page_title: Economic history of Colombia
section_title: Precolonial and colonial history
hierarchical_section_title: Economic history of Colombia / Precolonial and colonial history
caption_attribution_description: Indios segando en la minga. Acuarela del Obispo Martínez Compañón.
context_section_description: Indigenous peoples in Colombia predominantly cultivated maize and managed the Colombian climate and geography to develop planting technique using terraces. The indigenous also cultivated grass to use as roofs for their houses, and fique fiber to sew their clothing and artifacts. They also cultivated local fruits and vegetables like yuca and potato for their diet.  The indigenous peoples also were avid hunters and consumed processed local fauna.
  Colombia's economy during the colonial era was extractive and exploitative, relying heavily on forced native labor. Domestic industry was constrained during the colonial period because the audiencia was bound to Spain as part of a mercantile system. Under this arrangement, the colony functioned as the source of primary materials and the consumer of manufactured goods, a trade pattern that tended to enrich the metropolitan power at the expense of the colony.
  Because Spaniards came to the New World in search of quick riches in the form of precious metals and jewels, mining for these items became the pillar of the economy for much of the colonial period. Indeed, the extraction of precious metals—such as gold and copper—in the American colonies formed the basis of the crown's economy.
  Spain monopolized trade with the colonies. The crown limited authorization for intercontinental trade to Veracruz (in present-day Mexico), Nombre de Dios (in present-day Panama), and Cartagena de Indias. Direct trade with other colonies was prohibited; as a result, items from one colony had to be sent to Spain for reshipment to another colony. The crown also established the routes of transport and the number of ships allowed to trade in the colonies. Merchants involved in intercontinental trade were peninsular-born Spaniards. Finally, the crown circumscribed the type of merchandise that could be traded. The colony could export to Spain only precious metals, gold in particular, and some agricultural products. In return, Spain exported to the colonies most of the manufactured goods that the colony's elites needed, as well as the commodity of African slaves. Domestic products supplemented these items only to a minor degree. The types of goods traded were constrained by the relatively small size and number of ships, so that only high-value, low volume goods could turn a profit.
  Agriculture, which was limited in the 1500s to providing subsistence for colonial settlements and immediate consumption for workers in the mines, became a dynamic enterprise in the 1600s and replaced mining as the core of the Colombian economy by the 1700s. By the end of the 1700s, sugar and tobacco had become important export commodities. The growth in agriculture resulted in part from the increasing exhaustion of mineral and metal resources in the seventeenth century, which caused the crown to reorient its economic policy to stimulate the agricultural sector.
  As commercial agriculture became the foundation of the Colombian economy, labor was a key factor. Agricultural enterprises that had access to forced labor of the encomienda, a crown grant of indigenous tribute and labor to particular Spaniards, were initially favored. Ownership of land itself was less important than access to labor. As the crown restricted the encomienda as an institution, private ownership of land with the mobilization of wage labor emerged in the landed estate, or  hacienda. These landholdings were distinguishable by the manner in which the landholders obtained labor. Under a typical labor arrangement for an hacienda, indigenous laborers tilled the land a specified number of days per week or per year in exchange for access to small plots of land.
  The encomendero, or recipient of the encomienda, extended privileges to de facto control of the land designated in his grant. In effect, the encomendero was a deputy charged by the crown with responsibility for the support of the indigenous people and their moral and religious welfare. Assuming that the land and its inhabitants were entirely at its disposal, the monarchy envisioned the encomiendas as a means of admin
caption: Indigenous Colombians participating in a minca, c. 1791
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