Chapter six opens onto a tense confrontation that led the Spanish colonies in the New Kingdom the edge of civil war. As the colonial ideal of two ethnically-pure “republics” for Spaniards and for Indians had already begun to fracture, two indigenous communities identified the mestizo (mixed-ethnicity) sons of indigenous noblewomen as rightful successors to their outgoing caciques (indigenous chieftains). This decision inadvertently set off a chain of events that led to two decades of legal and political challenges. Through analysis of a cluster of legal cases involving aspiring caciques who were legitimate mestizo inheritors according to indigenous custom, this chapter explores the different bodies of law that informed Crown magistrates and administrators as they divided human communities and assigned their human subjects to categories and spaces. Here I also pay close attention to the legal implications of the rhetoric employed by different social factions as the legal cases in the colonies made their way to the Council of the Indies in Spain.

Economic development saw Spanish per capita income double between the 1870s and 1930s, and the 1876 Constitution provided half a century of political stability. However, despite universal male suffrage being granted in 1890, there were no mass political parties and voters could not change governments, while labour organizations were often banned and poverty widespread, especially among the landless workers of the south. In fact, political stability came at a high cost, as local elites were able to use central government funds to build and consolidate their clientelistic networks. Spain’s neutrality during the First World War also resulted in limited demands to increase state capacity. Indeed, the combination of weak party development and weak state capacity in 1931 goes a long way to explaining why the democratic experiment of the Second Republic would fail. Unfulfilled expectations of government land and labour market reforms disillusioned many, leading to a growing rejection of liberal democracy.