Macehuales and the Corporate Solution:

Colonial Secessions in Nahua Central Mexico

Stephen M. Perkins*
Oklahoma State University

This investigation of the legal separation, or secession,of indigenous subject

villages from municipal governments in the Tepeaca district of Puebla, Mexico
finds that early colonial (15211650) and late colonial (16511821) cases differed in their litigation and consequences. Early Spanish officials decided cases
based predominantly on pre-Hispanic tradition, only permitting separations
that preserved older indigenous social units. Bourbon officials of the late era,
in contrast, enabled an entirely new type of pueblo to develop. Indigenous
commoners (macehuales) used secessions to rupture relations with indigenous nobles (caciques) and local Spanish agriculturalists. The corporate
organization of new pueblos in Puebla was without pre-Hispanic precedent.
En este artculo, investigo la separacin legal, o secesin, de sujetos indgenas de sus municipios en el distrito de Tepeaca, Puebla, en Mxico. Ah,
los trmites coloniales tempranos (15211650) contrastaban con los trmites
coloniales tardos (16511821) tanto en su litigio como en sus consecuencias.
Los funcionarios espaoles del primer perodo resolvan los casos basndose
sobre todo en la tradicin prehispnica, y permitiendo tan slo separaciones
que preservaban las entidades sociales indgenas previamente existentes. En
contraste, los funcionarios borbones permitan el desarollo de un nuevo tipo
de pueblo. Los macehuales hacan uso del proceso de secesin para romper
sus relaciones con caciques y agricultores espaoles locales. La organizacin
corporativa de los pueblos nuevos en Puebla no tuvo precedente en la era
prehispnica.

*Acknowledgments: A Fulbright-Garca Robles Fellowship and a grant from Wenner-Gren

(Gr. 6023) funded research. I owe much to John Chance. I appreciate the advice of Rachel
Adler, Brian Larkin, and Blaire McPherson. Two reviewers comments improved and polished the final draft. All errors are mine.

Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos Vol. 21, Issue 2, Summer 2005, pages 277306. ISSN 0742-9797
electronic ISSN 1533-8320. 2005 by the Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please
direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of
California Presss Rights and Permissions website, at www.ucpress.edu/journals/rights.htm.

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On the morning of June 9, 1800, Nahuatl-speaking gaanes (laborers)

gathered at the chapel of the Hacienda of San Miguel Villanueva, located
in the Valley of Puebla. They watched a Spanish surveyor prepare to
measure a new townsite (or fundo legal). The act itself hardly merited
much excitement, but they must have been overjoyed: They had moved
one step closer to independence. Once landless peons, they had litigated
for over five years against their landlords, the Villanuevas, one of Pueblas
oldest and most prominent Spanish families, descendants of an original
conquistador. The gaanes had pooled their meager funds to hire a
lawyer. The lawyer convinced colonial officials that they possessed the
necessary attributesa church, a robust population, adequate natural
resourcesto incorporate as a pueblo. Over the objections of the Villanuevas attorney, the government agreed and ordered measurement of
a townsite on the haciendas lands.
The surveyor began at the church door. Walking west, he used a cord
measuring fifty varas (approximately forty-two meters) to mark off 600
varas (503 meters). He then repeated the procedure for each cardinal
direction. Upon completion, the townsite of San Sebastian Buenavista
measured some 250 acres.
A year later, responding to further entreaties by San Sebastians citizens, colonial officials separated the pueblo from the municipality of
Acatzingo to facilitate better government and more efficient collection
of tribute. Officials also ordered the establishment of a town council in
San Sebastian led by a locally elected gobernador (governor, or mayor).
Thus, on lands once belonging to the hacienda of San Miguel Villanueva, the pueblo of San Sebastian Buenavista emerged. Known today
as San Sebastian Villanueva, it remains a viable community with 4,372
inhabitants.1
Remarkably, legal challenges like this one happened frequently in
colonial Mexico (or New Spain). San Sebastian Buenavista began as an
hacienda. Other pueblos originated in the fission, or secession, of subject communities (sujetos) from their municipal head town (cabecera).
Disputes between head towns and subject towns frequently ended in
secession. But whether originating as an hacienda or a subject town the
result was often the same: designation as a pueblo, establishment of a
municipal council (cabildo), and measurement of corporate lands.
Historians and anthropologists commonly note these judicial cases
in regions they study (e.g., Garca Martnez 1987; Gibson 1964; Taylor
1. I found the case in Mexicos National Archive: Archivo General de la Nacin (hereafter AGN), Tierras, vol. 1296, exp. 6. Statistics on Mexicos demographic characteristics
come from the Instituto Nacional de Estadistica Geografa e Informtica (hereafter INEGI)
1991:3.

Perkins, Colonial Secessions in Nahua Central Mexico

279

1996). Yet few investigate in much depth the timing, processes, or consequences for local indigenous social organization and land tenure. James
Lockhart (1992) concludes that the cases represent a continuation of preHispanic processes carried forth into colonial years (see also Terraciano
2001). He proposes that the cellular organization of Nahua society, in
which larger sociopolitical units develop through the aggregation of
smaller units, predisposed smaller units to fission. Decentralization continued after the conquest, an embodiment of small-unit ambitions that
had existed since remote times (Lockhart 1992:57).
This article reports my archival study of colonial secession litigation
in the Tepeaca political district, located in Central Mexicos Valley of
Puebla.2 I will periodize the districts cases to argue that early colonial
(15211650) cases differed fundamentally from late colonial (16511821)
ones. My data lead me not to contradict, but to qualify Lockharts (1992)
argument. Many early cases did involve disputes and units of organization that predated colonial years. But later cases differed. First, they involved issues of the colonial present, not the pre-Hispanic past. Second,
they resulted in social units without pre-Hispanic roots. Cells did not so
much separate as disintegrate. Finally, the history of secessions in the
Castile region of Spain (Nader 1990), suggests a strong Old World legal
precedent for New Spains cases.
My investigation also addresses Eric Wolfs closed corporate peasant communitymodel. In a series of publications beginning in 1955, Wolf
proposed that modern indigenous community organization stemmed
not from isolation, but from capitalist integration. Wolf (1955:456457)
theorized that corporate communities developed in the seventeenthcentury era of indigenous depopulation and colonial economic depression. He argued that society-wide economic depression could weaken
external linkages between a colony and the wider world and disrupt or
weaken urban commerce and industry. In rural areas strong community
structures could flourish, meeting the limited demands of the larger
society for labor and products without surrendering local autonomy to
external middlemen or commercial firms. To guard against external intrusion, communities developed corporate controls: while individual
community members might use land and other resources for their own
purposes, the land could not be sold or transferred to outsiders. Community officials elected by the adult males of the community oversaw
and protected these insular, corporate privileges (see Wolf 1955, 1956,
1957, 1959, 1960).
2. As cited in the text and tables, the data derive from documents housed in Mexicos AGN, and in Pueblas State Notarial Archive, the Archivo General de Notaras del Estado de Puebla (hereafter AGNP).

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By explaining community closure to outsiders, corporate land

tenure, cultural traits, and community identity as reactions to wider political and economic fields, Wolf sought to identify the significant variables and processes underpinning these communities. Unfortunately, like
prominent historians of his day (e.g., Gibson 1964:165), he also assumed
that colonization compressed indigenous society into a single impoverished social and economic stratum ( Wolf 1959:212213). Consequently
he envisioned closed corporate peasant communities as largely egalitarian (but see Wolf 1986).
Later investigations demonstrate how indigenous noblestermed
caciques by the Spanishremained viable and very important in
many colonial, and even post-colonial, indigenous communities (Chance
1996, 2003; Garca Martnez 1987; Gruzinski 1989; Haskett 1991; Monaghan, Joyce, and Spores 2003; Van Young 1984). In this vein, Steve
Stern (1983) revamps Wolfs scenario to hypothesize how an eighteenthcentury struggle for solidarity between indigenous caciques and commoners actually led to organizations approximating the corporate community model (Stern 1983:39; see also Van Young 1984; Wolf 1986). Stern
(1982,1983) illustrates how pre-Hispanic class or ethnic distinctions
might influence New Spains indigenous community organization.
I will argue that secessions represent one manifestation of Sterns
struggle for solidarity. Later secessions, especially, led to communities
not unlike those first postulated by Wolf (1959) in his closed corporate
community model. The resulting pueblos operated outside the framework of older noble and commoner estates. Pueblo officers elected by
all adult males, not just caciques, managed pueblo lands and finances.
Pueblo townsites designated by Spanish officials allowed non-noble Indians (termed macehuales) to cultivate crops on pueblo lands not
owned by caciques. Such land tenure, at least in Puebla, was without
historical precedent. Overall, I will follow other investigators in suggesting that Wolfs model, while still inspirational, requires a revision
of the specific historical processes and timing underlying these communities origin.
I begin by discussing Pueblas pre-Hispanic institutions to better explain the regions post-conquest reorganization. I then discuss Spanish
ideas about community organization, before reviewing early colonial
cases from the Tepeaca political district. Over time Spanish ideas evolved
and I discuss the enactment of legislation designed to protect Indian communities and landholdings. I then turn to Tepeacas late colonial cases.
The surprising acceleration of secessions all over New Spain during these
years is reviewed in the context of the Bourbon reforms. I conclude by
suggesting that late colonial community processes, especially, must be
understood within New Spains wider political and economic conditions.

Perkins, Colonial Secessions in Nahua Central Mexico

281

Altepetl and Teccalli in Puebla

Located east across the volcanic divide from the more renowned Valley
of Mexico, Central Mexicos Valley of Puebla (hereafter Puebla) has a
long record of occupation.3 In pre-Hispanic and Spanish accounts of native society, city-states termed altepetl appear as the most important institutions. Within Pueblas altepetl, however, a pivotal institution was the
teccalli, or noble house. Each altepetl contained multiple teccalli, but
the number varied greatly. Altepetl like Tepeaca, Tecali, or Cuauhtinchan
might have ten or fewer teccalli, while a larger altepetl such as Huejotzingo or Tlaxcalas Ocotelulco could have forty or more (Anguiano
and Chapa 1976:142147; Chance 2000:488; Dyckerhoff and Prem
1976:172).4
Every noble and commoner identified with a particular teccalli. The
upper stratum of the teccalli consisted of relations of authority and reciprocity between the lord of a teccalli and his dependent nobles. A lord
granted nobles the right to receive labor and agricultural products from
specific commoner households. In return, nobles compensated him with
a share of their tribute.
The number of nobles, commoners, and land parcels in each teccalli likely correlated with its political influence. The ruler of a large and
dominant teccalli often served as king of the entire altepetl. Or multiple
teccalli rulers might jointly lead an altepetl, as with the four kings of Tepeaca at the time of the Spanish conquest. As segments comprising the
larger altepetl, each teccalli was a relatively independent social entity.
Population pressure, warfare among competing city-states and intermarriage likely welded fractious teccalli to one another, but new altepetl could also be created through their fissioning (Chance 1999:6; Olivera 1978:7374; Reyes Garca 1977:76118).5
3. The most important primary document for Pueblas pre-Hispanic history is the
Historia tolteca-chichimeca (Kirchhoff, Odena Gemes and Reyes Garca 1989). Analyses and summaries of the Historia are found in Martnez (1984b), Olivera (1978), and Reyes
Garca (1977).
4. For Nahuas (the Nahuatl-speaking peoples of Central Mexico), altepetl, teccalli
and similar organizational terms remain unmodified in plural form. Pluralization denotes
members (e.g., altepemeh).
5. I should note at this point that the term teccalli is absent from documents in the
Valley of Mexico. Adolph F. Bandelier (1878,1880) initiated investigation of Central Mexican social organization by focusing on the Valley of Mexicos calpulli organizations. Following his work, many scholars assumed that calpulliinitially conceptualized as localized lineages (Caso 1963; Kirchhoff 1954; Monzn 1949), then as territorial wards
(Carrasco 1971; Kellogg 1986; Offner 1983)organized all of Central Mexico. Investigators of Puebla and Tlaxcala, however, encounter virtually no documents discussing
calpulli (Carrasco 1976; Chance 2000; Martnez 1984b; Olivera 1978; Reyes Garca 1977).
Addressing this conundrum, Lockhart (1992:104108) divides Central Mexican social or-

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Before the Spanish conquest, teccalli were managed collectively,

even if hierarchically, by nobles and commoners. Commoners cultivated
teccalli lands in exchange for usufruct payments of surpluses to nobles.
On a stipulated basis, commoner households delivered a portion of their
harvest or other products to agents of nobles. Commoners do not appear to have been genealogically related to nobles. The Historia toltecachichimeca indicates that Nahua immigrants subdued local populations
as they established teccalli and altepetl (Kirchhoff, Odena Gemes and
Reyes Garca 1989). Even so, it appears that commoners remained in effective control of landincluding bequeathing it to heirsas long as
they remained tribute-paying members of the teccalli. Each teccalli,
therefore, can be understood as a type of corporate organization, albeit,
one with a pronounced division of labor based upon estate stratification
between nobles and commoners. Spanish colonialism may have actually
exacerbated the division between estates, leading to more antagonism
between caciques and macehuales than had existed prior (e.g., Stern
1983; Van Young 1984).
After conquest, Spanish officials dealt with Pueblas teccalli by
legally equating it with their own Iberian institution of mayorazgo. In
Spain, mayorazgos were officially entailed landed estates, in other words,
a property legally designated as inalienable and passed impartibly from
one noble to a designated heir (Clavero 1974). Spaniards labeled New
World estates held by caciques as cacicazgos. Treating teccalli as cacicazgos privatized them. A specific cacique owned each one (Chance
1996, 2000). But official Spanish recognition also gave the teccalli-turnedcacicazgo a legal existence in colonial society. The cacicazgo provided
caciques with a legal basis for their properties under Spanish rule.
Spanish Taxonomies
Just as colonial bureaucrats dealt with the teccalli by deeming it a cacicazgo, a legal entity akin to mayorazgo, they drew upon Spanish principles to categorize and structure altepetl. They employed two taxonomies. The first, a census taxonomy, had its basis in population size
and degree of urbanization. A large, well-developed settlement might be
designated a ciudad, or city; a medium-sized community a villa; a small,
independent settlement a pueblo. Each designation was official in that
ganization into a western zone (i.e., the Valley of Mexico), where the term teccalli is absent from early documents and calpulli organizations predominated, versus an eastern zone
(i.e., the Valley of Puebla and Tlaxcala), where teccalli flourished and calpulli remained
insignificant organizations found in but a few city-states.

Perkins, Colonial Secessions in Nahua Central Mexico

283

it had to be awarded by Spanish officials, often in response to a formal

petition from the community. As discussed below, this taxonomy
especially the pueblo designationbecame critically important for eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century indigenous communities. During
the initial years of Spanish rule, however, these designations carried a
measure of prestige, but little else in terms of real benefits (Gibson
1964:3233).
The second taxonomy dealt with the institutionalization of municipal administration and brought more tangible benefits and obligations.
In Puebla, as in the Valley of Mexico and elsewhere, Spanish officials followed pre-Hispanic precedent in designating the largest settlement of
an altepetl, with a proven line of indigenous rulers, as the cabecera, or
head town, of a municipality. The Spanish established a municipal council, or cabildo, in each cabecera; by the mid-sixteenth century it was led
by an indigenous gobernador, along with officials termed alcaldes, regidores, and other minor officials. As the council leader, the gobernador
administered justice in indigenous disputes within the municipality and
collected the tribute and labor demanded by Spanish authorities.
Smaller settlements located in the hinterlands of the old altepetl,
meanwhile, were designated as sujetos, or subject towns of the municipality.6 To be designated a cabecera came with a measure of power and
prestige, while the sujeto designation did not. In comparison with cabeceras, sujetos tended to be populated more by commoners, the macehuales. The early sixteenth-century effort to congregate isolated macehual households into nucleated sujeto settlements likely accentuated the
stratified settlement pattern between caciques living in cabeceras and
macehuales occupying sujetos (Chance 1996:489; Perkins 2000:6264,
132139).
Caciques might dominate a cabildo by preventing macehuales from
voting. They could then monopolize elected offices.7 Macehuales were
expected to rely on the gobernador to represent their interests and to
comply with his orders for tribute and labor. In this arrangement macehuales living in sujetos found themselves at a distinct disadvantage: to
6. As discussed below in the case of Acatzingo, the Spanish also occasionally assigned
one altepetl to another altepetl as its subject town.
7. Hildeberto Martnez (1984b:125165) chronicles the domination of teccalli nobles in Tepeacas early colonial municipal council (cabildo). For the neighboring Mixteca
Alta region of Oaxaca, Ronald Spores (1984:172173) documents cacique domination in
the electoral system, as does Robert Haskett (1991:2934) working in Cuernavaca, Morelos. In the Sierra Zapoteca of Oaxaca, John K. Chance (1989:141142) reports that macehuales in these small pueblos did participate, but always beginning in the lowest offices
of the cabildo, while caciques began in mid- to upper-level offices.

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make requests or air grievances they dealt with a cacique whose own
class or political interests potentially conflicted with their own. Thus,
in the relations between a cabecera and its sujetos the Spanish not only
created the infrastructure for the local level extraction of indigenous labor, products, and wealth, but also provided a municipal framework that
helped to preserve the indigenous social structure.8
Interestingly, while Spanish officials reorganized Central Mexicos
altepetl within the municipal cabecera-sujeto taxonomy, a movement
contrary to this sort of hierarchical organization was well underway in
the region of Castile, Spain. Helen Nader (1990) reveals that beginning
in the fifteenth century and becoming especially prominent under the
Hapsburg dynasty (15161700), Spanish monarchs increasingly generated revenue by allowing Castilian villages to secede from their ruling
towns or cities. For a stipulated price villagers could buy a township charter, establish an autonomous municipal council, and take greater control of political and judicial affairs within their own municipality. These
sales generated funds for a cash-starved monarchy. They also resolved
disputes between head towns and their subordinate villages, relationships fraught with tension in Spanish society. Over the course of the
Hapsburg dynasty, the political geography of Castile became a patchwork
of small municipalities. All reported directly to the national government.
With the ascension of Spains French Bourbons in 1700, the new dynasty
sought to reverse this process and institute provincial governing institutions. In the end, however, the Bourbons too resorted to further sales
of town liberty to gain revenue (Nader 1990:10).
Much as Spanish villages seceded from their head towns, secessions
began occurring in colonial New Spain. Early colonial secession cases
were often adjudicated based on the pre-Hispanic status of the petitioning community: in cases where a community proved its pre-Hispanic
status as an independent altepetl secession might be permitted, leading
to the replication of the cabecera-sujeto structure (i.e., a new cabecera
with its own sujetos). In contrast, in late colonial secession cases, the
first Spanish taxonomic system (ciudad-villa-pueblo) was used by plaintiffs to disrupt and dismantle the second one (cabecera-sujeto). Late colonial cases turned on whether indigenous commoners, living in a sujeto
or on a hacienda, could justify their designation as a pueblo with all the
rights inherent in this official title, and therefore achieve political and
economic separation from their cabecera. If so, the community could
establish its own autonomous cabildo. As an official pueblo it was then
entitled to an allotment of corporate-controlled landholdings, even if land
8. Lockhart (1992:5253) discusses how received ideas of the cabecera and sujeto
impacted Nahua thinking about the altepetl.

Perkins, Colonial Secessions in Nahua Central Mexico

285

had to be appropriated from adjacent Spanish haciendas or Indian

cabeceras.
Neither early nor late colonial cases suggest that subject communities bought their autonomy, as occurred in Castile. But the parade of cases
before the colonial government, the discourse used by Spanish lawyers
in proceedings, and the frequently favorable rulings by Spanish judges
during late colonial years suggest that Old and New World cases stemmed
from a common ruling philosophy and judicial tradition.
Early Colonial Secessions (15211650):
Litigating the Pre-Hispanic Legacy
At the time of the Spanish Conquest, the powerful altepetl of Tepeaca,
located in Puebla, shared a long and complex history with two nearby
altepetl: Acatzingo, located northeast some ten to twelve km., and Oztoticpac, located approximately five km. north.9 Nobles of several teccalli from nearby Cuauhtinchan founded Acatzingo in the fourteenth century. Mixteca-Popoloca immigrants settled Oztoticpac earlier in the
thirteenth century. In 1458, Tepeaca overthrew Cuauhtinchans regional domination and aggregated both Acatzingo and Oztoticpac into
its own altepetl. Both altepetl now owed tribute and fealty to Tepeaca,
but maintained their own leadership and teccalli. One ruler each from
Acatzingo and Oztoticpac were recognized as kings, and together with
two others drawn from Tepeaca, they constituted the four kings of Tepeacas dominion.
After the conquest, colonial officials designated Tepeaca as the head
town of the new Spanish-style municipality. As subject towns, Acatzingo
and Oztoticpac experienced even greater subordination than before.
Most obligations ultimately fell to the macehuales. Not only did they provide tribute and personal services to the caciques of their respective teccalli in Acatzingo or Oztoticpac, but they now fulfilled similar demands
to Tepeaca as the cabecera. Such demands strained the prosperity of the
teccalli in these communities and provided caciques and macehuales
alike with an incentive to form municipalities apart from Tepeaca. Even
so, the people of Oztoticpac apparently never challenged their subject
status and the community remained a small sujeto throughout the colonial era and beyond. Perhaps Oztoticpacs dwindling numbers made a
secession attempt unfeasible.10
9. Except where cited otherwise, Martnez (1984b:3749; 167184) provides the
sixteenth-century information concerning Tepeacas disputes.
10. To this day Santa Mara Oxtotipan remains a small settlement of 1,654 persons
within Tepeacas municipality (INEGI 1991:160).

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The caciques of Acatzingo, on the other hand, litigated vigorously

to escape Tepeacas dominion (Carrasco 1969; Reyes Garca 1988:1178;
Martnez 1984a:243247). Sometime after 1555, Acatzingo gained permission to elect its own gobernador, and shortly thereafter to obtain, if
only temporarily, the official designation of ciudad (Carrasco 1969:6).
Spanish officials resisted granting Acatzingo outright independence,
which Tepeaca lobbied against. Eventually, however, after more than a
century of litigation, Acatzingo finally did secure its independence from
Tepeaca in the mid-seventeenth century and became a head town in its
own right, taking with it a number of subject towns.
Acatzingos secession case echoes others of the same period. Head
towns and subject towns usually cited pre-Hispanic altepetl history to
argue their case: Traditions of local seoro [lordship] were evoked in
demonstration of cabecera rank, but Indian testimonies on the one side
and the other took opposite positions on what the pre-conquest status
had been (Gibson 1964:54). A well researched example of a colonial
municipality fragmenting into its former altepetl comes from the southern Valley of Mexico, where Rebecca Horn documents the division of
the head town of Coyoacan into its four original altepetl (Horn 1997:30
37). Kevin Terraciano reports similar conflicts in the Mixteca Alta of Oaxaca where legal cases centered on whether settlements housed dynastic
rulers prior to conquest. As the sixteenth-century litigation between Yanhuitlan and Tecomatlan attests, Spanish officials sought verdicts by attempting to reconstruct the complex pre-Hispanic relations between
these localities (Terraciano 2001:124130).11
Early Colonial Class Conflicts
At the same time, more radical class conflicts in Puebla threatened the
stability of both the indigenous teccalli and the Spanish cabecera-sujeto
hierarchy. In the Tepeaca district, Hildeberto Martnez (1984b:176
184) describes the growing sixteenth-century rift within teccalli between caciques and macehuales concerning land, tribute obligations

11. Bernardo Garca Martnez (1987:217221), working in the Sierra Norte de Puebla
(located north of the Valley of Puebla), discusses a slightly different situation in the conflict
between the cabecera Tlatlauquitepec and its sujeto Zacapoaxtla. While Zacapoaxtla appears not to have been a pre-Hispanic altepetl, it had been designated as the seat of a parish
in the mid-sixteenth century. In its secession case against Tlatlauquitepec, Zacapoaxtla used
this status to achieve its independence in 1580. Nevertheless, the resulting secession resembles others discussed here in that Zacapoaxtla became an autonomous cabecera, taking with it two sujetos formerly under Tlatlauquitepec.

Perkins, Colonial Secessions in Nahua Central Mexico

287

and municipal government control. In various sujetos, macehuales attempted to bypass caciques by paying royal tribute directly to the colonial government, claiming that caciques no longer rightfully controlled
teccalli lands. In rulings concerning Tepeaca in 1571 and again in 1581,
Spanish officials formally designated teccalli as cacicazgos and emphasized the right of particular teccalli caciques to collect macehual tribute (Martnez 1984a:447514). The rulings were consistent with colonial laws. The Recopilacin de leyes de los reynos de las Indias
([1681]1973) specifically mandated the preservation of caciques preHispanic right to cacicazgos and to the macehual labor and tribute embodied in them.12
In separate litigation between 1568 and 1571, macehuales of both
Tepeaca and Acatzingo sought access to the offices of municipal government. They undoubtedly appreciated the necessity of representation
in reducing the omnipotence of the gobernador and his fellow caciques.
The colonial government agreed. In 1571 it ordered that in Tepeaca in
the elections . . . of alcaldes, regidores, alguaciles, mayordomos, and other
municipal officials, half of the offices belong to the [caciques] and the
other half to the macehuales (AGNP, Tepeaca, paq.41, exp.28, fol. 2v.).
Yet, no evidence suggests that local Spanish officials ever carried out this
sweeping decree, especially for the highest offices of the municipal council. Tepeacas caciques, no doubt in league with local Spanish officials,
found a way to bypass the governments ruling and keep their fellow
macehuales disenfranchised.
These legal conflicts abated by the seventeenth century. As elsewhere in Mesoamerica, Pueblas indigenous population declined rapidly.
By 1650 epidemic disease reduced the population of Tepeaca and surrounding indigenous communities to one-fourth of their estimated size
in 1570 (Vollmer 1973).13 For Tepeaca a variety of sources indicate the
collapse of the citys indigenous population (Table 1). This holocaust
decreased the need for land among those who survived. In cases where
macehuales did petition for land, viceregal officials rejected them in favor of maintaining cacique land tenure. Officials viewed the preservation of the indigenous social structure as essential to maintaining economic and political stability (Garca Martnez 1987:182187, 215217;
Lockhart 1992:54).
12. See the section ttulo 7, libro 6, entitled De los caciques, in the aforementioned
Recopilacin (1973).
13. Vollmer (1973) utilizes tributary counts from 1560 and 1570 as a baseline for
measuring subsequent losses, but it is important to recognize that even by 1560 the indigenous population had already been drastically reduced from its pre-conquest size.

unspecified general area

pueblo (?)
pueblo
city (?)
municipality (?)
city
city
city
municipality
city
municipality

Unit of Analysis:

3.8b
4.9d

326 tributaries
457 familiesc
2,118
11,432 tributaries
16,967 personsf
49,089 personsg
5e

3.3a

Multiplier:

9,122 tributaries

30,000 hombres

Enumerated:
100,000
32,597
30,103
21,879
8,220
1,239
2,239
2,118
57,160
16,967
49,089

Estimated
Population:

Gerhard (1993:280)
Borah and Cook (1960: 147)
Paso y Troncoso (1940[15051818]:155)
Cook and Borah (1979:20)
Cook and Borah (1979:20)
AGN, Tierras, vol. 2730, exp. 1.
Villaseor y Snchez (1952 [174648]:248)
British Library, Mexico, vol. 225, fol. 4v.
Gerhard (1993:280)
I.N.E.G.I. (1991:219)
I.N.E.G.I. (1991:219)

Source:

widowers.
d Cook and Borah (1968:46).
e Cook and Borah (1968:40).
f without regard to ethnic or racial differences
g without regard to ethnic or racial differences

a Following Borah and Cook (1960:102).

b Following Cook and Borah (1979:13).
c Following Cook and Borah (1968:46), I reduced the 481 enumerated families by 5 percent (or approximately 24) to account for widows and

1520s
1548
1552
1568
1646
1702
1742
1785
1800
1990
1990

Year:

Table 1. Selected Estimates of Indigenous Population, Tepeaca, Puebla

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289

Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Townsite Legislation

While macehuales unsuccessfully petitioned for direct access to land and
government, Spanish colonial officials enacted statutes that would eventually serve as the legal basis for more successful litigation during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In a series of rulings (summarized
in Wood 1990:118), the Spanish colonial government delineated the minimum amount of land to be held by each Indian pueblo as its townsite
and the distance to be maintained between the townsite and Spanish enterprises such as haciendas, ranchos and ganados mayores (livestock
ranches) (Gibson 1964:292293; the original decrees are published in
Solano 1984:365367, 384385). By 1695, the government had ordered
a standardized 600 vara measurement beginning at a pueblos church, typically located in the center of the settlement. As in the opening case of
San Sebastian Buenavista, if a surveyor measured 600 varas outward from
a pueblos church in each of the four cardinal directions with the quadrants squared off, the total area of the townsite measured approximately
1,440,000 square varas, or about 250 acres ( Wood 1990:119123).
Paradoxically, Spanish bureaucrats repeatedly framed this legislation
in the idiom of pueblos (towns), rather than in the sixteenth-century
language of municipal cabeceras and sujetos (Gibson 1964:293; Wood
1984:183). Nevertheless, the legislation was consistent with language
used in the laws of the later Recopilacin de leyes de los reynos de las
Indias ([1681]1973), where more was said about the rights of pueblos
than those of cabeceras or sujetos. But what constituted a pueblo? Were
sujetos eligible for pueblo status and land rights? Or were only cabeceras
to be so designated? There existed no standard criteria (Lockhart
1992:56; Wood 1984:190). An example of this ambiguity is evident in
1567, when the government vaguely stated that 500 varas associated with
cabeceras were to be protected, as well the surrounding area of others
that requested and required it (Solano 1984:366). Whether done intentionally or not, the rulings contributed to the decline of the cabecerasujeto hierarchy. By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries lawyers representing various settlements seized upon the ambiguities concerning
pueblos to support their macehual clients.
Late Colonial Secessions (16511821):
Macehuales and the Corporate Solution
In comparison with earlier years, several significant changes occurred
in the late colonial period. First, Pueblas indigenous population began
to recover, much like the rest of Central Mexico. The tributary population in the political district of Tepeaca from 1626 until 1800 reflects this

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Table 2. Late Colonial Tributary Population, Political District

(Alcalda Mayor) of Tepeacaa
Year:
1626
1696
1720
1725
1730
1745
1750
1765
1775
1780
1785
1790
1800

Number of Tributaries:
4,138
7,189
10,017
13,391
13,938
9,885
9,393
9,236
9,863
10,162
10,162
11,081
11,431

a Source: 1626 and 1696 figures derive from Cuenya (1987:65); other figures derive
from Ouweneel (1991:573).

general trend, an overall recovery punctuated by epidemics and outmigration (Table 2).
Puebla remained heavily indigenous in its ethnic composition, second only to Oaxaca in the number of Indians per capita: In 1793, Spaniards and castas (individuals of mixed racial ancestry) constituted only
25 percent of Pueblas population, while the remaining 373,752 persons
were identified by Spanish enumerators as Indians (indios) (Thomson
1989:149). By 1777 nearly a quarter of the district of Tepeacas population resided on Spanish haciendas. Many haciendas possessed more
gaanes than the macehuales living in adjacent settlements (Garavaglia
and Grosso 1990:261).
Second, the attitude of Mexico Citys viceregal bureaucracy toward
caciques and macehuales began to change. With the colonys maturation, cacique privileges were increasingly challenged by officials of the
colonial government. Unlike their predecessors, late colonial officials felt
less compelled to rely on caciques as their primary liasons with indigenous society, or on the cabecera-sujeto structure to collect tribute and
recruit labor (Gibson 1964:5557; Lockhart 1992:54). Increasingly, they
viewed this settlement hierarchy as a liability that concentrated too much
power in the hands of gobernadoresusually caciquesopening the
door to tribute fraud and other abuses.
One way to break cacique dominion was to allow subject commu-

Perkins, Colonial Secessions in Nahua Central Mexico

291

nities to secede from their head town. As Danile Dehouve argues in

her investigation of Tlapa, Guerrero during the late eighteenth century,
the secession of villages was aimed at restraining the power of the Indian government by dividing it (1990:169). In these years it was more
common to create new pueblos than to establish new head towns. The
pueblo designation differed significantly from the cabecera-sujeto structure. A head town governed subject towns. A pueblo usually possessed
no subject towns at all. It remained within the municipality, but was politically and economically independent of the head town. By revamping
subject towns as autonomous pueblos, each with its own municipal
council, the political and economic power of the old head town and its
caciques was undercut, while tribute revenue moved more directly to
Spanish coffers. Thus local-level macehuales and high-level Spanish bureaucrats each achieved their different ends, often to the detriment of
cabeceras, caciques, or Spanish hacienda owners.
But what sort of settlement qualified as a verdadero pueblo, a true
town? In contrast with the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century case of
Acatzingo versus Tepeaca, officials in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries expressed little concern or interest in whether settlements had
been the seat of an altepetl ruler, or even had any nobles at all. Uninterested with historical tradition, and without a set list of objective requirements to determine if a settlement should be designated as a pueblo,
colonial officials evaluated late colonial pueblo requests based on variable attributes more related to the present or future of the settlement:
its population and potential for growth; its ability to remit tribute payments; the adequacy of its church for weekly mass; the suitability of its
citizens for holding public office; the distance from its cabecera and the
ruggedness of the intervening terrain; and the relationship of the sujeto
with its cabildo. A number of environmental variables, such as water
availability, climate, availability of wood, and amount of arable soils,
might also be discussed in determining a settlements suitability as a
pueblo.14 Lawyers hired by macehuales or gaanes touted the benefits
a community would enjoy if it achieved pueblo status.
Table 3 lists cases in Mexicos National Archive concerning the separation of sujetos from their cabecera. Macehuales often complained of
the treatment they received at the hands of the cabeceras gobernador
as the primary reason for their petition to fission. As head of the municipality, the gobernador was the indigenous authority with the most
political and economic leverage over sujetos. Macehuales, like those in
Santos Reyes (municipality of Tepeaca) and Santa Mara Ixtayucan (municipality of Nopaluca), accused gobernadores of abuse in matters of
14. Wood (1984:184212) discusses similar factors in the Valley of Toluca.

175257

1751, 1764 San Luis de los

Chochos
177073
San Sebastian
Cuaunopala
1781
Acajete
17941804 San Gernimo
Aljojuca
1798
Santa Mara Ixtayucan

Santos Reyes

175153

Sujeto(s):
San Simn
Yehualtepec
Santa Mara Actipan,
Santiago, San Juan
Acosaque

1751

Year(s):

separation approved

separation considered
separation approved; 2000 varas approved

Tepeaca
San Andrs
Chalchicomula
Nopaluca

Quecholac

separation approved; 600 varas already

possessed by San Luis
separation approved; 600 varas measured

separation rejected

Tlacotepecs cabildo complains

about Yehualtepec
separation approved; 600 varas
not considered

Municipal
Outcome:

Tlacotepec

Tepeaca

Acatzingo

Tlacotepec

Jurisdiction:

Table 3. Sujetos Petitioning for Designation as a Pueblo,

Political District (Alcalda Mayor) of Tepeaca

AGN, Indios, vol. 56, exp. 100;

vol. 56, exp. 107; vol. 56, exp.
108; vol. 56, exp. 109; vol. 56,
exp. 123; vol. 56, exp. 130; vol.
56, exp. 141; vol. 56, exp. 143.
AGN, Indios, vol. 56, exp. 129;
vol. 58, exp. 39; vol. 58, exp. 46.
AGN, Indios, vol. 56, exp. 112;
vol. 60, exp. 59; vol. 60, exp. 77.
AGN, Tierras, vol. 942, exp. 5;
vol. 1443, exp. 2.
AGN, Tierras, vol. 1056, exp. 7.
AGN, Indios, vol. 69, exp. 334; vol.
69, exp. 343; vol. 70, exp. 250.
AGN, Indios, vol. 71, exp. 15.

AGN, Tierras, vol. 56, exp. 112.

Source(s):

292
Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos

Perkins, Colonial Secessions in Nahua Central Mexico

293

royal tribute collection or labor requisition. They also accused gobernadores of colluding with local Spanish magistrates or priests. A gobernador could aid such officials by collecting illicit exactions or illegally
drafting laborers for personal use.
Such was the case in litigation involving the government of Acatzingo versus the allied sujetos of Santa Mara Actipan, Santiago, and San
Juan Acosaque. Previously associated with Acatzingos successful liberation from Tepeaca, by the mid-eighteenth century these three sujetos
began protesting their treatment by Acatzingo, much as Acatzingo decried its treatment by Tepeaca two centuries earlier. Unlike Acatzingos
campaign, macehuales headed these rebellious sujetos. Santa Mara Actipan, Santiago, and San Juan Acosaque were contiguous barrios (as
Acatzingos officials derisively referred to them).
By 1752, the sujetos macehuales had acquired a Spanish legal counsel. He accused Acatzingos gobernador, Don Domingo Gutirrez, of forcing individuals to purchase the local Spanish magistrates mules at inflated
prices (sometimes called the repartimiento de mulas). He also reported
that the gobernador demanded macehual labor for the official and priest
without due compensation. Moreover, the magistrate and gobernador had
recently imprisoned the sujetos elected leaders for failing to collect the
royal tribute. The leaders maintained that they did pay the tribute, but
because of past problems they had bypassed Acatzingos gobernador and
delivered it directly to their Spanish magistrate. Now the latter was backing Gobernador Gutirrez while the sujeto leaders languished in jail.
The lawyer for the sujetos recommended in June of 1752 that the
best solution was to separate them from Acatzingo. He suggested that
Santa Mara Actipan be designated the cabecera of the new municipality, with Santiago and San Juan Acosaque as its sujetos. The colonial government commissioned a local Spanish scribe and a priest to examine
this possibility. They also recommended separation. The priest, however,
warned that replicating the cabecera-sujeto hierarchy among the three
settlements would likely lead to similar problems. He advised that officers for the new government be drawn equally from all three sujetos.
Colonial officials agreed and designated all three as pueblos but with
one unified political body. Their decision to erect three new pueblos,
rather than one new municipality, reflects the declining interest in
cabecera-sujeto hierarchies during late colonial years. It satisfied the inhabitants of the sujetos, who could now take political control of their
community, bypassing the gobernador of Acatzingo in all matters, including tribute payments and labor drafts.15
15. Over time the three juxtaposed settlements became a single pueblo. Modern
Actipan de Morelos numbers some 4,328 inhabitants, the third largest pueblo in the modern municipality of Acatzingo (INEGI 1991:2).

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Table 4. Other Settlements Petitioning for an Allotment of 600 Varas or Larger,

Political District (Alcalda Mayor) of Tepeaca
Year(s):
17014

Settlement(s):
Tepeaca

Municipal
Jurisdiction:
Tepeaca

Outcome:

4 leagues
recommendeda
1794
San Agustn
San Agustn 600 varas approved;
del Palmar
del Palmar
feasibility of 1,800
varas to be investigated
1798, 1807 Santa Mara
Tepeaca
600 varas recommended;
Techachalco
feasibility of another 600
varas to be investigated
1804
Santa Margarita Tepeaca
600 varas approved;
Mazapiltepec
investigation is recommended concerning
other landsb
1807
Santa Mara
unknown
600 varas recommended
Tlachichuca
(subdelegacin de
Tepeaca)
181011
San Hiplito
San Hiplito 600 varas for each
Soltepec,
Soltepec
pueblo approved
Santa Margarita
Mazapiltepec,
and San Antonio
Xoquitzingo

Source(s):
AGN, Tierras, vol.
2730, exp. 1.
AGN, Tierras, vol.
2694, exp. 8.
AGN, Tierras, vol.
2725, exp. 24.
AGN, Tierras, vol.
1354, exp. 4.

AGN, Tierras, vol.

1384, exp. 4.

AGN, Tierras, vol.

1411, exp. 6.

a As an officially designated city, Tepeaca was entitled to 4 leagues of land. Perkins (2000:112117).
b As evident in this table, Santa Margarita Mazapiltepec reappears in 181011 along with several

other pueblos to again request a 600 vara allotment.

In this case, as in others, the late colonial enfranchisement of macehuales and former gaanes established a modern cargo system, like
those reported by ethnographers of contemporary Mesoamerica. In contrast to reserving offices for only a select few (i.e., caciques), modern
villagers encourage, even coerce, all men of the pueblo to serve in municipal government.16
Besides political autonomy, macehuales sought land (Tables 3 and
16. Frank Cancians (1965) description in Zinacantan, Chiapas, remains the definitive ethnographic analysis of the civil-religious cargo system, while John K. Chance and
William B. Taylor (1985) document the historical development of these systems during
the colonial and early independence eras.

Perkins, Colonial Secessions in Nahua Central Mexico

295

4). Pueblo status and townsites came to be highly associated with one
another. Stephanie Wood (1990:23), working in the Valley of Toluca, argues that the approximately 250 acre townsite must have been used for
more than simply houses, although its center did contain the pueblo.
As in Toluca, petitions by Tepeaca district pueblos repeatedly state the
agricultural importance of townsites for feeding its members (AGN, Tierras, vol. 1320, exp. 7, fols. 1r.-2r.; vol. 1443, exp. 2, fol. 68r.; vol. 1354,
exp. 4, fols. 3v.-4r.; vol. 2725, exp. 24, fols. 3r.-3v.). The townsite provided an important starting point for a pueblo, though whether the townsite land alone could support the entire population is difficult to reckon.
Macehuales or gaanes frequently petitioned for allotments in excess of
600 varas in cases from Puebla (AGN, Indios, vol. 70, exp. 250; AGN,
Tierras, vol. 1354, exp. 4, fols. 3r.-5r.; vol. 1411, exp. 6, fols. 4r.-4v.; vol.
2694, exp. 8, fols. 3v.-4r.; vol. 2725, exp. 24, fols. 3r.-5r.).
In late colonial Puebla, townsites had to be carved from a landscape
filled with haciendas, pueblos and cacicazgos. Even so, when no other
option existed, royal surveyers never hesitated to appropriate lands for
incorporation into a townsite. In 1770, for example, caciques of the government of Quecholac vigorously protested, but to no avail, the separation and establishment of San Sebastian Quacnopala as a pueblo, since
the townsite would come directly from Quecholacs official community
property (bienes de comunidad) (AGN, Tierras, vol. 1443, exp. 2, fol.
78r.). Likewise, as described in the opening case of San Sebastian Buenavista, when gaanes incorporated as a pueblo, their old hacienda invariably lost land and labor (see Table 5). Even in extreme situations
where Spanish lands had been legally entailed through the Spanish practice of mayorazgo, officials saw fit to suspend entailment and redistribute lands. In one case, the colonial government spoke of its right, even
its obligation, to override its own earlier grant of mayorazgo for the good
of the pueblo (AGN, Tierras, vol. 1296, exp. 6, fol. 7v.-8r.).
In the few late colonial cases that Charles Gibson reviews in the Valley of Mexico, he maintains a pessimistic view of the likelihood of gan
success since by this time many such populations had lived on haciendas for over a century (Gibson 1964:297). In contrast, Stephanie Wood,
in her later analysis from the neighboring Valley of Toluca, finds that the
larger, the older, and the more permanent the gan settlement on an
estate, the better its chances were for the successful pursuit of pueblo
status ( Wood 1992:396397). In cases from Tepeacas district, the issue was not whether a group of gaanes had been a community in the
pastgaanes often freely admitted that they and their ancestors had
been hacienda laborersbut whether the group had the size and accoutrements to exist as a viable pueblo.
In this regard the chapel of a hacienda, very often equal in size and

Capilla de Nuestra
Nuestra Seora de los
San Agustn
Seora de los Dolores Dolores de Cuesta Blanca del Palmar
Cuesta Blancab

pueblo created; 600

varas approved.
pueblo created; 600
varas measured

pueblo created; 600

varas measured

unknown

pueblo created;
600 varas measured

Outcome:

AGN, Tierras, vol. 1402, exp. 3

AGN, Tierras, vol. 1366, exp. 3;

AGN, Indios, vol. 69, exp. 265.
AGN, Indios, vol. 71, exp. 37;
vol. 71, exp. 79; vol. 71, exp.
106; AGN, General de Parte,
vol. 77, exp. 73; vol. 77, exp.
91; AGN, Tierras, vol. 1296,
exp. 6.
AGN, Tierras, vol. 1320, exp. 7

AGN, Tierras, vol. 1091, exp. 5;

AGN Indios, vol. 71, exp. 181.

Source(s):

a This case involved the aggregation of gaanes from the following haciendas: Seora Santa Ana; Seor San Juan de Ojo de Agua; and San Francisco
las Minillas.
b This chapel was located on lands entailed to the Spanish noble, the Conde de Orizaba.

Tecamachalco

18091818

San Juan

La Asumpcin

Nopaluca

Municipal
Jurisdic-tion:

18031805

San Jos de Chiapa

Proposed
Pueblo Name:

17991803

Santuario de
Seor San Jos
Chiapaa
San Pablo

Hacienda(s):

Santsima Trinidad de
Quecholac
Tecolotepetitlan
San Miguel Villanueva San Sebastian Buenavista Acatzingo

17901805

17831809

Years:

Table 5. Hacienda Gaanes Petitioning for Designation as a Pueblo, District (Alcalda Mayor) of Tepeaca

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297

grandeur to a regular pueblos church, could serve as the nucleus for a

proposed pueblo. That gaanes would rally around a chapel is logical
since royal decrees mandated that surveyors begin measuring townsites
at the church of a pueblo. Thus, as in the opening case of San Sebastian
Buenavista, the chapel served not only as the figurative heart of the new
pueblo, but the actual axis for its townsite.
As alluded to earlier, the late colonial arguments presented by Spanish lawyers on behalf of Indian clients were strikingly similar in content
and style to those made by lawyers for villagers in Castile who sought
liberation from head towns (Nader 1990:125, 130, 133). As in Castile,
lawyers representing clients in Tepeaca always made sure to convey the
colonial governments vested interest in the proposed pueblo creation,
emphasizing the viability of the settlement as a tribute-paying entity. In
the case of a sujeto, they also usually outlined the improved religious instruction that would follow from holding mass in the settlements own
church, rather than forcing the populace to arduously journey to the
cabecera each week. On both sides of the Atlantic, it appears, Spanish
lawyers appealed for justice using the same well-rehearsed lines. Indians retained Spanish lawyers to articulate this philosophy in view of their
local circumstances.
Placed in this larger context, the arguments made by indigenous
communities appear less original and more formulaic, more a construction by lawyers than an original discourse set forth by the natives themselves. Even so, the issues raised in the litigation, though framed in preconceived categories, still conveyed particular local facts and issues that
shed light on macehual motivations. All indications suggest that the impetus for such cases came from the macehuales themselves.
Secessions and the Bourbon reforms
Of the nineteen cases of macehual and gan secessions investigated in
the Tepeaca district of Puebla, fifteen took place between 1764 and 1821.
Such findings reflect those of other investigators. Surely the most striking aspect of the entire picture of indigenous central Mexican sociopolitical structure in the eighteenth century is the recognition of an increased number of independent units, most of them formerly constituent
parts of larger units (Lockhart 1992:52). For example, in the Sierra Norte
de Puebla north of the Valley of Puebla, Bernardo Garca Martnez
(1987:377379) identifies twenty-two secessions in the 153 years between 1590 and 1743, while another twenty-two occurred in just fortythree years between 1759 and 1805. In the large Archdiocese of Mexico, William B. Taylor reports six cases of sujetos seceding from their
cabecera before 1754, while twenty-eight cases originated after that date

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(1996:371). Kevin Terraciano, working in the Mixteca Alta of Oaxaca,

finds that the number of autonomous governments increased by only
sixteen (from twenty-one cabildos to thirty-seven) between 1690 and
1779, while another forty-three were added (from thirty-seven to eighty)
between 1780 and 1800 (Terraciano 2001:131). In the district of Tlapa,
Guerrero, Dehouve notes that the majority of cases fell between 1767
and 1797. Originally, Tlapas government controlled the tribute collection of some seventy sujetos and a population of well over 4,000 people,
before Spanish officials ordered the establishment of new cabeceras in
1767 for more efficient tribute collection. Afterward, a second wave of
late eighteenth-century divisions ensued, initiated by sujeto inhabitants
who wished to secede from their new cabeceras (Dehouve 1990:168).17
The uniform timing of these cases in the latter-half of the eighteenth
century suggests that population growth was a critical factor: indigenous
population recovery strained agricultural resources as never before. It
also suggests that the newly instituted Spanish Bourbon bureaucracy
changed its policies regarding the cabecera-sujeto hierarchy.
Associated with the ascension of the Bourbon monarchy in Spain,
the Bourbon reforms were instituted most completely beginning in the
1760s. Many of them centered on restructuring Spains colonial governments to expedite a policy of free trade to reinvigorate colonial
economies, together with a more efficient and centralized system of revenue collection so that Spain would benefit from these improved
economies. The government pursued these absolutist policies through
administrative reform, including the creation of new colonial political
districts and offices, the removal of certain trading monopolies and the
restraint of other interests, such as the Church, that disrupted state authority and impeded the flow of wealth into Spains coffers. Bourbon
administrators also placed a renewed emphasis on upholding the laws
of the colony.18
On a region-by-region basis, the effect of the Bourbon reforms for
local indigenous societies remains generally overlooked and enigmatic.
Nancy Farriss, in her investigation of colonial Yucatn, suggests that they
initiated a virtual second conquest in that region. For the first time, local Spanish officials tightly administered Mayan communities by taking
direct control of community tribute, ending corporate use of revenues,
and effectively undermining the corporate authority of local indigenous
17. Wood (1984; 1992) provides little summary data concerning the chronology and
number of secessions in Toluca. But her findings generally concur with those of other
investigators.
18. Although Bourbons took over the Spanish throne in 1700, reformers under the
dynamic reign of Charles III (17591788) enacted the most ambitious changes (see, e.g.,
Brading 1971; 1987; Hamnett 1971; Lynch 1989).

Perkins, Colonial Secessions in Nahua Central Mexico

299

elites. At the end of the eighteenth century in many communities, land

used by indigenous religious confraternities was sold, while plantation
agriculture expanded rapidly as the Yucatns export economy in henequen grew under the Bourbon policy of free trade (Farriss 1984:355
388).
In Central Mexico such a radical second conquest is not evident.
Unlike the eighteenth-century assault on Mayan land and organization,
Central Mexicos lands had been under assault for a long time. Farriss
speculates that in regions where the Indians had little or no autonomy
to lose, the consequences of the centralizing policies of the Bourbon
monarchs may have been minimal or even beneficial, to the extent that
more effective royal government meant stricter enforcement of the laws
protecting Indians from Spanish greed and ill treatment (1984:356). If
colonial laws aimed at protecting indigenous rights were indeed more
fully enforced, as it appears they were, the reforms may have actually
benefited indigenous peoples, particularly macehuales. The creation of
new pueblos fit well with Bourbon policies, especially the goal of increasing revenue collection: New pueblos fragmented the political and
economic monopoly of the old cabecera and its caciques. They became
viable tribute-paying entities directly accountable to the state, as lawyers
for macehuales and gaanes repeatedly emphasized in their petitions to
the viceregal government.
Conclusion
Scholarship over the last thirty years reveals how one of Mesoamericas
oldest analytical dichotomies, Spanish haciendas versus Indian communities, is greatly oversimplified. A diverse array of landholding institutions such as cacicazgos, ranchos, and cofradas (confraternities) also
inhabited New Spains countryside. From an ethnic perspective, we recognize that Spaniard versus Indian ignores the variety and fluidity of
social alliances prevailing across 300 years of colonial rule, and imputes
an immutability in the categories.19
I have shown how various segments of colonial society realigned
over time: Initial government support of caciques gave way to eighteenthcentury government-approved secessions that diluted cacique power;
macehuales, whose ancestors sixteenth-century petitions only succeeded in reaffirming their tributary status to caciques, found eighteenth19. A recent special issue of Ethnohistory entitled Beyond the Hacienda: Agrarian
Relations and Socioeconomic Change in Rural Mesoamerica (Alexander and Kyle, 2003)
reviews older and more recent representations of the colonial countryside (see Alexander 2003).

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century Spanish bureaucrats far more receptive to their requests for autonomy; local Spaniards decried government decisions made by fellow
Spaniards to confiscate previously confirmed properties for the benefit
of Indian pueblos. Such social realignments presented opportunities for
real, consequential resistance at the community level; opportunities used
by macehuales to effect meaningfulif not revolutionarychange.
As mentioned at the outset, James Lockhart (1992) hypothesizes that
secessions reflected an inherent predisposition in Nahua society to fragment into ever smaller sociopolitical subunits. He conceives pre-Hispanic
Nahua units such as altepetl and teccalli as relatively separate and selfcontained, and hence cellular in organization (Lockhart 1992:1520,
436438). In this conception colonial secessions represented a continuation of processes occurring since time immemorial:
Although affected by Spanish concepts to some extent, they had above all reshaped notions like cabecera and pueblo in their own minds and manipulated
them as a means to attain their own ends. Their goals were indigenous rather
than Spanish in inspiration, an embodiment of small-unit ambitions that had existed since remote times. What had happened was not so much fragmentation
or homogenization as a decentralization that was one of the possibilities inherent in indigenous sociopolitical organization from the beginning [Lockhart
1992:5758].

However, by periodizing Tepeacas cases, I have shown that secessions

differed due to the variable relations between caciques, macehuales, and
Spanish entrepreneurs in the context of changing viceregal policies
through 300 years of colonial rule. Early colonial secessions established
a second identical unit (a second cabecera). It preserved teccalli social
relations between nobles and commoners within the liberated altepetl.
In my view, these secessions do represent a cellular division as conceived
by Lockhart (1992). In contrast, late colonial cases saw commoners escape cacique dominion, unravel municipal relations between cabeceras
and sujetos, and in some cases destroy a basic unit of indigenous organization, the teccalli. Such secessions led to entirely new organizations.
The resulting unitspuebloswere as much Spanish in organization as
they were Nahua.
The eighteenth-century pueblo arising from hacienda or municipal
secessions ultimately led to communities stratified along lines familiar
to modern ethnographers of Mexican pueblos. The late colonial pueblo
potentially offered an escape from hereditary privilege. It allowed opportunities for access to land and government. First, a pueblo possessed
a town council composed of officers elected by all of the communitys
adult male macehuales, not just the municipalitys cacique nobility as
before. Absent the older cacique-macehual status system, town council

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301

officers might more fully represent the will of all members. Second, officials managed community finances, including the collection of colonial tribute. Third, the bestowal of townsites created opportunities for
macehuales to cultivate crops on pueblo lands not owned by caciques
oftentimes for the first time in recorded history. Fourth, the population
constituted a congregation of worshippers led by a priest within their
own church. Prior to secessions, members of many subject towns, lacking their own priest and church, traveled to the head town. Of course,
this reorganization also provided opportunities for establishing social inequality on new grounds.
Much as Wolf (1955, 1957, 1959) envisaged, Pueblas early colonial
history revolved around Indian communities declining from Europeanborne disease, set against ever-expanding Spanish haciendas. Unlike a
region such as Oaxaca or Guatemala, where we now understand colonial hacienda growth to have been quite attenuated, or the Yucatn, where
colonial economic developments occurred comparatively late, Puebla
experienced explosive hacienda growth in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, en route to becoming the primary breadbasket of early
colonial New Spain. Nevertheless, its history does not support the timing and operative variables of Wolfs closed corporate peasant community model. Only during the eighteenth centurywhen population
growth, not decline, led to pressure on agricultural resources, and at a
time when Spain implemented the Bourbon reforms to reinvigorate New
Spains economydo Wolfs hypothesized corporate features crystallize
in the guise of the late colonial pueblo. My findings thus corroborate
those of later investigators who find factors associated with eighteenthcentury indigenous population growth, not decline, and commercial expansion, not depression, leading to the development of corporate communities (Farriss 1984:222223; Hill 1992:156; Stern 1983; Van Young
1984).20
I have suggested that shifting priorities in the Bourbon colonial government provided new opportunities for local-level macehual agency.
To operationalize its renewed penetration in the late colonial countryside, the government used pueblos to identify Indians, just as those so
defined appealed to the state on the same grounds for political autonomy and landholdings. To the extent that it effectively managed disputes
between local Spanish, cacique, and macehual actors, the state imposed
20. In a later reassessment of the closed corporate peasant community model, Wolf
(1986) recognized the influence of social stratification as an important variable within indigenous communities. Until his death, he continued emphasizing the approach he
helped pioneer: to identify the operative historical processes in the political and economic
realm that articulate community with nation and lead to particular local arrangements
through time. I owe my own approach to Wolfs perspective.

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its philosophy of the rights and obligations encumbent upon members

of newly formed pueblos. On the other hand, groups of macehuales
and gaanes had tangible political and economic incentives to reorganize apart from their noble lords: In exchange for remitting royal tribute directly to the colonial government, inhabitants of pueblos were fully
invested with voting rights, officeholding, and often with grants of community land. The underpinnings of this community organization therefore conformed far more closely with the states jural beliefs about the
rights and obligations of Indians in a Spanish-style pueblo, than it did
with pre-Hispanic Nahua notions of the role of macehuales in an altepetl, or indeed, in a teccalli. Therefore, I conclude that these struggles
for solidarity had less to do with primordial Nahua traditions than with
an active social reconfiguration related to New Spains late colonial political and economic situation.
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