An Institutional and Personal Crisis in Colonial Yucatan: A translation

A/N. This is an abstract of my graduate thesis introduction .

To publish its full translation into english has always been a dream of mine and I guess this is the fisrst step. Enjoy the colonial ride!

The original can be found in:

Alcocer Medina, Gretty Beatríz, Diego de Quijada: una crisis institucional y personal en el Yucatán del siglo XVI, UADY, Yucatán, 2017.

Diego de Quijada: An institutional and personal crisis in  XVI century Yucatan

Along its history, the Spanish administration has developed and evolved trying to adapt to the new stages of its government. It was on the XVI century, with the expansion of new modern ideas, the discovery of the New World and it’s subsequently colonization, parallel to the upcoming of Philip the II to the Spanish throne, that the Spanish administration suffered one of its greatest and most important changes.

Philip the II modernized and reinforced the administration of the Hispanic Monarchy; organs of justice and government suffered remarkable reforms, striping them from medieval traditions and the idea of global dominance which the Catholic King and Philip’s father, Charles the I, aspired to. Philip developed a peculiar government system, in which the King became the foundation of the government and was in charge of dealing with all the matters and taking all the decisions.

Philip wished that political power remain only in king’s hands, but to achieve this, he had to, first, get rid of any other power group who threatened his new royal policy and second, forge a public administration, not only wide but tough, capable of antagonizing this groups. Reason why, and although this “personal monarchy” was his main style of govern, Philip couldn’t leave aside the great administrative machinery inherited from his father, by the contrary, Philip saw in this machinery a great promoter for political power centralization (Woodrow, 1985, p. 23). This aspiration, but above all, the policies and reforms that came along it, arrived –welcomed or not- to every corner of the Monarchy, and the New Spain territories –who coincidentally were in the midst of its colonization- weren’t the exception.

New Spain’s provincial government characteristics are so vast, we couldn’t write a definitive book, says Woodrow Borah, and surely, he is right (Woodrow, 1985, p. 23). The complexity of this organism, particularly on its first years of establishment is, with no doubt, overwhelming. The new territories couldn’t escape the new methods of organization, a direct consequence of Philip’s centralist aspirations (Woodrow, 1985, p. 9); thus, the establishment of a great bureaucratic mechanism in them came swiftly. An exact replica of the one working in Castile is what they attempt, so as the colonization progressed in New Spain’s territories, a net of government officials, dependent to the King and subordinated one to another in a hierarchical organization that tried to cover the entirety of the political body, was erected (Miranda, 1967, p. 28).

Nevertheless, public administration’s development in the colonies was a slow process, full of juridical and administrative problems, conflicts within the various jurisdictions and in no way one could state, followed a straight path or even equivalent to the peninsular one. They soon realized that public administration would be conditioned and would need to girdle itself to each region particularities; as well as adapt and modify itself as of the struggles conquerors, officials and first settlers faced day by day. Struggles which, of course, were non-existent in Castile (De la Torres, 1985, pp. 243-244). In consequence, provincial organization developed without homogeneity and consonance.

For the same, there was a great pressure from the Crown, to control all the government threads of a world so wide, so complex and so remote (Ots Capdequi, 1941, p. 28). The desire to centralize the administrative power and the complexity and magnitude of the new kingdoms, produce as consequence, the Crown’s ache to lessen and restrict the power, not only of external power groups –like the new feudal aristocracy which encomenderos were erecting or wanting to erect- but also, of the brand new civil ranks and jurisdictions just established in New Spain’s colonies (Semboloni, 2007, n/p). Without a doubt, when the centralizing policy and the bureaucratic machinery got installed on the New World, along came the mistrust and skepticism of the high ranks in Castile (Garcia, 2005, p.104) ; they imposed and opposed themselves to the government officials, that not so long ago, they themselves appointed.

The Crown’s apprehensions for its colonial authorities lead to the multiplication of government instructions, obstruction of some administrative functions and various jurisdictional limitations; trapping the government officials in a labyrinth of royal warrants, ordinances, provisions, appointments and more, which affected their effectiveness and labor in their territories.

However, amidst having to endure this system of counterweight and vigilance established by the Crown, the officials had to challenged –complying to that same royal policy- the power groups settled in the colonies: local elites, encomenderos and friars; they all were an obstacle for the brand new administrative power (Garcia, 2005, p. 93). But of course, to antagonize a power group is not always easy. It was inevitable that these other colonial institutions refute and fight this royal policy, especially when their influence and survival depended on it. Therefore, battles between colonial bureaucracy and peninsular oligarchy were common, and they had terrible implications in colonial’s social and political life, but mostly in the hegemony and authority of the government officials.

On that account, many royal officials chose to not carry out this royal policy during their terms, because the least they wanted to do was to provoke these power groups and deal with the consequences it could bring them. No doubt, the inconsistency and variability of jurisdictional delimitation and the amount of restrictions and control imposed to royal officials due to the Crown’s distrust in them, resulted in a weak and doubting public administration, which many times couldn’t or just didn’t bother to antagonize the other powers around it. Consequently, these external powers –contrary to the Crown’s efforts- kept on intervening in local politics and began to affect the royal officials in great measure and with severe consequences.

With no doubt, both elements: the Crown’s restrictions and the settler’s resistance incite chaos in New Spain’s administration. To prove this, I intend to analyze Diego de Quijada’s administration. He was the first Alcalde Mayor of Yucatan appointed by the King himself in 1560. Throughout his administration one can clearly notice these aforementioned conflicts, retractions and contradictions that troubled some members of colonial juridical administrations in mid XVI century.  

Having said that, we ought to consider that Yucatan’s situation was very different compare with the rest of New Spain, seeing that since its beginnings, Yucatan developed at its own pace. By the midst of the XVI century, the province had just completed its lengthy conquest process and was just entering its colonial stage. Nevertheless, in spite of the hope that the first settlers and Franciscan friars had put in this territory, what they found was just a precarious land, which –unlike the conquered territories in central region- could only offer Mayan Indians. This disenchantment, coupled with the fact that both conquerors and friars had to share the juridical responsibility and functions (Saucedo, 2012, p. 132) –in lack of a well-defined administrative power- and the fact that the conquerors, through the encomienda system, developed a grand and significant power in the peninsula, meant the impending arrival of conflicts between these two power groups. These constant fights kept Yucatan in a fragile and precarious situation.  

The year was 1560 when conflicts in the Yucatan peninsula reached their breaking point, hence King Philip the II’s determination to intervene. He named Doctor Diego de Quijada as Alcalde Mayor of the Yucatan and Tabasco provinces; and hoped that with this appointment -first ever made directly by the king- a solution for this chaos could finally be reached between the encomenderos and the Franciscan friars in the peninsula. In the same matters, the king hoped that Quijada would build the appearance of a strong royal official and so be able to diminish the power the encomenderos had gained.

Nevertheless, and despite his willingness, various matters converged prompting that this wouldn’t be so easy to achieve for the newly arrived Alcalde Mayor. The unusual characteristics of the province, coupled with its fragile social context meant that the attempt of appliance of the royal policies in it -perpetuated by the Alcalde Mayor- turned out in an outburst of turbulence and rampages which led the peninsula into a state yet worse. Along with Quijada’s appointment and his actions, came an endless amount of questions and conflicts that kept the Alcalde Mayor and the Yucatan province on the spotlight and the Crown on the watch.

During Quijada’s term hardly reconcilable interests were intertwined. The Crown’s high political interests in one side, religious and moral in the other, but above all, personal interests from conquerors, encomenderos and even from the Alcalde Mayor; this resulted in a period of truly sociopolitical crisis in the province. However, history attributes this crisis in Quijada’s administration to only two reasons. First, to the great resistance and hatred that Quijada suffered by the settlers, and second, to the o-so famous Auto de fe in the town of Mani, which took place in Quijada’s second year in power, and in which he himself partook and attended. But even if these two reasons are key for the understanding of this period of Yucatan’s history, they can’t explain it in its totality. A couple of questions remain unanswered. Why Yucatan’s society repelled so much and so violently Quijada’s policies? And why the Alcalde Mayor avidly participated on the trials against Mani’s idolaters in 1562?

A lot is said about the “poor judgment” and imprudence that Quijada had in solving conflicts and for the same reason, to create them. It is believe this was the only cause as of why Quijada and his administration were so damaging for the province. Nevertheless, this is a meager and effortless explanation, with which we can’t fully comprehend the reason or reasons behind the Alcalde Mayor’s actions and decisions. So, the question is still in the air, what motive or motives had Quijada to behave in the way that he did and led his administration and himself to the ruin?

My aim is to establish -through the revision and analysis of letters and official documentation- that these motives, go far from just a simple “poor judgment” on Quijada’s behalf. My intention is to demonstrate that all actions and decision made by the Alcalde Mayor in his administration, if well each one instigated by a different cause, they all start off from a specific reason: when appointed Alcalde Mayor, the Indian Council promised Quijada that they would consider appointing him as Governor of Yucatan, if and only if, his development as Alcalde Mayor was good enough and precise. Since that moment, acquiring the Governor title became overriding for the Alcalde Mayor, and he believe he would obtain it if he showed the Crown that in he, it had a loyal subject and royal official who would rule Yucatan through an allied policy to the Crown’s desires. Consequently, along his term, and in spite of the circumstances and the hostile environment it created against him, the Alcalde Mayor prioritized this desire and it made him act erratically and irresponsibly, damaging not only him but the entire provincial society.

[…]

To deeply analyze what happened during Quijada’s years in power is certainly of great importance for the complementation of Yucatan’s colonial history; because by understanding the Alcalde Mayor’s actions and the cliques and context surrounding him, the comprehension of sociopolitical life in mid XVI century Yucatan, would become easier. Likewise, it will attend those black holes that had been ignored by Yucatan´s historiography. As well as, as Francisco Altable (Altable, 2013, p. 89) says: stories of personal misfortunes would help, if it’s possible to multiply them, to increase the number of perspectives that we have of -in this case- how complex the public administration was in colonial era.