"Tratándole como paysano y él a ellos". Pertenencia local, redes supralocales y transmisión de bienes entre el Nuevo y el Viejo Mundo (siglo XVII)

This article is dedicated to the analysis of how social actors could claim the rights associated with belonging to a family and a place in the causes of «inheritance in abeyance» (hereditas iacens), managed by an administrative-judicial procedure of the Early Modern Spanish Monarchy, the so-called «expedientes de bienes de difuntos». Through a particularly rich case study, I will try to show the weight of the different evidence in the claim of the hereditary assets of the deceased in the Indies, to demonstrate that personal identity and kinship ties as well as belonging to a community, despite being produced locally, could be successfully exploited at a supra-local level, provided that people, with words and actions, had demonstrated their willingness to remain «members».