Alcalde - Modern Usage

Modern Usage

In modern Spanish, the term alcalde is equivalent to a mayor, and is used to mean the local executive officer in municipalities throughout Spain and Latin America. For example, the title alcalde continued to be used in the Spanish-speaking American Commonwealth of Puerto Rico after the occupation of the island during the Spanish-American War in 1898. In the autonomous Spanish cities of Ceuta and Melilla, however, the alcaldes-presidentes have greater powers than their peninsular colleagues.

Because the United States incorporated parts of the former Viceroyalty of New Spain, the office had some influence in the local political and legal developments of those areas and is mentioned in judicial cases. This title continued to be in use in the Southwest United States after the Mexican American War until a permanent political and judicial system could be established. Alcaldes were notorious for their support for rule of law and opposition to vigilantes. In nineteenth-century California, Stephen Johnson Field, later an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, once served as the only alcalde of Marysville, California, a town established in 1850 during the Gold Rush by immigrants, who temporarily used the Spanish and Mexican form of municipal government. In Texas, the position of county judge was based on that of the alcalde which had existed in the state prior to the Texas Revolution. Like the alcaldes before them, county judges under the Texas Constitution wield both judicial and chief executive functions. Although in larger counties today the county judge usually functions solely as county chief executive, in smaller counties, the role of the county judge continues to have many of the combined judicial and administrative functions of the alcalde.