Few responsible citizens want to become involved…
1540 CE to 1683 CE
Those who do are more interested in their personal well-being than in the affairs of the colony.
Peninsular Spaniards, or peninsulares (hereafter, Peninsuars), who buy their offices seek rewards for their investments and enrich themselves at the expense of public funds.
Creoles (criollos), Spaniards born in the New World, also join the Spanish bureaucracy in order to gain wealth and participate in other opportunities controlled by Peninsulars.
They look to local government as one of the few potential areas of employment in which they can succeed.
Very few Creoles ever attain a position of importance in the political hierarchy of the island.
As the bureaucracy grows in the colonial period, a latent hostility develops between Peninsulars and Creoles—a hostility that erupts into hatred and violence during the wars for independence in the nineteenth century.
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Regions
West Indies
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