The Mercedes
The encomienda was granted by two lives, i.e., for the owner and their immediate heir. She was later declared vacant and granted to new benemerito. In practice, families occurred in their enjoyment for many generations. Further details can be found at Nieman Foundation, an internet resource. But you should not believe that la encomienda was delivered loud and clear to a Spanish; It was necessary for it to comply with certain obligations to Indians and to the State. Thus, the holder of an encomienda was obliged to give sustenance and dressed Indians when they were working in their mines. In villages should have a cleric for you adoctrinara and taught the catechism to Aboriginal people, thereby fulfilling the Evangelistic zeal of Spain; He was also forced to defend the territory where were their people, repaired bridges, build roads and finally you should attend, when necessary, to the war in defense of his King. But the hard work executed in mines, little rest, poor feeding them provided, the arrival of new diseases, uprooting them producing frequent shipments that were subjected to by the encomendero, ended by decimate them.
The demographic decline was accelerating more and more and more; the process of miscegenation that absorbed many of them, and the little importance of mining in the centuries that come, will eventually leave reduced old and large parcels to the miserrimo number of two, five or ten people. The Mercedes de Tierra, private ownership of land: the parcel did not constitute right of ownership over the land; This depended on another institution called the mercy of Earth, which consisted of the Governor, the cabildo or the King himself gave to a Spanish ownership of a portion of land, for joy and the domain and its descendants. The mercy of land, needed legal formalities for their enjoyment as the mensura, the inauguration and the real confirmation, was expressed in the cities and their surroundings in the form of plots and small farms, after that stays or haciendas were located.
