Stern's Difficulties with the Black Legend

The problem with speaking in absolutes is that there is always a percentage that proves the opposite to be true.  It is poor reporting to take the experiences of a small minority and apply their fate to the rest of the population.  The difficulty lies in determining the point at which these absolutes can be applied to the whole without being a fallacy.  Stern's mission is to eliminate the absolutes from the conversation of Spanish colonization.  Through analyzing the workings of the mita system, yanaconaje, the rising popularity of slavery in the Andes (as a labor source), and eventual introduction of contract workers on the labor market in the 1620s, Stern demonstrates how the natives and Spanish were both key players in the social and economic organization of the region. But by no means is he arguing that the Spanish did not establish an exploitative system that was denigrating to the native populations.  Overall, the natives were still worse off than before the Spanish arrived; however they were much more active in their own lives than popular history would have us believe.

The changes in labor sources show the level of influence ayllus had over the general make-up of the economy.  Under the Toledan reforms, it seems as if the natives developed even more methods to subvert the coercive labor relationships between the Spanish and the ayllus.  The elaborate rituals of fact-checking, accounting, and bribery surrounding the revisitas and the determination of legitimate deaths attest to the level of sophistication to which the Andean groups were able to manipulate the imported legal structure for their own gain (135). The fact that such a system existed to determine and re-assess the mita requirements shows just how faulty and unreliable the labor system became.  This is a small glimpse of the the Andean strategy to use Spanish political weapons against them.  In light of this, it is no wonder that despite the high costs African slavery became a popular substitute labor force in the 1600s (142).  By continually making mita labor difficult to enforce, either intentionally or as an unintended consequence of the Toledan reforms, colonists naturally turned to other more amenable sources, such as slavery and individual wage labor contracts (without the mita system actually being outlawed by the government).  In one sense, the Andeans soundly disprove the Black Legend, in that they were beating the Spanish at their own game in controlling the labor market.

The small victories of the Andeans came at greater cost to them in the long run.  The contract workers were still susceptible to exploitation by their overseers (146).  While it was somewhat more beneficial than the fate of the mitayos, native laborers were still treated poorly and kept at a distinct disadvantage to their overlords.  The constant bickering with the Spanish further divided the ayllus on distinct political lines and caused inevitable acceptance of and assimilation into the Spanish colonial structure.  By working within the system, they lost the "possibility of organizing a wider, more unified and independent on behalf of the peasantry"(135).  If the vulnerability and naivete of the natives as spelled out in the Black Legend applies at all, it is in that the natives tried to fight the Spanish on their own turf, where they had a home-team advantage in the colonial political institutions.  The small individual battles of the ayllus masked that in the long run, the Spanish won the war.  Despite their efforts, Stern laments that the natives were unsuccessful in launching a true, complete rejection of the colonists.