Daily Life In Colonial Latin America (29 page)

COMPONENTS OF THE SYSTEM

Spanish American Administrative Networks

Royal Government

The formal outlines of long-term Spanish rule in the
Americas began to emerge three decades after Columbus arrived in the Caribbean.
Following the conquest of Tenochtitlán, capital of the Aztec Empire, in 1521,
the Spanish crown established a Council of the Indies to oversee the affairs of
overseas realms that suddenly appeared worthy of sustained attention. The
addition of Peru a decade later, followed soon after by the discovery of
substantial deposits of silver in both of these new territorial acquisitions,
was accompanied by the definitive withdrawal of administrative concessions to
adelantados,
leaders of conquistador bands. Spain’s American possessions were now
divided into two vast administrative networks known as the viceroyalties of New
Spain and Peru, centered, respectively, on Mexico City and Lima. Two more
viceroyalties were created in the 18th century, New Granada and La Plata, each
representing territories formerly under Lima’s control and newly dynamic in an
economic sense. Each of these administrative entities was governed by a viceroy
sent from Spain to represent the king both practically and symbolically.
Smaller administrative regions called
audiencias,
governed by high
courts known by the same name, enjoyed a good deal of autonomy from vice-regal
authority in places like Central America and Chile. Everywhere, nevertheless,
power derived ultimately from the king and his Council of the Indies back in
Spain.

But distance and extended travel times often left effective
decision making in the hands of officials on the ground in the Americas, who
might set aside decrees they found inconvenient to enforce. This bureaucratic
stonewalling occurred frequently enough to be immortalized in the Spanish
phrase
obedezco pero no cumplo
(literally “I obey but I do not
fulfill/carry out”), which combined a declaration of ultimate loyalty to the
crown with a refusal to implement a particular royal dictate deemed by local
authorities to be unworkable and, therefore, contrary to the crown’s true
interests. Agents of the crown received pitifully low salaries and had to
purchase their offices at great cost, an innovation necessitated by the
profligate ways of King Philip II (1556–1598), whose government found itself
increasingly strapped for cash. It may be understandable therefore that
government bureaucrats viewed the procurement of a respectable income as a
higher priority than the dispensing of impartial royal justice. The
administrative post best exemplifying the conflicts of interest plaguing the
system was that of the
corregidor,
a regional administrator who was
directly responsible for translating the laws of Spain into the lives of most
local people. Designated as “protector” of the native population and upholder
of the vast legislation intended to help him in that task, the corregidor
generally derived substantial benefits, financial or otherwise, by doing
precisely the opposite.

Administering Native Communities

In governing the native population, the corregidor was
often assisted by descendants of pre-colonial nobilities who had managed to
sustain their leadership roles, if only at the local level, through
accommodation to Spanish rule. Known in New Spain as
caciques,
a term of
Caribbean origin, and in Peru as
kurakas,
these native lords, of which there
were still more than 2,000 in the Andes alone in 1754, had to balance Spanish
demands with the needs of their own people. They were expected above all to
ensure the fulfillment of the tribute and labor obligations that were crucial
to sustaining the colonial economy. Not surprisingly, members of the
colonial-era native nobility were most likely to survive and even prosper in
their new role by pleasing their Spanish superiors. In doing so, however, they
often became the primary targets of their own communities’ complaints. This
circumstance was of further benefit to Spaniards, who thereby managed to
displace local discontent with colonial rule onto the natives’ own
representatives. And should these individuals choose instead to resist the
dictates of Spanish officials, or simply be too slow to fulfill them, they
might be corrected with a public whipping or a stint in the local jail, if not
replaced entirely.

Another native political institution that persisted well
into the colonial era, although again in modified form, was a local political
unit known as the
calpulli
in central Mexico, the
chinamit
in
highland Guatemala, and the
ayllu
in the Andes. This unit, the basic
building block of pre-colonial political organization, had its origins in
clan-based control over specific lands or other resources wherein loyal clan
members were assigned use but not ownership rights over a portion of those
resources. While this form of political organization varied in its
characteristics and operation from place to place, it continued to provide a
strong sense of local community identity in addition to serving as a vehicle
for the administration and distribution of privileges and obligations relating
to labor, land, and tribute. In general, this clan-oriented sense of political
organization posed little threat to the larger colonial order. Groups
possessing it were as likely to engage in conflict with neighboring native
groups as with Spaniards over, say, access to land or water. In fact, colonial
authorities had as much to gain as to fear from native peoples who possessed a
strong sense of their own distinctiveness, although only as long as that sense
of distinct identity remained locally focused, dividing rather than uniting the
larger indigenous population.

Some of the deepest divisions within the native population
developed not between different ayllus or calpullis but between
originarios
(original
members of local communities) and
forasteros
(outsiders). The latter
were individuals who had fled their own villages for good, often out of a
desire to escape onerous tribute or labor obligations. They were frequently
blamed for all manner of crime or other social problems in the communities
where they took up residence. The real threat their existence posed to the
traditional social order was both less obvious and more profound. By escaping
burdensome obligations in their home villages, they were also cut off from
access to village lands and other benefits of communal organization. In order
to survive, they had to become wage laborers for Spaniards or in some other way
fill new occupational niches created by the economic changes that accompanied
colonialism. As such, they embodied the colonial economy’s disruption of
traditional divisions based on clan, community, or ethnicity.

The Cabildo and Town Planning

A different local political institution, this one of
Spanish origins, operated parallel to native-based forms of administration in
indigenous villages: the
cabildo
(municipal council). This institution
also existed in nonnative towns and cities, where it was generally the key
organ of creole participation in colonial government. For Spaniards, urban
living was a hallmark of civilization. Every one of the more than 900 towns and
cities they founded in the Americas between 1492 and 1809—some, like Lima, from
scratch and others, like Mexico City, on the foundations of existing native
settlements—required an orderly government to complement the spatial order
imposed on the colonial landscape by means of a new, “checkerboard” form of
city planning. That plan saw neighborhoods of decreasing prestige radiating
outward from a main square where Spanish power was visibly represented in both
a religious and a secular sense by a church and administrative structures of a
level of grandeur appropriate to the community’s prestige in the larger world.

The cabildos charged with governance of these carefully
laid out communities were each staffed by several
regidores
(municipal
councillors) and presided over by two
alcaldes
(municipal administrators).
In theory, these posts turned over regularly, although they were generally
monopolized by local notables, whose houses, in accordance with the colonial
urban plan, tended to be located just off the main square. Despite the local
prominence of its members, the cabildo was in fact severely limited in its
power, not to mention far from democratic. Nevertheless, it was the only form
of local political representation available in nonnative communities. An
important consequence of this circumstance was that the cabildo became the
focal point for creole political ambitions in the early 19th century once
Spain’s control over its mainland American possessions began to crumble in the
wake of Napoleon’s 1807 invasion of the Iberian Peninsula. That story is told in
the book’s conclusion.

Colonial Administration in Brazil

In Brazil, the
engenho
was in many ways a more
crucial center of power than the town, at least prior to the 18th-century urban
explosion in the mining fields of Minas Gerais. Moreover, as on the peripheries
of the Spanish Empire, like northern Mexico or Chile, there was no significant
stratum of native villages organized to provide labor and tribute to imperial
elites, as in New Spain and Peru. By the early 17th century, as native slavery
declined in importance on Brazilian sugar plantations and the Jesuit system of
aldeias
mostly disappeared, the surviving, largely semi-sedentary native population
tended to live beyond the boundaries of Portuguese coastal society. Nevertheless,
at the latter’s margins, in places like the inland southern settlement of São
Paulo, small numbers of people of mixed Portuguese and indigenous ancestry
known as
mamelucos
acted effectively to extend European control into the
interior. Although their culture was often more native than Iberian in origins,
the primary economic activity of the
Paulista
mamelucos was the supply
of native slaves to the coast. Despite the early shift to African labor, demand
for native slaves never disappeared, and Paulista and other slave-hunting
canoemen known as
bandeirantes
pursued them ever farther up Brazil’s
vast network of inland waterways in great expeditions called
monsoons.
Somewhat
ironically, it was these explorers of mixed ancestry who extended the reach of
Portuguese colonial administration, and “European discovery,” far into the
South American interior.

Royal Government in Brazil

As of 1549, Brazil had a formal system of royal government,
eventually directed by an Overseas Council in Lisbon, which bore many
similarities to the one existing in Spanish America. It was centered for two
centuries in Salvador da Bahia before being moved south in 1763 to Rio de
Janeiro, coastal outlet for the goldfields of Minas Gerais, another of the
fruits of inland exploration by Paulista bandeirantes. Meanwhile, the vast
Amazonian region in the north first gained recognition as deserving of special
administrative attention with the creation of a separate
Estado do Maranhão,
as opposed to the
Estado do Brasil,
as early as 1621. These
administrative regions were subdivided into smaller territories known as
captaincies, which technically fell under the jurisdiction of a royal governor,
later a viceroy, in Salvador. In practice, they were governed by
captains-general, mostly army officers, who often demonstrated a good deal of
independence from central control.

Municipal Government in Brazil

At the municipal level, the
senado da câmara
was the
rough equivalent of the Spanish American cabildo. It included a couple of
distinctive posts: a
juiz de fora,
a professional and presumably
disinterested royal magistrate; and a
juiz do povo,
charged with
representing the interests of artisans and other common folk. The post of juiz
do povo was abolished in the early 18th century, at least in Salvador, where
the sugar planters who dominated the city council successfully appealed for its
elimination. It seems they had been unable to neutralize opposition to their
interests by means of the bribes and other inducements regularly employed by
the wealthy and powerful in colonial Latin America in order to secure the
cooperation of officials at all levels. An alternative solution, evidently, was
to get rid of the post altogether.

NEGOTIATING THE SYSTEM

Law and Community Relations in Spanish
America

One way or another, a privileged elite of largely European
ancestry held most of the cards in the struggle over the terms of day-to-day
existence that unfolded under the umbrella of the administrative systems
outlined above. The Iberian monarchies, if sometimes genuinely concerned to protect
their subjects in the Americas in accordance with what they took to be their
Christian duty, were almost entirely dependent on the colonists of Iberian
origins to procure the fruits of empire. This objective tended to overrule all
others. Specifically, the drive to enhance royal revenues provided significant
leverage to the wealthier and more European sector whose financial assistance
was so badly needed. For example, the Spanish crown decided to allow for the
regularization of land titles after 1591 through a process known as
composición
de tierras,
which enabled Spanish colonists to obtain legal cover for their
prior infringement on the communal lands of native villages in return for
payment of a fee. Not surprisingly, this process encouraged further encroachment
on village lands, despite numerous laws against such actions. The beneficiaries
of the first round of composición correctly anticipated that the crown would
need their money again, and more rounds soon followed.