Indigenous Justice, Casta Suspects: Jurisdictional Wrangling in Colonial Yucatan

In 1803, two Mayas from a pueblo near Mérida, Yucatan, complained to the solicitor of the Indian Court that they had discovered their recently stolen pigs in the possession of a free-black militiaman of one of the provincial capital’s main barrios. They told the solicitor, Juan Esteban de Meneses, that they were afraid to confront the militiaman, Julián Pérez, because he was a pardo, or person of African descent. The two campesinos sought the solicitor’s aid as an agent of the tribunal charged with trying and representing indigenous defendants and plaintiffs due to doubts regarding the authority of Maya justices of the Barrio of San Cristóbal over a casta, or mixed-race, suspect. Julián Pérez’s militia service further complicated the matter of the stolen pigs since it involved plaintiffs and suspects who pertained to competing judicial spheres: Mayas, who benefited from trial within and representation by agents of Yucatan’s Indian Court, and Pérez, whose status as a soldier led to protected treatment as a holder of the military fuero.

This was not the only case in which questions arose over the authority of tribunals ostensibly created for Mayas to adjudicate Indian matters at the local level. This paper contributes to ongoing scholarship on black-indigenous interactions in colonial Latin America, a field of study in which researchers have made great strides forward in recent years. However, more work remains to be done on conflicts involving assertions by indigenous authorities regarding their right to try and jail casta witnesses and suspects. Based on Yucatecan archival records involving land sales, petty crimes, and translation issues, this paper examines the encounters of African-descent castas with Maya local justices and agents of Yucatan’s Indian Court during the late seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries.