The Breakdown of the Colonial Order

Abstract

As much as the Great Rebellion was provoked by changes in the larger Andean political economy, it provoked a profound transformation in the local political economies of highland Indian communities. The segment of society that suffered most was the Indian nobility. The loss of life and property hit the great cacical houses of the Titicaca basin hard. The destruction of obrajes and flocks and the disruption of trade further severed the Cusqueno economy from the Altiplano, just when improvements in shipping made Buenos Aires a more attractive port-of-entry than Lima and royal policy began to encourage trade rather than limit it. Cusco's textile and sugar industries, and portage across the Titicaca basin, thus declined further. Insofar as the cacical elite had drawn its wealth and power from their control over the contact between local economies and the regional market, they suffered proportionately. Even more damaging for the Indian nobility of Cusco was the crown's rethinking of the organization of colonial rule. Throughout the Americas, Charles III and Charles IV sought to extend royal authority in a wave of state-building that paralleled and surpassed that of the Habsburgs in the sixteenth century. While the codification of Spanish rule in the late 1500s had imposed a colonial discipline on Andean society, the inability and reluctance to enforce royal justice had created great latitude for negotiation: “obedezco pero no cumplo” served as the unofficial motto of corregidores and caciques as well as of viceroys. From the mid-eighteenth century, the crown set out to reclaim control of royal government and of Indian tribute.