Note 56 — Chapter VIII · THE AUDIENCIA AND THE GOVERNOR: CONFLICTS OF JURISDICTION

I beg your Majesty that while it shall last (the war) you may be pleased to discontinue the Audiencia here, as it is this that most hinders and opposes the administration and the government, ... This is the enemy which most afflicts this commonwealth, and most causes dissensions, parties, factions, and hatred between the citizens—each auditor persecuting those citizens who are not wholly of his own faction, especially those who extend aid and good-will toward the governor, against whom, as it seems, they show themselves always in league. They always make declarations of grievances [against him] because they are not each one given, as used to be and is the custom here, whatever they may ask for their sons, relatives and servants; and they habitually discredit the governor by launching through secret channels false and malicious reports, and afterward securing witnesses of their publicity. They even, as I have written to your Majesty, manage to have religious and preachers publish these reports to which end, and for his own security, each one of the auditors has formed an alliance with the religious order which receives him best.56