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Jeremy Baskes Repartimiento

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In Jeremy Baskes’ article, he argues against the view that the Repartimiento de Bienes were an institution that forced Indians to buy goods from the Spanish government against their will, but rather that the Indians used this system voluntarily and often benefitted from it. He begins by focusing on the economic and political position of the repartimiento, explaining what they were and how they developed in the first place. He also goes into detail about how the alcades mayores distributed the goods given on credit through the repartimiento, and how they received payment, or, when they didn’t receive it in a timely manner, what they did to recover their profits. He then analyzes the claim that the repartimiento was used to force Indians to pay …show more content…

His key point is that “the strong ‘invisible hand’ of the market” was the biggest factor in the development of the repartimiento (2). There were no other viable means for Indians to get credit to buy farm animals or other expensive goods—a merchant could not reasonably extend credit to an Indian he did not know because of the high risk of default, compounded with the fact that he had no means to coerce payment. The alcade mayor was the only person who had the means to both extend credit to the Indians and have the authority to demand repayment (13–14). While he could have used his power “to collect the debts owed to private merchants” as well as the debts owed to him, it made more sense to discourage private merchants from lending so as to bring himself more business (14). Baskes does not think that there is sufficient evidence to conclude that repartimientos were regularly forced upon Indians who didn’t want them, however; the main reason for this is that the alcade mayor simply did not have enough political power to do this. Since he was the only representative of the Spanish government, with repartimientos “at times even prohibited by the Crown,” even they would likely not defend him if Indians resisted an effort to coerce them to take a repartimiento (9–10). Since the ability to extend credit to Indians “was necessary to permit the expansion of markets,” and private merchants were usually unwilling to risk their own money to do this, the Spanish had to step in in order to expand their economic reach

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