The Repartimiento () (Spanish, "distribution, partition, or division") was a colonial labor system imposed upon the Indigenous population of Spanish America and the Philippines. In concept, it was similar to other tribute-labor systems, such as the mit'a of the Inca Empire or the corvée of the Ancien Régime de France: Through the pueblos de indios, the Amerindians were drafted work for cycles of weeks, months, or years, on farms, in mines, in workshops (obrajes), and public projects.
Establishment of the repartimiento and decline of the encomienda
With the New Laws of 1542, the repartimiento was instated to substitute the encomienda system that had come to be seen as abusive and promoting of unethical behavior. The Spanish Crown aimed to remove control of the Indigenous population, now considered subjects of the Crown, from the hands of the encomenderos, who had become a politically influential and wealthy class, with the shift away from both the encomienda system and the enslavement of the native groups. under the draft labor system known as mita, influenced in part by a similar draft labor system the Inca used also called mit'a. The república de españoles "included Spaniards, who lived in Spanish cities and obeyed Spanish law," and the república de indios “included natives, who resided in native communities, where native law and native authorities (as long as they did not contradict Spanish norms) prevailed.”
How it worked
In practice, a conquistador, or later a Spanish settler or official, would be given and supervised a number of Indigenous workers, who would labor in farms or mines, or in the case of the Philippines might also be assigned to the ship yards constructing the Manila galleons. This would come from Hispanic miners or agriculturalists putting in a weekly application for labor with the district magistrate or a special judge who is in charge of repartimiento labor. Adult males of the community whose turn it was to go were assembled by the jueces reparations (the Amerindians governors of the pueblos de indios) and given to the Spanish official who would move them to a different area to do whatever labor was needed. Legally, these systems were not allowed to interfere with the Amerindians own survival, with only 7-10% of the adult male population allowed to be assigned at any time. These Amerindians were paid wages for their labor, which they could then use to pay tribute to the Crown.
Native men, working around 3 to 4 weeks a year, could also be put to work by the local government in public works such as harvests, mines, and infrastructure. Northern New Spain had the most silver mines, and because repartimiento labor was unreliable, wage labor was the dominant form of labor used in New Spain.
Capitalist development
The repartimiento, for the most part, replaced the encomienda throughout the Viceroyalty of New Spain by the beginning of the 17th century. In Peru, the mita labor system prevailed because the Inca Empire had already established a centralized tribute system, as well as a common identity, and already had experience with a rotational labor system from the Incan mit'a.