Portocarrero y Lasso de la Vega, Melchor

Melchor Portocarrero y Lasso de la Vega (the count of Monclova), viceroy of Peru (1689–1705). As successor to the controversial duke of Palata, Monclova sought to increase the revenue base and labor pool of the colony without increasing the colonists' resentment and Indian resistance. Monclova enacted various measures that reversed earlier decrees: He reduced the number of Indians assigned to mita service (forced labor) at the silver mines of Potosí, he encouraged the use of wage labor, and he issued a new labor code that superseded the Palata regulations. In spite of persistent problems with tax collection and mita quotas, Monclova also reaffirmed the primacy of the Toledo reducción (resettlement) system, avoiding a fundamental reorganization of Peru's Indian community. His reversal of the Palata reforms postponed but could not prevent the major labor crises of the eighteenth century.

See alsoNavarra y Rocaful, Melchor de; Repartimiento.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Jeffrey A. Cole, The Potosí Mita, 1573–1700: Compulsory Indian Labor in the Andes (1985).

Ann M. Wightman, Indigenous Migration and Social Change: The Forasteros of Cuzco, 1570–1720 (1990), esp. pp. 9-44.

Additional Bibliography

Fernández Ariza, Guadalupe. Literatura hispanoamericana del siglo XX: Historia y maravilla. Málaga, Spain: Universidad de Málaga, 2004.

Lavalle, J. A. and Domingo de Vivero. Galería de retratos de los gobernadores y virreyes del Perú (1532–1824). Barcelona, Spain: Tip. de la casa editorial Maucci, 1909.

Moreyra Paz Soldán, Manuel and Grover Antonio Espinoza Ruiz. Estudios históricos. Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Instituto Riva-Agüero, 1994–1995.

Torres Arancivia, Eduardo. Corte de virreyes: El entorno del poder en el Perú en el siglo XVII. Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Fondo Editorial, 2006.

                                       Ann M. Wightman