This essay proposes a connection between the limited autonomy granted to indigenous communities, under a cacique, in the colonized New World, and that previously granted to mudéjar or Muslim communities, under a qadi, in late medieval Iberia. Not only is the relationship between these two structures evident in terms of law and theoretical spatial organization, but also in terms of the failure of the structures to effectively «contain» their populations, as seen in archival evidence from Lima and Sevilla, where members of supposedly segregated communities worked interdependently with those of their colonizers.