction and nature of the evolution was closely similar but much slower, corresponding to the relatively small Spanish presence there. The
stayed in something comparable to the second stage of Nahuatl for the entire time up to independence.
too the indigenous social configuration was sufficiently close to the Spanish that it could serve as the basis for institutions such as the encomienda and parish. But Andean sociopolitical units were less contiguous territorially than those of central Mexico or Spain, and the population engaged in more seasonal migration. Thus the local ethnic states of the Andes, comparable to the altepetl of the Nahuas (though far less well understood) as the framework of social , may have come under greater challenge of their essential character and identity. The Spaniards tended to reassign noncontiguous parts of one entity to other entities geographically closer, thereby mutilating the original entity. As far back as can be traced, the postconquest Andeans were inclined to migrate permanently from their home entity to another, whether to avoid taxes and labour duties or for other reasons. Such movement occurred in Mexico too, but there the new arrivals tended to melt into the existing entity, whereas in the Andes they remained a large separate group without local land rights or tribute duties, known in Spanish as forasteros. Another challenge to indigenous society came in the later 16th century in the form of attempts by the Spanish government to reorganize sociopolitical units, nucleating the population in so-called reducciones, with consequent social upheaval. Still another apparent disruptive force was the Spanish use of obligatory rotary labour of large groups for relatively long periods at great distances. Yet given the mobility of the
from preconquest times, strong
may have been involved.
The Andeans had sophisticated recordkeeping systems in preconquest times but did not put records on paper with ink, and after the conquest they did not engage in alphabetic writing on the same scale as the indigenous people of Mesoamerica. Some indigenous-language records are now beginning t}