Francisco Álvarez de Toledo (Oropesa, 10 July 1515 – Escalona, 21 April 1582), also known as The Viceroyal Solon, was a Spanish aristocrat and soldier of the Kingdom of Spain and the Spanish Empire’s fifth Viceroy of Peru. Often regarded as the "most important of Peru's viceroys", his administration is notable for its devastating impact on the American Indians of Peru.
Toledo brought stability to a tumultuous viceroyalty of Spain and enacted administrative policies which changed the character of Spanish colonial rule and the relationship between the American Indians of the Andes and their Spanish colonial overlords. Leading a policy of "reductions", Toledo forcibly relocated about 1.4 million American Indians of Peru and Bolivia into new settlements in order to enforce their Christianization, collect tributes and taxes, and gather American Indian labor to work in mines and other Spanish enterprises. This policy increased the demands on forced labor compared to that of mit'a in the Inca Empire. He also executed Túpac Amaru, the last Inca chief of the Neo-Inca State in Vilcabamba.
Toledo held the position of viceroy from November 30, 1569, until 1 May 1581, a total of eleven years and five months. He has been praised as the "supreme organizer" of the immense viceroyalty, giving it a legal structure and strengthening institutions by which the Spanish colony functioned for more than two hundred years. Scholar John Hemming described Toledo as "one of the world's great colonial administrators". He also described him as "honest and honorable but cold and unfeeling...autocratic" and "with the temperament of an ascetic."
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Birth and early years
Francisco Álvarez de Toledo was born on 15 July 1515 in Oropesa, Castile belonging to the noble family Álvarez de Toledo. He was the fourth and last child of Francisco Álvarez de Toledo y Pacheco, II Count of Oropesa, and María Figueroa y Toledo, eldest daughter of Gómez Suárez de Figueroa, II Count of Feria and María Álvarez de Toledo, daughter of the I Duke of Alba de Tormes. The death of his mother is speculated to have made him serious and taciturn. His mother's aunts, Mary and Elizabeth, were responsible for his upbringing.
At the age of eight he moved to the court of King Charles I of Spain, to serve as a page to the queen consorts Leonor and Isabel. He learned Latin, history, rhetoric and theology, fencing, music, dancing and courtly manners.
Serving the Emperor Charles V
Toledo entered the service of King Charles I (also called the Emperor Charles V), in 1530, at the age of fifteen. The king's Machiavelliananism approach and tendency to seek balance between his collaborators, would influence Toledo's future governmental work.
In 1535, when he was twenty, he was invested with the habit of a knight of the Order of Alcántara, a religious-military order. In 1551, he was given the command of Acebuchar by the Order.
His first military engagement was during the Conquest of Tunis (1535) in which imperial troops removed the Ottoman Turks from their outpost in North Africa. He also participated in the Italian War of 1536-1538 against France, which was triggered by Charles I defying Francis I by installing his son as regent of the Duchy of Milan. Following the signing of peace, Toledo returned to Spain and later went to Ghent, in Flanders. In 1541, he participated in the expedition to the Ottoman Algiers, a campaign which ended in failure due to bad weather. In the following years, he served on the diets, boards and councils, and participated in Spanish negotiations with England to start a new war against France.
He engaged with the issue of the legal status of Native Americans in Hispanic America by participating in the debate between Juan Ginés Sepúlveda and Bartolomé de las Casas in Valladolid, and was familiar with the New Laws of the Indies, issued by Charles I, which caused a stir in Peru.
He left Barcelona for Italy and Germany with the emperor during the fourth war against France in 1543. He participated in the battles of Gelderland and Düren.
In 1556, when Charles I abdicated, he accompanied him on his trip to the Monastery of Yuste in Spain. On November 12, they entered the castle in Jarandilla de la Vera, where they were hosted by Fernando Álvarez de Toledo y Figueroa, 4th Count of Oropesa. The stay lasted until February 3, 1557, when the preparations in Yuste were finished. Álvarez de Toledo stayed with Charles I at Yuste until his death in 1558.
The following years were spent by Álvarez de Toledo in activities related to the Order of Alcántara. Between 1558 and 1565 he remained in Rome, where he participated in the discussion and definition of the statutes of the Order, as attorney general.
Viceroy of Peru
Toledo became the fifth Viceroy of Peru (which included at the time Bolivia) in 1569. He was appointed viceroy by Philip II of Spain. Peru was the "jewel" of Spain's colonial empire. The conquest of the Inca Empire by Francisco Pizarro in 1532-1533 had given Spain enormous wealth, but Toledo inherited a chaotic situation. The problems facing Toledo included conflicts between the Spanish conquistadors and the secular and religious authorities in Peru. Corruption by colonial officials was endemic. The Peruvian population of indigenous people, Andeans, had declined by about 75 percent (from 10 million to 2.5 million) from 1520 to 1570 due to conflicts and epidemics of European diseases. A rump state of the Inca Empire still existed outside Spanish control in Vilcabamba. Most seriously, from the viewpoint of Spain, the production of silver, a major contributor to Spain's finances, was declining.
Until the arrival of Álvarez de Toledo as Viceroy, Spanish rule of the Andean population had largely been indirect. Except for Roman Catholic priests, Spaniards were forbidden from living among the Indians and the Spanish extracted tribute and labor from the Andean population through their indigenous leaders, the caciques or kurakas. Other than the often brutal demands of the Spanish colonists for labor and tribute, the Andean Indian culture remained largely unchanged from the days when the Incas ruled.
Toledo conceived and implemented an ambitious program to "put down neo-Inca insurrection, strengthen colonial government and legal institutions, indoctrinate the native populace in Catholicism, and shore up faltering revenue streams from mining".
General Inspection (Visita General)
Following the recommendations of the king, Álvarez de Toledo set out to visit the territories under his charge—a task never previously attempted due to the vast extent of the Viceroyalty of Peru and one that would undoubtedly prove arduous. This undertaking aimed to reshape the economy, territory, and Andean society within the Kingdoms of Peru and established the following objectives:
• Develop a new tax rate ledger.
• Strengthen the administration of justice to protect indigenous people.
• Gather indigenous populations into settlement towns.
Fulfilling his duties, he left Lima on October 22, 1570, accompanied by his secretary Álvaro Ruiz de Navamuel and other knowledgeable men, including cosmographer and historian Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa and naturalist Tomás Vásquez. Later joined by Juan Polo de Ondegardo, Juan de Matienzo, and the religious chronicler José de Acosta, these companions were general visitors who received orders and instructions aligned with these objectives and were empowered politically to intervene in judicial matters within regional locales to restore social peace following the turmoil of recent wars.
These officials were tasked with curbing excesses in tribute rates (which powerful encomenderos, indigenous chiefs, and other figures collected illegally) and resolving disputes over land rights and cases of abuse against commoners and indigenous people, mediating or arbitrating where necessary. More specifically, they were instructed to act against anyone who mistreated or wronged indigenous people:
"[…] in any way, to proceed against them, conducting the necessary investigations to uncover the truth, punishing the guilty, and adjudicating any indigenous lawsuits, whether newly initiated or pending before any courts."
Over the five-year inspection, Viceroy Álvarez de Toledo traveled an impressive 4,971 miles, which he divided into two stages. The first stage's route was Lima - Huarochirí - Jauja - Huamanga and Cusco. After two years in Cusco, he proceeded with the second stage, heading to Charcas Province along the route: Checacupe - Chucuito - Juli - La Paz - Potosí - La Plata. After an unfortunate expedition against the Chiriguanos in southeast Charcas, he returned to Lima via Arequipa and the sea.
Destruction of the Neo-Inca State
When Toledo arrived in Peru in 1569, a Neo-Inca state with an emperor, Titu Cusi, still existed outside Spanish rule in the remote jungle city of Vilcabamba. Toledo initially hoped to lure Titu Cusi and other Inca nobles to Spanish authority by offering them estates and riches, but in the course of his investigations on the inspection tour, his opinion hardened. Toledo learned that the Inca Empire, and the emperor and his remnant state was still venerated by many Andeans and the Inca religion was still widely practiced. He perceived the Neo-Inca state as a threat to Spanish rule and embarked on a campaign to discredit the legitimacy of the former Inca Empire, the Neo-Inca state, and the Inca religion.
In May 1571, Titu Cusi died suddenly. The Incas in Vilcabamba blamed a Catholic priest for his death and killed him. Tupac Amaru became the new emperor. The Incas killed several more Spaniards and Toledo sent a military expedition of 250 Spaniards and 2,000 Andeans to Vilcabamba to destroy the Neo-Inca state. The Spanish captured Tupac Amaru and other Inca nobles and after a brief trial Tupac was beheaded in Plaza de Armas of Cuzco on 24 September 1572. Toledo then continued his campaign to wipe out the heritage of the Incas by destroying religious relics and punishing other Inca nobles. "Toledo rightly saw that the Inca myth would be an inspiration to any rebellious Indians over the coming centuries...but the mystique of the Incas was too strong to be rooted out by the determined Viceroy." The Incas had lost all power, but "the sentimental memory of the imperial past continued to flourish."
Reorganizing Peru
Toledo accomplished three major tasks in the reorganization of the Viceroyalty of Peru: (1) the mandatory resettlement of Andeans into Spanish-style villages called reductions; (2) the organization of silver and other mines to obtain greater revenue; and (3) the imposition of a country-wide system of forced labor by Andeans.
Reductions were a feature of Spanish colonies throughout the Americas and in the Philippines. In Peru prior to Toledo's Viceroyalty, Andean Indians mostly lived in small, dispersed settlements. The scattered settlements made it difficult for Spanish colonial authorities to impose their rule, but the Andeans' livelihood and survival was often dependent upon their exploitation of several different environments at different elevations and characteristics, the so-called vertical archipelago. A primary motivation for Toledo's reductions "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." Toledo said the reductions would protect natives from "being exploited by local landowners and miners, harassed by the colonial judicial system, and deceived by a false religion." Spanish authorities perceived indigenous groups as volatile and prone to lawlessness and laziness if not controlled. Toledo's most important justification of the reductions was, as he told the king of Spain, that they would be located near the mines that were so important to Spanish finances.
Toledo's plans envisioned 840 reductions with a total population of about 1.4 million Andeans, an average of about 1,600 people per reduction. Each reduction resembled a Spanish town with a main plaza and square and a regular grid of streets. Even the design of the houses in the reduction was dictated. They were, for example, to be open to the street to "minimize the danger that too much privacy would lead to idolatry, drunkenness, and illicit sexual intercourse." A priest attended to the spiritual needs of the residents. The leadership of each reduction was the responsibility of a Spanish style government, but the most important official of the reduction was a kuraka, an indigenous leader who had the responsibility of collecting tribute and laborers for mining and other enterprises.
Toledo's reductions have been characterized as both mostly successful and as failures. Many towns in Peru and Bolivia trace their foundation to the creation of a reduction. However, concentrating the Andean population into reductions increased the incidence of disease and the population of the old Inca Empire continued to decline for at least another 50 years after Toledo. A report to the king of Spain in the 1580s said that "many of the Indians have died in the mines, in other labors, or from the recurrent epidemics; others have fled to escape their labor and tribute obligations."
Recall, return to Spain, imprisonment and death
In spite of this, Toledo was blamed for the viceregal books not being balanced and taxes not being sent back to Spain. He was recalled to Spain in 1581. There he was jailed until 1582, where he died of natural causes.