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In 1641, the rural guard of colonial Trujillo on the northern Peruvian coast, accompanied by "many Indians," attacked a cimarrón (fugitive slave) encampment led by two congos, Gabriel and Domingo.1 Indigenous men wished to end the fugitives' raids on their fields and families. Towards this end, they guided the Spanish lieutenant magistrate and his company to the cimarrón settlement hidden in the hills above the Santa Catalina valley.2 Indigenous leadersand commoners of the Mansiche reducción—or colonial indigenous village—who maintained lands in the Santa Catalina valley, testified that "negros cimarrones"(fugitive "blacks") had been assaulting local inhabitants and stealing from valley since 1633.3 Yet, Mansiche reducción had not registered a previous complaint indicating that fugitive slaves and indigenous people in Santa Catalina had not to this point been antagonistic. Rather, the cimarrones'leaders, Gabriel and Domingo, had a history of trading with the valley's indigenous farmers who [End Page 19] were members of the Mansiche reducción.4 So why, after years of tolerating fugitive slave activity in the Santa Catalina valley, did the indigenous villagers and leaders of Mansiche join the Spanish assault? How did the resistance of congos cimarrones against the impositions of slavery clash with the struggles of indigenous villagers and laborers against the demands of Spanish landholders? The participation of indigenous villagers in the Spanish entrada (military venture) against cimarrones and indigenous accusations of fugitive attacks provide an entry into two interdependent points regarding indigenous-"African" relations in rural environs, a critical yet understudied issue in colonial Spanish American history.5 First, the northern coastal case illuminates how African slaves complemented, but did not replace, indigenous laborers in commercial Andean rural economies. Historians have noted the decline of northern indigenous communities and the rise of African-descent populations, yet this article explore the interactions of these co-existent groups in the arid valleys of Peru's northern coast.6 Second, when indigenous communities and enslaved or fugitive Africans clashed over scarce resources, they did so according to their distinct locations in colonial law and their places in the local economy. As members of colonial reducciones, indigenous communities sought to defend their Crown-appointed rights against the expanding Spanish estates. As other scholars have noted, the Republic of the Indians offered a legal location for "Indians" to defend land and water resources and combat excessive colonial impositions.7 As the Crown mandated, indigenous people who paid tribute, performed required labor, and converted to Catholicism were vassals to the King and thus [End Page 20] deserved royal protection.8 In addition to their use of colonial courts and the Catholic Church, this article suggests that northern coastal indigenous communities survived the hacienda usurpations of resources by trading with enslaved Africans and their descendants. Indigenous farmers and communities also employed enslaved or fugitive Africans and criollos (born in the Americas) as itinerant laborers as another strategy for enduring Spanish confiscations of land and water. Likewise, enslaved Africans and free people of color supplemented their hacienda food rations by trading with indigenous neighbors in an ongoing development of mutually beneficial relationships. Thus, this article suggests that regardless of the demographic decline of indigenous populations or Spanish royal mandates to separate "Indians" from "negros," rural people developed local economic and labor practices that defied legal expectations and colonial impositions.9 Yet, when the northern coast experienced a series of environmental disasters, Spanish estate owners, indigenous communities, and enslaved Africans turned to distinct survival strategies. After an earthquake in 1619, the northern coastal valleys experienced severe flooding in 1624. The earthquake had destroyed the earthen walls of the irrigation canals, a critical infrastructure of the desert agriculture on the coastal plain.10 Without proper irrigation, the fields could flood with contaminated waters and could not be cultivated. Compounding the resulting labor deficiency in...
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