During the 16th century, the Crown controlled America through advances and governors, subject to control and discipline, and through the visitors of the Council of the Indies.
The advance guard was, in general, a captain who commanded by order of the king although, given the distance, he had discretionary powers.
Two Hispanic organizations soon took over the government of the colonies:the Casa de Contratación de Sevilla and the Council of the Indies. From the Peninsula they adopted general provisions, since the particular ones fell on the advanced ones.
Once all of America was conquered, the governors replaced the advanced ones and were responsible for the legal, administrative and political organization ever since.
The Viceroy
The most important position in the Spanish administration was held by the viceroy who acted as king. The first viceroy, Diego Colón, son of the Admiral, directed the colonization from Santo Domingo from 1509 to 1526, the year in which this viceroyalty disappeared, given the magnitude of Mexico.
viceroyalties of America
The Indies were organized into four viceroyalties:
Viceroyalty of New Spain
The Viceroyalty of New Spain (Mexico) stretched from the north of Guatemala to the west and midwest of the current United States, a huge area that was difficult to control, subdivided into three provinces and twelve municipalities.
Viceroyalty of Peru
The second in size and importance, the viceroyalty of Peru, extended along part of the American Pacific coast, capital in the city of Lima and with eight municipalities.
Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata
The third, the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, with its capital in Buenos Aires, occupied what is now the Southern Cone (Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay) and part of Bolivia.
Viceroyalty of New Granada
The fourth and last viceroyalty, New Granada, comprised the future countries of Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador, and was divided into eight provinces.
Captainships General
The captainships general , territories of minor importance, were governed by a captain general, whose authority was only surpassed by the viceroy.
There were four captaincies general:captaincy of Caracas (which in practice became independent from the Viceroyalty of New Granada), Captaincy of Guatemala (located to the south of the Viceroyalty of New Spain), Captaincy of Chile (very far from the Viceroyalty of Peru) and the Captainship of Cuba which included the Caribbean islands.
In those places where, due to certain circumstances, the authority of the viceroy or the captain general did not extend, it was exercised by the president of the Audiencia . Three presidencies are then created:Quito (between the viceroyalties of Peru and New Granada), Cuzco (south of Lima) and Charcas (in Bolivia).
The Royal Audience
The Crown establishes the Royal Audience for the performance of judicial, administrative and governmental activities.
A judicial body of the highest level, its power was above that of the Viceroyalty, until the Council of the Indies did not rule on matters of an important nature, in which its decision was unappealable.
The oldest court was created in Santo Domingo , from 1511, from which the Panama (1538) and Lima and Guatemala (1542) emerged. The last one, that of Bogotá, was established in the middle of the 16th century.
Its importance was fundamental, because in the presidencies, the governor's position was occupied by the president of the Court.
The hierarchy of these organisms was in accordance with the importance of the territory in which they were located. Thus, the audiences of the viceroyalties stood out, followed by the presidential ones and later, the subordinate and praetorial ones.
Of all of them, that of Santo Domingo enjoyed the greatest power, which actually served as an outpost of the Council of the Indies on the continent. Its structure was based on a president, several auditors, a prosecutor and a chief bailiff.
In general, the highest civil authority of the territory presided over the Hearing of his region, even if it was a merely formal and representative position, since in the Council he did not have a voice or a vote.
The Council of the Indies
The supreme body of administration and control of all of Spanish America , the Council of the Indies, was created in 1511, although until 1524 it did not have a coherent regulation. However, it was not until 1574 (during the reign of Felipe II, with the colonies already consolidated) that the Royal Ordinances were promulgated that definitively established the functions inherent to their competence, despite having already been contemplated in the Laws of the Indies.
His power emanated from the king and was exercised on his behalf, through his delegate, the President of the Council, a position that sometimes fell to an ecclesiastic.
The Council of the Indies included in a single institution the executive, legislative and judicial powers. He approved or rejected appointments to high positions, passed laws, influenced the appointment of high ecclesiastical prelates, etc. The officials of the colonial administration had to report to him and periodically inform him of the progress of their constituencies.
Structure
It had a vertical administrative structure made up of presidents, auditors, advisers and chroniclers; and in the technical part, by sailors, geographers, cartographers and other professionals related to overseas activities.
When a problem of difficult solution or any new conflictive situation of a certain magnitude arose, the Council sent a visitor as its highest representative; who, with power delegated by the king, could subject any person, even the viceroy, to the residence trials , in which anyone could be involved by complaint of a subject against an official, no matter how humble the accuser. The visitor had to listen to the reasons stated in the trial and instruct a case against the defendant, which was sent to the Council so that it could rule on the fairness of the claim. However, the residency trials never had any real effect, as the powerful were seldom targeted by the simple folk. Good and democratic initiative of Cardinal Cisneros that, like so many others in the colony, remained only on paper.
Abolition of the Council of the Indies
The long life of the Council underwent many transformations. With the enlightened administration of the Bourbons, the Council became, in the style of France, a Ministry of the Indies, abolished by the revolutionary Cortes of Cádiz in 1812, to resurface with the restoration of Fernando VII. Finally, it disappeared in 1834, shortly after the king's death, when Spain only had the Philippines, Cuba and Puerto Rico as remnants of its empire.
Municipal power
The Indian town councils enjoyed the greatest importance in the foundation, consolidation and later administration of the local territories of the colonies. These councils, called councils , performed mainly urban functions, since they were in charge of the location of the public and private buildings of the city, of its sewage, of the general cleaning of the town and of the defense when it was required.
The cabildo
The town hall or council was made up of the most influential and wealthy neighbors of the town . But over time, the positions went from representative to auctioned and awarded to the highest bidder.
The aldermen , officials who were to be elected by vote, could not function satisfactorily until after independence.
The meetings of the councils could adopt the character of closed or open. In the latter, important issues were addressed, and all the people of the town and surrounding areas attended them. Popular decisions were made in these open councils, since all the participants voted in them. In the closed ones, minor and daily matters were dealt with, lacking general repercussion.
The magistrate
The corregidor was the head of the councils , with a function similar to that of the current mayors, the highest local authority of the town. There came a time when all the positions were auctioned, as the Crown was in need of funds. This is how public positions were put up for auction, which became, over time, oligarchic. Only with independence was this undemocratic structure modified (given the prohibition that artisans, laborers and slaves form part of it), which was maintained throughout the colony and constituted a privilege.
The kings had arranged that all the land that had not been distributed, would remain as communal pasture or as vacant land and property of the community, administered through the councils. With this, they applied the policy of settlement of the Crown in the regions that it recovered from Islam during the Reconquest.
The ecclesiastical structure
The Church, spiritual standard-bearer of the Conquest, stood out in the defense of the Indian against the excesses of many conquerors and the encomienda system.
Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, a priest in Santo Domingo, Cuba and Mexico, received from the kings the title of Protector of the Indians and argued his thesis in multiple writings, in which he denounced the outrages committed. Today he is considered a precursor of anti-colonialism.
The Dominicans
Among the orders that most stood out in humanitarian work is that of the Dominicans, to which Las Casas, Fray Antonio de Montesinos (both dedicated to exercising control over the military hosts) and Cardinal Cisneros belonged.
Other orders and saints
Other orders, the Franciscans and Capuchins, carried out an extraordinary Christian and cultural policy.
As a legislator of the Indies we must mention the legal work of Father Francisco de Vitoria, co-author of the Laws of the Indies. The Catalan Franciscan friar Junípero Serra managed to evangelize all of California and establish the mission system, which still persists today.
The blacks found a defender in the Jesuit Fray Pedro Claver, whom the Church raised to the altars in 1887. The mulatto Fray Martín de Porres, also sanctified by the Church, stood out as a champion of the orphans and dispossessed children of Peru. Among other illustrious prelates, defenders of the disinherited, we have San Francisco Solano, Fray Juan de Zumárraga, the Mexican writer Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and Santa Rosa de Lima (the patron saint of America).
ChurchMissions
The missions of the Church in America followed two different paths. On the one hand, they dedicated themselves to propagating the Catholic religion among the Indians and, therefore, they contributed greatly to their literacy, turning their efforts in this work Dominicans, Franciscans and Capuchins alike.
The other, more complete and integrating aspect, was assumed by the Society of Jesus, whose members not only evangelized and taught the aboriginal people to read and write, but also organized, colonized, administered and incorporated land to agriculture, for use by the collecting Indian tribes.
The Jesuits and their community work
The Jesuits stood out in the so-called reductions , which in number of thirty-five founded for the Guarani Indians in Paraguay, southern Brazil and northern Argentina, organizing the work of the Indians as if they formed a medieval religious community, self-sufficient and dedicated to the work and glory of God. The parents became the only authorities in territories that stood out for their excellent economic results and their humanitarian spirit. The experiment was so successful that it aroused misgivings in the Court and in Carlos III who, for various reasons, ordered the expulsion of the Jesuits from the missions and reductions. The king seized the assets of the Jesuits in Spain and in the colonies, and forced them into exile. It is probable that some priests sowed ideas that were not in the interests of the Crown and, to a certain extent, they anticipated the independence winds that began to blow in the last third of the 18th century in some southern colonies.
The Parishes
The basic unit of the ecclesiastical organization in the Indies, similar to the chapter, was constituted by the parishes, under the spiritual tutelage of the parish priest, although subject to the superior ecclesiastical authority of the bishops and archbishops, who watched over the dioceses, which included several parishes. .
The Patronatos
To regulate the relations between the church and the State, intimately linked in those times, there were the Boards , whose members were appointed by the Crown, direct recipient of this privilege through the Vatican.
The inquisition
However, one aspect that veils the good work of the churches in America is the existence of the Court of the Holy Office, a religious police institution known as the Inquisition. This armed wing of the church gained an unusual boom from 1569, the year in which King Felipe II began to use it as one more coercive element of absolutism. In America he lived in two locations, one in Mexico and the other in Lima. The inquisitors dedicated themselves to persecuting Protestants, French Huguenots, Jews or crypto-Jews, and also some scandalous customs, such as bigamy and blasphemy.
Unlike the Peninsula, the Holy Court was not accepted in America, given the tolerance that the Spanish had to exercise in a society of various races, languages and religions. The processes occurred to a much lesser extent than in Spain during the second half of the 16th century.
The cultural contribution of the Church
In addition to the moral, social and human teaching that Christian doctrine implied, the teaching of literacy carried out by the Church manifested an elitist and selective nature, since the majority of poor Spanish peasants, encomienda Indians and black slaves continued to be illiterate.
Foundation of universities
Very soon, higher education broke out in America, as a result of the combined effort of the Crown and the Church, which exclusively managed the entire university cultural movement.
Mexico benefited from a University, founded by Royal Decree in 1551; in the same year it was followed by that of Lima. Thirteen years earlier, in 1538, Santo Domingo already had the University of Santo Tomás de Aquino, which followed the guidelines and models of Salamanca.
Foundation of schools
From the beginning of colonization, Dominican and Franciscan priests established primary schools for children and adults. In 1505, Fray Hernán Suárez began elementary education in the convent of the order of San Francisco, intended for the children of Spanish and noble Indians, especially in Peru and Mexico. He founded the Colegio de San Francisco in 1523 and, in 1525, the Colegio Imperial de la Santa Cruz, for caciques and notable Indians, in order to win them over to the cause of the emperor and Christianity, and make them valid interlocutors among the indigenous mass.
The culture
Civil society contributed greatly to the promotion of culture in America. The two most populous cities, Mexico and Lima, competed in cultural advances.
Mexico City has the honor of having been the first in America that, since 1535, had a printing press run by Viceroy Mendoza, with the consent of Emperor Carlos V. This achievement was followed by the construction, at the end of the century XVI, of the cathedral, which took almost three centuries to rise and remains intact in the center of Mexico City, which, at that time, was the largest in all of America, both in terms of the number of its inhabitants and the wealth of its buildings . Lima benefited from the printing press from 1583.
Writers of the Colony
In the late 16th and early 17th centuries, America began to have excellent writers. Among them are the Mexican nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (poetess and essayist), the Peruvian Inca Garcilaso de la Vega (famous for his Royal Comments, an admirable account of the conquest of Peru) and the Spanish-Mexican playwright Juan Ruiz de Alarcón. (The suspicious truth). Over time, this contribution will increase and enrich the Castilian language with countless turns and new words, and will give universality to a language that until the 16th century was limited only to Spain.