CHAPTER 5 THE COLONIAL PERIOD IN MESOAMERICA 203But the native communities did survive through the Colonial period and in many
cases up to the present day. We can attribute at least part of that success to their col-
lectivist orientation. By working together for their mutual support and often pre-
senting a united front against outside forces, the townsfolk helped to ensure the
survival of the community as a whole. At the same time, however, this strong com-
munity affiliation tended to prevent people from reaching across their borders and
forming broader alliances to address common problems.
Community Government
The colonial authorities grouped the native communities into townships called mun-
icipios.The largest settlement in each municipiowas designated as the cabecera,or
head community. The other communities then became subjects, or sujetos,of this
head community. For administrative purposes, jurisdiction trickled down to the sub-
ject towns through the governing officials of the cabecera.In turn, tribute payments,
legal disputes, and other matters passed first from the subject towns to the cabecera
and from there to higher, Spanish-controlled, levels of administration. It is interest-
ing that although Spanish administrators viewed this organization in terms of a hi-
erarchy of greater and lesser towns, native people took a different view. For them,
each town was essentially an equal and independent unit of the same type. The
cabecerahad certain rights and duties for the sake of convenient administration, but
generally it was not seen as inherently dominant over the other towns around it.
The colonial administration, by incorporating the native community into its
structure, helped ensure the survival of that institution. One could argue that the
Spanish rulers caused it to survive, that they kept the native communities intact pre-
cisely because their existence facilitated the colonial program of indirect rule. It was
easier for the Spanish authorities to allow the native communities to govern their
own local affairs than it would have been to introduce an entirely new sociopolitical
organization at all levels of native society. For Indians to identify with their local com-
munities, rather than uniting more broadly along class or ethnic lines, also served the
Spanish strategy of “divide and conquer.”
But we can also look at this arrangement in another way. The native people prob-
ably would not have tolerated the complete dissolution of their communities. The
Spaniards would have had to contend with constant rebellions and uprisings; perhaps
they would have been driven out of Mesoamerica completely. The system that de-
veloped was a compromise. Native people gave up the intercommunity, regional pat-
terns of integration that had existed at the time of the conquest, which were
inherently weaker than local affiliations and were quickly undermined by colonial
policies. But the Spaniards acknowledged the status of the individual community as
a self-governing entity with rights to its communal property. If they had not, there
might have been no colony.
In the early colonial years, political power within native communities was wielded
by members of the traditional ruling families, descendants of the pre-Hispanic tlatoque
in Nahua regions, the halach uinicin Yucatán, and the yaa tnuhuin the Mixtec area,
as well as members of other high-ranking noble families. These leaders came to be