Given these entrenched ideological assumptions about the colonial order, it is no wonder that the state and those groups with an interest in the status quo viewed with suspicion and hostility any challenges to the fixed and "natural" boundaries between different sorts of people. These attitudes were perhaps best embodied by the so-called Two Republic system of Spanish America, a sprawling collection of royal legislation, local administrative policies, and informal practices, through which Spanish colonizers attempted to separate native peoples from other colonial subjects.