Contested Customs: Reinventing Indigenous Authority in Sixteenth-Century Ubaque, New Kingdom of Granada

This article examines the transformation of Muisca authority in sixteenth-century Ubaque, a valley in the northern Andes. It examines how two caciques conceived of and practiced their authority vis-à-vis their communities and the Spanish administration. While in the 1560s the cacique enacted his authority by appealing to Indigenous ritual and opposing evangelization, his successor in the 1580s claimed at court that he was a true Christian. Based on these cases, I argue that the Spanish empire’s effort to preserve Indigenous groupings that kept to their old customs while making them Catholic created a tense atmosphere and a deep fracture in the mechanics of colonialism that involved not only caciques but also other Indigenous authorities, encomenderos, clergy, and imperial officials and ultimately ended up transforming Indigenous authority.