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The spread of Catholicism worked through natives' pre-existing caste system

Source: Situado and Sabana #82

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By joining forces with the Spanish and becoming their vehicles for the exercise of civil and religious control, the caciques and principales gained far more than the empty "places of honor in processions and other services" that Robert Allen Matter allowed them (1990). They filled positions of true power and responsibility in a hierarchical system that put other Indians in the position of their vassals.

A clear demarcation between the dominant and the subordinate orders and well-established lines of authority were obvious prerequisites to the spread of Christianity in a native society. The Franciscans found it necessary to postpone the conversion of Apalache, they said, because "some of the Indians obey their chiefs poorly." The king, they thought, should send more soldiers, so that "the chiefs with the favor and aid of Your Majesty could subdue their Indians" (Franciscans, 1612).

The upper orders of native society lost as much as they gained by their alliance with Spaniards. Hispanicization could be deeply destructive of family support networks. Richard C. Trexler analyzed its impact in the Valley of Mexico as a problem in social psychology. There, as in Florida, the Franciscans' conversion strategy was to intern the sons of chiefs, often at a distance from their parents. This practice, differing sharply from former methods of socializing the young, served the military purpose of hostage taking and made it possible to create an elite cadre of native aides, but it also led to painful intergenerational conflicts. The retroactive monogamy imposed by Christian marriage turned many elite youths into bastards, ashamed of their mothers and angry with their fathers. Their new fathers, the padres, taught them to ridicule their pagan ancestors and heritage and to take comfort in the bosom of Mother Church. Returning to their villages, the "ninos "informed on their elders and went about in terrorist squads attacking pagan holy sites and images. Servile toward the friars and alienated from their own families and heritage, they entered adult society drawing their importance from the new order and armed with the power to coerce.

John K. Chance's analysis of the Sierra Zapoteca of Oaxaca, where the work of conversion was done by Dominicans, reveals how useful a native elite could be to its conquerors. Spanish settlement in the Sierra was numerically minimal, largely because the alcalde mayor, a political appointee of the viceroy's, monopolized both trade and tribute. Caciques and principales, who spoke Spanish and were licensed to carry a sword, go mounted, and wear Spanish clothes, were the go-betweens between the Republic of Indians and the Republic of Spaniards. Their brokering functions were multiple. As fiscales, or parish officials, they policed the towns for immorality, drunkenness, and apostasy on behalf of a priest who visited them two or three times a year on saints days to collect his fees. As town officials they collected tribute and administered the "repartimientos de mercancias," or forced sales of merchandise, on behalf of the alcalde, skimming a profit off the top for themselves. As members of the cabildos, or town councils, they paid the alcalde a fee of 5 pesos plus gifts to be invested with their varas, or staves of office. And when the visitador named by the alcalde made his round of the towns, extorting 20 to 50 pesos in gifts from each cabildo over and above his party's entertainment, they were the ones who imposed the unpopular exactions on the communities.

As population in the Sierra Zapoteca declined, the social structure became top-heavy; by the mid-18th century the privileged class comprised from a third to a half of Sierra population. The towns were saddled with an inflexible sociopolitical system designed for much larger places; some of them retained the status of pueblos sujetos simply to avoid the costs of community government. Without war to bolster their position vis-a-vis the principales, the caciques became poor and politically weak, while the few espanoles who lived in the Sierra, neither priests nor presidial soldiers, were little more than parasites attached to Indian society.

(Bushnell SS)