Peonage is any form of wage labor, financial exploitation, coercive economic practice, or policy in which the victim or a laborer (peon) has little control over employment or economic conditions. A Peon (English /ˈpiːɒn/, from the Spanish peón Spanish pronunciation: [peˈon]) is anyone subject to peonage. Peon and peonage existed both the colonial period and post-colonial period of Latin America, as well as the period after the end of slavery in the United States, when "Black Codes" were passed to retain African-American freedmen as labor through other means.
In Bolivia indigenous populations were subject to the Mit'a system during the rule of the Inca and Spanish empires. Later this was replaced by a peonage known as pongaje that lasted until the mid-20th century. In Chile peonage took the local form of inquilinaje and lasted until the Chilean land reform in the 1960s. In Ecuador a similar practise was that of the huasipungos.
