Multilingualism posed a problem to Mexico’s rulers from colonialism’s inception. In legal settings, the Spanish Crown relied on court interpreters to translate the testimony of indigenous language speakers and the documents they submitted as evidence. This paper asks how national-era language policy and restructuring of the court system shaped indigenous language use in legal settings after independence (1821) in Oaxaca, Mexico’s most multilingual and multiethnic state. With independence, Mexico’s new nation builders pushed Spanish as the national language, and abolished the legal category of Indian in an effort to erase colonial caste distinctions and perpetuate the ideal of a homogeneous Spanish-speaking citizenry. This shift in language policy was accompanied by reordering of the local court system. In the fledgling state of Oaxaca, one of the most important results of these intersecting trends was the state government’s abolition in 1825 of the office of Interpreter General, or official court interpreter. With a commitment to Liberal ideals and a sweep of the pen, Oaxaca’s founding fathers made what had been visible in colonial legal documents – the act of translation through a professional interpreter – invisible, a trend that changed the ways in which the relationship between law and society was mediated and perceived. How, then, did the act of translation – so central to the functioning of colonial courts – proceed after independence? I will analyze nineteenth century legal documentation with an eye to pinpointing how and where the act of translation occurred, and to what effect. What were the implications of the de-professionalization of translation in a state in which the majority of new citizens were speakers of indigenous languages with little Spanish language competence? Did the absence of a professional interpreter increase the potential for mistranslation (purposeful or otherwise), or democratize popular access to the courts?