Toledo's Resettlement in Charcas: Local and Regional Perspectives in Dialog

PAULA C. ZAGALSKY

Nashville, Tennessee

Simposio; International Symposium. Unsettling Resettlement: Forced Concentration of the Native Population in the Colonial Andes; 2018

National Museum of Ethnology, Japan / Vanderbilt University, USA

This presentation is an in-progress version of an analysis of the Toledan reduction process in the Charcas region. This region occupied a significant part of the jurisdiction of the Real Audiencia of Charcas; it was located in the largest space of the Southern Andes, and until 1776 belonged to the Viceroyalty of Peru. From general to specific, Map One illustrates the macro region of the Southern Andes, from the south of Cuzco to the southern border of what are now Bolivia and Argentina. Map Two shows the region of Charcas. Map Three indicates an area of smaller scale that will be examined in micro-historic terms. This paper has three connected objectives. First, I offer a panoramic vision of the primary researches that allowed us to understand the changes produced in the Charcas region during Toledo?s administration. This represents a contribution to the historiographical review of the area. The existing historiography of Charcas is very rich in studies of local cases; but these are rarely compared, connected, or put into dialogue at the regional level. Second, I put various demographic groups established in Charcas in comparative dialogue, including repartimientos, corregimiento, and pre-Hispanic chiefdoms or entities. I attempt to show the nuances and contrasts of the process of regional population concentration. Third, I propose to return to the local scale with a case study of the repartimiento de Visisa, a member of the pre-Hispanic Federation of Qaraqara, whose territory included the Cerro Rico de Potosí and the Villa Imperial. This case allows us to observe concrete instances of the reduction process and the open margins for compliance, dialogue, negotiation, alliances, and resistance, and to illuminate the impact of reductions on the control of resources.In this way, this presentation attempts to combine different scales to enrich our perspective on analyses of the Toledan reductions. I connect the micro-historical perspective on a local space with the region of Charcas on a broader scale.