The history of early Santiago de los Caballeros de Guatemala is often reduced to the defining moment of contact between Spaniards and natives. Santiago’s early history typically appears as a Manichean battle between the Spanish evildoers and the noble natives. This portrayal is not only simplistic but also exclusionary.

The role of Black slaves and even of indigenous peoples from outside Guatemala remains absent from images of the sixteenth century.¹ It would seem that, after the initial battles between indigenous peoples and European intruders, a colonial society miraculously burst from the ashes of vanquished native civilizations.² Consequently, the complexity of...

Santiago was built by commerce. Trade in native slaves, cacao, indigo, cattle hides, beef, and mutton, among other things, allowed the city to grow. Its political importance alone would not have guaranteed growth. One can imagine early Santiago with bustling barrio markets filled with ambulatory vendors, professional merchants selling from their stores and tents, women vending all manner of goods, and all intent on turning a profit.

To understand the origins of the city’s commerce, one needs first to focus on its elite mercantile specialists, themercaderes. Perhaps better than any other group, merchants understood the intricacies of regional and...

Santiago’s merchants were among the first Europeans in the region. Unlike nonspecialized traders, who participated in commercial dealings only intermittently, merchants dedicated themselves almost wholly to commerce. The city’s merchants, like their counterparts throughout Spanish America, possessed important economic connections and, in some cases, wealth that allowed the more successful among them grudging admittance into the local elite. Their riches also permitted them entry into powerful local institutions like the municipal council.

Merchants participated in wholesale activity while not ignoring retail sales and, consequently, were largely responsible for keeping the colony supplied with coveted European goods. They operated stores in...

Commerce pervaded all levels of society and all social groups. Indeed, many if not most of Santiago’s residents participated in commercial activity in some way or other. They were rarely labeled as professional merchants, but small-scale sales, often made from the home or away from the home, were a way that poor Spaniards, Blacks, people of mixed ethnicity, women, and men could earn a living in a world dominated by their social “betters.” Women and men operating at the lower levels of commerce lacked the social connections and wealth that otherwise would have allowed them better positions in society. It...

Santiago’s inhabitants depended on the fruitful lands that surrounded the city and those in nearby regions. Agricultural products, whether indigenous crops like cacao or introduced products like wheat, served as one of the foundations of the early colony’s economy. The sale of cattle, hogs, mutton, horses, and mules also helped the city with much-needed infusions of money. In some cases, agricultural production was such that Santiago’s farmers even supplied neighboring settlements whose production did not meet demand.

Santiago’s geographic position, landlocked in a valley surrounded by volcanoes, made transportation an urgent matter. Initially, Europeans relied ontamemes, but because of...

Despite their relatively small numbers, artisans made up a vital segment of Santiago’s population during the sixteenth century. The bulk were Spaniards, though native, African, and ethnically mixed individuals also worked in European crafts. Sexual differentiation also existed. Males predominated in the manual crafts; women were, of course, important, but primarily in gendered tasks such as baking.

Santiago boasted nearly the full gamut of European crafts (see Table 1). Those who worked with clothing, namely, tailors and cobblers, outnumbered those in other trades such as confectioners, while musicians, painters, sculptors, and watchmakers ranked among the rarest.¹

Taken as a whole,...

Literate professionals relied on the power of writing to attain economic success. Unlike other groups, professionals were highly educated, able to read and write in the demanding fluid but abstruse style of the time. Many of Santiago’s residents could barely sign their names, whereas all professionals produced smooth and flowing signatures, some with intricate and magnificent flourishes. Since they constituted part of an educated elite, few non-Spaniards could be found among them.¹ Indeed, only a handful of Portuguese operated within the group. Not a single case of a clearly identified ethnically mixed professional appeared in the sources I examined, however....

We do not know when the first Africans arrived in Guatemala. Records that concretely demonstrate their participation in the armed subjugation of native peoples have not surfaced. To Spaniards, Blacks represented an indispensable part of their culture. As such, they likely played an important role in the military phase of the initial contact between natives and Europeans.¹ Chroniclers like Bernal Díaz del Castillo hardly mention the participation of Africans in the conquest of Guatemala.² Yet evidence from other areas argues for their participation.³ Juan Bardales, a slave manumitted for his services during the fighting in Honduras, in particular, in the...

Despite a precipitous decline as a result of contact with Europeans, throughout the sixteenth century indigenous peoples collectively made up the largest group in what today constitutes modern Guatemala.¹ Natives also made up the majority in early Santiago. Variations in language and culture notwithstanding, Spaniards referred to all natives with the collective termindio.

There also existed diversity in the types of indigenous settlements. Three main types existed during the sixteenth century: the barrios that formed within Santiago; the milpas that surrounded the city; and towns, which existed throughout the region and contained the bulk of its indigenous population.² Santiago’s...

The need for indigenous laborers in Santiago and in agricultural and mining ventures both nearby and distant from the city brought about many forms of interaction. Initially, in Guatemala native labor was channeled mainly through the encomienda. Sometime later, repartimiento provided laborers for the colonial society.

Encomienda and repartimiento, despite their coercive nature, were quite distinct from the more nefarious, and much shorter-lived, institution of native slavery.¹ Native slaves who worked in domestic capacities came into close contact with Spaniards, much asnaboríasdid. Additionally, native slaves in the areas around Santiago functioned as auxiliaries on agricultural enterprises. They became...

Throughout this book, themes such as credit, trade, and interethnic interaction serve as a foundation for a social history of early Santiago. Commercial transactions, largely based on credit structures and undertaken by a plethora of diverse individuals, proved ubiquitous among Santiago’s population. Trade promoted interaction among people of different ethnic groups. To a large extent, only small sections of Santiago’s commercially active population have received attention from pioneering scholars, however.¹ Commerce at the lower ends, an essential component of early Santiago, has been mostly ignored.

Early Santiago’s society mirrored patterns and trends identified elsewhere. In many ways, this betrays a...