In the meantime, most of those who left the doctrinas chose the easier [than cimarronage] route of finding a patron who could get them exempted from the labor levy. The patron-client relation was a powerful bonding mechanism running through and reinforcing the hierarchical Spanish society. It linked governors to business partners and to native nobles, company captains to soldiers, shipowners to crews, and friars to their native assistants. It was given formal expression in the institution of compadrazgo, a kind of fictive kinship that created a tissue of mutual obligations. ...The increasing number and size of haciendas in the 1670s and 1680s offered new patrons. One could become a ranch peon simply by settling inside the boundaries of an hacienda and claiming the protection of the hacendado, who for his part was glad to add a reserve of seasonal laborers to his fulltime ranchhands, who were a mixture of indios de servicio, workers on yearly contract, and black slaves. (Bushnell SS)