Las márgenes de los pueblos de indios. Agregados, arrendatarios y soldados en el Tucumán colonial. Siglos XVIII y XIX.

Since the mid-eighteenth century, colonial sources on the “pueblos de indios” of Tucuman haved included passing references to "agregados" and "soldiers", the mobile population that was growing around them and could even outnumber the families of the “tributarios”. The agregados would usually pay rent to the “curaca” of the pueblo de indios. That way, they could contribute to the persistence of certain “reducciones” and to the consolidation of their system of authority. However, the same phenomenon can be read in less optimistic terms since, quite often, these agregados could become "intruders" in the “pueblos”. In addition to their different legal status, agregados and soldados used to be perceived as “mestizos”. Poor Spanish, mestizos and free Indians made up the most substantial component of this marginal population, an active factor of mixing in the villages. Thus, the condition of the agregados and soldados was marked by ambiguity: on the one hand, their rights (particularly their landowning rights) were more vulnerable than those of the “legitimate” Indians; while, on the other hand, they flaunted their social and ethnic superiority