The encomienda system is a trusteeship labor system employed by the Spanish crown during the Spanish colonization of the Americas and the Philippines in order to consolidate their conquests.

Conquistadores are granted trusteeship over the indigenous people they conquer, in an expansion of familiar medieval feudal institutions, notably the commendation ceremony, which had been established in New Castile during the Reconquista.

The encomiendo system differs from the developed form of feudalism in that it does not entail any direct land tenure by the encomendero; ‘Indian’ lands are to remain in their possession, a right that is formally protected by the Crown of Castile because at the beginning of the Conquest most of the rights of administration in the new lands go to the Castilian Queen.

These are laws that the Crown attempts to impose in all of the Spanish colonies in the Americas and in the Philippines.

The maximum size of an encomienda is three hundred Amerindians, though it rarely reaches near to that number.

The encomenderos have the authorization to tax the people under their care and to summon them for labor, but they are not given juridical authority.

In return, the encomenderos are expected to maintain order through an established military and to provide teachings in Catholicism.

The little respect that the Europeans have for the ‘Indians’, however, helps corrupt the system rather quickly.

So, what was supposed to assist in the evangelization of the Natives and in the creation of a stable society becomes a blatant tool of oppression.

The Crown establishes the encomienda system in Hispaniola in May 1493.

While it reserves the right of revoking an encomienda from the hands of an unjust encomendero, it rarely does.In the papal bull Inter caetera (1493) the Borgia Pope Alexander VI grants the western newly found lands to the Castilian Crown, on the condition that it evangelize these new lands.The encomienda system is essential to the Spanish crown sustaining its control over North, Central and South America in the first decades after the conquest, because it is the first major organizational law instituted on a continent where disease, war and turmoil reign.

The encomienda system is succeeded by the crown-managed repartimiento and the privately-owned hacienda as land ownership becomes more profitable than acquisition of labor force.

The last encomiendas are abolished in 1791