This chapter examines the attempts of the high Spanish officials in Chuquisaca and Buenos Aires to suppress Chuquisaca’s vibrant political sphere in the aftermath of years of open confrontation, both violent and through the courts. Royal magistrates came to believe that the city’s public life posed formidable challenges to the colonial administration. This was not necessarily due to prevailing feelings of outright opposition to Spanish rule or even because the urban lower classes had violently clashed with the military garrison. The problem lay in the unyielding refusal to submit to authority. While some grievances, such as the suppression of the tobacco monopoly or the rejection of Spanish troops, were more radical than others, such as ceremonial controversies or the endowment of chairs, the greatest threat came not from the demands themselves but from the systematic act of demanding, from the continuous collective assertion of views about governmental affairs through an interwoven array of legal and extralegal, violent and nonviolent political practices. If the legitimacy of the Spanish rule was not strictly speaking in question, the governance certainly was. Without directly challenging the colonial regime, the routines of political contestation undermined its basic operating principles.