Mountain Pastoralism in the Andes during Colonial Time

GIL MONTERO, RAQUEL

Utrech

Congreso; XVth World Economic History Congress; 2009

This paper will summarize part of the history of the Andean herders during the colonial period. In the Andes, the realm of pastoralism was neglected, and even denied, for many years by academics. It was only in the 1960s when two scholars started to write about pastoralism. Until today, these studies have remained scarce, and they are mostly anthropological and archeological, focused on llamas and alpacas. Herders are almost "invisible" in colonial studies and difficult to trace in the sources, but in the last years they came slowly more to the fore. After the conquest, the Spaniards reorganized the American world in order to satisfy their primary needs: food, labor, and transportation–amongst others. In order to organize the mining labor force, they moved thousands of persons per year. During the late 16th and the beginning of the 17th centuries –during the silver boom–the most important mining city in the Andes surpassed 130.000 inhabitants, and there were many other settlements around smaller mining centers. All these urban inhabitants needed to be fed, and because of the location of these cities, food was brought often from distant places. The only herders the Spaniards found in America were living in the Andes. For a long time, the llamas were the only animals for transportation until the mules–brought from Europe–became more frequent, from about 1630 onwards. But in some places the grass was not good enough for mules, so the llamas remained prominent there. Herders were considered rich and important in the first centuries of colonial times, and they inhabited relatively populated highlands.  Since most of the mines were located in dry uplands, were herders used to live, these herders worked in the mines, transported food, firewood, metals, salt and other items. They also paid tributes and participated in the colonial economy. But because of their mobility, they eluded colonial impositions when possible. The paper will give an example of these circumstances taken from Lípez, an arid high place in the southern Andes, during the 17th century.