Dana Velasco Murillo. Urban Indians in a Silver City

Dana Velasco Murillo’s Urban Indians in a Silver City: Zacatecas, Mexico, 1546–1810, provides a long-term view of the indigenous people of Zacatecas, from the foundation of the city in the middle of the sixteenth century to its decay in the late eighteenth century. The author’s aim is to show the role played by ethnically and linguistically plural indigenous peoples in shaping the city’s life. In this sense, the author claims that Indians’ acceptance of Spanish law and institutions did not suppose the loss of their culture—at least, not for a long time. Common native organizational methods and practices as well as a general indigenous identity grew from the recurring interactions that took place between semi-sedentary and non-sedentary Chichimec groups (naturales) who had lived in the area long before the conquest. Indians who came from different locations of the viceroyalty of New Spain (forasteros) also contributed to this process. According to Velasco Murillo, the discovery of productive silver veins in the mid-sixteenth century in Zacatecas guaranteed an important Spanish presence in the area, which led to the foundation of the city of the same name and the establishment of its cabildo de españoles (Spanish city council). The Spanish municipality assumed jurisdiction over the indigenous peoples already living in the area, which was probably the reason why naturales and forasteros acquired the status of vecinos (neighbors) of the city. As vecinos, Indios were as entitled to receive lands and build houses as was any Spaniard. In addition to vecinos’ sharing a vicinity with the colonizers, two other facts made the Indians of Zacatecas different from the rest of the indigenous inhabitants of New Spain. In the absence of traditions of organized labor and metallurgy among Chichimecs, free wage labor soon flourished and expanded among native workers. At the same time, mine owners, the Spanish city council, and royal authorities favored the migration of sedentary Indians from central and western Mexico. The council depended on migrant Indian labor to meet the long-term labor needs resulting from the elimination of the obligation to pay the tributos reales, a tax imposed on the conquered indigenous peoples of Mexico. This privilege of being released from taxes, together with the pepena or partida (an amount of silver that Indios were allowed to keep for themselves), was an important source of attraction of Indian labor to the area.

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