Partido (region)

Partido (lit. '"party"') was a Spanish colonial term that referred to a governed local administrative region, roughly equivalent to today's municipality in terms of rural land areas included,^[1][2] and used in the Spanish colonies in the Americas during the times of the Spanish Empire. It was "the territory or district composed of a jurisdiction or administration from a main city."^[3]

The term referred to 18th and 19th-century land regions that consisted of mature dispersed settlements but which had not yet been formally incorporated as hamlets. Though similar to today's municipality, partidos were under the control of a town or city government whose seat was, at times, a day's walk, or longer, away.^[4]