Ambiguous Authority: Juan de Frías and the Audiencia of Santo Domingo Confront the Conquistador Antonio Sedeño (1537)

On May 19, 1537, in a region of the Pearl Coast, two armed factions of Spaniards challenged one another on the banks of the Unare River in what would become eastern Venezuela (see Figure 1). Licenciado Juan de Frías and his smaller force of about 80 men confronted a large party under the command of the conquistador Antonio Sedeño.¹ Frías professed to represent the crown by charge of the Real Audiencia of Santo Domingo, which had bestowed on him a vara del rey (staff of the king, symbolizing royal authority) and sent him off to arrest Sedeño.² Sedeño likewise maintained that he had royal authority, citing his capitulación (contract of conquest) for the nearby island of Trinidad and letters from Empress Isabel, wife of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (King Charles I of Spain) and regent of Spain from 1529– 32 and 1535–39. In their confrontation, both Frías and Sedeño claimed to represent the will of the king.³

This conflict illustrates much about sixteenth-century Spaniards’ conceptions of political legitimacy, as well as the reasoning leaders employed to exercise authority. It also reflected the disjointed nature of political power: the highest branch of government (the monarchs in consultation with the Council of the Indies) and the highest regional court (the Audiencia of Santo Domingo) did not always work in unison. In 1524, Charles V established the Council of the Indies to screen, read, and address communications to the crown from the empire’s American colonies. The council was to advise the monarch and supervise the administration of the Indies on his behalf. Spain’s conciliar governing structure served the monarchy well, preserving, in the words of historian John Elliott, “the fiction that the King was personally present in each of his territories.”⁴

Figure 1.

North Coast of South America and the Southeastern Caribbean

Source: Michael Perri and Tracy Pounds, February 10, 2016.

The Audencia of Santo Domingo

The Spanish crown had long sought to distribute power among the institutions that dealt with the colonies, in a system of checks and balances designed to maintain its own authority. In keeping with this strategy, Ferdinand II established the Audiencia of Santo Domingo in 1511 on the island of Hispaniola to check the power of Viceroy Diego Columbus. Like its later counterparts in other colonies, the Audiencia of Santo Domingo combined political, administrative, and judicial functions, and transmitted the royal will to the Americas.⁵ Audiencias were not the only conduits of royal power, however. Confusion frequently arose because the crown conferred its authority at multiple administrative levels, including governorships, which were typically peripheral regions in need of defense or further conquest. The crown usually chose military men as governors—men willing to conquer or defend marginal but promising territories.⁶ After the crown in 1523 rescinded Columbus’s viceroyalty of the Indies, the Audiencia of Santo Domingo often competed for authority with the region’s governorships.

The unique geography of the Spanish Caribbean differentiated the Audiencia of Santo Domingo from its later mainland counterparts. According to historian Peter Bakewell, mainland audiencias provided “a unity of judicial and executive functions that mirrored the nature of Spanish monarchy itself.” Audiencias, which were usually based in major towns or cities, thus became politically centralizing institutions.⁷ Like the other audiencias, the Audiencia of Santo Domingo wanted to establish a cohesive political entity, but the fragmentary geography of its Caribbean jurisdiction—consisting of an assortment of islands and remote continental territories—created isolating and centrifugal conditions that frustrated the court’s efforts.

Eventually, both the crown and the region’s subjects came to view governorships as the most effective governing institutions. By the end of the sixteenth century, distant governorships, such as the governorship of Venezuela, and important town councils, such as the Cabildo of Havana, came to exercise an informal independence from the out-of-the-way Audiencia of Santo Domingo.⁸ Nevertheless, in...