The Indian Population of Southern Guatemala, 1549-1551: An Analysis of López de Cerrato's Tasaciones de Tributos
The tasaciones de tributos compiled between 1548 and 1554 under the supervision of Alonso López de Cerrato have long been recognized as the most important tribute documentation extant for mid sixteenth-century Central America, being of particular interest to all those whose inquiries have focussed on various aspects of the economy and demography of regions stretching from Chiapas and Yucatán in the north to Honduras and Nicaragua in the south. For the purpose of this paper, we wish to concentrate simply on one spatial component of the Libro de tasaciones forming part of the celebrated legajo 128, a rich set of documents housed in the Archivo General de Indias in the section of the archive classified as the Audiencia de Guatemala: that spatial component referred to by contemporary Spanish officials as “los términos y jurisdictión de la ciudad de Santiago de Guatemala,” that is, the territory which in early colonial times fell under the administrative authority of the city of Santiago.