La mosaïque indienne: Mobilité, stratification sociale et métissage dans le corregimiento de Cuenca (Equateur) du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle

Abstract

Jacques Poloni-Simard studies the evolution of the Indian community in Cuenca (present day Ecuador) between 1557 and 1780. He analyzes the economic situation in the region, as well as the institutions implemented by the Spaniards, in order to evaluate Indian response and adaptation to them. He suggests that three distinct periods existed. The first (1557–1619) was a period of destruction and exploitation. During this period, Indian effort was mainly directed at conserving the most essential of their traditions and at adapting to the new reality. The second period (1620–80), on the contrary, was a period of growth. In it, different individuals and groups invented new ways to deal with the situation. Social differentiation inside the Indian group was growing, as was mestizaje. Finally, in the third period (1680–1780), encroachment on Indian land and Indian labor was especially strong. As a result, new adaptation mechanisms were called upon and the distinction between Indians “who remained Indians” and those who did not, became especially noteworthy. Poloni-Simard stresses that response to challenges and adaptation to changing circumstances were carried out on both an individual and a collective level. Individual Indians responded to new situations by recasting themselves anew through immigration, through modifying their economic activities and through constructing social networks that expanded beyond their original community. The Indian collectivity responded by changing solidarity patterns, by modifying the importance of different authorities within the community and by adopting new communal practices.Poloni-Simard insists that, despite the existence of a single legal category of “Indian,” a category mainly tied to fiscal obligations levied by the colonial state, in reality, there were many distinct Indian groups. Indians varied according to their places of residence (urban or rural), according to their professions, wealth and connections. If this internal variation inside the Indian group is not surprising, and would be typical of any other category, such as Spaniards or nobles, it is nevertheless true that Poloni-Simard’s research demonstrates the degree to which internal differences were both substantial and meaningful. Among other things, these differences contributed to the emergence of the “plebe,” that is, of the popular urban classes that were no longer defined according to race or ethnicity, but that were characterized instead by reference to their socioeconomic (common) experience. His vision of Indianness allows for the most important conclusion of the book. Miscegenation, it is argued, was first and foremost social. Indians who immigrated to the city, for example, often continued to marry into their “ethnic” group. Yet they became “mestizos” by virtue of their connections with and integration in the non-Indian world. These connections extended their social and economic relations, as demonstrated by the identity of people whom they chose as creditors and debtors, as witnesses and as testament executors. The division between Indians and mestizos was thus social and cultural rather than biological. Indeed, there was a continuum rather than a rupture between one group and the other. Yet while urban centers were a favorable space for this kind of miscegenation, they could also be spaces in which Indianness reenforced itself and was reproduced and reinvented. Indeed, most Indians arriving to the city became mestizos, yet some remained within an Indian social space which was restructured in the city.Another important feature of this book are the sources and methodology it uses. Sources mainly include notarial records, which allow the author to examine the activities (and strategies) of individual Indians. We are thus exposed to fascinating portraits of individual actors, each working to defend his interests. We hear of artisans, mulateers, and service Indians living in the city, yet maintaining contacts (and often properties) in the countryside. We read about the struggle of caciques trying to conserve their privileged position, among other things, by attempting to maintain contacts both inside and outside the Indian world. We read of women behaving differently than men. From the methodological point of view, the study constantly makes references to network analysis. It includes very interesting (and surprising) graphs (pp. 285, 289–91, 296) that demonstrate the degree by which the Indian world cannot be separated from the so called mestizo and even Spanish world. This, however, poses a question. If ethnicity is remodeled into social behavior, than the end result is the blurring of all groups and the elimination of all preset divisions. Thus, if the distinction between Indians and mestizos is no longer valid, as the author seems to suggest, the natural conclusion is that neither is the distinction between mestizos and Spaniards and to, that end, even Spaniards and Indians. Yet if this is true, how can history be told from an Indian point of view? How can it be narrated as a story of (Spanish) action and (Indian) reaction?