Toledo, having taken charge of the government…
1571 CE
Toledo, having taken charge of the government of Peru and implemented many reforms, centralizes colonial governmental functions and lays the foundation for the future administration of the viceroyalty.
Establishing royal authority and Spanish dominance in the colony, he breaks the power of the encomienderos, reducing them to obedient servants of the crown.
He works hard to convert the indigenous people and provide them with religious training.
Adding new laws and royal decrees regarding the native peoples and their lands, he gathers them into villages, or reducciones, promulgating laws that apply to natives and Europeans alike.
He attempts to adapt the political and social structures of the Incas to life in the viceroyalty and reduces the old system of mita, or forced native labor.
Under his reforms, later to be known as the Toledo Reforms, no more than one seventh of the male population of a village can be conscripted, they cannot be forced to worked far from their native villages, and they are entitled to compensation for their labor.
Toledo assigns Sarmiento de Gamboa the task of writing a chronicle of pre-Hispanic times in Peru by compiling information given by some of the older survivors from that time.
Sarmiento's work is considered an invaluable source of information for that period.
Toledo sends the account to the King, in hopes that a museum would be founded.
He builds bridges and improves the safety of travel in the viceroyalty.
The first coins minted for Peru (and indeed for South America) appear between 1568 and 1570, circulating the silver from mines at Potosí around the world.