The indigenous communities then became a reservoir of labor for the colonial economy. In order to maintain it, restrictive laws were accumulated and a system of centralized control was established that kept the natives in a position of inferiority with respect to mobile phone number list all other social strata. This resulted in the old hierarchies within the indigenous communities losing their economic base. In fact,folk ), relatively closed corporate units under the impact of Spanish indigenista politics.
However, to the extent that they participated in the economic life of society, they were integrated into class society. Both the colonial system and class mobile phone number list relations underlay interethnic relations, albeit in different ways. In colonial terms, indigenous society as a whole faced colonial society. Relationships were defined in terms of ethnic discrimination, segregation, social inferiority, and economic subjection. Class relations, on the other mobile phone number list hand, were defined in terms of labor and property relations; therefore, it was not a matter of labor relations between two companies, but between specific sectors of the same company.
Colonial relations responded to mercantilism; class relations, to capitalism. The colonial system worked on two levels: between the metropolis mobile phone number list and the colony, and within the colony itself: «What Spain represented for the colony, it represented for the indigenous communities: a colonial metropolis»25. For this reason, the post-independence period did not transform the essence of relations between Indians and global society. Despite legal equality, several factors acted to maintain colonial relations, now transformed into "internal colonialism."