Cofradías de indios (Indian confraternities)

Lay religious brotherhoods that became the one corporate purse most Spanish-American Indian towns controlled themselves: they held cattle, land and cash, elected their own stewards, and paid for burials and feasts. By 1787 the archbishopric of Guatemala alone reported 1,982 of them across 419 churches. Church and crown spent two centuries auditing them, capping them and licensing them — and repeatedly finding that the clergy, not the brothers, were the leak.