Comunero Politics and the King’s Justice

In 1774, a mob of commoner Andeans in one town in the viceroyalty of Peru attacked and killed their cacique, claiming that no person could be held responsible because the común, the community of commoners, had done it. The political theory was simple: if the cacique is good, he should be obeyed, but if he is a tyrant, if he does not serve justice, the people of the community have a right to overthrow him. A synthesis of pre-Columbian practices, religious teachings, and Spanish political philosophy, it was taught by officers in the cabildo and cofradías of the town. Also known as the rey común, Andeans defined it as “the ayllus together.” In testimony and written petitions, comuneros defended their right to overthrow their cacique, while professing loyalty to the Crown by paying tribute and serving mita. This idea of commoner self-government spread to other indigenous towns.

Cofradía and Cabildo in the Eighteenth Century

By the eighteenth century, the town-based cofradía and cabildo offices had merged to form what scholars call the fiesta-cargo system, a series of linked posts that created affective ties to the town and legitimated authority within it. Andeans now defined themselves as comuneros, members of the común, the body of commoners that excluded caciques. To become a leader of the común, one served the saints by holding cofradía office. Comuneros had made cofradías and saints Andean: service to the saints rotated among the town’s ayllus and saints’ celebrations included llama sacrifice, pouring libations, and shamanistic practices. During their time as officeholders, comuneros were exempt from tribute and mita, making them a de facto nobility. Caciques saw these officeholders as threats to cacical rule and worked to undercut them. That fear coincided with Spanish policies that also sought to reduce cofradía officers so as to increase tribute payments and mita labor.

Introduction

In the sixteenth century, Spaniards forcibly resettled Andeans into planned towns called reducciones. Andeans adapted the political and religious institutions of the new towns, the cabildo (town council) and the cofradías (confraternities), and made them their own, organizing them by the Andean social form, the ayllu. Over time, political legitimacy and authority within towns was transferred from traditional native hereditary lords, the caciques, to the common people of the town, who called themselves the común. Although a Spanish word, común took on Andean meaning as it was the word used to translate terms for collective land and the collective people of a town. It became a recognized shorthand for a political philosophy empowering common people. In the late eighteenth-century era of Atlantic Revolutions, the común rose up against its caciques, in an Enlightenment-from-below moment of popular sovereignty.

Inca and Asanaqi in Qullasuyu

Prior to Spanish invasion, the Asanaqi ethnic group did not live in large urban areas but in small hamlets scattered across the Andean high plane. Conquered by the Inca around 1460 and incorporated into Tawantinsuyu, they served corvée labor, known as mita, as their “tax,” sometimes working in administrative centers (tambos) along the Inca highway. Although compulsory, they expected to be “asked” to work and fed and clothed at the Inca’s expense in a system of reciprocity. The Incas allowed the Asanaqi to keep their local gods, called wakas, but required them to worship imperial gods as well, making llama sacrifices in their honor along sacred paths called ceques. With the Spanish invasion, imperial-level rituals and administrative centers were abandoned. For a time, Andeans continued to live widely scattered in small hamlets, worshipping their wakas, under control of caciques. To control Andean labor and generate wealth, Spaniards established encomiendas.

Rational Bourbons and Radical Comuneros

Many town-based civil practices helped bind comuneros to their town, most importantly mita duty and tribute payment, both organized by ayllu. Gathering for mita and paying tribute were highly ritualized events that frequently became contentious as comuneros challenged caciques. Libations were poured, feasts were shared, and masses were said to ask the saints to protect mita workers before they traveled to the Potosí silver mines. Tribute was paid twice a year, requiring the whole town to line up by ayllu so each adult male, and sometimes females, could come forward pay their tribute and share a cup of chicha. Other civil duties that helped bind comuneros to their towns included gathering for a padrón or census, the cabildo’s annual walking of the town borders (the mojones), carrying the royal mails, and annual elections for cabildo office. The cabildo had expanded to include alcaldes (officers) for each ayllu and annex.

Andeans Found Their Own Towns

In the early 1600s, commoner Andeans moved back to their former hamlets, but refounded them as annexes of their reducciones, with grid-pattern design, and incipient cabildo and cofradías. Annexes furthered the fragmentation of pre-Conquest ethnic groups begun with reducción, as only some ayllus were included in each annex. To create their new annex towns, Indios Ladinos (those literate in Spanish) got permission from Spanish political and religious authorities, but they met resistance from local priests who accused them of fleeing Christianity to return to idolatry. Andeans persevered because the towns, with their cabildos, and saints and cofradías had become central to defining community and legitimate membership in it, making it easier for forasteros (“foreigners”) to join. This self-government by commoners was a colonial innovation, but Andeans adapted town institutions, organizing them through their ayllus, making them thoroughly Andean. These Andean commoner-led repúblicas laid the groundwork for political solidarity and sovereignty.

Resettlement

vIn the 1570s Viceroy Toledo implemented a resettlement of Andeans from their widely dispersed hamlets into larger grid-patterned towns called reducciones. Each new reducción was a self-governing república de indios, where native hereditary lords the caciques now shared authority with a town council (cabildo) of elected commoners. Within reducciones, Spaniards reinforced elements of Andean social and political organization: ayllu members were settled together, the town’s elected officials were to rotate among the ayllus and the tax rolls were recorded by ayllu. As part of conversion, each town was assigned a patron saint with a confraternity (cofradía) to celebrate it. Documents related to resettlement, including a statement that Spanish invasion had rescued Andeans from Inca tyranny, were put in each town’s community chest (caja de comunidad). Spaniards argued that reducción failed because Andeans did not live in the towns full time, but Andeans returned regularly to fulfill their civil and religious duties.

Spanish República and Inca Tyranny

For Spaniards civilization was only possible in a república, a self-governing town that was both urbs, the built environment, and, more importantly, civitas, the people and their social bonds. Theologians taught that God had granted sovereignty collectively to the people, who in turn loaned it to the king. But if he proved to be a tyrant, the people could revoke their sovereignty and overthrow the king. This political ideology underwrote both the 1521 Comunero Revolution in Spain and provided justification for overthrow of the Incas: if a people were so oppressed by a tyrant that they could not act, another power could intervene and overthrow the tyrant. Understood this way, Spaniards rescued Andeans from Inca tyrants. In order to civilize Andeans and convert them to Christianity, Viceroy Toledo began a process of undercutting encomenderos’ control of Andean labor and resettled Andeans into planned towns, modeled on the Spanish república.

The Resilience of the Común and Its Legacy

Although colonial Spanish- and Republican-era governments tried to undercut comuneros’ political philosophy of popular sovereignty, the común has persevered. Racist conclusions about Indians tarred comuneros as backward and pre-modern. To “modernize” them, comuneros’ lands were privatized and auctioned off, and laws officially eliminated ayllus. Comuneros gained the right to vote with the 1952 Bolivian revolution, many moved to cities, but most failed to prosper economically. They were officially “campesinos,” or peasants—a euphemism for race. Late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century anthropologists’ ethnographies show that reducción towns and annexes still exist, and the cabildo and civil-religious hierarchy still function. In 2005 Evo Morales, a self-identified Aymara, was elected president of Bolivia with comunero support. Bolivia’s 2009 constitution incorporates Aymara ideas of gender complementarity, gave legal personhood to Pachamama (Mother Earth), promotes collectivities as ethically superior to capitalist individualism, and recognizes legal pluralism. Many of these ideas echo the late colonial comuneros.

A Lettered Revolution

In 1780 the comunero political philosophy of popular sovereignty spread across the viceroyalties of Peru and Rio de la Plata, leading to popular uprisings beginning in indigenous towns, led by cabildo members whose first targets were caciques. Comuneros from different towns, realizing their common goals, joined together, exchanging ideas at multi-town saints’ festivals, and through the mails in rebels’ holographic letters, signed “común.” Caciques fought alongside Spaniards to help defeat the comuneros and claimed royal rewards for their efforts. Some comuneros supported the idea of an Inca as a legitimate American king, while maintaining their ideas of town-based self-rule. A few Creoles joined the fight in order to drive out peninsular Spaniards. Misinterpreting the town-based dynamics of this revolutionary moment, official accounts by Spanish bureaucrats emphasized the leadership of Tupac Amaru, or Tupac Catari, or Tomás Catari, and blamed fiscal abuse from corrupt priests, corregidores, or caciques as the cause.