Stern's View on the Black Legend

Stern skirts around explicitly discussing the Black Legend, but instead chooses to allude to it when analyzing the exploitative techniques of the encomenderos, priests, and Crown officials.  He argues that the Spanish themselves are any more or less naturally greedy or born predators who live of the weakness and frailty of the natives.  However, the economic structure in which they are placed is built on "inherent brutalities," where "extractive institutions and relationships required the repeated application of coercive energies simply to reproduce themselves"(102).  While at first it appeared to be ideal to have a designated allotment of native laborers, this model came with intrinsic flaws: often the laborers lived far from their worksite, disease and malnutrition was quickly diminishing the labor force (further increasing the labor shortage), and the mitayos did not receive enough compensation to support themselves, thus increasing the disillusionment and reluctance to work.  Since under the new centralized mita system encomenderos were not allowed to make private labor contracts with kurakas, they were even more dependent on a labor force that was dissatisfied, sick, and often didn't even show up when they felt that the encomenderos were not politically strong enough.  While under the post-Incaic alliance agreements allyus were generally receiving the raw end of the deal, at least they could negotiate for the best option available.  With the new system in place, the only method of reinforcement of the repartimientos open to the encomenderos was coercion and punishment.

Not only were other options unavailable to the encomenderos, but these tactics were rewarded with profits.  the corrupt governmental structure and its methods of labor distribution were such that "political weight and skill determined one's spoils" (100).  By making their workers dependent on the government for labor, this encouraged corruption and collusion between landowners and officials.  When a mere 20 people legally controlled 41% of the labor force, it follows logically that competition for mitayos, and maximizing the productivity of their meager supply would encourage cutthroat and cruel tactics among the rest of the encomenderos.

There is nothing intrinsic of the Spaniards that made them cruel to the Indians; they did not thrive on the pitiful cries of their subservient, powerless laborers.  However it is difficult to argue that reducing the natives to peasantry and exploiting every available resource without reciprocity did not negatively affect the native populations.  The very nature of their economic model encouraged these tactics, and rewarded a handful of successful coercers.  Stern seems to be saying blame the system, not its followers.