Cabildos and Cofradias in Reduccion Towns: Indian Place-Making in Seventeenth-Century Andes

In the sixteenth-century Spaniards introduced a project in social engineering on a massive scale: the resettlement of indigenous people into towns with institutions modeled on those in Castile. These new towns were to be self-governing republics, which with their rectilinear streets and plazas and cult to the saints and Spanish-styled government would not only reconceive lived space but create proper subjects of God and King. Following the forced resettlement, Spanish bureaucrats and priests reported that the Indians fled either to return their fields, to other indigenous towns, or to Spanish towns and mining centers. However, studies by geographers, anthropologists, and historians have shown that most of the Toledan-era reducciones (including their annex towns founded in the succeeding generation) have survived to the present as key places for indigenous people: places where local level government meets, and where saints’ festivals are celebrated.  Despite the fact that Christianity, or better said, cult to the saints, and Spanish-style governments were forced upon indigenous people as key elements of the Spanish civilization project, native Andeans rapidly adapted these two institutions to their own needs. Indeed, I argue that it was precisely the indigenous uptake of cabildo and cofradia that made reduccion towns meaningful and permanent. Certainly, Andeans did not become Christians or urban dwellers in the same way as Spaniards, and thus many Spaniards could not bring themselves to recognize the King’s indigenous vassals’ uptake of urban life or religiosity.  Yet cabildo and cofradia helped to create the structures of feeling that made reducciones from simply spaces of colonial oppression to become meaningful places for native Andeans.