The rural social representations of the “non-Indians” in the face of the decline of the colonial-agrarian city: the Central Andes of Nueva Granada at the bourbon crossroads

Abstract

At the end of the eighteenth century, social representation processes of the non-indigenous rural population began to be resignified according to whether it came from conglomerate or dispersed spaces. During the Habsburg period, the fundamental socio-spatial boundary was given by the conquered and the unconquered, and the colonies were urban/rural settlements organized and controlled around more or less conglomerate political-administrative entities. There, one was mestizo, Spanish or Indian regardless of the place of residence. However, the promulgation of the Royal Instruction of 1754, the expansion of the
internal frontier, and the physiocratic turn made possible the expansion of this colonial world. This expansion implied the destructuring of the rules of social order and control. In this article I show that, as never before, the fact that someone came from the cities, small villages, or uninhabited areas became a factor of otherness among the non-indigenous
population (vecinos or neighbors, libres or
free-people and mestizos).