The Danger of Ruin and the Irresponsible Owner. Inheritance Disputes in the Spanish Empire (Kingdom of Guatemala, 17 th Century)

This article examines the disputes over a Guatemalan estate that arose before the Juzgado de Bienes de Difuntos, a court responsible for overseeing the assets of deceased individuals in the Spanish Empire. The so-called «Sierra del Agua», a complex social aggregate that entangled people (heirs, tenants, administrators, creditors) and assets (land, buildings, a chapel, a sawmill, animals and enslaved person), was subject to numerous claims, with different parties having rights and responsibilities related to ownership, inheritance and administration. At the heart of these claims were operations to qualify assets as in danger or in actual ruin, which made it possible to act on the status of things and people and to break open the relationships between them, dissolving some and binding others. What the case analyzed ultimately shows is that in the culture of possession characterizing the early modern legal thought, the abandonment of things was seen as a possible attack on the common good, establishing a kind of quasi-servitude over privately owned assets that could be reactivated through the designation of ruin, to the point of allowing the de facto expropriation of the absent owner. Ownership, ultimately, had to be legitimized through actual presence and care, and an irresponsible owner could end up being dispossessed by the King’s tribunals, to ensure the preservation of the kingdom’s resources.