Colonial Urbanism in the Age of the Enlightenment: The Spanish Bourbon Reforms in the River Plate

By Claudia Murray

This book tells the story of how the monarchy aimed at creating a new capital city in a remote and forgotten area of the empire. It also shows how the local Creole bourgeoisie rapidly assumed the role of urban developers, and enhanced their economic status by investing in and controlling the Buenos Aires’ property market. In a short period, from 1776 to 1810, the urban transformation of Buenos Aires helped increase the Crown’s revenues and considerably reduced contraband trade. Nevertheless, urban changes generated an internal struggle for power for the control of the city between the Spanish loyalist and the local wealthier Creoles. As this book concludes, for an empire such as the Spanish, which was built upon a network of cities, the Crown’s loss of the control of Buenos Aires’ urban space was a serious threat to its power that foreshadowed Argentina’s wars of independence.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anthem Press
• Release date: Jun 6, 2023
• ISBN: 9781785279836

Book preview

Colonial Urbanism in the Age of the Enlightenment

Colonial Urbanism in the Age of the Enlightenment

The Spanish Bourbon Reforms in the River Plate

Claudia Murray

Anthem Press

An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company

www.anthempress.com

This edition first published in UK and USA 2023

by ANTHEM PRESS

75–76 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 8HA, UK

or PO Box 9779, London SW19 7ZG, UK

and

244 Madison Ave #116, New York, NY 10016, USA

© 2023 Claudia Murray

The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023902287

A catalog record for this book has been requested.

ISBN-13: 978-1-78527-981-2 (Hbk)

ISBN-10: 1-78527-981-5 (Hbk)

Cover Credit: Mariana Padrón, Plan and elevation, Source: AGNA, Sala IX, División Colonia, Permisos para edificar, legajo 11-1-1, doc. 166, 1787.

This title is also available as an e-book.

Contents

List of figures and tables

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. The Spanish Empire before the Bourbon Reforms

The Geo-Administrative Division of the Colonial Territories in the Americas

The Spanish Empire Hierarchical System of Cities

Domination, Acculturation and the Colonial Society of the Eighteenth Century

Urban Tools for Domination: Foundational Myth, the Grid and Architectural Styles

The grid system

Urban planning

Architectural styles

2. The River Plate before 1776 and the Bourbon Reforms

The Foundation of Buenos Aires

Trade, Contraband and the Merchant Class

The Bourbon Reforms and the Intendancy System

Buenos Aires’ Urban Geography prior to 1776

3. Urban Expansion

Land Control Changes

The Spatial Division of the City

Decentralisation of Market Activities

Emergence of Entrepreneurial Urban Developers

4. The Image of Power

Enlightened Urbanisation

Urban Improvements, the Real Ordenanza de Intendentes and Political Conflict

Street paving

Waste collection

Street lighting

Public Buildings and Government Offices

Investment in Government Offices

A Monarchical Power Losing Control of the Plaza Mayor

5. Ceremonies of Power

The King’s Presence in the Colonies

The Ceremonies and the Hierarchical System of Cities

Viceroy’s Arrivals in Buenos Aires

Symbolic Capital and Economy of Favour

Neoclassical Translations to Represent the Enlightened Empire in the River Plate

Ceremonies and Power Relations

6. Disciplining Porteños’ Private Architecture

Government Regulations and the Development of Private Buildings

Regulation of the Entire Building Apparel

Investment in the Residential Real Estate Market

The Populace Takes Over the City

7. The British Assault on the River Plate

The Enemy, the Cabildo and the Defence of the City

Creating a New Ideological Urban Field

La ciudad mas Leal

‘Dialectics of the Enlightenment’ and the Architecture of Freedom

Appendix 1

Bibliography

Index

List of figures and tables

Figures

Tables

Acknowledgements

This volume had been many years on the making. It started as my doctoral dissertation at the Department of Geography King’s College London, funded with a full scholarship from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) in the UK. I subsequently visited this work several times, expanding and publishing works on eighteenth-century urban planning and Enlightenment policies. Furthermore, it was during my subsequent studies as a research fellow at the Department of Real Estate and Planning at the University of Reading, where I increased and consolidated my understanding on property markets and real estate investment, allowing me to revisit this work from an economics perspective.

I am therefore in debt to several individuals and organisations, including the AHRC, the Department of Geography at King’s College London and my doctoral supervisor, Professor Linda Newson. Equally my colleagues at the University of Reading for their constant feedback and support that allowed me to continue my research in urban matters in Latin America and the Caribbean. I am also grateful to the anonymous reviewers of this volume who made valuable contributions to the content and theoretical framework.

My work not only stands on the shoulders of many scholars that have produced valuable research on the region, I have also conducted extensive archival research at the Archivo General de Indias (Seville, Spain) and the Archivo General de la Nación (Buenos Aires, Argentina). In the first archive, research covered the sections dedicated to Buenos Aires during the viceroyalty, the correspondence of viceroys and superintendents, and the collection of viceroys’ memoirs. I also extensively searched in the Mapas y Planos section of this archive, covering the entire colonial period for Buenos Aires as well as other colonial capitals such as Mexico and Lima, and other cities within the River Plate viceroyalty and the Captaincy of Chile. The Mapas y Planos section at the archive also contains information on uniforms, which I also consulted to gain insight on ceremonies, protocol, uniforms and dress codes. In the Archivo General de la Nación, my research focused on the Cabildo records from 1774 until 1812, on sections dedicated to planning permissions, and some files in the Tribunales section dedicated to urban developments and buildings. Also in this archive is the Collección Santa Coloma, which comprises the private correspondence that the merchant Gaspar de Santa Coloma maintained with business partners, family and friends in Spain and other parts of the viceroyalty of the River Plate and Peru. These letters provided valuable information of citizen’s perceptions regarding urban changes. I also collected material from the Instituto Nacional de la Historia (Buenos Aires, Argentina), the Biblioteca Nacional de Buenos Aires and the collections held at the Facultad de Filosofía y Letras of the University of Buenos Aires, and the Escuela de Estudios Hispanoamericanos in Seville. In the United Kingdom, I consulted The Senate House, the British Library as well as the libraries of both my institutions, King’s College London and the University of Reading.

To all the helpful staff from these institutions I am also grateful, and in particular, to the Archives of Seville and Buenos Aires, who have consented the publication of the plans and illustrations appearing in this volume. Unfortunately, some archival material has been lost (for example I could not consult certain maps I intended to view that were held at the National Library of Buenos Aires as an incident in the early 2000s meant that some plans have been lost for ever). Even when I visited some archives in Buenos Aires I could not help but noticing the poor state of the documents I was consulting. Funding for archives and the process of digitalisation is challenging particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean. The publishing of this material in this volume makes therefore a valuable contribution towards the preservation of Ibero-American cultural heritage.

A final note of gratitude to my family and friends who have provided support and encouragement throughout the years.

Introduction

Colonialism is a system in which a country controls another country or area, a definition that acquires complexity when considering the different disciplines that research this field, not to mention the evolving narratives and interests of both, authors and audiences.¹ The focus in this volume is on colonialism and human geography, involving cities, architecture and the actors concerned with designing, developing and inhabiting the urban space in colonial Latin America. Within this focus, there are issues related to identity – which is central to spatial conceptualisations of colonial domination that cover private buildings, the public space as well as the inhabitants and users of these spaces. Identity in turn is understood here as a fluid and yet constrained concept² affected by culture and politics but also, as this volume shows, by architecture and the urban context. The demographic explosion of the eighteenth century increased the demand for property while the financial gains made by entrepreneurs of the expanding trade created the necessary surplus for investment in real estate assets. No other urban centre exemplifies this phenomenon better than Buenos Aires, the fastest growing city in the Spanish world at the time of the establishment of the viceroyalty of the River Plate in 1776. Since then and until the end of the viceroyalty in 1810, the reduction of contraband trade, the opening of commerce and the regulation of land titles and urban planning helped the local economy and consolidated the basis for a flourishing real estate market.

Although these were spatial and economic measures brought by the Bourbon dynasty in Spain, the century was also characterised by a new way of thinking known as the Enlightenment. The movement was exemplified by freedom in thinking, where science and reason guided humanity.³ Nevertheless, an all-encompassing definition remains a challenge, as some countries used the concept to support absolutism while for others it represented republican ideas.⁴ Furthermore, studies have also shown the importance of geography particularly in colonial societies where the Enlightenment was more revolutionary than the independence movements themselves.⁵

Notwithstanding, politics is not the only contradiction posed by the Enlightenment. By 1750, the power of the church in Europe had begun to decline favouring the ‘disenchantment of the world’ or the search for a more rational explanation of the world and the working of its natural forces.⁶ It was characterised by a mistrust in religion and traditional authority and by an optimism that human progress could be achieved through education and a utilitarian approach to society, which was visible in public health measures to reduce crime and control disease. Under this seemingly progressive agenda, Michael Foucault argues that the state’s real goal during the eighteenth century was to place under surveillance a whole range of urban developments, constructions and institutions.⁷ Indeed, the author states that governments’ concerns for the health and welfare of its citizens were not based on philanthropy, but on interests to preserve the labour force. With the great demographic expansion of the eighteenth century came the necessity for incorporating more workers into the apparatus of production. Therefore, the development of medicine during the eighteenth century came with the need for selecting the healthy from the sick, the strong from the weak, in order to determine those with greater prospects of survival that could be turned into useful subjects.

This same interest in classification and the ‘utility’ of individuals has a parallel in enlightened architectural theories of the time. A prominent theorist was the Abbot Marc-Antoine Laugier (1713–1769), who, in his ‘primitive hut’ ideal of a human abode, reduced architecture to its simplest and most utilitarian combination of elements, namely the column and the lintel. With this example, Laugier argued that architectural elements should demonstrate the ‘truth’ and origin of their structural function and campaigned for the abolition of Greek and Roman orders that were used only for decorative purposes.⁸ Laugier was certainly a thinker ahead of his time, even if philosophers and scientists were also questioning established theories from antiquity,⁹ stripping buildings of its classical orders only materialised in the advent of functionalism in the twentieth century. Still, his theories on expressing the true function of building’s components were later supported by architects and philosophers, providing momentum to the idea of architecture as a language form that could express the character of a building.¹⁰ Architecture had always been more than pure structure, endowed with an ability to signify by means of the repetition of known classical conventions and the connection to Antiquity.¹¹ However, during the eighteenth century and mainly due to the revivals that widen the alternatives for architects and commissioners to decide and select the best style to represent their philosophies and moral standing, the semiotics of architecture became more evident to the lay public, speaking not only to the intellectuals or religious groups. This is why classical elements appeared in private houses of the bourgeoisie and not just in palaces or houses of the nobility.

Historicisms and revivals played an important role in the semiotics of eighteenth-century architecture, bringing back not only the use of old forms but also the historical context.¹² Following the spirit of the time for inventory and cataloguing, building typologies and ornamental styles were classified and given a function to express the character of a building.¹³ Therefore and in line with the Enlightenment’s methods, architecture not only had a sheltering function, but its ornament and final form also had scientific order and followed general laws that were drawn from historical examples, thus giving ornament a rational semiotic function instead of being the result of a capricious selection based on taste.¹⁴ This rationalisation of the ornament and architectural forms was soon noticed by imperial powers at the centre of art creation in Europe.

In eighteenth-century Europe, the arts were increasingly associated with politics and propaganda. In England, the split between the Tories and the Whigs paved the way for a division in society’s taste that soon draw in the artist community by making them take sides in politics. This in turn helped the commercialisation of the arts, as once an artist became affiliated to a party, he received commissions from fellow party members. As Paul Monod explains, ‘the parties had created national networks of political connections that facilitated the spread of fashionable trends. […] Politics could be good for [art] business, and party affiliations could lend themselves to the growing commercialization of art’.¹⁵ Notwithstanding, even if the concept of political art appealed to the Spanish monarchy, art expressions that flourished from the political allegiances in England were not the best source of inspiration for Spain. They instead admired their neighbours over the other side of the Pyrenees. France was viewed by the Spanish government as an enlightened place full of ideas that could be adopted and thus lead the Bourbon empire to a prosperous future.¹⁶

In France and during the late seventeenth and first half of the eighteenth centuries, artistic expressions surrounding the royal family flourished. They not only produced portraits of the king displaying the image du plus grand roi du monde ¹⁷ but artistic works extended from music to literature and from religious ceremonies to fêtes, all of them spreading from the palace to the streets and private dwellings and thus encompassing daily life at Versailles and beyond.¹⁸ This implies that domination not only involved art and architecture but was also present in every aspect of the existence of the subjects. Furthermore, domination is not necessarily expressed in official commissions or state buildings.¹⁹ As the following chapters will show, private architecture and material culture, especially in a hierarchical society such as the one established in colonial Spain, were also important as the elite made use of exclusionary practices to retain and increase its power. This volume therefore continues the debate on the dialectics of the Enlightenment and the importance of context and geography, by analysing the Spanish colonial system of urban administration, looking at how liberal ideas of property ownership and real estate investment helped Buenos Aires’ inhabitants to accrue power and take gradual control of the city and region, diminishing the power of the colonial authorities. Simultaneously, the colonised set the foundations for a powerful elite that needed material culture to exteriorise its newly acquired position, increasing the demand for commercial goods as well as private architecture.

A final note on the methods and caveats of reading architecture and ornament as a language. There is extensive research on the social and symbolic connotations of private and public spaces carried by an array of disciplines including philosophers, sociologists, archaeologists, historians, psychologists, geographers and architects. All these disciplines have different perspectives that have led to an interdisciplinary approach, which in turn has enriched considerably the architectural debate.²⁰ There are many controversies regarding the use of semiotics in the study of architecture but the main debate revolves around the division of function and form.²¹ In the analysis of eighteenth-century architecture, form took prominence to function and it was a clear indication of social capital in Bourdieuan terms. The symbolism of the styles selected denoted the designers’ knowledge (as well as their clients’) of a particular building type, including an understanding of its geometrical orders as well as denoting the intention to align the new building to the ideologies carried by the chosen style or historical revival.

This study therefore makes use of iconography to study eighteenth-century architecture, as well as other theories that enable the inclusion of the societal, economic and geographical context in which the buildings were placed and architecture consumed. Therefore, architectural and urban development under study here is viewed primarily as a political and social discourse, which inevitably privileges their symbolic function over form and where the latter is in turn considered as a symbol drawn from an architectural repertoire that best fulfils the intended message.

The fact that architecture fulfils its purpose when individuals and the community make use of it²² implies that there is a pre-established social understanding of the built environment, which is formed by customs and habits of a given social group. This has been explained by Umberto Eco’s account of the ‘the lesson of the toilet bowl’. During the mid-1950s, the toilet was introduced into remote rural populations in the south of Italy. Not knowing its purpose, people used it as a cleaning tank for grapes. Placing the grapes in a fishing-net inside the toilet bowl, the peasants flushed it so the water cleaned the grapes.²³ There are other similar stories in Greece, only that here the peasants used it as a fireplace. The confusion arose because the shape of the toilet was very similar to that of a traditional Greek fireplace, with peasants therefore welcoming the new ‘technology’ as it came with an incorporated cistern to extinguish the fire.²⁴ The moral of the story is that architecture denotes its function only within a system of established habits and expectations in a given community.²⁵ This relates to Bourdieu’s habitus, which refers to the actor’s embodiment of a system of behavioural patterns that although they do not determine actions completely, ensure that individuals act in a certain way.²⁶ Habitus is, according to Bourdieu, the product of a society which people of a similar class share.

These theories can help the study of ephemeral architecture that was displayed during political ceremonies in colonial Spain. The fact that people attending ceremonies knew the rules and behavioural codes to interact and move around the architectural displays, show their acceptance and familiarity with this habitus. Furthermore, individuals’ reactions and embracement of the new ornament and styles presented to them were a testament of their symbolic capital, of their understanding of the meaning carried by the ephemeral architecture. Context was therefore crucial for the understanding of the message conveyed in historicisms. In today’s European society, for example, there is an implicit understanding in the message conveyed by the Doric style used in the Parthenon and that of Nelson’s column in Trafalgar Square.²⁷

Notwithstanding and although it is important to distinguish the context where symbolic forms are used, the division between styles depicted in public and domestic buildings provides an opportunity to study subversive mechanisms of appropriation. According to Michel de Certeau, strategy is the ‘imposition of power through the disciplining and organization of space’ while tactics are the ‘ruses’ that convert it to the purposes of ordinary people.²⁸ This spatial theory enables the interpretation of styles used by dominating powers as a process of ‘aestheticization’ through which a government attempts to discipline the society.²⁹ The responses to this process by the colonial Spanish society, as the last chapter in this volume will demonstrate, are the tactics by which they managed to take the style out of its context, create their own habitus and divert governmental strategies to their own end.

Notes

1 Cooper, Colonialism in Question.

2 Silverblatt, Foreword in Fisher and O’Hara, Imperial Subjects.

3 Condorcet, Sketch.

4 Outram, The Enlightenment.

5 Whiteaker, The Enlightenment.

6 Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of the Enlightenment, p. 3.

7 Foucault, The Politics of Health, p. 99. The author explains that the well-being of subjects was not only a state concern, the society in general became involved through organisations such as charities and philanthropic societies that also attempted to organise health policies.

8 Vidler, The Writing on the Wall, p. 3.

9 Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of the Enlightenment, p. 3.

10 See Etlin, Symbolic Space.

11 Vidler, The Writing on the Wall, p. 3. It is worth pointing out that architecture always carried a discourse which could be religious, political or social.

12 Historicism is an architectural term that refers to styles that were strongly influenced from the past, especially revivalist architecture such as Greek, Gothic and Renaissance. See Stevens Curl, Dictionary of Architecture, p. 318.

13 According to Peter Collins, it was Jacques-Françoise Blondel who wrote the first history of modern architecture which was published in four volumes between the years 1752 and 1756. In this work the architect set about cataloguing French buildings and placing them in their historical context. He was appointed royal architect to Louis XV in 1755. The work of Blondel strongly influenced the teaching of architecture at the time. See Collins, Los ideales de la arquitectura, p. 23. In Symbolic Space, Richard Etlin examines the work of J.-N.-L. Durand in helping to rationalise and catalogue architectural elements for teaching architecture.

14 For the use of scientific order and the creation of universal laws during the Enlightenment, see Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of the Enlightenment, p. 81.

15 Monod, Painters and Party. Politics in England.

16 Urzainiqui-Miqueleiz, Francia y lo francés en la prensa crítica española a finales del reinado de Carlos III: el censor y su corresponsal, in Jean- René Aymes, ed., L’image de la France, p. 119. See also Donahue-Wallace, Jerónimo Antonio Gil in particular chapter 1.

17 Beaurian, La fabrique du portrait royal in Gaehtgens, in Martin Schieder, et al. eds., L’art et les normes sociales, p. 46.

18 Hanley, The Lit De Justice of the Kings of France, p. 329. For expressions of power in seventeenth-century French music, see Isherwood, Music in the Service of the King.

19 Jamieson, Domestic Architecture and Power, p. 15.

20 A good review of different approaches can be found in Parker Pearson and Richards, Architecture and Order, 1994. There have been several works since but a more up to date systematic review of disciplines and approaches is needed.

21 Martin Krampen, Survey on Current Works in Semiology of Architecture, in Umberto Eco, et al. eds. A Semiotic Landscape, p. 169.

22 Eco, Function and Sign: The Semiotics of Architecture, in Broadbent et al. eds., Signs, Symbols, p. 24.

23 Ibid., p. 22.

24 Jencks, Charles, The Architectural Sign, in Broadbent et al. eds., Signs, Symbols, p. 83.

25 Eco, Function and Sign: The Semiotics of Architecture, in Broadbent et al. eds., Signs, Symbols, p. 24.

26 Painter, Pierre Bourdieu, in Crang and Thrift, eds., Thinking Space, p. 242.

27 Jencks, The Architectural Sign, in Broadbent et al. eds., Signs, Symbols, p. 96.

28 Crang, Relics, Places and Unwritten Geographies in the Work of Michel de Certeau (1925–86), in Crang and Thrift, eds. Thinking Space, p. 137.

29 This process was unveiled by de Certeau in conjunction with Dominique Julia and Jacques Revel in ‘The Beauty of the Dead’, an article that studies specific acts of political repression during the first half of the nineteenth century. See Ahearne, Michel de Certeau Interpretation, pp. 132–136.

Chapter 1

The Spanish Empire before the Bourbon Reforms

The Geo-Administrative Division of the Colonial Territories in the Americas

The sixteenth century consolidated the geographical expansion of European powers over territories populated by indigenous people by means of a strategy that guaranteed the dual objective of subjugation as well as the economic exploitation of the colonies.¹ From this common baseline, colonialism adopted different forms depending on several factors including the dominant socio-political ideas of each European power, as well as the physical environment encountered and the particularities of the local indigenous population, including their responses to foreign strategies. Colonialism was thus not uniform all over the territories, not even within those under the same colonial power.²

In the case of Spain, the geographical colonial system consisted of administrative units, each with its own office that was dependant on an immediately higher office in a hierarchical order that culminated with the Spanish king. Administrative offices often lacked clearly defined functions, which generated disputes that only peninsular authorities could solve, albeit after a long bureaucratic process of communication.³ This long chain of letters and reports from the colonies to the Crown was deliberate and aimed to guarantee that ultimate decisions were taken by the state. The blurring of incumbencies also ensured that officials themselves watched their peers, immediately informing superiors when someone was encroaching another officer’s incumbencies. The effect was a bottom-up surveillance system to prevent excesses of power and thus supervise the vast dominions with scant resources.⁴ Furthermore, as colonial officials were located far from the state’s close control, European rulers often opposed the appointment of the nobility to high offices in the colonies, fearing that they could challenge the ruler’s authority. During the earlier time of the colonies, Spain and Portugal, in particular, aimed to prevent the establishment of powerful nobilities overseas.⁵

Modern European empires had separate colonial authorities in the metropolis to supervise the administration of the colonies.⁶ Initially, in Spain, the Royal Council of Castile dealt with matters related to the Indies, but the increase of business (and bureaucracy) forced the creation of a separate council exclusive for the colonies. This was known as the Real y Supremo Consejo de las Indias, created by Charles V on 1 August 1524⁷ and although it ranked below that of Castile within the Spanish imperial system, it had undisputed powers in overseas territories.⁸ The functions of the Consejo de Indias were varied, but in general, it was responsible for colonial policy as well as ensuring that royal decrees and laws were transmitted to relevant officials for implementation.⁹ The other institution dealing with colonial matters was the Casa de Contratación, created in Seville in 1503. This was mainly a trading house issuing permits for traveling and exchanges of individuals and cargo between Spain and the colonies.¹⁰

There were two large viceroyalties in the Americas: New Spain (covering present-day Mexico, Central America and parts of North America) and the viceroyalty of Peru (covering most of South American countries with the exception of Brazil, largely occupied by the Portuguese empire). The viceroy was the highest authority in the territory, residing in the capitals of Mexico City and Lima (Peru). Viceroys were also captain-general of the armies, in charge of the defence of the coast and borders of the empire. In the judiciary, viceroys acted as president of the courts and enforcer of royal laws and decrees received from the peninsula.¹¹

The gobernaciones, presidencias, capitanías generales and audiencias were smaller jurisdictions within the viceroyalty that were in turn subdivided in alcaldías mayores in New Spain and corregimientos in the viceroyalty of Peru. The alcaldías mayores and corregimientos were split into municipalities, which were the smallest territorial units, each comprising a small town and its adjoining hinterland.¹² The audiencias were the highest royal court of appeal within their respective districts. In the capital cities of Mexico and Lima, they were called pretorial and acted as a consultative council to the viceroy.¹³ They were also empowered to check on the viceroys’ exercise of power even though the viceroy acted as president of the audiencia pretorial – a clear example of the blurring of incumbencies mentioned earlier.

The other audiencias were subordinate to pretorial and had a president of their own, but ultimate power was vested on the viceroy. The governors presided over a district or province and were above the alcaldes mayores and the corregidores.¹⁴ All of them, governors, alcaldes mayores and corregidores had political and judicial authority, with the governor sometimes acting as captain-general, thus adding military powers to political ones.¹⁵ The town hall or cabildo was the lowest in the hierarchical administrative division of the territories. In Buenos Aires, the cabildo was the only body that represented the Creole population (Spanish descendants born in the colonies). This institution had various functions. It distributed lands, oversaw commerce, controlled weights and measures in the markets, organised public events and collected and levied local taxes. In small cities without sufficient hierarchy for an audiencia or courts, the cabildo also took over this responsibility. Its members included alcaldes (municipal magistrates) and regidores (city councillors), and a notary to minute meetings and actions. In larger cities, this basic structure became more complex adding an alguacil mayor (head police), an alferez real (ensign mainly responsible for events) and a