A cacique, sometimes spelled as cazique (Latin American Spanish: [kaˈsike]; Portuguese: [kɐˈsikɨ, kaˈsiki]; feminine form: cacica), was a tribal chieftain of the Taíno people, who were the Indigenous inhabitants of the Bahamas, the Greater Antilles, and the northern Lesser Antilles at the time of European contact with those places. The term is a Spanish transliteration of the Taíno word kasike.

Cacique was initially translated as "king"^[1] or "prince"^[2][3] for the Spanish. In the colonial era, the conquistadors and the administrators who followed them used the word generically to refer to any leader of practically any indigenous group they encountered in the Western Hemisphere. In Hispanic and Lusophone countries, the term has also come to mean a political boss, similar to a caudillo, exercising power in a system of caciquism.^[4]

The Taíno word kasike descends from the Taíno word kassiquan, which means "to keep house".^[5] In 1555 the word first entered the English language, defined as "prince".^[6] In Taíno culture, the kasike rank was hereditary^[7] and sometimes established through democratic means. As the Taínos were mostly a peaceable culture the kasike's importance in the tribe was determined by the size of his clan rather than his skills in warfare. The Taíno kasikes also enjoyed several privileges that marked them as the elite class of Taíno society: they lived in a larger rectangular hut in the center of the village, rather than the peripheral circular huts of other villagers, and they had reserved places from which to view the areítos (ceremonial dances) and ceremonial ball game.^[8] Most importantly, the kasike's word was law and they exercised this power to oversee a sophisticated government, finely involved with all aspects of social existence.^[9]

The Spanish transliterated kasike and used the term (cacique) to refer to the local leader of essentially any indigenous group in Spanish America.^[10] Caribbean caciques who did not initially oppose the Spanish became middlemen, serving as the interface between their communities and the Spanish. Their cooperation was frequently provisional. Most of the early caciques eventually revolted, resulting in their deaths in battle or by execution.^[11] Two of the most famous of these early colonial-era caciques are Hatuey from what is now Cuba and Enriquillo on the island of Hispaniola.^[12] Both are now respective national heroes in Cuba and the Dominican Republic.

The Spanish had more success when they drafted the leaders of the far more hierarchically organized indigenous civilizations of Central Mexico. These Central Mexican caciques served as more effective, and loyal, intermediaries in the new system of colonial rule. The hierarchy and nomenclature of indigenous leadership usually survived within a given community and the Spaniards' designation of caciques did not usually correspond to the hereditary or likely candidate from a given system of indigenous leadership.

As a consequence, elite indigenous men willing to cooperate with the colonial rulers replaced their rivals who had better hereditary or traditional claims on leadership.^[13] The Spanish recognized indigenous nobles as a European-style nobility, within the newly established colonial system and a cacique's status among the colonizers (along with that of his family) was buttressed by their being permitted the Spanish noble honorifics don and doña.

As colonial middlemen, caciques were often the first to introduce European material culture to their communities. This is seen in the Spanish-style houses they built, the Spanish furnishings that filled them and the European fashions they wore everywhere.^[14] They engaged in Spanish commercial enterprises such as sheep and cattle ranchers and sericulture. Many even owned enslaved Africans to operate these concerns. The caciques also acquired new privileges, unknown before contact. These included the right to carry swords or firearms and to ride horses or mules.^[15] Some caciques had entailed estates called cacicazgos. The records of many of these Mexican estates are held in the Mexican national archives in a section Vínculos ("entails").^[16][17][18] The establishment of Spanish-style town government (cabildos) served as a mechanism to supplant traditional rule. Spanish manipulation of cabildo elections^[19] placed compliant members of the traditional, hereditary lineages on such cabildos town councils.^[20]

By the late colonial era in central Mexico, the term cacique had lost any dynastic meaning, with one scholar noting that "cacique status could in some degree buttress a family's prestige, but it could no longer in itself be regarded as a rank of major authority."^[21] In a 1769 petition by a cacique family to the Viceroy of New Spain, appealing for the restoration of its privileges, the following expectations were listed: "that, the cacique should be seated separately from commoners at public functions; he was excused from serving in town government; he was exempted from tribute and other exactions; he was excused from Sunday worship and payments of the half real; his servants were not liable for community labor; he was exempt from incarceration for debt and his property from sequestration; he could be imprisoned for serious crime but not in the public jail; the caciques' names were to be listed among the nobles in official registers; and "all these privileges are to apply equally to the caciques' wives and widows." With Mexican independence in 1821, the last of the special privileges of colonial-era caciques were finally abolished.^[22]

In contrast to the rest of the Spanish Colonial Americas, in the Andean region the local term kuraka was preferred to cacique. After conquering the Inca Empire the Spaniards administering the new Peruvian viceroyalty had allowed the kurakas or caciques to maintain their titles of nobility and perquisites of local rule so long as they swore fealty to the Spanish monarch.^[23]

In 1781, the Tīpac Amaru rebellion was led by a kuraka who claimed to be a descendant of the Inca royal line, that of the final Inca, Túpac Amaru. At independence in 1825, Simón Bolívar abolished noble titles, but the power and prestige of the kurakas were already in decline following the Great Rebellion.^[24] Kuraka rebellions had been waged since the beginning of the Spanish colonial rule, and decades after Túpac Amaru II's 1781 uprising other insurrections such as the Túpac Katari or the Mateo Pumakawa uprisings were often the first major engagements of the South American Wars of Independence.

Cacicas played significant roles as female leaders and entrepreneurs within indigenous Mexican communities. These women held titles independently, distinct from their husbands, and did not lose their status if they married outside their rank.^[14] Cacicas possessed financial insight, engaging in business transactions like property dealings and managing financial networks.^[25] They owned valuable assets including land, homes, and livestock, often securing the best and most fertile territories.

Despite their entrepreneurial focus, cacicas also wielded considerable authority, acknowledged by native communities, the Spanish Crown, and the Catholic Church. Their status rivaled high-ranking Spanish men, with privileges like special treatment at religious ceremonies and even distinguished burial sites. This recognition extended beyond their ancestors, surpassing the rank of notable figures such as Isabel Moctezuma and her lineage.

The multifaceted roles of cacicas highlight their integral contributions to Mexican society under Spanish rule, demonstrating their adeptness in economic enterprise, societal leadership, and cultural influence across indigenous communities.

An extension of the term cacique, caciquismo ("boss rule") can refer to a political system dominated by the power of local political bosses, the caciques. In the post-independence period in Mexico, the term retained its meaning of "indigenous" leaders, but also took on a more general usage of a "local" or "regional" leader as well.^[26][27] Some scholars make a distinction between caudillos (political strongmen) and their rule, caudillismo, and caciques and caciquismo.^[28] One Argentine intellectual, Carlos Octavio Bunge viewed caciquismo as emerging from anarchy and political disruption and then evolving into a "pacific" form of "civilized caciquismo", such as Mexico's Porfirio Díaz (r. 1876–1911).^[29] Argentine writer Fernando N.A. Cuevillas views caciquismo as being "nothing more than a special brand of tyrant".^[30]

In Spain, caciquismo appeared in the late 19th-century and early 20th-century Spain.^[31] Writer Ramón Akal González views Galicia in northwest of Spain, as having remained in a continual state of strangulated growth over centuries as a result of caciquismo and nepotism. "Galicia still suffers from this anachronistic caste of caciques."^[32] Spanish strongman El Caudillo Francisco Franco (1892-1975) was born in Ferrol in Galicia.

In the Philippines, the term cacique democracy was coined by Benedict Anderson.^[33] It has been used to describe the political system where in many parts of the country local leaders remain very strong, with almost warlord-type powers.^[34] The Philippines was a colony of Spain from the late sixteenth century until the Spanish–American War of 1898, when the United States assumed control. The U.S. administration subsequently introduced many commercial, political and administrative reforms. They were sometimes quite progressive and directed towards the modernization of government and commerce in the Philippines. However, the local traditional Filipino elites, being better educated and better connected than much of the local population, were often able to take advantage of the changes to bolster their positions.

There is no consensus in the scholarly literature about the origins of caciquismo. Murdo J. MacLeod suggests that the terms cacique and caudillo "either require further scrutiny or, perhaps, they have become so stretched by the diversity of explanations and processes packed into them that they have become somewhat empty generalizations".^[35]

• Caciques in Puerto Rico
• Caudillo
• Gregorio de San Juan
• Kalku
• Lonko
• Machi
• Gregor MacGregor, he claimed to be cacique of Poyais, a fictional Central American country
• European colonization of the Americas
• Guaicaipuro