Social Climbers: Changing Patterns of Mobility among the Indians of Colonial Peru

Abstract

T HE' CONQUEST of the Indian empires and their absorption into the Spanish colonial regime affected every aspect of the native cultures. When the Spanish incorporated Andean society into their empire, the patterns of social rank and stratifieation among the Indians were extensively reshuffled. Most analyses of this problem have concentrated upon the replacement of the Inca elite by the Spanish conquerors and the mechanisms governing the absorption of the native population into Spanish society. These analyses define social mobility in terms of the factors which permitted Indians to enter Spanish society or, conversely, prevented them from doing so. Such a definition of social mobility implicitly assumes agreement by all members of colonial society that joining Spanish society meant gaining social rank and status in addition to power. This assumption can be questioned, for Indian society had its own criteria for assigning rank and status among its members, and despite the physical fact of conquest, these criteria were not immediately superseded by those of Spanish society. Throughout a large part of the colonial period, Indian society remained distinct from that of the Spaniards. An Indian ambitious for greater social position who had adopted the attitudes of Spanish society would evaluate his social rank and the avenues for raising it very differently from another Indian, equally ambitious, whose attitudes conformed to the traditions of Andean society. For the Indian who adopted the attitudes of Spanish society, social mobility would be defined from the point of view of that society. Spanish laws defined an Indian in quasi-racial terms, as an individual born of Indian parents. People assigned to this category made up a separate estate in colonial Peru, protected and exploited under laws