The Conquest of the Incas by John Hemming

Author:John Hemming [Hemming, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: #genre
ISBN: 9780156028264
Publisher: Harcourt
Published: 1970-07-08T04:00:00+00:00

18. OPPRESSION

Forced labour: the forbidden practice of porterage

THE first impression of any sensitive visitor to Peru in the mid-sixteenth century was a terrible decline in the native population. Vicente de Valverde wrote to the King as early as 1539: 'I moved across a good portion of this land and saw terrible destruction in it. Having seen the land before, I could not help feeling great sadness. The sight of such desolation would move anyone to great pity.' Vaca de Castro wrote a few years later: 'There has been and still is a great decline of the Indian natives, which I have seen with my own eyes on the road from Quito to Cuzco.'

The depopulation was most obvious on the coastal plains. Cristobal de Molina described conditions in three valleys in the 1540s. 'I shall tell you about two provinces that were reputed to have contained 40,000 Indians when the Spaniards entered this country. One was Huaura beside Huarmey, which Almagro took as a repartimiento because of its large population and reputation for being very rich; the other is Chincha, which Hernando Pizarro took, and which also had 40,000 Indians. Today there are not more than four thousand Indians in the two provinces. In the valley of this city [Lima] and in Pachacamac five leagues from here, which was all one entity, there were over twenty-five thousand Indians. It is now almost empty, with scarcely two thousand.'

Chincha, a hundred miles south of Lima, had been one of the most populous valleys of the coast. Cieza de León reported that by 1550 its population had shrunk by five to one, and Bartolomé de Vega wrote that Chincha had only a thousand inhabitants by the 1560s.* A decade later, it was reported that Chincha had only five hundred natives and Pachacamac only one hundred.* Cieza reported many other instances of terrible decline, notably in the Santa, lea and Nazca valleys and at Paramonga, where 'I believe there are no Indians at all to profit from its fertility', and Garcilaso said that the valleys of Lunahuaná and Huarcu had fallen from 30,000 to 2,000 by the year 1600.*

Some observers made damning comparisons. Fernando de Armellones said that 'we cannot conceal the great paradox that a barbarian, Huayna-Capac, kept such excellent order that the entire country was calm and all were nourished, whereas today we see only infinite deserted villages on all the roads of the kingdom.' Another report concluded that 'it is clear that the government in the past was better and more valuable: for under the Inca's rule the Indians were daily on the increase'.

Other writers were alarmed at the terrible prospect facing Peru. The eminent Jesuit José de Acosta wrote: 'many believe that what remains of the Indians will cease before long' and the Dominican Santo Tomás pleaded to the King that ' unless orders are given to reduce the confusion in the government of this land its natives will come to an end; and once they are finished, Your Majesty's rule over it will cease'.

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