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, 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."

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.