The paper aims to discuss the role of local councils of different regions of Portuguese America, analyzing their roles as delegates of the colonial population and also as instruments of control over the royal teaching, created in the second half of the eighteenth century, and the power relations established in the process. The study focused on documents produced by municipal councils, teachers and the central government, resulting from administrative and political relations between them. These documents allow the understanding of the mechanisms that organized these relationships and that had a direct impact on the educational reforms undertaken by the Portuguese Crown then.
educational reforms; Portuguese America; local powers