Amerindians who lived in the pueblos de indios had ownership over their land, but, deemed subjects of the Spanish Crown, they had to pay tribute.
[4] In practice, a conquistador, or later a Spanish settler or official, would be given and supervised a number of indigenous workers, who would labor in farms or mines, or in the case of the Philippines might also be assigned to the ship yards constructing the Manila galleons.
Adult males of the community whose turn it was to go were assembled by the jueces repartidores (the Amerindian governors of the pueblos de indios) and given to the Spanish official who would move them to a different area to do whatever labor was needed.
While there were attempts to guard against overwork, abuses of power and high quotas set by mine owners continued, leading to both depopulation and the system of indigenous men buying themselves out of the labor draft by paying their own curacas or employers.
If an Amerindian left their pueblo, they would look for wage labor; others signed contracts (asientos) for six months to a year, during which time the worker was required to be paid a salary, and provided living quarters as well as religious services.
This area was not greatly populated, and because of this, it was harder for the Spanish to enforce reducciones, meaning they could not create pueblos de indios to pull repartimiento labor from.