<P> The priest of Hispaniola and former encomendero Bartolomé de las Casas underwent a profound conversion after seeing the abuse of the native people . He dedicated his life to writing and lobbying to abolish the encomienda system, which he thought systematically enslaved the native people of the New World . Las Casas participated in an important debate, where he pushed for the enactment of the New Laws and an end to the encomienda system . The Laws of Burgos and the New Laws of the Indies failed in the face of colonial opposition and, in fact, the New Laws were postponed in the Viceroyalty of Peru . When Blasco Núñez Vela, the first viceroy of Peru, tried to enforce the New Laws, which provided for the gradual abolition of the encomienda, many of the encomenderos were unwilling to comply with them and revolted against him . </P> <P> Nevertheless, the encomienda system was generally replaced by the crown - managed repartimiento system throughout Spanish America after mid-century . Like the encomienda, the new repartimento did not include the attribution of land to anyone, rather only the allotment of native workers . But they were directly allotted to the crown, who, through a local crown official, would assign them to work for settlers for a set period of time, usually several weeks . The repartimiento was an attempt "to reduce the abuses of forced labour". As the number of natives declined and mining activities were replaced by agricultural activities in the seventeenth century, the hacienda, or large landed estates in which laborers were directly employed by the hacienda owners (hacendados), arose because land ownership became more profitable than acquisition of forced labor . </P> <P> The encomienda was strongly based on the encomendado's tribal identity . Mixed - race (Mestizo) individuals, for example, could not by law be subjected to the encomienda . This moved many Amerindians to deliberately seek to dilute their tribal identity and that of their descendants as a way for them to escape the service, by seeking intermarriage with people from different ethnicities, especially Spaniards or Creoles . In this way the encomienda somewhat weakened Amerindians' tribal identification and ethnicity, which in turn diminished the pool of available encomendados . </P>

How were some of the indigenous workers able to escape the encomienda system