Caciques as Legal Benefactors: Cacical Legal Offensive in the Andes, 1552–72

This paper explores the first legal offensive undertaken by Andean caciques in the mid-sixteenth century. In the 1550s, numerous Andean lords traveled to Lima and other ‘legal cities' to sue their encomenderos, landowners, or other caciques. By doing so, they hired lawyers, procurator, curators ad litem as their ‘private' legal facilitators. The rise in litigation caused uneasiness among the colonizers. Spanish authorities blamed the lawyers and procurators for increasing the rates of disputes. Nonetheless, the caciques became familiar with the tribunals, leading to new regulations by viceroy Toledo to try to limit their presence in the courtroom in the 1570s. This paper analyzes the cacical offensive and the emergence of the ‘litigious caciques' as benefactors of their subjects.