Alcaldes Mayores Research Articles

Indigenous Politics of Emancipatory Education in Bolivia: The Role of the Escuela-Ayllu of Warisata

This article analyzes how the Escuela-Ayllu of Warisata in Bolivia challenged the feudal system known as gamonalismo in the 1930s-1940s within the broader context of Indigenous struggle. It demonstrates that distinct currents of Indigenous education, including indigenismo, Caciques-Apoderados’ Centro Educativo de Aborígenes “Bartolomé de las Casas,” and Alcaldes Mayores Particulares’ escuelas particulares, informed the Escuela-Ayllu’s community-led education. It argues that Warisata’s community members turned the Escuela-Ayllu into a political space of communal democracy that undermined the rural order structured by internal colonialism.

Information and Revolt: The Use of Communications and the Exercise of Power in the Tuxtla Riot of 1693

In May 1693, the indian town of Tuxtla began a riot in which an Indian governor, the alcalde mayor of Chiapas, and his alguacil were killed. The local authorities had to find out about what had happened and coordinate their efforts to manage the calm and punishment of the mutineers, reporting it to the monarch subsequently. Starting from this particular case, in this paper we propose an approach to the reality of these communications and their role in the exercise of power. To do this, we will use as main sources the letters sent to the Consejo de Indias from American territory, whose content will allow us to reflect on the construction of the story about the events and their journey.

Science on Stage in Early Modern Spain

Science on Stage in Early Modern Spain

Los últimos corregidores y alcaldes mayores de Cataluña, 1823-1836

El estudio muestra los cambios en la administración territorial de Cataluña durante la crisis final del Antiguo Régimen y la monarquía absoluta. Se ofrecen algunos datos biográficos de sus titulares, los corregidores y alcaldes mayores, y se narran las vicisitudes del sistema en el dominio peninsular de la Monarquía Hispánica donde se registraron las mayores tensiones. Durante la década absolutista de 1823-1833, quedó patente la imposibilidad de mantener la antigua mezcla de justicia, administración y poder militar, por lo que la monarquía isabelina separaría enseguida esas funciones y adoptaría el modelo ideado en las Cortes de Cádiz y desarrollado en el Trienio constitucional de 1820-1823.

Augustinian Recollect History of Siquijor (1794-1898)

During the Spanish rule Siquijor Island was under the alcalde mayor of Bohol in 1864, after being part of Cebu for decades. The lone town of Siquijor was separated from Dumaguete and created into a parish in 1781. It was handed over to the Recollects in 1794 and in 1800 it had 5,000 inhabitants. The growth of Christianity finds its roots in the intense systematic missionary activity by Augustinian Recollects who established four more parishes. They constructed stone churches, belfries, kumbentos, roads, municipal edifices and even water depositories. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the towns underwent cholera and smallpox outbreaks, typhoons, Moro piratical raids, locust plagues and earthquakes (1886, 1897). During famine, the Recollects distributed corn among parishioners. Juan Félix de la Encarnación, author of the iconic Diccionario español bisaya, bisaya español, served Siquijor for thirty years. The huge kumbento of Lazi was completed by Toribio Sánchez in 1891.

La administracion señorial en la Galicia moderna

Los patrimonios de instituciones y casas rentistas tenían componentes materiales e inmateriales y, en la Edad Moderna, los señoríos eran centros de poder y control social, por cuanto sus titulares disponían de mecanismos para tejer un entramado de dependencias mediante el nombramiento de personas para cargos diversos, a través de la presentación de curas, recurriendo a la condonación o rebaja de deudas, y sosteniendo obras pías de carácter asistencial y educativo. Esta situación y la extraordinaria extensión del régimen señorial en Galicia, que afectaba al 90 por cien de los vecinos, confieren interés al conocimiento de la administración de los estados nobiliarios, caracterizada por contar en la cúpula con un grupo muy reducido de «profesionales», a la cabeza de los cuales estaba el alcalde mayor y administrador general, y en la base con una densa malla de dependientes ocupados en el gobierno político, justicia y hacienda, funciones «públicas» y «privadas» en ocasiones al cuidado de una misma persona. Esta red de oficiales se completaba con los curas de presentación, con cometidos informales, pero claves para la estrategia señorial. En la segunda mitad del XVIII se produjo una incipiente profesionalización de la administración de los estados señoriales, debido a la creciente presencia de abogados en las judicaturas locales, pero el decreto de abolición de señoríos de 1811 interrumpió este proceso y privó a la nobleza de una parte de sus fuentes de poder y control social.

El señorío, una razón de ser de los adelantamientos modernos

En el umbral del siglo XVI los Reyes Católicos reflotaron dos de los adelantamientos bajomedievales —el de Castilla y el de León— con el objetivo prioritario de patrullar en aguas señoriales. La realidad señorial que siempre había acompañado a los adelantamientos cobró, a partir de entonces, un especial protagonismo a los ojos de estos monarcas y a los de sus sucesores en el trono. Todos ellos, viendo crecer el «peso» del señorío, se sintieron urgidos a potenciar las alcaldías de adelantamiento diseñadas, en buena medida, como «contrapeso» El objeto de estas líneas no es tanto estudiar el «contrapeso», como constatar el «peso» que lo exigió, dejando constancia de la abultada presencia del señorío en uno de los tres adelantamientos modernos: el de Castilla-Burgos, y en un momento histórico muy concreto: el ocaso del reinado de Felipe II que consideraba a los alcaldes mayores de adelantamiento como un «freno» para los señores.

“Corrupted by Ambition”: Justice and Patronage in Imperial New Spain and Spain, 1650–1755

Abstract Renewed interest in the linkage between finance and the state has led historians to reexamine corruption. While there is scholarly consensus that the royal sale of appointments (beneficio) corrupted governance and weakened royal authority in a stagnant Spanish empire, the historical record suggests otherwise. Beneficio allowed social newcomers to buy their way into the judiciary. Traditional elites thought that these newcomers were innately corrupt and that making them judges violated distributive justice, or the fair awarding of entitlements by traditional notions of merit. Between 1650 and 1755, enlightened thinking challenged these precepts. The idea that corruption entailed violating royal laws in office gained strength. Performance mattered more, and accepting money for appointments instead of considering traditional merit was part of a utilitarian approach. Thus in 1675 absolutist governments in Madrid began selling appointments to alcaldes mayores in New Spain to gain oversight, appropriate resources, and weaken the viceroys, who lost half, if not more, of their patronage power. Beneficio therefore strengthened the monarchy and should be seen as part of yet another cycle of royal reforms beginning in the late seventeenth century.

Waskar Ari. Earth Politics: Religion, Decolonization, and Bolivia's Indigenous Intellectuals.

Waskar Ari's book narrates the history and dissemination of the practices and discourses (something he refers to as “earth politics”) of the Alcaldes Mayores Particulares (AMP), indigenous activists in Bolivia in the early twentieth century, in order to illustrate their “unique project of decolonization based on the reinterpretation and re-elaboration of colonial law” (p. 4). Using an innovative combination of archival and oral testimonials, Ari's book sheds light on a relatively unknown period in Bolivian political history. This history has often been elided from the more recent “indigenous movement literature” of the 1970s and 1980s. In fact, what Ari illustrates is that the work of the Taller de Historia Oral Andina, an important think-tank of Aymara scholarship that has received a lot of academic attention in recent years, was preceded and influenced by this much earlier history of indigenous organizing. Further, the AMP's ideas continue to resonate in contemporary Bolivia, but with a state-based “decolonial project” of autonomy and plurality. There are certainly limitations to this kind of a political project.

Earth politics: religion, decolonization, and Bolivia's indigenous intellectuals

Politics focuses on the lives of four indigenous activist-intellectuals in Bolivia, key leaders in the Alcaldes Mayores Particulares (AMP), a movement established to claim rights for indigenous education and reclaim indigenous lands from hacienda owners. The AMP leaders invented a discourse of decolonization, rooted in part in native religion, and used it to counter structures of internal colonialism, including the existing racial systems. Waskar Ari calls their social movement, practices, and discourse Earth Politics, both because of the political meaning that the AMP gave to the worship of the Aymara gods, and because the AMP emphasized the idea of the earth and the place of Indians on it. Depicting the social worlds and life work of the activists, Ari traverses Bolivia's political and social landscape from the 1920s into the early 1970s. He reveals the AMP's extensive geographic reach, genuine grassroots quality, and vibrant regional diversity. Ari had access to the private archives of indigenous families, and he collected oral histories, speaking with men and women who knew the AMP leaders. The resulting examination of Bolivian indigenous activism is one of unparalleled nuance and depth.

Al servicio de su majestad. Sentencias judiciales en la provincia de Colima en los albores del siglo XVII

Justice Administration was one of the fundamental tasks undertook in the Indies by the Spanish Empire. During Spain’s Old Regime “to rule” meant to “dispense justice” in accordance with the divine order. Local justice rested in the hands of alcaldes ordinarios and, at the provincial level, on those of the alcaldes mayores. Crimes were punished by public executions, exile, imprisonment and pecuniary penalties. In Seventeenth-Century Colima, sentencing dramas were an everyday occurrence. Homicides, burglaries, assaults with deadly weapons, resisting authorities and livestock rustling, among other crimes, were penalized by the competent authorities.

Conflict in Colonial Sonora: Indians, Priests, and Settlers

Conflict in Colonial Sonora: Indians, Priests, and Settlers

Los actores locales de la nación en la América Latina: Análisis estratégicos

This noteworthy volume gathers papers given at workshops held at the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla and the Colegio de Tlaxcala. Moving away from structuralist analyses, scholars have recovered an actor-centric view now honing in on all social and ethnic groups. Editor Evelyne Sanchez emphasizes in her careful introduction that methods such as microhistory have shed light on “actors who negotiate and do not submit absolutely to a normative system” (p. 7). Network analysis has usually explained boundaries and causes of group actions, argues French historian Michel Bertrand in an interesting twist, but it also elucidates the margins of autonomy of historical actors within or beyond these restrictions. He warns, however, of the pitfalls in recent works that have reverted to pure genealogy or misinterpreted mere contacts between actors for solidarity. This methodological thread loosely stitches together the following chapters.Frédérique Langue maintains that the Venezuelan creole elite largely forestalled the access of pardos (people of mixed African, European, or Indian descent) to the university and the militias. The pardos attained papers from the crown to legitimize their standing (gracias al sacar), which the creoles countered with the discourse of inferiority. Langue argues that the nonwhite groups or those of lower socioeconomic status were excluded from politics “because of or despite their activism” (p. 95). She counters some US scholars who currently emphasize the relative success of these groups. Meanwhile, Edgar Iván Mondragón Aguilera traces the tactics of a Portuguese soap maker in an early seventeenth-century Inquisition trial. While the Holy Office in New Spain withheld the names of accusers and the extent of their claims to probe the soap maker’s faith, the suspect pleaded his insufficient command of the Castilian tongue, for example, to ward off consequences.Lidia Gómez García, in a tightly researched piece, holds that the Bourbon Reforms undermined the authority of the altepetl governors of San Juan de los Llanos, Puebla, because of growing fiscal pressure, forced labor in tobacco cultivation, and militia recruitment. The community nonetheless supported the royalists during the independence period, because it opposed the dissolution of the local “reciprocity and the political economy of revolving power” (p. 128). After independence, political strongmen or caciques assumed the mediating role of the district officials (alcaldes mayores). Mariano Torres Bautista maintains this basso continuo while focusing on the Mexican Revolution. He argues that the indigenous communities did not seek to end poverty but to impose the redistribution of land, because they had been excluded from the nineteenth-century state-building project. Future research may build on these insights to explore the opportunities that individuals saw in these changes.Evelyne Sanchez analyzes the rational actors contending over the freedom of religion in the drafting of the 1857 Constitution. Since majority opinion was not with them, the liberals maintained the privileged position of the church, provided it did not collide with state authority. María de Lourdes Herrera Feria discusses collective and individual actors in the Mexican contributions to World’s Fairs. She shows that the Pueblan rural contributors showed greater cohesion than the urban ones, contrary to what one might expect from an industrialized city. Enrique Guillermo Muñoz demonstrates that President Ávila Camacho’s cronies ran the Puebla municipal water services until losing their influence. During the Miguel de la Madrid presidency, the state of Puebla occupied these posts. The author argues that the Ávila Camacho cacicazgo followed traditional politics as clientelism trumped the law, but embraced modern economics. Finally, the last piece again departs from the book’s focus on New Spain/Mexico. Gabriela Dalla Corte draws on a wide range of archives to show that Paraguay sold large swaths of the Chaco Boreal to foreign investors to pay down its debt. The rise of great landowners such as the Spaniard Carlos Casado del Alisal was generally seen as a favorable foreign influence modernizing the country.This collection of fine essays drawing on substantive archival research will interest all colonial and modern historians, especially since the rhythm of research pulses differently in France and Mexico than in the United States. The editor has credibly discussed the concept of local actors in the transition from the ancien régime to modernity. Another framework holding this book together, however, is the collaboration of the historians in Puebla and Tlaxcala in addition to the two French scholars with whom the editor most likely worked while obtaining her PhD in Toulouse. These contributions thus cover extensive ground both topically, temporally, and regionally. One could ask if a seventeenth-century Portuguese in the jaws of the Inquisition or a successful Spanish investor in the early twentieth-century Chaco were truly local actors of the nation. This scholarly cooperation has nonetheless produced solid essays whose quality more than offsets the volume’s loose internal structure.

Alcaldes mayores y subdelegados frente a la siembra clandestina de tabaco: Papantla 1767-1806

<span lang="ES" style="line-height: 150%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: ES-MX; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: ES; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;">Este trabajo tiene como objeto explorar las estrategias que permitieron la persistencia de la siembra clandestina de tabaco en Nueva España, en particular en la región de Papantla. Analizar las relaciones entre los alcaldes mayores, subdelegados y empleados del monopolio del tabaco, enfatizando la protección informal de la que gozó el cultivo ilegal de parte de las autoridades provinciales y examinar cuál pudo ser el destino del ahorro, así como de las ganancias obtenidas del tabaco ilegal, particularmente en el financiamiento de actividades comerciales y crediticias que llevaban a cabo alcaldes mayores y subdelegados, especialmente en el repartimiento de mercancías.</span>

A Fractured Pochgui: Local Factionalism in Eighteenth-Century Papantla

In August 1787 in Papantla, New Spain, native Totonacs rose in riot. While the captain of militia of a neighboring community described this as a case of natives rising up against Spaniards and justice generally, a close examination of the event reveals multiple divisions within the community. This study explores how factional interests in Papantla divided the community across racial lines. It particularly considers how one group of native leaders who opposed a corrupt alcalde mayor (Spanish magistrate) were able to foster his removal from office and how corresponding actions by the alcalde mayor's native supporters forced the removal of his successor. This uprising further demonstrates how native leaders were able to tap into community hostility over the Bourbon reforms and deploy that anger in the interests of their own political gain.

Between Indian Law and Qullasuyu Nationalism. Gregorio Titiriku and the Making of AMP Indigenous Activists, 1921-1964

In 1921, when hard-line Liberal regimes ended in Bolivia, Gregorio Titiriku, an Uru-Aymara Indian from the shores of lake Titikaka (La Paz), started 50 years of Indian intellectual activism among the Alcaldes Mayores Particulares (AMP), a 450 cell network of indigenous intellectuals. Titiriku struggled against internal colonialism and was a crucial participant in the making of AMP subaltern nationalism. Titiriku’s ideas became a crucial part of AMP discourse, known during this time as Indian Law. This discourse promoted the worship of Pachamama (mother earth) and Achachillas (the spirit of the grandparents in the high hills of the Andes). AMP discourse sought to rename the nation of Qullas (currently known as Aymara-Quechuas). Titiriku was especially good at creating ideas for mobilization among the AMP, such as qullasuyun wawapa (the children of the Qulla tribes) in order to promote "jaqi" pride (indigenous peoples pride), and bayeta camisas (people who dress in “bayeta” in order to promote an Indian dress-code as part of a politics of identity). These ideas provide us with a privileged field for understanding of the relationship between alternative modernities and public spheres. Titiriku thus used AMP discourse to contest segregation policies and to resist mainstream civilization projects. The particularities of Indian Law and its strategic nationalism reveal the existence of alternative discourses of modernity largely forgotten in Bolivia. The analysis of AMP discourse helps us understand the longstanding presence of struggle for autonomy and hegemonic projects in Bolivia and provides us with a better comprehension of how internal colonialism and public audiences interact historically.

Bajo el signo de la crisis: los alcaldes mayores de Barcelona durante el reinado de Carlos IV

A lo largo del siglo XVIII, los alcaldes mayores o tenientes de corregidor de Barcelona, impuestos por Felipe V en el Decreto de Nueva Planta (1716), constituyeron el componente civil más visible de un corregimiento tan ampliamente militarizado como éste. Desde 1783, sus dos letrados habían sido clasificados en varas de tercera (más antigua) y de segunda clase (más moderna) respectivamente. Fueron responsabilidades suyas asesorar, al gobernador militar y político de la plaza (corregidor), en materia de justicia ordinaria civil y criminal de primera instancia y presidir el ayuntamiento de regidores durante las ausencias de su superior. Hasta entonces, los dos alcaldes mayores habían desempeñado un importante papel como vehículos transmisores de las reformas ilustradas emprendidas por los Borbones. Pero durante el reinado de Carlos IV, el bajo perfil profesional presentado por algunos de estos letrados, unido a la contundente reacción militarista de los corregidores, resultado de las guerras contra la Francia revolucionaria, conllevaron cierto retroceso de su influencia política en Barcelona, la cual, con mucha paciencia, se había conseguido en reinados anteriores.

Justicia y gobierno: La Audiencia de Puerto Rico (1831–1861)

The Audiencia was an appellate high court established after 1511 by the Spanish monarchs in their American territories, where it became a powerful and influential institution. It had from three to six oidores (judges) whose main duty was to oversee all legal cases brought to them by minor courts or local officials. However, these Audiencias also had administrative and legislative powers whenever a viceroy, a captain general, or governor was absent from the territory or when these officials came in conflict with the crown. These officials, advised by counsel, presided over the Audiencias in their territories.Eighteen Audiencias were created in the Americas over 300 years. The last one was decreed for Puerto Rico in 1831 by King Ferdinand VII. Gerardo Carlo Altieri postulates that its creation was forced by the island’s increasing population and growing wealth and was due to Spain’s fear of losing Puerto Rico. Before 1831, all Puerto Rican legal problems and cases had been sent to be resolved by the Audiencias of Santo Domingo, Puerto Principe, Cuba, and Caracas.The Audiencia’s importance has been brilliantly studied in the general institutional histories of Charles Gibson, Clarence Henry Haring, and J. M. Ots y Capdequí. Other authors such as Alfonso García Gallo, Mark A. Burkholder and D. S. Chandler, J. H. Parry, Pilar Arregui Zamorano, Juan Matienzo, Feliciano Barrios Pintado, and Tomás Polanco Alcántara have written on specific Audiencias, and various other authors have written articles on those created in their countries. The themes researched are diverse: from the art of the Royal Audiencia at Quito to the government of the Audiencia in New Galicia or New Granada. It is accepted that the jurisdiction of each of the Audiencias in the continental lands served to delimit the territorial boundaries of the new independent countries of Spanish America. The Audiencia as the foremost legal institution in the New World has not been studied in the richness of its legal activities since the foundation of the first one.This useful book, originally created as Carlo’s doctoral dissertation at the University of Seville, presents ample research on the Audiencia of Puerto Rico. An introduction, nine chapters, conclusions, a comparative chronology, and a most valuable bibliography fill its 493 pages. It is a notable contribution to Puerto Rican, Caribbean, and Latin American legal and institutional history.Carlo analyses the importance that the Audiencia had for Puerto Rico and how it became more modernized and more localized than its older sisters in Spanish America. He examines the role of the captain general of the island and his relation to the court. He also studies how the new acuerdo (agreement) decreed by the crown in 1832 gave the presidency of the Audiencia to an official called regente, an act that impinged on the captain general’s power.Carlo discusses the new bureaucracy of oidores — judges brought to Puerto Rico from the lost Audiencias — and the numerous new officials and judges (alcaldes mayores) who were part of the new legal network in the island. He includes cases and decisions of the court on such issues as municipal relations, taxes, commerce, military cases, servitude, and slavery. Carlo uses excellent documentary evidence from major archives in Puerto Rico and Spain, which is supported by fine secondary material. This book helps the reader see the manifold actions carried out by the Puerto Rican Audiencia during its first 30 years, when a body of decisions and legal interpretations were made solely for the island. Law has been given scant attention in the study of colonial Latin America, and this work contributes to that knowledge.This valuable work, however, needed to lose its dissertation format and explain in a good glossary many legal terms taken from royal decrees and Spanish courts of previous centuries. It is a book readable mainly by legal historians of Spanish America but not by the general public. The writing is repetitive and confusing in many places (pp. 175–76) in the author’s effort to cover as many aspects as possible of the Audiencia’s activities. There are also long discussions on topics not specifically related to the Audiencia in an effort to bring out the “origins” of the cases seen or decisions by the court.Nonetheless, with his treatise, Gerardo Carlo Altieri opens anew a path for legal and institutional research of Spanish America’s colonial history and of Puerto Rico’s Spanish history.

Witnesses, Spatial Practices, And a Land Dispute in Colonial Oaxaca

At approximatety eight o'clock in the morning on the 22nd of June, 1719, Don Gaspar Agüero de los Reyes y San Pelayo, thealcalde mayor(Spanish magistrate) of the district of Villa Alta, Oaxaca, prepared to depart on horseback from the town square of the Zapotec pueblo of San Juan Juquila toward four disputed parcels of land. Standing with him in the square were the cabildo officers of San Juan Juquila and San Juan Tanetze, who had been engaged in a legal battle over the land for four years. Their lawyers stood with them. Juan Tirado, a district interpreter, and court witnesses (in lieu of an official notary) translated and notarized the proceedings. From his perch on the back of his horse, the alcalde mayor read the legal decision in the dispute, which the interpreter translated for the benefit of the Zapotec officials. The auxiliary judge, who rendered the decision in the case from the distance and comfort of the diocesan seat of Antequera, had ordered that the land in question should be divided equally between the two pueblos. The lawyer for the cabildo of Tanetze voiced his official protest and vowed to appeal the case to the Real Audiencia. The alcalde mayor registered the protest. Then, he addressed another group of men who had been waiting in the wings: Juan de Yllescas, Andrés Ramos, Juan Baptista, Pedro Hernandes, and Nicolas Santiago, all natives of the Zapotec pueblo of San Miguel Talea, and all of whom had testified in an earlierprobanzaon behalf of the pueblo of Juquila. Through his interpreter, the magistrate swore them in as witnesses and ordered them to guide the group to the disputed territory, identify the parcels of land and their borders, and determine where they should be divided. From this point on, the Zapotec witnesses took the lead and proceeded toward the disputed territory along the Camino Real, with their “faces pointing south.” In this manner, the legal ritual of boundary marking (amojonamiento) began.

Articulating Space: The Free-Colored Military Establishment in Colonial Mexico from the Conquest to Independence

At the close of the seventeenth century, even with Spain feeling the heat of war and with streams of pirate raids still punishing the coastlines of the crown's New World holdings, Spanish bureaucrats cringed when considering the prospect of using black troops to defend their possessions. Francisco de Seijas y Lobera, the former alcalde mayor (district governor) of Tacuba, a distinguished member of the Spanish gentry, a scientist, merchant, and a traveler, seemed to capture the spirit of the times in his fourteen-volume history of the Spanish kingdom. Written between 1702-1704 as a counseling guide for the new monarch, Philip V, Seijas dedicated an entire tome exclusively to Mexican affairs. Within, he described in detail the existing military landscape, the scope of enemy threats, the parameters of existing defenses, and most importantly, he offered a series of recommendations for improving the mechanisms for protecting the crown's borders. During times of emergency, Seijas suggested that Mexico could probably count upon the military services of 200,000 coastal and frontier defenders. His estimates tallied that a full 175,000 of these would be drawn from the negro, mulatto, pardo, Indian, and mestizo racial classes.