Indians, Merchants, and Markets: a Reinterpretation of the Repartimiento and Spanish-Indian Economic Relations in Colonial Oaxaca 1750-1821.

Jaffary, Nora

by Jeremy Baskes. Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2000. 306 pp. $60.00 U.S. (cloth).

Cochineal--a red dye made from insects harvested from the nopal cactus--was the most lucrative export item after silver that Spain extracted from Mexico during the colonial period. Despite its importance, however, Jeremy Baskes's Indians, Merchants, and Markets is the first book devoted to the examination of cochineal in Mexico's colonial economy. In this engaging monograph, Baskes reconstructs a tantalizing glimpse of the agricultural aspects of cochineal production. Unlike most other new world products, cochineal remained an export item produced almost exclusively by indigenous agriculturalists in small-scale production. Baskes's primary interest lies not with tracing the crop's agricultural history, but rather with examining its performance within the colonial economic institution of repartimiento.

Historians of colonial Latin America have traditionally interpreted the repartimiento as an exploitative system that the Spanish colonizers successfully engineered to extract maximum capital gain from defenseless indigenous communities. The institution of repartimiento (distribution) assumed several forms in the colonial economy of Spanish America. One form, the repartimiento de comercios, has been normally portrayed as a mechanism which allowed Spanish administrators to force Indian consumers to purchase over-priced luxury goods in exchange for under-compensated labour. Indians, Merchants, and Markets purports to deal with the history of repartimiento de comercios, but the text actually appears to describe another variation of the practice in which local Spanish administrators, alcaldes mayors, contracted in advance of the harvest to purchase cochineal from indigenous producers at fixed prices. Once harvested, Indians were to deliver the stipulated amount of cochineal to the alcaldes, who turned a profit by selling the produce at the higher market price cochineal normally fetched.

Baskes's central goal is to recoup traditional historiography's depiction of the repartimiento. He wishes to demonstrate that Indians were not passively oppressed victims of this system, and also that alcaldes mayores were not wildly successful exploiters of it. His key argument is that indigenous peasants were not coerced into participating in the repartimiento, but rather participated voluntarily because it was the only venue through which they could access much needed credit in the currency-weak economic context in which they lived. Alcaldes mayores became the administrators of the cochineal repartimiento because they were the only force with the judicial power necessary to undertake the provision of credit and the extraction of debt from the Indian producers. Baskes claims that Spanish administrators did not profit from the repartimiento in such dramatic ways as traditionally conceived, pointing primarily to the high rates of loan default the alcaldes mayores were forced to accept. His thesis, in accordance with much current Latin American scholarship, also implies a revised characterization of the colonial state as a far weaker body than historically conceived.

Indians, Merchants, and Markets will appeal broadly to scholars interested in colonial agriculture and economics. As well, Baskes's last chapter, which traces the modification and movement of cochineal during its journey from alcaldes' coffers overland to the port city of Veracruz and overseas to the London market, will prove invaluable to scholars interested in the commercial aspects of Atlantic world exchanges.

For the most part, Baskes persuasively presents his case through a cogent analysis of alcalde account books, audencia records, price indices, and Viceregal correspondence. There were moments, however, when I was left less than completely convinced by Baskes's revised depiction of the repartimiento. One of his key arguments, for instance, is that the cochineal repartimiento benefited Indians because it was the only form of credit available to them. He certainly demonstrates that the alcaldes were the only group that would risk making loans to Indians, but it was much less clear that Indians benefited from the loans. Baskes asserts that one of the reasons the cochineal repartimiento assisted Indians was that it allowed them to purchase valuable commodities (specifically livestock and cochineal seed) that they otherwise would not have been able to afford.

However, he does not refer to evidence that Indians actually spent the money they were advanced on such items. Indeed, what records he did locate indicated that "most repartimiento advances for cochineal were for very small amounts"(p. 99). Indians, then, apparently normally used repartimiento funds to cover their basic survival needs: household expenses, tribute, and payment for religious services. Credit--along with its necessary corollary of interest (in whatever form this may take)--that is used to fund survival needs rather than economic ventures producing growth is unlikely to ever benefit the borrowing party. Rather--and I do not see any reason to assume cochineal producers in colonial Mexico would be exceptions to this rule--entrance into such contracts entails the initiation of ongoing cycles of debt and dependency by the borrower on the lender. There are, then, weak spots in Baskes's novel presentation of the cochineal repartimiento of colonial Oaxaca. But on the whole it is a fascinating treatment of an undeservedly under-examined area of colonial Latin American history.

Nora Jaffary
University of Northern Iowa