Directly translated from spanish, "Reducciones" means "reductions". These "reductions" were colonially designed settlement towns to relocate and reorganize the indigenous Indian population.
The reducciones were part of the larger reforms of Francisco de Toledo, the fifth viceroy of Peru, beginning in 1567[1]. Known as the Toledo reforms, the Spanish crown aimed to "aggrandize spanish power by consolidating viceregal rule and to revive the flow of Andean silver to the metropolitan treasury" [2]. In order to achieve these economic and political goals efficiently, Toledo attempted to relocate the scattered Indian population into settlements. Before the reducciones were built, Indians and in Peru and throughout colonial South America generally lived in small localized and dispersed villages, making it difficult to rule. Moreover, the purpose of this massive resettlement program "was to establish direct state control and facilitate the church's Christianization of the native population, while enhancing the collection of the tribute tax and the allocation of labor" [3]. By relocating the Indian population the Spanish system of forced tribute tax and forced labor, known as mita in Spanish, were easier to enforce.
The structural layout of the reducciones was based on a repeatable template as a Spanish-style rural town. Each settlement town was built in a rectangular or square grid formation. The reducciones were complete with a church with a stationed priest, a prison, a travelers lodge and a town square. They can best be described as a type of camp designed to model an ordered town.
The effect of the reducciones was tremendous. Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala recounts the effect of the reducciones in The First New Chronicle and Good Government. Prior to the resettlements, Poma describes the ways in which the Andean agricultural system thrived on benefitting from the microclimates up and down the Andean mountain range. Each microclimate and corresponding agricultural product contributed tot he health and well-being of the Indian population. However, the reductions destroyed this "'vertical' organization of farming" [4]. Not only were they torn from their established agricultural system, but also they were relocated in potentially completely different climate zones. Poma notes that the new sites were "sometimes set in damp lands that cause pestilence" [5]. Moreover, the settlement villages were occasionally positioned in natural disaster zones, prone to flooding or avalanche. Furthermore, the resettlements destroyed key kin and other familial relationships between villages. Therefore, the ironically, the "reductions" also reduced the indigenous population dramatically. The reducciones functioned to completely control and exploit the Indian population, under the guise of attempting to culturally transform and civilize the localized people.
Besides the settlements under the Toledo reforms, the Franciscans and the Jesuits also organized reductions, mainly in the Viceroyalty of Peru. It were these that eventually achieved the most development, success, and fame, especially the Jesuit Reductions of Paraguay. This was a result in a difference between the application of the reduction system between Viceroyalty of New Spain and the Viceroyalty of Peru. The work of Vasco de Quiroga—the Bishop of Michoacán who founded a number of hospital towns—and Francisco de Toledo, Count of Oropesa—the Viceroy of Peru who promoted the system and convinced the Jesuits to work within it—should be especially noted for their efforts to improve the system. Father Eusebio Kino worked for humane practices at the Spanish missions in the Sonoran Desert and in the forced labor conditions at the silver mines and Ranchos in Provincia Interna de Sonora y Sinaloa.
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