Political Styles in Latin America: Colonial Bureaucracy

After the overthrow of Native American states, the first governments in Latin America were colonial administrations set up by Spain and Portugal. The document that I would like you to read deals with important aspects of their political style. Many historians argue that the nature of colonial administration helped shape later political values and institutions in Latin America—even when colonial controls themselves were thrown off.

In theory, Spanish and Portuguese governmental systems concentrated power in the hands of their monarchs. Once a decision was made, it was supposedly executed by a hierarchy of officials descending from the king and his advisers in Europe to a vice-king, or viceroy, in the New World to local officials, or corregidores. Since local officials often lived far from centers of administration, they had the opportunity to exercise much freedom in the application of the law. But more than distance, the social and economic positions of local officials influenced the execution of their duties. Being often poor relatives of high churchmen or top government officials, they came to the New World to gain wealth and elevate their status. Furthermore, since the few lucrative jobs in mining and merchant activity were long ago occupied, and since manual labor, whether agricultural or artisan, was performed by the “mixed” majority, Spanish newcomers sought government positions as a way of entering the economy in a favorable capacity. Few alternatives for upward mobility existed, a condition that remained endemic and persists today. Local officeholding became a means of enrichment.

Just as the owners of haciendas and mines exploited the labor of natives and Africans, so the corregidores extorted money from native communities. They manipulated the tribute tax, which since 1650 was a head tax on adult male “Indians” paid in money. The document that I would like you to read describes the activities of a Corregidor in the viceroyalty of Peru in the 1740s (you can read it by clicking here). The account was written by two agents of the king sent specifically to find corruption. Potential exaggeration on the part of the king’s “spies” is lessened by the structure of the system. Since corregidores had to pay a “surety bond” before collecting the money, they were forced to make up what they already had pledged. The system invited extortion.

After reading the document, I would like you to consider and discuss the following: By what mechanisms did the corregidor profit from his office? What device did the king institute to detect fraud? How did the corregidor avoid censure and punishment? What kind of political heritage is suggested by this report on Peru for later Latin American rulers and also for the ruled? How does this political structure compare with other early modern states, like European national monarchies for example? Your thoughts…