Partido (region)

In Ponce, Puerto Rico, creation of the cabildo in 1692, marked the end of the "partido" status and the beginning of the municipality. Today's (2019) Ponce City Hall, above, was built later, in 1846.

Partido (lit. '"party"') was a Spanish colonial term that referred to a governed local administrative region, roughly equivalent to today's municipality in terms of rural land areas included,[1][2] and used in the Spanish colonies in the Americas during the times of the Spanish Empire. It was "the territory or district composed of a jurisdiction or administration from a main city."[3]

The term referred to 18th and 19th-century land regions that consisted of mature dispersed settlements but which had not yet been formally incorporated as hamlets. Though similar to today's municipality, partidos were under the control of a town or city government whose seat was, at times, a day's walk, or longer, away.[4]

  1. ^ Fay Fowlie de Flores. Ponce, Perla del Sur: Una Bibliográfica Anotada. Second Edition. 1997. Ponce, Puerto Rico: Universidad de Puerto Rico en Ponce. p. 264. Item 1322. LCCN 92-75480
  2. ^ Francisco A. Scarano. "Inmigración y estructura de clases: los hacendados de Ponce, 1815-1845." Inmigración y Clases Sociales de Puerto Rico del Siglo XIX. pp. 21-66. Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico: Huracán. 1981. (Colegio Universitario Tecnológico de Ponce, CUTPO).
  3. ^ Luis Caldera Ortiz. Nuevos hallazgos sobre el origen de Ponce. Lajas, Puerto Rico: Centro de Estudios e Investigaciones del Suroeste de Puerto Rico. 2019. p. 56. ISBN 9781075058325
  4. ^ Salvador Brau. La fundación de Ponce. Ponce, Puerto Rico: Tipografia Comercial "La Democracia". 1909. pp. 16-17.