production (land), were easily able to dominate the local economy. A creole culture emerged among the non-Indians on their dispersed ranches, a local variant of a lifestyle based on cattle ranching that spread along the Pacific margin of Central America all the way to what is now the southwestern United States. Social relations between the local creoles and the Indians of Nicoya are hard to gauge; the documentary record was not typically concerned with such matters. However, one colonial document from 1765 may be highly indicative of the poor state of relations between the two ethnic groups and illustrative of the stark difference in the degree of estrangement between the Indians of Nicoya and surrounding Ladino community. The document presents a petition to the Crown by a union of 200 Ladinos to form their own town apart from that of Nicoya. The arguments supporting their request were phrased in the language of ethnic group solidarity: The Ladinos sought the improvements that came from leaving their dispersed ranches and living in a town of their own and away from the Indians in Nicoya. Nicoya was reported to be economically defunct and its community quickly dying. The choice presented by the Ladinos was one between life in a new creole town and death if they had to rely on Nicoya. The Crown agreed to their petition. The representation that the Ladinos made of social conditions in Nicoya may not have been far off the mark. Essentially isolated in their community and surrounded by more-or-less hostile neighbors, the native community persisted, it would appear, more by the weight of centripetal forces exterior to the community itself, keeping in check the centrifugal pressures within the community for dissolution. In more concrete terms, the economic and political needs of the State maintained the artificial boundaries and structure of an "Indian" community, well past the date when the community, as an ethnically identifiable social entity, would have dissolved through the typical processes of acculturation and assimilation. To this historically particular moment we add the structural contradictions in the political structure of the Spanish colonies. The point of contact between Crown and Indians was the local administrative authority, the Corregidor. Provided enormous leeway in the weak state system of colonial governance, the position of Corregidor was purchased. The individual who held it for a specified number of years was free to exploit it for his personal economic