Slavery in The Spanish New World Colonies - Indigenous People Enslaved By The Spanish

Indigenous People Enslaved By The Spanish

Spanish colonization of the Americas began with the capture and subjugation of local Indigenous peoples of the Americas, mainly of the Native Caribbean people by Columbus on his four voyages. Initially, enslavement represented one means by which the Columbus and other Castilians (Spaniards) mobilized native labor and met production quotas. Unlike the Portuguese Crown's support for the slave trade, los Reyes Católicos opposed the introduction of slavery to Castile and Aragon on religious grounds. When Columbus returned with slaves, they ordered many of the survivors to be returned to their Caribbean homelands. The papal bull Sublimus Dei of 1537, to which Spain was committed, also officially banned slavery, but it was rescinded a year after its promulgation. Therefore, the Spanish used other forms of coerced labor in their colonies, such as the Indian Reductions method, the encomienda system, repartimiento, and the mita.

After the issuing of the 1542 New Laws, the Spanish greatly restricted the power of the encomienda system. The statutes of 1573, within the "Ordinances Concerning Discoveries," forbade certain kinds of coerced labor and regulated treatment of the local population. It required appointment of a "protector de indios", an ecclesiastical representative who acted as the protector of the Indians and represented them in formal litigation. These laws however did not change very much the practice of encomienda and mita forced labor.

Later in the 16th century, in the viceroyalties of New Spain and Peru, thousands of Indigenous people they were forced to hard work as underground miners in the mines of Potosi, Guanajuato and Zacatecas.

The Jesuit Spanish missions in Paraguay, like his franciscane homologous in California practiced Indian Reductions of the Guaraní indigenous people with forced relocation, sedentarization and labor to support the mission industries. The coerced labor was not by purchase but military enforcement. This was repeated in other Spanish colonies and provinces, effectively making the Native residents locally sourced serfs.