ABSTRACT
Most historians approach colonial Spanish-American demographic materials with an interest in the number and composition of local and regional populations. Even though the census system of Spanish America is relatively well-known to most students of the empire, a review of its major characteristics may be helpful. In evaluating the social context of the population records, the houselist or matrícula provides considerable insight. Not only do these remarkably complete inventories of families and individuals permit the location of people on the town map, they indicate how the clerical bureaucracy viewed the social composition of households. Three other characteristics of the population concerned the data collectors of the Spanish empire: race, marriage, and age. These three, of special interest to modern demographers and social historians, give the most difficulty in attempting to apply modern demographic and statistical techniques because the categories themselves seem to have variable meanings and the consistency of reporting leaves much to be desired.
