Entre la devoción y el poder: las cofradías indianas (siglos XVI-XVIII)

The salvation of the soul was the greatest obsession of Western Christian societies during the Ancien Régime. Since the 13th century, various lay fraternities emerged in Europe devoted to both the spiritual and material welfare of the faithful. These associations expanded rapidly and, following the incorporation of overseas territories, also proliferated throughout the Iberian worlds. Although oriented towards pious ends, these lay corporations became the subject of dispute between the Church and the Crown, each claiming them under their respective jurisdictions. The balance between the two powers, combined with the large number of brotherhoods established and the flexibility of the legislation governing them, granted these fraternities a significant degree of autonomy. This broad margin of action allowed them not only to fulfil their devotional and charitable duties, but also to promote and regulate everyday practices. In this sense, they became genuine spaces of agency and negotiation that the authorities sought to control. Beyond the repeated royal and ecclesiastical decrees directed at pious associations, these corporations can be understood within a broader series of uneven colonial transformations, in which they operated as nodes articulating devotion, sociability, and power, while also retaining a capacity for resistance within the societies of the Indies between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries.