THE ECONOMICS AND CHANGES OF AMERICA (week 10)

Time after the arrival of the Spanish embassy, the country or continent had already been organized on a more organized way, such as the systems handled in Spain.

TAXES AND GOVERNMENT PAYMENTS

Every subject that had a ranch inside Colombia, had to pay money to the government, approximately the 5% of the ranch winnings. But also depended on the economic o f the country, because if the money in the country was good the taxes would be higher than before, and if the economy was low then the money would be less to pay. The money in the country changes so much because it depended almost completely on the products in the nature like coco, tobacco, cotton and sugar. If the weather wasn’t good enough and these things didn’t farmed, the production of money would be very low. As the precious stones mines had been excessively explored and used, this product was running low.
But in the xviii century new gold mines were found and these stones were once again exploded for the market.
Kind of as jobs, each ranch specialized in producing a product, for example the “ fierro abajo, fierro arriba” ranch specialize in farming “cacao”. And the government would also control how many “hectares” would be handled for each product. All this food and stones would be sold and exported back to Spain and sometimes would be exchanged with other things inside the country. After the coffee was discovered and until today it is one of the best selled products in the world. The coffee was a lot better than the “cocoa” that was the number 1 product selled in the country.

Also another way to keep the ranches on business was the collecting of cows, horses and farm animals.

THE PEOPLE AND SLAVES

The country was now divided into “criollos” , black people, Spanish and natives. Now not only the Spanish were the rich but also the “criollos” hjad gotten strength and were people with money. The “clero” was the one that collected the money of the properties and could be rather Spanish or “criollo”, which was an improvement now that before only royal Spanish men could be these collectors. The biggest ranches belonged to the Spaniards and government people, but also there where middle people with ranches, but the problem was the taxes were from 60 to 90% of these houses winings. So these people were all the time worried about paying them. At the end most of these selled their properties to the government.
Like the black slaves were revolting every day they decided to make a new rule which dictated, that any male black slave that marries a free woman could recover halve his freedom. This rule was really not true because the women were forced to marry for only months, in which the black people could live halve like normal people. And then the Spaniards trick was to force the woman to separate, and make as an excuse to the black people that they had their chance and blew it.
This was off course unfair for the black but they had to live with it. After all the African descendants passed a couple of months from living into one piece of wood with 20 other people to live in a house with over 10 rooms, to eat food wastes, to eat the best quality and variety of food.

In a short way of saying Colombia was now a business of exportation to Spain, the government that technically the only thing that did was steal money and make unfair rules. The slaves that were summated and the whites trying to get richer.