Borderlands Inheritance: Child Heirs, Indios Menores de Edad, and the Politics of Property in the 16th-Century Province of Pánuco

The Province of Pánuco occupies a paradoxical position in sixteenth-century New Spain: distant from Mexico City because of geography and environmental challenges such as rainforests and mountainous terrain, yet also coveted by entrepreneurial absentee landowners seeking to raise cattle. The dynamics are further complicated when landowners are menores de edad. This paper examines two instances in which menores de edad engaged in the production of property, one in Mexico City and the other in the Province of Pánuco itself. Both groups of minors came from the elite strata of their respective societies: those in Mexico City from the Spanish administrative elite and those in Topla from the remnants of an indigenous elite. This paper examines the roles of distance, paper, and on-the-ground realities in the maintenance and loss of land through the production of property. In June, menores de edad Lope de Sosa and Alonso Estrada inherited lands owned by their father, Juan Alonso de Sosa, royal treasurer of New Spain. Through the implementation of representatives in both Mexico City and Pánuco, the land of these menores de edad was owned, managed, and made to produce from afar. In October, indigenous principales of Topla, described as menores de edad, sold communal lands to Spanish buyers, which were then sold multiple times over the span of three years. This paper demonstrates that borderland property regimes operated through profound asymmetries of power, over vast distances, through paper, attempting to transform peripheral spaces into extractive landscapes.