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The Probanza and Shaping a Contesting Mestizo Record in Early Colonial Peru*

Abstract This article examines the form and context of making colonial records in late sixteenth-century Spanish Peru, by focusing on a petitionary notarial document-collection Hispano-Andeans prepared and compiled, in Cuzco and Lima, in the early 1580s. I argue that the mestizo petitionary record was made as an ‘archival’ countermove to the exclusionary legislation that in the 1570s targeted individuals of Spanish-Native parentage, and that chiefly aimed to bar them from the provincial priesthood. In that petitionary record, the probanza—a notarial form of sworn witness testimony—played a key role in the realignment and readjustment of the archival record pertaining to mestizos; one that had a changing impact in the ensuing crown legislation of the late 1580s, and that served as ‘foundational’ legal precedent in future Hispano-Andeans' appeals at the Council of the Indies, in Madrid.