This article examines the experience of minors at the intersection of guardianship, domestic servitude (free and unfree labour), and punitive violence in Charcas (Bolivia) in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. The author proposes that the study of the role of punishment in the lives of working children and adolescents allows us to question how practices that occurred under the legal cloak of guardianship – in which many members of colonial society participated – were used as a hidden practice of domination that sought to reproduce servitude based on certain origins from an early age. In this context, punitive violence exercised by masters and lords would have been at the core of prevailing prejudices about ethnic and racial difference.

本文考察了 16 至 18 世纪查尔卡斯（玻利维亚）未成年人在监护、家庭奴役（自由和非自由劳动）和惩罚性暴力交汇处的经历。作者提出，对惩罚在工作儿童和青少年生活中的作用的研究使我们能够质疑在监护权的法律外衣下发生的做法——殖民社会的许多成员都参与其中——是如何被用作一种隐藏的做法从早年开始就试图根据某些起源来重现奴役的统治。在这种情况下，主人和领主实施的惩罚性暴力可能是普遍存在的关于种族和种族差异的偏见的核心。