por The columbian factory It was a way of exchanging goods between the Spanish Crown and its colonies in the new continent. It began as a commercial exchange whose name comes from Columbus or Colón.
Columbus was the Genoese navigator who, looking for the shortest route to reach India, came across the lands of what was later called the American continent.
The main reason why Europe was interested in the new lands was purely economic. For this reason, Columbus devoted himself to getting gold from his arrival. The first islands that explorers arrived at were Hispaniola (now the Dominican Republic and Haiti), Cuba, and Jamaica.
The settlers were friendly people and welcomed the explorers. Despite this, they did not tolerate the abuse or mistreatment of the newcomers, responding violently to them to defend their lands and their lives.
First period of the Columbian factory
At first, the Spanish offered the Tainos European artifacts and objects and exchanged them for gold.
This lasted as long as the Indians were willing to barter and enjoyed obtaining objects that were exotic and unknown to them. In addition, gold had no special value for the aborigines.
Immediately they began to take the aborigines to Europe deceived and profited from their sale as slaves in Europe.
All this happened during the first year after the arrival to the new lands, between the years 1493 and 1494.
Subjugation of Tainos
When the exchange no longer worked, the way the Spanish found to get gold was to subjugate the indigenous population.
They had to force the original population to pay tribute. Gold stocks were small and not enough for the invaders.
For this reason, in order to get the indigenous people to pay tribute with the metal, they had to organize a military structure that would contribute to the objective.
Creation of the military structure
Between the years 1496 and 1497 Bartolomé, the brother of Columbus, was in charge of the colonizing company.
With the aim of obtaining more resources, fortresses were built in the interior of the island with the forts Santo Tomás, Magdalena, Esperanza, Bonao and Concepción.
When each of these forts was founded, it immediately began to subdue the Taíno population.
Second period of the Columbian factory
They forced every Indian over the age of 14 to give a bell full of gold or an arroba of cotton.
It was the first form of slavery imposed on the aborigines. It was an instrument that destroyed the physical and moral integrity of the original inhabitants because there was never the amount of gold that the Spaniards believed.
Causes of failure
Forced labor, abuse, mistreatment and diseases brought from Europe, caused the number of Taínos to decrease from several hundred thousand in the year 1492, to just five hundred people in 1548.
In addition, due to the abuses, individual and mass suicides, insurrections, fleeing to the mountains and resistance to work to feed the Spaniards occurred.
For these reasons, the colonizers established other tax collection systems, such as the repartimiento and the encomienda.
References
R Cassa (1992) The Indians of the Antilles. Ed. Mapfre. Quito, Ecuador.
JP de Tudela (1954) The Colombian negotiation of the Indies. Indian Magazine. search.proquest.com