Coerced or Voluntary? TheRepartimientoand Market Participation of Peasants in Late Colonial Oaxaca

This article challenges the traditional depiction of the late colonial repartimiento de comercio as a system of forced production and consumption. Employing a micro-economic analysis of the repartimiento's operation in Oaxaca, it argues that peasant participation in the alcaldes mayores' repartimientos was voluntary, not coerced, and that the repartimiento should be understood instead as a system of consumer and producer credit designed to operate under colonial conditions of high risk. Repartimiento credit was expensive, but it permitted peasants to participate more extensively in markets as consumers and producers. ‘Indians are capable of requesting the cargo of a flotilla, and [so] it is a vulgarity and a misunderstanding of the repartimiento to say that they are forced.’