THE LABOR REPARTIMIENTO Before the royal cedula arrived that would outlaw Indian enslavement for any reason or for any period, Governor Mendez Canzo was already laying plans to implement an alternative form of unfree labor, one that had proven useful in other colonies. Contemporaries had no one word for the labor levy. It appeared under a variety of preconquest names, from the "mita" of Peru to the "polo" of the Philippines. Historians, who sift the past for identifiable patterns, are the ones who have given the labor levy the general name of "repartimiento," fixing on the term that contemporaries used for the division or distribution of any commodity. The labor levy that Mendez Canzo implemented and got the accommodating Cacica Maria to endorse was an institution that had developed in the Indies as a response to the labor crises of the mid-16th century. The "new repartimiento," as McAlister [1984] calls it, was more conservative of the dwindling native population than the "old repartimiento" of encomiendas and personal service outlawed by the New Laws of 1542. Under the new and revised repartimiento administered by royal officials instead of private individuals, village authorities sent quotas of laborers in rotation to construct public works or perform other activities for the general welfare. They worked under regulated conditions and for a token jornal, usually applied against their tribute. By 1560, this system was the chief means by which Spaniards were supplied with Indian labor. While the "general welfare" was often broadly interpreted to include almost any productive activity, the new repartimiento did succeed in rationing what had become a scarce commodity and bringing it under governmental oversight. (Bushnell SS)