4 - Tools of Colonial Power: Officeholders, Violence, and Exploitation of Enslaved Africans in Santo Domingo’s Cabildo

Summary

This chapter explores two complementary dimensions of acquisition and display of power by local elites in Santo Domingo. The first is political and institutional. In the early sevententh century, the sale of offices became standard practice in the Spanish empire allowing local elites to buy seats of regidores in local Cabildos across the empire in perpetuity, thus gaining control of their own local governments. A seat on the Cabildo of Santo Domingo became a prized possession for elites to reaffirm their position in the island social hierarchy. It also enabled access to important economic opportunities, which triggered rivalries among its members. The second one is also political, but it is more narrowly focused on racial politics, on the role of these elite men as slaveholders and the way they used their enslaved workers in their personal and political rivalries. The elites of Santo Domingo proudly manifested their power and tried to impose it upon their peers through their use of their enslaved workers, whose obedience (particularly when deployed in opposition to others) gave true meaning to the institutional and class power these elite men had acquired.