Reductions

The Spanish and Portuguese relocated, forcibly in many cases, indigenous inhabitants (Indians or Indios) of their colonies into urban settlements modeled on those in Spain and Portugal.

The Royal Academy of Spain defines reducción (reduction) as "a grouping into settlement of indigenous people for the purpose of evangelization and assimilation.

[2][3] Forced resettlements aimed to concentrate indigenous people into communities, facilitating civil and religious control over populations.

[5] Reductions could be either religious, established and administered by an order of the Roman Catholic church (especially the Jesuits), or secular, under the control of Spanish or Portuguese governmental authorities.

The largest and most enduring secular reductions were those imposed on the highland people of the former Inca Empire of Peru during the rule of Viceroy Francisco de Toledo (1569–1581).

[9] Moreover, the reduction of the Indians was intended to break down ethnic and kinship ties and detribalize the residents to create a generic, pan-Indian population, disregarding their numerous tribes and different cultures.

[11] Indian reductions in the Andes, mostly in present-day Peru and Bolivia, began on a large scale in 1570 during the rule of Viceroy Francisco de Toledo.

The authorities often adopted a policy of reductions for the resettlement of inhabitants from far-flung scattered barrios or barangays to move into a centralized cabecera (town/district capital), where a newly built church and an ayuntamiento (town hall) were situated.