The Colonial Electoral Practices and the Making of an Electoral Habitus. The Cabildo de la Villa de Luján between 1771 and 1821

Abstract

This article examines the electoral processes developed during the last decades of the colonial period in the jurisdiction of the Cabildo de la Villa de Luján, a rural town located near Buenos Aires. The aim of this paper is to investigate the existence of a colonial electoral tradition and the practices that may have informed and guided the actors to deal with the changes brought on elections as a result of the adoption of the principle of popular sovereignty after the revolution. The text considers rural people and towns as political actors engaged in the construction of both an electoral tradition and the changes in that tradition that took place in the first decades of the nineteenth century.