The colonial society and economy of Latin America were based on local communities of three principal types: Spanish towns, Indian villages, and landed estates or haciendas. Of these, it was the latter that provided the economic foundations for the aristocratic social system. This book tells how and why the Spaniards who settled the Peruvian coastal valleys originally came to establish their estates. Some of the questions it attempts to answer are: Why did the hacienda system arise in the second half of the sixteenth century? Was it primarily a product of Spanish history and culture? Was it an inevitable result of the conquest? What did it owe to Indian customs and traditions? To local geography? To economic and social conditions? Concentrating on seven major valleys of the central coast, the author investigates varying local conditions and circumstances as they appear in wills, bills of sale, contracts, and other notarial documents. The story begins with the indigenous coastal societies before the conquest and concludes with the consolidation of the hacienda system in the early seventeenth century.

"Hacienda y comunidad representaron los pilares fundamentales de la estructura agraria tradicional del Perú. En momentos en que se operan importantes cambios en tales instituciones y que se encuentra en aplicación la primera reforma agraria efectiva de la historia republicana, su análisis cobra plena actualidad. Como un aporte a los esfuerzos que se vienen realizando por dotar de una nueva fisonomía a nuestroagro, el Instituto de Estudios Peruanos ofrece una segunda edición de este volumen de su serie Perú Problema, dedicado al esclarecimiento de la situación de la estructura agraria nacional previa a la reforma de 1969"--Presentación.