A Mulata Cacica in the Central Andes? Disputing Maria Hernandez’s Genealogies and Blurring Gender and Racial Boundaries in the Construction of Lineage and Authority in the Early 1600s

At the beginning of the 17th century, the intervention of a “mulata” woman named María Hernández in a conflict over the succession of a cacicazgo (officially confirmed ethnic chieftainship) in the central Andes challenges scholars’ traditional idea that colonial ethnic leadership could only be requested and aspired to by "Indios." By reconstructing the case of this Afro-Andean woman, it is possible to study the narrative strategies about relations of family and consanguinity behind a petition for the succession of a cacicazgo. These strategies and the operative understandings that they reveal place in question scholars’ ideas about how race and gender functioned within a critical local state institution in the construction of power in the colonial Andes. The reconstruction also allows us to observe how relations between Afro-descendant and native populations—both elite and “del común” (commoner)—were built from below and from within a local native elite household during the early Spanish empire.