Indians Pros And Cons Essay

The casta term “Indian” confined Andeans to this notion of being subjects, that were obedient and always paid tribute. The idea that Indians were poor and miserable creatures that needed protection first emerged in the sixteenth century. Indians that paid tribute and that served mita were the ones that received protections because it meant that they were in compliance with the Spanish crown. In return, the crown would make them vassals-- thus making Indians important members of the colonial society and distinguishing them from Africans. However, making Indians vassals also benefited the crown’s economic goals as they exploited Indians for labor. According to Rachel Sarah O’Toole, in her book Bound Lives: Africans, Indians, and the Making of Race in Colonial Peru, she
By claiming and reinforcing this idea that Indians needed protection from “predators”, it enabled the crown to keep Indians under their control as well as to establish a sense of indispensable-ness to them. Furthermore, the crown also deemed Africans as dangerous and disruptive to Indians as a way of creating distinctions between them-- reinforcing the “Indian” casta. This act, according to O’Toole, “evinces that secular and ecclesiastical officials constructed a danger for their own purposes, instead of being a danger truly faced by Andean people” (23). This illustrates that reinforcing this idea that Africans were some sort of danger to Indians was solely for the crown’s own benefit, rather than Indians merely being in danger. Not only that but, this notion also intensified the crown’s role into the indigenous communities. The crown assumed the role of protector when it came to Indians because it aligned with their purposes-- they needed to make Indians feel like the crown was essential to their role in society, and if they did that they would have means of keeping them under their