Justice from Below: Popular Ideas of Justice and Good Government in 16th-Century Andes
In the colonial period, juicios de residencia (trials after the tenure of an officer) were legal mechanisms in which king’s subjects expressed their opinions, evaluations, and complaints over the performance of magistrates. Also, this instrument of supervision provided an opportunity in which these ordinary subjects defined their ideas of justice, the magistrate’s obligations, and the “good government.” This paper explores these popular views of justice and government that emanated from several juicios de residencia in the Peruvian viceroyalty. By focusing on the juicios de residencia of corregidores (urban magistrates with judicial and political powers) between 1575 and 1600, this essay examines numerous testimonies from a complex universe of legal users. These juicios corresponded to investigations about those magistrates in several main cities of Peru: Cuzco, Ica, Huamanga, Santa, and Trujillo. In all these juicios, caciques, royal officers, farmers, colonists, artisans, Andean commoners expressed their versions of the corregidor’s performance including specific examples of misconduct. Oral testimony was the most common legal proof in the Andean courts, which also illustrated the ideas, beliefs, and expectations of declarants.
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