Conflict, Alliance and Dissociation in XVII Century Puerto Rico: The Social Networks of Captain General Sancho Ochoa de Castro and First Sergeant Jeronimo de Mieses [1602-1608]

During the first decade of the XVII century, First Sergeant Jeronimo de Mieses was the driving force of a passionate power conflict against the Governor and Captain General of Puerto Rico, Sancho Ochoa de Castro (1602-1608). These individuals maintained a fundamentally personalist struggle, which played within the classic conflicts that pitted central powers against local elites, and the overlapping colonial jurisdictions of government against each other. The alliances and fallouts between the principal players constitute an excellent case-study which reveals the importance of social relations in the formation and resolution of conflict and the mutable and dynamic nature of the personal networks that operated within the unsettled society of Puerto Rico in the early modern age. Adapted from the source document.