Space, Society, and the Colonial State: Cusco under Charles II

This paper sketches the overlapping spaces occupied by different segments of mid-colonial Cusqueña society -- Indian villagers, creole colonists, royal bureaucrats and those in the church -- arguing that material, legal, and personal bonds wove together the different territories of pueblo, real caja, audiencia, corregidor, and so on to produce an enormously resilient Habsburg hegemony. While all sharing a largely undisputed acknowledgement of Castilian sovereignty, people in these different communities occupied different spatial worlds, some rooted firmly in the highland soil, others suspended in the great networks that ran from Madrid and Seville to Potosí, right through Cusco [Peru]. Royal control of law, courts, and state and church office, and subsidy of the highland market economy through labor tribute, left the crown's officers and agents deeply entwined in all parts of colonial society, and essential to the integration of these different spaces -- in turn further reinforcing royal hegemony.