Dote, Donacion, Venta, y Alquiler: Indigenous Andeans and Urban Space in Early Colonial Huancavelica

In August of 1571, Viceroy Francisco de Toledo authorized local authorities to establish the Villa Rica de Oropesa, commonly known as Huancavelica, in a remote valley high in the Peruvian Andes. His order both acknowledged the ad hoc emergence of the mining center and attempted to bring order to a location of unique strategic and symbolic importance to the colonial project. As the only significant source of Andean mercury, the town of roughly 10,000 became a vital part of the colonial mining economy predicated on refining silver by amalgamation and exploiting native populations for their labor. In keeping with this status, colonial authorities intended the urban center to reflect the and reinforce colonial power, granting pride of place to colonial political and religious authorities while relegating Indigenous Andeans to peripheral neighborhoods and parishes. The reality, however, proved more complicated. This paper draws on research in Archivo Histórico de Huancavelica to examine the urban history of the mining center from the 1570s to roughly 1600. The land sales, lawsuits, dowries, and donations reveal a shifting urban landscape in which Indigenous Andeans and their communities played a central role, a demonstrated by their footprint in the town itself. As mercury extraction evolved from a loosely organized enterprise to a royal monopoly driven by conscript labor from surrounding Andean communities, the presence and property of Indigenous actors and communities also changed, revealing individual and communal efforts to navigate the emerging colonial reality. Ultimately, efforts to control urban space reveal evolving tensions between various interests: Andean and Spanish, individual and collective, local and imperial.