Agriculture and Inequality in the Colonial Andes:A Simulation of Production and ConsumptionUsing Administrative Documents

摘要

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,indigenous communities in the Viceroyalty of Peru sufferedforced resettlement, introduced disease, and onerouscolonial tribute levies. These produced an onslaught ofpetitions for new tribute counts, as their diminishedpopulations were obliged to pay the head taxes set byearlier censuses. The resulting visitas (administrativesurveys) provide a wealth of information on the demogra-phy and agricultural systems of colonial Andean commu-nities. However, comparatively little quantitative researchexists on the distribution of agricultural resources and thenutritional demands of households. We model agriculturalproduction and nutritional demand using household demo-graphic and landholding declarations in the visitas from theColca Valley of southern highland Peru, combined withethnographically-derived estimates of agricultural produc-tion and nutritional demand. The results indicate thatdespite surplus agricultural production in the aggregate,there were significant differences in intra- and inter-community land wealth and production sufficiency ratios,leaving about 30% of households with caloric shortfalls. Incontrast to regional-scale carrying capacity-type models,this simulation characterizes agricultural inequality withincolonial Andean communities, and thus accounts for thehardship evidenced by tributary recount petitions, even in abreadbasket province from which much surplus productionwas extracted to fill colonial coffers.