Discussion Response to classmate

Genealogical Fictions Limpieza de Sangre,

Religion, and Gender in Colonial Mexieo

Maria Elena Martinez

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRliSS

STANFORD, CALIFORNIA 2008

This book has been published with the assistance of the University of Southern California

Stanford University Press Stanford, California

©2008 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording,

or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press.

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Martinez, Maria Elena Genealogical fictions; limpieza de sangre, religion, and gender in colonial

Mexico I Maria Elena Martinez. p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8°47-5648-8 (cloth; alk. paper)

1. Mexico-Race l-. Racism-Mexico-History. 3. Social classes-Mexico-History 4. Social c1asses-

Religious Church. I. Title.

fr39l-.ArM37 wo8 305.5' r 2l-0890097.l.-dl'l-l-

l-0070 3875 1

Typeset by Thompson Type in roll l- Sabon

•

To my parents, Aurelia Lopez Corral and Nicolas Martinez Corral

To my grandparents (mis cuatro costados), Fwrentina Corral Esparza, Severo LOpez Avitia,

Marla de JesUs Corral Corral, and Enrique Martinez Corral

And to the precious land, our patria chica, that gave us life

CHAPTER SIX

The Initial Stages and Socioreligious Roots of the Sistema de Castas

Testimonies to the Spanish colonial project to create a dichotomous model of social organization, the first Mexican parish books contain- ing baptismal, marriage, and death registers were divided into {ibros de espa.ilO/es (books of Spaniards) and {ibros de indios (books of Indians). Dunng the first half of the seventeenth century, however, parishes in dif-

parts of New Spain started to keep separate records for people of mixed ancestry, the "castas," who previously had tended to be included

the books o.f Spaniards. Scholarship on colonial Mexico has generally mcerpreted £Ius change as a sign that the sistema de castas had crystal- lized. 1 The system began to unfold in the second half of the sixteenth century, a period that witnessed the growth of a "mixed" population as well as a nomenclature referring primarily to descent. By the end of the century, main colonial categories of difference, including mestizo and mu/ato, started to appear in administrative records on a regular basis.

Spanish colonial categories of "mixture" partly drew on metropoli- tan Beginning with the Council of Elvira {circa 314 C.E.}, sex- ual Intercourse between people of different religions was the subject of continual ecclesiastical prohibitions, and eventually marriages between

Jews, and Muslims were not permitted. The persistence of mterrehgJOus sexual unions during the medieval period gave way to new terms for their "hybrid offspring" (hibridos), including that of mozarabe (mixed Arab), which initially referred to the children of a Christian and a 2 This classificatory impulse intensified when the Spanish In- qUlSltHlIl began its genealogical investigations and efforts to determine people's degrees of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim blood. Given early modern Spain's acute concerns with lineage, purity, and categorization, the emergence of the colonial sistema de castas was perhaps to be ex- pected. But the rise and form of that system can be explained only by

Initial Stages of the 'Sistema de Castas'

and religious developments in Spanish America and the i interaction of local and transatlantic processes, among them

set in motion by the African slave trade. This chapter charts the origins of the sistema de castas in central New

It first discusses main classificatory trends in sixteenth-century records, particularly the shift from a somewhat fluid system of

in which paternal ancestry was privileged, but not al- to a more rigid model based on both bloodlines. Focusing mainly

mestizos, this section attributes the shift at the end of the sixteenth ¥nm,:yto processes of economic and political exclusion as well as to the

of the Inquisition and accentuation of Spanish anxieties the religious proclivities and genealogical origins of the native pop-

The chapter then examines the role of slavery in determining juridical-theological status of blacks vis-ii-vis that of the native peo- and more generally the place that African descent occupied within

",1!oo,i·,.1 society and its gendered order of blood symbols. The final sec- analyzes the Spanish colonial language of "race," particularly the

:ooeel'" of raza and casta, and the influence that religious notions of purity had on the system of classification's principal categories.

CATEGORIES AND ARCHIVES:

BOOKS OF SPANIARDS, INDIANS, AND CASTAS

AI,tho,ugh insufficient in and of themselves as a source of information origins and functioning of the sistema de castas, sixteenth-

records provide important clues about early colonial c1as- 'i trends. One of their limitations, besides their incomplete na-

they generally list more information for men than for women children. Marriage records, for example, often qualify grooms with

: terms such as espanol or indio, but don't provide the background of the . bride. Similarly, baptismal records include more information about the

(and godfather) than about the mother and child. This gendered "yrr'meu·y in parish registers was the result of the Castilian tradition

. determining the sociopolitical status of family members according to that of the head of the household, normally the father. A patrilineal logic reigned, that is, not just in the discourse of nohility {which established

.. noble status through the paternal bloodline} but in processes of estab-

.lishing vecindad {"citizenship" or membership in the local community} naturaleza ("nativeness" or membership in the kingdom). J In Span-

Ish America, this logic tended to operate in accordance with the dual tnodel of social organization, for at least initially, belonging in one or

'44 Religion, Genealogy, and Caste

the other "republic" was largely, though by no means exclusively, deter_ mined on the basis of the status of the father.

Patrilineal classificatory patterns are evident in birth records from sixteenth-century central Mexican cities. For example, the baptismal registers of Puchla's Sagrario Metropolitano (Cathedral Parish), which had /ibros de bautismos de espaftules as early as J544, tend only to SPec_ ify the Spanish status of the father, as such suggesting that the mother and child were Spaniards roo. Yet other colonial sources, inciudlllg a ISH report scnt by the city to the Council of the Indies, confirm that some of the children being registered had indigenous mothers. The re- port stated that out of eighty-one male heads of households, twenty_

were married to native As far as can be determined, the children produced by these unions were registered in libros de bautis- mas de espaiioles, without any indication that they were not Spanish.s In the early period, what seems to have mattered most were the status of the father and the legitimacy or illegitimacy of the child. Although the of mestizo does appear in one register from the 154os, its use contmued to be rare through most of the sixteenth century.6 That the term was scarcely utilized was not due to a lack of a population of mixed ancestry. A demographic count sent to the Suprema at the end of the sixteenth century estimated the total nonnative population of Puebla to be 20,100, including 14,400 Spaniards; 3,000 "mestizos, mulattoes, and free blacks" working in the obrajes, or textile mills (silk, cotton, and wool); 200 religious; and 2,500 black and mulatto slaves.7 The absence of the category of mestizo in parish records also did not mean that it was not used, for it did quickly appear in a number of municipal ordinances, town council records, and colonial repons. In the r540s and 15)OS, for example, various mestizos were granted lots of land in Puebla's traza (colonial urban grid plan) as well as in some native barrios. 8

As to the use of the categories of negro and mulato in the Sagrario Metropolitano's baptismal records, they starred to appear with some frequency in the 1;60s. few of these entries include last names but . , they tend lO apply the qualifiers negro and mulato to both men and women. Y Thus, on July 9,1560, Juan, son of "Lucrecia negra y de Diego de Ojeda," was baptized. His godparents were Luis Hidalgo and "una mulata Mendora."10 That the patrilineal trend determining the clas- sification of the children of Spanish males and native women did not operate in unions involvinr women of African ancestry was pardy a function of the institution of slavery and the Spanish legal principle of the "free womb" (vientre libre), which in order to protect the property rights of masters made the status of newborns follow that of their (en- slaved) mothers. ll It was also an early sign of Spanish colonial society'S

Initial Stages of the 'Sistema de Castas'

du"",""e to fully incorporate blacks and their descendants as vecinos naturales, to include them in the principal categories of sociopoliti-

belonging. i By contrast, early policies toward the offspring of Spanish-Indian

encouraged their integration into Spanish society. In the 1550S, example, the crown mandated that New Spain's officials take mes-

who were living in native towns and link them with their fathers, were to raise them as good Christians, cultivate their love for Spain

all things Spanish, and distance them from the "vices" and rituals indigenous population. 12 Royal decrees also ordered the establish-

of institutions aimed at integrating the children of Spanish-native into the republica de espaiioles. Though not always carried out, projects to found orphanages, boarding schools, monasteries,

dowry foundations for those who were destitute surfaced in Mexico Puebla, and other Spanish colonial towns.l.l The crown promoted

incorporation of mestizos into the Spanish community in order to demographic imbalances as well as to cultivate their loyalty to But its early orders to transfer them to Spanish cities and parents

mainly aimed at those who were orphaned and nor at those who already being raised by families in native towns, whose dassifica-

varied. Indeed, the offspring of colonists and native women could be consid-

Spaniards, mestizos, or Indians depending on sLlch factors as their status (legitimacy), paternal recognition, and level of Hispani-

as on the community in which they were raised. Self- 1M also played a role. Some individuals, especially those who

noble pre-Hispanic blood, identified more with their Indian ances- Ixtlilxochitl, for example, was a mestizo (actually a castizo) ac-

IOrdi',g to the emerging Spanish system of classification, but he for the part considered himself part of the indigenous nobility and was

oecogo·i"d as such. He recast native history largely in Spanish terms and certain extent distanced himself from the indigenous world of both

present, bur he nonetheless claimed noble Indian status and privileges that it implied.

A more telling example of how children of Spanish and native par- could be classified is provided by some of the descendants of the

Diego Munoz, who was married to a Castilian but fathered least two children with an indigenous wOl;nan. When he settled down live in Mexico City, he apparently helped raise his illegitimate off-

'P'''o,., one of whom was Diego Munoz Camargo (ca. 1528-99), the fu- hi,,,o,ii,n of Tlaxcala.H In the 1580s, the historian accompanied

group of Tlaxcalan officials to Madrid and met with Philip II, who

'46 Religion, Genealugy, and Caste

recognized him as the son of a cOnqueror. Munoz Camargo married Leonor Vazquez, a native noblewoman of Ococciulco, and had two le- gitimate children with her, Isabel and Diego. The historian became the teniente (deputy) of the Tlaxcalan municipal magistrate in 158} and, being fluent in Castilian and Nahuatl, often acted as official interpreter for colonial administrators. Though he worked for Spanish authorities, Munoz Camargo identified with native interests. As the son of a Spaniard, however, he could not hold a post in Tlaxcala's indigenous government. Munoz Camargo's son, on the other hand, was able to take over the post of "Indian governor" of Tlaxcala after he married the highest-ranking native woman in the province. 15 At least some of the descendants of the union between Diego Munoz the conquistador and an indigenous woman were thus absorbed into the category of indio. As this and other examples demonstrate, Spanish patrilineal principles, while dominant, did not always prevail. Official recognition of New Spain's native nobil- ity and the establishment of a dual system of rights and privileges based on blood made a return to the "pure Indian" pole not only possible but, under certain circumstances, desirable.

In sixteenth-century central Mexican cities, then, the classification of the descendants of Spaniards and native people was not determined by descent alone (as it seldom was to be), or for that matter by gender, but by a variety of factors. Despite an overarching patrilineal trend, legiti- macy, parental recognition, social rank, the initial demographic imbal- ances, strategies 00 the parts of both Spaniards and Indians, and level of acculturation could all playa role. At the end of the sixteenth century, however, patterns of classifications began to be based more squarely on aocestry. The term mestizo, for example, started to be applied to the children of Spanish and native unions on a more regular basis, regard- less of legitimate birth and other factors. The shift from a patrilineal but relatively fluid model of classification to one that was based on both pa- ternal and maternal bloodlines was manifested in the parish archives of various cities, which began to keep separate books for people of mixed ancestry: /ibros de castas. Mexico City's Sagrario Metropolitano started to keep separate baptismal records for the castas in 1603. Puebla's sa- grario began to do so in 1607, and by 1661, it had also started to keep different marriage books for that population. 16

Was the shift to a dual-descent model of classification related to de- velopments in Spain, where maternal descent had become increasingly important due to the merger of requirements of nobility and purity of blood and the Inquisition's activities? Possibly, but more important were a series of sociodemographic, political, and religious trends in cen- tral Mexico that lessened the overall status of mestizos. These trends

initial Stages of the 'Sistema de Castas' '47

the growth of a Spanish population through natural repro- .d and migration, which reduced the need to absorb the children of

unions into the Spanish group. Furthermore, marriages between $p,nii,h males and noble indigenous women, never common in the first

became even less common as lineages declined, meant that the mestizo population was not only increasingly il-

also more distanced from noble bloodY Another socio- :(1 factor influencing the status of mestizos was the emergence

a population of poor Spaniards. The problem was already considered in the mid-sixteenth century, and in 1553 led Viceroy Luis de to order Puebla's officials to attach all the Spaniards who did

have professions, properties, or employers ("o(icios, haciendas, 0 ) to masters.1S

Nonetheless, the number of poor Spaniards continued to increase. J'b' g;row,h of this population may not have been perceived as a problem

it not been for the presence of persons of mixed descent who were advantage of available economic opportunities or creating their

historian Munoz Camargo had several large properties as well «attl, ranches and commercial enterprises, and Andres Rodriguez, de-

by a contemporary source as an "Africano," was a merchant who eg,darly made trips to and from Tlaxcala and These two

have been exceptional, but it is well documented that per- - •.•• ,r ._.""., descent acquired a strong presence in craft guilds and that

engaged in petty commerce. 211 In Puebla, free blacks and mulat- quickly discovered that they could buy maize, wheat, chickens, salt, and various other products from the native population and then sell to Spaniards for a decent profit. The cabildo tried to put an end to

practice in 1555 and subsequently made several attempts to prevent of African ancestry from selling anything in the city.21 As has

,u,m,,,,d for Mexico City, the increase in poor Spaniards during which a small but significant portion of the population of

anc.""ywas showing signs of economic advancement might have ancestry increasingly important for the maintenance of colonial

.,'m''''''''' .. •• State policies, for one, reflect a desire to make that popula- into a free wage-labor force.

It would be misleading and reductionist, however, to attribute the of the sistema de castas simply to socioeconomic tensions and pro-

for there were other important dynamics at work. Politically, government started to consider mestizos a liability, especially after attempted rebellion of Martio Cortes, and to limit their rights and

The crown deemed the descendants of conquerors and noble I an especially dangerous group because they had a double claim

Religion, Genealogy, and Caste

to the land. Seeking ro curb their power but not alienate them, it issued policies that sometimes affirmed their special status and at others under_ mined it. Although the process had started earlier, in the last third of the sixteenth century, a series of legal restrictions diminished the rights of mestizos and started to make them into "second-class citizens."23 In the 157os, for example, royal decrees prohibited them from carrying arms; from becoming public notaries, caciques, and municipal magistrates; and from holding the title of Protector of Indians.l4 Furthermore, in 1582, Philip II ordered New Spain's viceroy to sell certain offices in the audiencia (particularly that of receptor) only to the sons of conquerors and to ascertain that they were not "mestizos () mulatos. "2S Persons of mixed ancestry were also gradually not permitted to enter the most pres- tigious trades and guilds and particularly were barred from becoming masters in them.

Fears that mestizos would turn into a political threat combined with suspicions about their religious loyalties. Usually described simply as a system of social control that served to divide and rule colonial popula- tions,26 the sistema de castas emerged during the formal establishment of the Inquisition and was inseparable from rising concerns (and men- dicant pessimism) over the persistence of pre-Hispanic religious prac- tices and beliefs. Although the Holy Office did not receive permission to prosecute native people, the discourse of indigenous idolatry-to which both the formal inquisitorial tribunal and the provisorato de indios contributed-that surfaced after the mid-sixteenth century fed the Span- ish interest in determining the origins of the Indians and in studying theories about the pre-Columbian inhabitants descending from one of the lost tribes of Israel. 27 Many of these theories linked the two groups by arguing that both had a predisposition to idol worshipping and that they had similar traditions of ritual sacrifice and cannibalism. Some Spanish writers made much of the fact that the words ;udio and indio, as written in sixteenth-century Spanish, were virtually indistinguish- able. For the Carmelite friar Antonio Vazquez de Espinosa, for example, the orthographical similarity was not exactly evidence that the Indians derived from Jews, but it was certainly consistent with the theory.28 The friar, who returned to Spain around 1622 after spending time in Peru and New Spain, also claimed that passages in the Bible indicated that the native population descended from one of the lost tribes of Israel, the one, incidentally, that had been condemned, "like mules," to perpetual servitude. H

The Spanish colonial discourse of idolatry, which drew heavily frorn anti-Semitic thought and tropes, had implications not only for the na- tive people but for mestizos and other casta categories, some of which

Initial Stages of the 'Sistema de Castas'

revealed in a 1576 letter written by Mexican inquisitors to the ,gp'''''' The letter, which made a case for depriving people of par-

indigenous descent from inquisitorial offices and posts, stated that lPani,,,d, in New Spain avoided the company of "indios mestizos or .«i,,"" because they generally considered them "vile and despicable"

incorrigible liars. For that same reason, the authors continued, these .",gc"i,,, of people were not admitted into monasteries nor allowed to

the habit, but some were able to do both because of their white skin which allowed them to conceal their "true descent." And if their

".,.Ii'" characteristics were not enough to deny them access [0 posts in Holy Office, there was also the matter of their ancestry, which some

had speculated had its origins with the Palestinians (the term in the letter). The issue was not resolved, the inquisitors noted,

there was "persuasive evidence" linking the two populations, such similarities between Hebrew words and indigenous ones, and their

liken'''' in habits, rituals, sacrifices, dress, hlankets landJlong hair":

because many things that happened to these [Indians] were announced for by the Prophets; and also because thty [the people that speculate about

hi,i'''''jsee the name Indio, and presume that it has been altered, and that the joined at the bottom so that it says Judio. These rumors and general

and assumptions, together with the vileness and baseness and depraved .",on,,,,' the descendants of these I seem sufficient reason not admit

into the offices of the Inquisition nor to any other ministerial post, and Ith"on",,'Y was done it would come a great surprise and shock. 3!!

The Mexican inquisitors' letter, which oozes anxieties over the pos- Semitic origins of the Indians, was written as the notion of purity

blood was starting to be adapted to the colonial context and ances- was becoming an exclusionary tool. The issue of idolatry played a . I role in this exclusionary process because, at least in the minds

religious officials, it associated the native people not only with the Hebrews bur also with the conversos. Technically, the venera-

of idols was considered a different type of religious transgression u::: persistent rejection of the church doctrine by those who

and taught the main principles of the faith. 31 But because indigenous people had been "cleansed" by holy water and in theory

i ' some colonial authorities argued that their lingering alle- to their old deities, by breaking with Christianity's monotheistic

::PI""'PI that latria (adoration) is owed exclusively to God, constituted only apostasy bur heresy. Frustrated by the removal of the mass of

people from their jurisdiction, inquisitors in particular insisted 'thatth, Holy Office should be allowed to try idolaters as heretics.

Religion, Genealogy, and Caste

Indeed, in a J619 leHer to the Suprema, Mexican inquisitors claimed that some "Iadino Indians" were returning to their idolatry, supersti_ tions, and sorcery and spreading their ideas not only among native peo_ ple but also among Spaniards. n These and other wrongdoings, the au_ thors lamented, were common in New Spain but could not be dealt with properly because the Holy Office could not tty Indians. The officials pointed out that if in Europe the Inquisition had been given authority to deal even with "infidel Jews and Moors, when rhey carry out their ritu_ als and ceremonies in Christian lands, [thereby) providing bad examples [for Christians)," with more reason should it be able to try a population that had been baptized. Their requests were not heeded, bur various Spanish priests and writers continued to link the idolatrous traditions of the Indians to those of the anCient Jews, and their refusal to completely relinquish their old gods and beliefs to the "heresy" of the conversos, thus pulling the native people and their descendants into the discourse of purity of blood.

Initially the connection between pre-Hispanic native religious prac- tices and impurity was not explicit. But by placing the indigenous peo- ple and their descendants on a lower spiritual plane than Old Christian Spaniards, the supposedly recurring problem of idolatry prompted reli- gious authorities to question native qualifications not only to work for the Inquisition but also to be ordained as priests and have access to ec- clesiastical offices and benefices. By the 1570s, some cathedral chapters had constitutions that made mestizo priests ineligible for ecclesiastical posts and benefices. Thus, when in 1571 the bishop of Antequera wrote to the crown proposing that Cristobal Gil should not have the post of treasurer in the cathedral because he was not a "pure Spaniard," his letter included a list of other priests who had "ra\a de mestizos" and were therefore disqualified from accessing benefices. H The descendants of Spanish-Indian unions were allowed to enter the priesthood in the 1580S, bur only if they were exceptionally qualified. Because there was a shortage of priests who spoke native languages, this acceptance understood to be a matter of necessity and strongly contingent on candi- dates' submitting proof of their qualifications in the form of "informes de cafidad y meri[Os," which included birth and genealogical informa- tion. Not yet addressed directly in relation to colonial populations, the issue of limpieza de sangre nonetheless loomed in the background.

The Mexican historian Francisco Morales believes that the first Span- iard to explicitly link the indigenous people to borh the ancient Jews and the issue of purity of blood was the Franciscan Geronimo de In his Historia Eclesicistica Indiana, finished in 1604, rhe friar stated that just as those who had converted from Judaism were prevented from join-

Initial Stages of the 'Sistema de Castas' '5' religious orders because they were "new" Christians, so too should Indians, for they also were new to the faith.]j He pointed out that

though the primitive church had allowed recently converted gen- and Jews as priests and bishops, experiences with New Christians

the con versos) had led the papacy to bar the descendants of fiJ ' within the fourth degree from professing in the religious orders

the Franciscans [0 codify this exclusion in their statutes. According Mendieta, a few Indians had been given the habit in the early phases

bur during their novitiate year they had proven to be for the order. Therefore, the Franciscans-the same order

had helped lead the campaign to create the Spanish Inquisition and by I52.'i had installed purity requirements-had established a

them altogether. Arguments about insufficient of the Catholic faith and unproven loyalty to it were also

against mestizos. Although both groups had already been barred the Franciscan Order in central Mexico, their exclusion became

of the order's purity statute in 1614. Spanish concerns with the issue of native idolatry, which increased

the 1560s onward, were accompanied not only by the extension of notions of impurity to colonial populations but also by the con-

tru,e,;on of indigenous women's bodies as vehicles of contamination. ability of the discourse of limpieza de sangre to turn women into

of impurity had already manifested itself in Spain. In Mexico, proh;b;;,;,;n of indigenous religions ("idolatry"), which like Chris-

and Judaism were not confined to a series of beliefs but encom- various levels of social life and were inscribed in everyday rituals

practices, J6 enhanced the importance of spirituality in the house- . That is, the colonial church's efforts to annihilate pre-Hispanic

priests, and public rituals lessened the role that native men played • p.erpe"u<u;ng indigenous forms of understanding and experiencing the

officials were not as effective at policing the indigenous ,0 in which women tended to be more crucial in the transmis-

of knowledge about the natural and supernatural. In the more private domain of the home, traditional practices related the keeping of sacred household objects, celebrating rites of passage

marriage, dealing with sickness, and so forth tended to survive. ''Women were prominent in these activities and in particular in rituals to . ward off sickness, to prevent the dangers of childbirth, to protect chil- ,deen from malignant supernatural forces, and to heal. Their critical role in the process of "acculturation and coumer-acculturation"]7 enabled the projection of Spanish colonial anxieties over the failure of the conversion

: project, and indeed, over impurity, onto their bodies. Like conversas and

Religion, Genealogy, and Caste

moriscas, native women became strongly associated with the transmis_ sion of their ancestors' cultural-religious forms. And just as Old Christian concerns with safeguarding purity of blood were expressed in terms of anxieties about the fluids of impure women in the metropole, so too in the colonial context, where the metaphor of contaminating breast milk also became common. This metaphor served to refer to the transmission of all sorts of practices from native (and later black) wet nurses to chil- dren, and in particular to mark mestizos and creoles as impure.

At the start of the seventeenth century, the category of mestizo, like that of Indian, was deeply embedded in discourses of religious conver- sion and being linked, more often than not implicitly, to the concept of limpieza de sangre. This development, along with the socioeconomic and political trends that were sketched out above, explains the declining status of people of Spanish-Indian ancestry and the increasing preoc- cupation with ancestry at the end of the 1500s. But it does not entirely clarify the emergence of the sistema de castas and more specifically the form that it took. Explaining the nature of the system requires a deeper understanding of the impact of the formal recognition of native purity on patterns of categorization and of the consequences of the institution of slavery on the classification of blacks and their descendants.

CASTE, SLAVERY, AND COLONIAL MEXICO'S

GENDERED SYMBOLICS OF BLOOD

The construction of casta categories and processes of political and eco- nomic disenfranchisement that accompanied it escalated in the seven- teenth century. During the early decades, for example, vecindad waS transformed, at least in Spanish towns (native ones had their own citi- zenship regime), from an administrative to an informal status and made virtually exclusive to Spaniards. 38 Moreover, in the 1630s, in response to a petition from professors at the University of Mexico, the crown pro- hibited the matriculation of Indians, mulanos, and illegitimate mestizos and made them ineligible to hold university degrees. The decision waS extremely important in terms of constructing religious and political hier- archies because university degrees were necessary for most high-ranking posts in the church and state. Restrictive legislation, however, generally did not lump all the castas together. Mestizos, especially if legitimate, tended to occupy a different place within the "republic of Spaniards" than mulattos.

Irrespective of how certain institutions were operating and the link- ages that some colonial officials drew between Indians and Jews, and

Initial Stages of the 'Sistema de Castas'

and heresy, the crown and key jurists and theologians p to uphold the notion that native people were pure and thus

allow for their possible access, and that of their descendants, to the Christians and, indeed, to that of Spaniard. Thus, when

;h friar Gregorio Garda discussed the theory that the na- people descended from ancient Hebrews in his early seventeenth-

;",,,u,,,treatise, titled Origen de los indios del Nuevo Mundo, he made to stress that even if it turned out to be true, their blood was none-

pure. He reasoned that if the Indians did indeed have Jewish .ne'''''''', it was possible that they had arrived in the New World before

death of Christ. The implication was that the indigenous popula- did not descend from deicides-an aspersion commonly cast on in Christian Europe-and thus that their genealogies were not

",n""'.» This affirmation of Indian purity enabled Garda not only to the right that mestizos had to access offices in the government

the church (prerogatives of natives of a jurisdiction) but to include in the "Spanish nation" (nacion);

1Vb,"un""'g,h,,, ,m' of ,f" Indians that such Spaniards have with the Spanish , said part whatever negative association it had, and gains much

one that now accompanies it, from which, since it is better, and more io"o,",bl", the said descendants take the surname and name Spaniard, even if

are mestizos and have the same percentage of Indian and Spanish parts, as [Spaniards] they are <ldmitted in the Repuhlic's honorable posts and gov-

""m,,,,, and to other places and things of honor and Religion, and are not because of having Indian parts ... [which they ordinarily derive] from

maternalline.411

In the early modern period, the term nacion (from the verb nacer, "to born") had different connotations, one of its most common referring a group with the same origin, sharing birthplace and lineage as well

and culture. Thus, Old Christians sometimes described con- Jews as members of the "Hebrew nation," as in "los de nacion he-

descendientes de Judios" ("those of the Hebrew nation descending Jews").41 In Spanish America, the concept of naci6n also usually

an ethnolinguistic group, and it was in this sense that Gregorio used it when he asserted that mestizos were eligible for honors

'n,j ",ffi,,,· in the republic because of their "Spanish parts." Colonial ar- provide ample examples of Spaniards who disagreed, and as pre-

I discussed, certain institutions and royal policies did limit their Nonetheless, the friar's construction of mestizos as Spaniards was

'."'i"ul,,,,,oin different colonial laws and texts and reflected the adapta- of the generational and genealogical formulas of the Castilian con- of limpieza de sangre to the colonial context. Thanks to the belief

'54 Religion, Genealogy, and Caste

that blood was a vehicle for the transmission of all sorts of qualities, the descendants of Indians could become Old Christians by demonstrating, for several generations, their devotion to the faith, and by reproducing with "pure" Spaniards.

This construction of the Spanish-Indian "mixture" was gendered be_ cause it coded Spanish blood as stronger and masculine. Its logic was that Indian blood could be completely absorbed into Spanish blood not only because it was unsullied but because it was "weak." Garda thus al- luded to the mestizo's purported physiological weakness and "feminine" characteristics {such as the inability to grow a beard), which the friar ar- gued derived from his "Indian pans." Drawing from Galenic theories of humors, he claimed that the climate of the region had made native bodies humid, like those of women, and thus not conducive to the growth of fa- cial hair, as well as intellectuaUy and physically weak, and in general "ef- feminate and pusillanimous" {"afeminados. i pusiianimes")Y Garcia's characterization of Spanish-Indian unions was thus built on certain bi- naries that were coded female and male and that implied an imbalance of strength and power between the two groups. Spanish colonial soci- ety's dominant "symbolics of blood" thus echoed the sociopolitical re- lationship between the two republics as compatible but hierarchical and paternalistic. It simultaneously reflected the gendering effects of power and the powerful effects of gender, instrumental not only for conceptu- alizing but for constructing and reproducing colonial hierarchies.4l

The colonial discourse of native weakness was prominent in Spanish colonial society. It originated in the sixteenth century at the time that the indigenous population began to decline. To deal with the resulting shortages of labor for Spanish mining, ranching, and sugar enterprises, the crown allowed the importation of black slaves into its American territories. A single black, some Spaniards claimed, was three or four times stronger than an Indian-a claim that helped them to rationalize both the system of enslavement and the demographic drop among the indigenous population. Thus, Viceroy Martin EnrIquez described with awe the strength of mulattos (here referring to children of black men and indigenous women) when compared to mestizos. Thanks to the "na- ture" of his black father, he claimed, a mulatto was to a mestizo like "a man to a doll."44 The viceroy'S depiction of the two castas-his use of a gendered Simile to mark a relationship of power-was not unique, but rather reflected larger discourses that feminized native people and mas- culinized blacks and that were linked to Spanish political, economic, and religious projects.

Whereas Spanish colonial ideology generally construed sexual repro- duction between Spaniards and the indigenous population as a redemp- tive process-one in which Indian blood could be completely absorbed

Initial Stages of the 'Sistema de Castas'

Old Christian lineages-it seldom allowed blacks the possibility "redemption" and their full im:orporation into the "Spanish na- The lower status of African ancestry within colonial Mexico's symbolism owed much to slavery, which in the sixteenth century

still understood, as in the late medieval period, as an economic and ei;!io,u, institution. According to the Siete Partidas, the thirteenth-

legal code that constituted the juridical basis of the Spanish was the natural human condition, and only three

could be deprived of it: enemies of Christianity who were wars," children of slave women, and individuals who

themselves under certain circumstances. The prevailing notion that o-religicmi,,, should not be enslaved, which the late medieval Christian

borrowed from Muslims, rhetorically framed slavery as a reli- institution and connected slaves to infidelity, paganism, and sinY

By the time of Spanish expansion to the Americas, Iberians already a long history of enslaving Africans and of developing negative at-

toward people with dark skin. In the second half of the fifteenth imagery intensified on the peninsula due to the estab-

II of the Portuguese African slave trade, which began in 1441 was stimulated by the 1453 capture of Constantinople by Ottoman

The fall of the city cut Christian Europe's access to slaves from .. IBi"ck Sea and Balkan regions and led to a clear shift to sub-Saharan

as the main source of forced labor for western Europeans. AI- Spanish cities such as Seville and Valem:ia (main recipients of slaves) had populations of free blacks, the shift reinforced pre- Castilians associations of slavery and "blackness."46 These as-Deiia'im", however, need not have determined the nature of slavery in Mn"·i'.'. During and after the conquest, not all slaves were

.""oa not all blacks were slavesY Persons of African descent partici- in Spanish expeditions and conquests, and after the foundation of including Havana, Mexico City, and Puebla, some were allowed

• o,b",i·o titles of vecindad (especially if they had Spanish fathers). But status generally declined after the mid-sixteenth century, when the Laws helped make the condition of inheritable slavery exclusive to

The momentous decision to ban the enslavement of native people was pro,ml,,,d by numerous factors, among them the fear that

lead to their extinction, the role of the church in defendmg mdlg- rights, and the crown's desire to prevent the encomenderos from

a feudal nobility. That Spaniards did not prohibit the use of slaves on the other hand, was partly due to the growing Euro-

of Africa as a land of infidels and barbarians, Iberia's e and familiarity with black slaves, the prior establishment of

Religion, Genealogy, and Caste

trading networks in West Africa by the Portuguese, and the cooperation of African slave Also of crucial importance were the political

that Spain had in the Americas. As the jurist Solorzano y Pereira later declared, because conversion could take place only through gentle the responsibility for delivering the Indians to Catholicism, on whICh Its tides to lands in the Americas depended, could be achieved only by respecting their natural and an- cient li.ber.ty.I(1 The very application of the concept of naturales (natives) to the lIldlgenous population drew from the Scholastic tradition and im_ plied recognition of their right, as a people who were in their lands and had submitted to Christianity, to live in their own polities, with their own political leaders, institutions, and hierarchies . .!l Although in some regions the enslavement of Indians continued even after the passage of the New Laws, the principle of their freedom became a crucial compo_ nent of Spanish colonial ideology, central to Spain's justification of its continued presence in the Americas.

Perhaps because Spanish sovereignty in the Americas did not rest on the idea of respecting the freedom of Africans, who after all were not in their own lands, relatively little thought was given to the legiti- macy of the transatlantic slave trade. Bartolome de Las Casas, one of the main advocates of the liberation of the native people, was appar- ently not as troubled by the brutal treatment of Africans and owned some himself. Although he modified his views toward the end of his life, he along with other colonial officials proposed that labor shortages be resolved through the importation of black slavesY To be sure, a few theologians did voice strong opposition to the enslavement of blacks in- cluding Archbishop Alonso de MontMae. In IS60, he wrote to Philip II asking how a Christian king could allow for the enslavement of blacks when there appeared to be no JUSt cause for it. Noting that His Majesty and his predecessors (Charles V and the Catholic Kings) had acted in a n?ble and just manner when they freed the baptized Indians, the arch- bishop wanted to know why the merchandising of slaves from Guinea and other areas "conquered" by the Portuguese was being permitted.

In a remarkable statement for its time, Archbishop MontMar chal- lenged the principal arguments that Spaniards used to justify slavery. He pointed our that the claim that blacks could be enslaved because they were enemies of Christianity did not have much validity because those who were introduced to it seemed to be accepting it in good faith and were not waging war against Christians. Responding to writers who ex- cused the practice on the basis that it was controlled by Africans them- selves, MontMar added that if enslavement was common in Africa it was because it had been stirr 'llated by the large profits that resulted

Initial Stages of the 'Sistema de Castas' , 57

,ari,I:,i"g European demand. ''IN]or does it seem to be sufficient cause," continued, "that said blacks receive spiritual and corporal benefits

their captivity under the Christians, in particular because in such ;ap.eiv;ey they arc often times or routinely subject to harms that arc ami- tbe"C'"to their salvation."s3 Mont Mar could nor reconcile the enslave-

of peoples who had accepted baptism with Christian principles_ last potentially liberating because they posed freedom as the natural

,,,,,d;e;,," of humanity-and urged the crown to condemn the institu- If saving the souls of blacks was the goal, the archbishop wrote at

end of his letter, instead of "rescuing" them through slavery in order convert them, the Holy Gospel should be preached to them in their

where both their bodies and souls were free and thus more open receiving the message of God. During the following decades and early seventeenth century, a few

voices were raised against the transatlantic slave trade. strong critiques of slavery were written by Bartolome AI-

in the 1570S and by the Jesuit Alonso de Sandoval in 1627.54 lando"J, who described in great detail the horrific conditions under

Africans were captured and transported to the Americas, de- the intellectual capacities of blacks. If they did not have mental

i1c"it;", he argued, no one would be bothering to try to convert them. notwithstanding the arresting image of bodies and souls in captivity du,,,,,;,,;,, of the slave trade sometimes painted, the system was allowed

continue, in part because the sale of licenses to the Portuguese for blacks into the Americas had by the late sixteenth century

an important source of revenue for the Castilian crown .. I.1 But the obvious economic interests behind the transatlantic slave

Spaniards continued to justify their enslavement partly in reli- terms and, more concretely, to mark slaves as Muslim infidels. some bills of sales of Africans contained the inscription "captured

:, in just war, subject to servitude." The linkage with Islam was not en- . tirely fictitious, for most of the slaves that the Portuguese shipped to Spanish America during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were from

. the Upper Guinea region (now Senegambia), which had a significant pop- '. ulation of Muslims. Although Spanish laws stipulated that all slaves

had to be baptized and taught the basic principles of the faith, the per- Sistent presumption that they retained their "infidel" ways led to various efforts to try limit their contact with native peopleY Their efforts were on the whole not successful, in part because the principle of the free womb encouraged unions between black men and indigenous women and quickly led to the rise of a free population of mixed African and na- tive ancestries (labeled "mulatto" at first) .• 1

Religion, Genealogy, and Caste

The association of blackness with infidelity also facilitated the ex_ tension of Castilian concepts of limpieza de sangre to persons of African descent. As the transatlantic slave trade was consolidated, various Span_ ish writers on both sides of the Atlantic, including Juan de Torquemada started to identify dark skin color as a marker of divine punishment and' more specifically, to attribute the enslavement of blacks to the curse of Ham. \g Some also began to refer to blacks in terms of "race" and "im- purity." Early records of passengers from Spain to Spanish America re- veal that blacks and mulattos were sometimes listed in Seville's Casa de Contrataci6n's registers as Spaniards (as well as negros and mulatos) and that some were even classified as cristianos viejos, particularly when their fathers were Old ChristiansY Thus, although people of African descent were already being marked by their skin color, they were not yet uniformly considered genealogically impure. This situation began to change in the late sixteenth century. In his chronicle of the life of Charles Y, for example, Fray Prudencio de Sandoval compared the sup- posed inability of the descendants of converted Jews to rid themselves of their "Jewish race" with that of the descendants of blacks to separate themselves (even with "thousands" of white ancestors) from the "acci- dent of their negritude."6u Who would deny, wrote the friar and bishop of Pamplona, "that in the descendants of Jews remains and lasts the bad inclination of their ancient ingratitude and failed beliefs, like in blacks the inseparable accident of their negritude? For if one thousand times they are with white women their children are born with the dark skin of their parents."61 Tellingly, Sandoval's comments not only construe Jewish and black ancestries as ineffaceable stains, and hence threatening to Old Christian lineages, bur betray a particular anxiety about sexual relations between black males and white women.

In the colonial context, just as in the metropolitan one, anxieties over genealogical contamination were largely displaced onto the field of wom- en's sexuality, the privileged si[C for the containment of race/caste am- biguities. Within the emerging sistema de castas, in which classification based on both bloodlines and the status of purity implied having access to economic resources and political rights and offices, control of female reproductive capacities was crucial for perpetuating the hierarchical and racialized social order. Unions between black men and Spanish warnell were the most threatening to that order because they undermined onc of its main psychological premises, the inaccessibility of the latter to all but Spanish men. They were also problematic because if they became commonplace, they would compromise the dominant group's limpieza de sangre. Black blood was more threatening to Spanish lineages than that of native people because Spanish men who reproduced with indige· nous women could, over the course of a few generations, reproduce their

Initial Stages of the 'Sistema de Castas' '59

status. What they could not do was to completely "redeem" or •.• "Fv" their children with black women-the "seeds" of blacks were,

of Jews and Muslims, apparently too potent to be completely ;'imila'c<d.

That women of African descent could not produce "pure Spaniards" a legacy of the institution of slavery and the way it tried to ensure children of female slaves remained the property of masters, that is,

making their status follow that of their mothers. It was also a prod- of efforts to deny the descendants of blacks the political and eco-

privileges that the status of purity implied and in general any ge- .,.lo1:iCi,lclaims. As property, slaves were not able to make many claims

on birth and their masters and government officials normally tried prevent them from creating a communal identity. Through a process

Orlando Patterson calls "natal alienation," they were to relinquish heritage as well as the possibility of bequeathing it to their descend-

This denial didn't mean that slaves did not forge ties to the past od .. nong themselves, just that Spanish society seldom recognized them

legitimate or binding. The absence of slave surnames in many par- records in a sense reflected an ideology that sought to obstruct or

black communal identities and memory of the African pastY >irican·d''''·'KI,d people were strongly discouraged from congregating,

their own associations, and in general from engaging in activi- that would allow them to nurture a collective identity.(,4 Several co-

Mexican cities allowed blacks to form cofradias (religious brother- for the sake of fomenting their Christian religiosity, and some of

confraternities thrived, becoming important and ongoing sites of ieligil)m and cultural expression for blacks and their descendants.6 ) But

population's persistent fears that such institutions would en- and enslaved people of African ancestry to unite and plan rebel-

periodically led government officials to. attempt to outlaw them and various occasions led to their temporary suspension. Freedom did not necessarily make it easier for blacks to either ex- as communities or make genealogical claims. Because their progeni-

were assumed to have arrived as slaves, they were not • as a community that had willingly accepted Christianity and

rule and that was in a contractual relationship with [he Castilian C">wn. Lacking the status of a "republic" and marked as descendants · of distant, infidel lands who had lost their freedom, African

: J were denied access to full vecindad rights and to the category .. Christian. Thus, the issuing of vecino titles to blacks and their de- scendants, which although on a limited basis had taken place before, be-

· increasingly rare in the late sixteenth century. They were also nor- · tnally not allowed to serve as witnesses in civil or ecclesiastical tribunals

,60 Religion, Genealogy, and Caste

because, civil and religious authorities argued, theif Old Christian sta_ tus could not be confirmed. Spanish laws and institutions tended not to validate claims that the descendants of slaves had been Christians since "time immemorial." As late as the eighteenth century, people of partial African ancestry were described by some colonial officials, and some_ times presented themselves, as deriving from slaves and having infidel origins.66

Spanish colonial discourses regarding persons of African ancestry, which rendered theif polirical ties and religious loyalties as suspect, were immersed in contradictions. Parts of Africa (mainly in the Kongo and Angola) had accepted Christianity, for example, and some blacks in Spain and the Americas had proven, and were acknowledged, to be sincere Christians. Spanish secular authorities constantly worried that African- descended people would use confraternities to plan rebellions, but some black sodalities became known for their piety. Furthermore, although colonial reports tended to consttue blacks as disloyal and subversive elements,l,7 a significant number served in colonial militias, which were avenues to honor and social advancement. In central New Spain, people of African descent provided military services as early as the sixteenth century and in subsequent centuries played a critical role in the Spanish defense of the Circum-Caribbean.M Moreover, even though Spaniards associated persons of African descent with slavery and tried to relegate them to the lowest socioeconomic levels, their place in Mexican society was at no point monolithic. At the end of the sixteenth century, they not only participated in a number of crucial rural and urban economic activ- ities69 but also had a significant presence in Spanish households and were highly prized by their masters not just as a source of labor. According to various viceregal reports, even Spaniards of modest backgrounds made it a priority to purchase posts in local government for no other reason than to acquire black retinues and the symbolic capital that they emhou- ied. 7U Indeed, in Mexico, where no separate planter class emerged, many colonial officials had slaves, thus turning them into a part of the theater of domination, into public symbols of the economic, social, and military might of their masters.

By the early seventeenth century, both Mexico City and Puebla had rising numbers of free and enslaved Africans who were relatively in- tegrated into Spanish colonial society. Many lived in close proximity to Spanish residents and tended to be relatively acculturated, especiaily those who had been raised in the Americas and worked in Spanish households. Spaniards referred to these blacks and mulattos as either crio/los (creoles) or ladinos, the latter term having been used in Spain to refer to Muslims and Jews who mastered the Castilian language or were

Initial Stages of the 'Sistema de Castas'

to the point that they could not be distinguished from 'a Spaniards."71 No matter how "creolized" or "Latinized" per-

of African ancestry in central Mexico were, their strong presence in dominant culture's intimate, familial sphere made Spanish men anx-

DUS and distrustful, constantly on guard that at any moment their male and servants would try to kill them, usurp power, and take their

.wi"w,''''''n. In 1612, Spanish fantasies of racial and sexual violence in City played a prominent role in the circulation of rumors about

"black conspiracy" that led the audiencia to conduct an investigation, thirty-five blacks and mulattos, and order their executions.72 cofradfa leaders were implicated in the alleged plot, the tribunal

ordered the temporary dismantling of all black sodalities. Spanish fantasies, or tather nightmares, of racial violence and dis-

"""«,,i,on surfaced periodically in Mexico. Tending to take a similar they reflected the existence of an arena of competing patriarchies

which power was symbolized by the phallus and enacted upon on the of women, particularly their wombs. 7l These fantasy-nightmares

up a world in which it was no longer the labor, sexual, power of women of African descent that was being ap-

and transferred to the dominant group, but that of Spanish . in which it was not blackness but whiteness that was marked as and targeted (through reproductive and classificatory patterns)

extinction; and in which black men were not stateless but had their kingdom and, with it, privileged access to all women. The phantas-

of a black republic was dearly a product of a racialized socio- K order that denied the patriarchal rights of black men and trans-

the bodies, children, and labor of black women into the property Sp.,m'sh men. It betrayed the particularly deep connections that slav- had crcated between racial, gender, and economic subordination as as Spamsh colonial society's chronic anxieties over "black blood."

anxieties were reflected in the very categories of the sistema de which mainly marked as impure people of African descent.

RAZA, CASTA, AND L1MPIEZA DE SANGRE;

THE SPANISH COLONIAL LANGUAGE OF RACE

and casta, terms central to early modern Spain's lexicon of blood, referred to breed, species, and lineage, and could thus be used inter-

ch<ang"lblyto describe groupings of animals, plants, or humans.74 Their and connotations were not identical, however. Whereas the first

be.:aln, strongly identified with descent from Jews and Muslims and

Religion, Genealogy, and Caste

acquired negative connotations, the second remained more neutral and was hence more frequently applied to Old ChristiaIls.75 But casta also had multiple meanings. If as a noun it was usually linked to lineage, as an adjective it could allude to chastity, nobility ("good breeding"), and legitimacy, and more generally to an uncorrupted sexual and genea_ logical history. Casta was thereby able to give way to the term castizo, which referred to notable ancestry.76 By implication, the mother of a castizo would have been casta, a woman who had remained faithful to her husband. When applied to humans, then, the sixteenth-century Spanish word casta and its varIous connotations were alluding to a sys- tem of social order centered around procreation and biological parent- hood, one in which reproducing the pure and noble "caste" was mainly predicated on maintaining the chastity of its women. Whether in Spain or Spanish America, notions of genealogical purity and their privileging of endogamic marriage and legitimate birth were never divorced from discourses of gender and female sexuality, from a sexual economy con- stituted by gendered notions of familial honor.

In the colonial context, Spaniards came up with even more uses for the word casta, for by the mid-sixteenth century it was functionmg, in the plural, as an umbrella term for the children of "mixed" unions.?7 In Mexico, this application of the term began around the mid-sixteenth century, almost simultaneous with the rise of a nomenclature distin- guishing people of different lineages, its first and most enduring terms being mestizo and mulato. Hence, when later in the sixteenth century Diego de Simancas, a man of Spanish and native parentage, was tried by the Mexican Inquisition for allegedly believing that Jesus was not the true son of God, he was asked to declare not his "race," but his

The dominant colonial usage of the term casta simultaneously signaled the importance of reproduction and sexuality to the colonial order and the increasing anxieties about being able to control them. The Augustinian friar Nicolas de Witte expressed these anxieties in I552, when he wrote about the difficulty of maintaining peace in Mexico. The land, he noted,

is engendering and is being populated by a mixture of evil people. For it is dear that this land is full of mestizos, who are [born] so badly indincd. It is full of black men and women who derive from slaves. It is fuJi of bla(.:k men who marry Indian women, from which derive mulattos. And it is full of mestiws who marry Indian women, from which derive a diverse caste [(.:astal of infinite number, and from all of these mixtures derive other diverse and not very good mixtures.79

The emerging system of classification relied on the idea that each of the three main colonial categories-Spaniards, Indians, and blacks-

Initial Stages of the 'Sistema de Castas'

characterized hy a unity of substance that was maintained through .. ,Io" .. ny hut could be hroken through sexual intercourse outside the

As other naturalizing discourses, the sistema de castas held sex as productive act that could pollute or dilute blood, which in turn could

sick and degenerate beings, or at the very least pose classifi- problems within the hierarchy of allegedly natural categories.so the system allowed for a virtually infinite number of castes to

.. ,,,odu,,,!.. Did the premises of the sistema de castas and in particular belief in discreet human groups challenge the theory of monogen-

Not according to Gregorio Garda. Realizing the dangerous theo- implications of applying the concepts of purity and mixture to he pointed out that mestizo animals could come from distinct

.,,,,'um but be part of the same species. Likewise, individuals could be- ta different "nations" or "lineages" but be part of the same Adam-

human species. S] Garda seemed to be echoing Fray Juan de "n"d,,', discussion, in his Dia[ogos familiares de fa agricultura cristiana <5:,8--'580), of marriages between Old Christians and New Christians

in particular his comparison of horse breeding with human repro- to argue that even though all people derived from the found-

biblical couple, some lineages were better than others and therefore avoid mixing with lesser ones. The influence of understandings

reproduction in the natural world on Spanish thinking about human Iepro,duc,lun proved to be even stronger in the colonial context, as evi- Ien,ceo', for example, by the numerous casta categories created from zoo-

terms. the term casta was applied to people of mixed ancestry, it be-

to acquire negative connotations, but it remained distinct from the <O'"CI'P' of raza and its religious undertones. Hence, mestizos, mulat-

and in a general sense also Spaniards and Indians were considered not necessarily races. Or rather, not all of these cat-

01 thought to have "race." Anthropologist Laura Lewis is thus correct when she asserts that early modern Spain elaborated an

,",ch"I',n"y discourse on race within its peninsular borders at the same that it created a more inclusive system of caste in the Americas,

that allowed the different castas to claim to be connected through .. ,>g"m' or symbolic kinship ties. u Such a rigid distinction between

two systems of differentiation cannot be drawn, however. Not only caste in the colonies become racialized over rime, an increasingly

'.,,,u,,II,lngdiscourse, but as stressed earlier, by the late sixteenth cen- o tury, Iberian notions of race and impurity had started to be used against I persons of African ancestry. This use was captured in the probanzas de limpieza de sangre. In I599, for example, Cristobal Ruiz de Quiroz sub- mitted his genealogical information to the Franciscan Order in Puebla

,64 Religion, Genealogy, and Caste

in order to prove that he descended from "a clean caste and genera_ tion, without the race or mixture of Moors, mulattoes, blacks, Jews or the newly converted to the Holy Catholic Faith."n The following year, Pedro Serrano, a native of Seville who applied to be a royal secretary in the Philippines, submitted his genealogical information in order to es- tablish that his ancestors had not been tried by the Holy Office and that they were pure Old Christians, "dean from the races of moriscos, Jews, blacks and

The extension of Castilian notions of race and impurity to persons of African ancestry was also reflected in casta nomenclature. For ex- ample, the term mestizo, which surfaced in the 1530S and by the next decade had become almost synonymous with illegitimacy, simply meant "mixed" and had been used in Spain mainly to refer [0 the mixture of different animal species. &_1 The category of mula to, which in the Spanish colonies appeared on a regular basis only as of 1549, referred to the children of Spaniards and blacks and in general to anyone with partial African ancestry. In both Mexico and Peru, it was initially applied [Q persons of either black-Spanish or black-native parentage, bur in the seventeenth century, a separate, though sporadically used, category for the latter was created, that of zambahigo (zambo in Peru). According to Solorzano Pereira, the term mulato was used to describe the offspring of Spaniards and blacks because they were considered an uglier and more unique mixture than mestizos and because the word conveyed the idea that their nature was akin to that of mulesY Although both mestizo and mulato derived from a zoological vocabulary and implied cross- breeding, their use marked an important difference in Spanish attitudes toward reproduction with blacks and indigenous people.

Covarrubias, who also linked the word mulato to that of mule, pointed out that mules were bastdfd animals, a "third species" that was produced by the crossing of horses with donkeys and that could reprO- duce only under extraordinary circumstances. As such, the term was reminiscent of a/boraieo (or a/boraique), a pejorative name for conver- sos. Originally the word referred to the Prophet Muhammad's fabled animal, which was neither horse nor mule, but in fifteenth-century Spain, it was used to convey that the New Christians were neither Jews nor Christians but a kind of unnatural or third species, one that pre- sumably had difficulties reproducing. In the case of the term mu/ato, its trope of infertility perhaps served the same function in the Spanish colonial world that it had in the French colonies: simultaneously easing white anxieties about the uncontrolled growth of populations descend- ing from slaves and sanctioning the continued sexual exploitation of en- slaved women by their masters. 89 What is clear is that the word mulato,

Initial Stages of the 'Sistema de Castas'

for some Spaniards connoted ugliness, was inextricably linked to and reproductive relations promoted by the institution of slavery

incipient Western notions of beauty and race. Spanish views about reproduction with blacks versus native people

be<,on" even more evident in the next two casta categories that surfaced central Mexico: castizo and morisco. These for the most part did appear in early parish registers but were used in some colonial ad-

I\u,nisr;,"i,'" and Inquisition documents. Castizu, which emerged in the third of the sixteenth century, referred to the child of a Spaniard a mestizo, that is, to someone who was three-quarters Spanish and

Indian.90 Morisco was at first more ambiguous, for it was with Islam, blacks, or both.91 In New Spain, it continued to to Muslim converts to Christianity. Thus, in the early 1600s,

Ruiz, a morisca residing in Mexico City and native of Granada, was tried for being a follower of the "sect of Muhammad."n

subsequent decades, the word morisco increasingly referred to the Spaniards and mulattos. ror example, in 1631, the Mexican tried Agustin, a "morisco or mulatto," for idolatry; in 1658, the case of Beatriz de Padilla, "an unmarried morisca, daugh-

of a Spaniard and a free mulata"; and in 1693, it tried Francisca de :bi'qu"",n,a "mulatto of the morisco race" ("mulata de raza morisca")

sorcery/.l Needless to say, the terms castizo and morisco carried significantly

lifl""nrcultucal baggage. In Spain, the first had been used to describe of good lineage and caste and the second to designate ex-

M,,,I,ims, thus carrying connotations of religious infidelity. It is true when Mexican Inquisition officials first explained the meaning of

in their 1576 lcttcr to the Suprema, they did not associate the with any redeeming qualities. Nevertheless, the displacement

a word that in Castile mainly had positive connotations onto the chil- of mestizos and Spaniards was no linguistic accident. It not only

the aristocratic bloodlines of some castizos, descendants Spanish conquerors and noble native women, but also signaled the

of a specific type of discourse of "mixture," one that rec- the purity, or potential purity, of native lineages (especially if

were noble). m,"",d, in the last decades of the sixteenth century, royal policies be- ta privilege castizos over other castas, namely, by making them eligi- for the priesthood and (like mestizos) exempt from paying

. Furthermore, the Holy Office started to consider them eligible for the - status of purity of blood. Thus, in 1.')90, the canon Santiago was com- ., Illissioned by the Mexican Inquisition to investigate the purity of blood

,66 Religion, Genealogy, and Caste

of Juan de Reina and his wife in order to determine if he was eligible to work fOf the Holy Office. After some inquiries, Santiago wrote to the Suprema requesting instructions because he had discovered that Reina's wife was not a "castiza hija de mestiza," but a "mestiza hija de India." She was not the product of a union between a Spaniard and a mestiza as he had assumed, but rather of a union between a Spaniard and Indian woman. 9.1 Santiago's letter dearly implied that the category of castizo was compatible with the status of purity of blood. In the early seventeenth century, the Suprema received a number of similar letters which led it to instruct colonial Inquisition officials to grant purity fication to those candidates for offices or familiaturas who had no more [han one-fourth Indian blood (cuarto de indio). Other colonial estab_ lishments, including the Franciscan Order, instituted the same polky.%

Although [he sistema de castas lent itself to the production of a great number of classifications, only a handful appeared in a consistent fash- ion in Mexican colonial records such as parish registers, tax lists, and censuses. Besides Spaniard, Indian, and black, these categories mainly consisted of mestizo, mulato, castizo, morisco, and zambahigo (or zam- baigo), and in the eighteenth century, also lobo, coyote, pardo, moreno, and occasionally chino. That a relatively small number of terms figure in legal records does not mean, however, that others were not in everyday use. As numerous documents containing legal petitions or witness tes- timonies indicate, categories such as "mestiza coyota," "mulato lobo," and "coyote mestizo" circulated among the population, and composite zoological names became increasingly common in the second half of the colonial But the appearance and relevance of certain terms var- ied by region and period. The system of classification was even less rigId in the northern Mexican frontier, for example, than it was in central New Even within the same region, their use was often inconsis- tent and influenced by a number of subjective and situational factors.wl1 The process of recording caste classifications in parish archives was itself fraught with complications. Ancestral information provided at the time of a birth or marriage was not always trustworthy, for example, and par- ish priests were sometimes less than rigorous in their use of categories.

If in practice the use of classifications tended to be anything but sys- tematic, the sistema de castas was nonetheless a system, an ideological complex constituted by a set of underlying principles about generation, regeneration, and degeneration. These principles linked main casta cat- egories with specific proportions of Spanish, Indian, and black blood; made certain mix[Ures compatible with purity; and distinguished be- tween people who descended from Spaniards and Indians and those who had African ancestry. Although they did not go unchallenged, the orga-

Initial Stages of the 'Sistema de Castas'

assumptions behind the sistema continued to operate throughout coio",i,iperiod, intluencing colonial power relations, individual and

identities, and Mexican definitions of purity, tace, and nation.

CONCLUSION

V,hough, genealogical investigations and concerns with "blood mix- surfaced in both Spain and its colonies, a system of classification on caste differences did not blossom in the metropole, at least not

enduring one. Perhaps the difference was due to the relatively small conversos and moriscos, especially vis-a.-vis the numerical

g of people of African and native descent in the Americas_ the absence of discernible physical differences between New -:-,,-, Christians made it difficult for such a system to operate other

on paper. And perhaps the bureaucratic and archival revolution ""'pam began to experience near the middle of the sixteenth century

a role in the reproduction of the sistema de castas in the m,,,i,'"" For all their flaws, parish archives, which separated Indians

Spaniards and eventually castas, became increasingly systematized the following two hundred years. Although similar efforts to create

organize parish records took place on the Iberian Peninsula, colo- archives became a main source of creating and reproducing knowl- about caste, so much so that by the late seventeenth century most

00103"'" de limpieza produced in New Spain offered a cettified copy candidate's baptismal record or an affidavit from a priest attesting

birth information. The rise of the sistema de castas in Mexico and other parts of Spanish

",,"'ica was ultimately related to colonial developments and the inter- of local and transatlantic processes. The increasing salience of the categories, in parish records and elsewhere, was part of the larger

disenfranchising people of mixed ancestry, of limiting their ,. and economic claims and making the prerogatives associated

vecindad and naturaleza exclusive to Spaniards and, to a lesser ex- native people. The emergence of the sistema de castas and growing

of the· . were also related [0 the extension of Iberian reli- impurity to colonial populations, particularly those that

, African roots. At the end of the sixteenth century, European theories about the origins of the Indians proliferated, and Spanish thinkers con-

'aidered the possibility that not JUSt blacks but native people descended : from stained biblical genealogies. Some attributed the darker skin color , and servile condition of colonial populations to their descent from Ham's

Religion, Genealogy, and Caste

cursed son Canaan, while others blamed it on their being one of the lost tribes of Israel. Insofar as they linked black and Indian blood to anCes_ tral sin and condemned lineages, these theories contributed to the recast_ ing of early modern Castilian concepts of purity and race.

The colonial notion of limpieza de sangre was not clearly defined . , however, and remalOed vague throughout most of the seventeenth cen_ tury, especially with regard to the native people and their children with Spaniards. Some institutions included Indians and their mixed descen_ dants in the categories of impurity, and Spaniards occasionally deployed the word raza against them (as jn rafa de mestizos). But the extension of the concepts of limpieza de sangre and race to the indigenous population did not prevail or at least had to contend with its official status as pure. That native people and blacks occupied different places within New Spain's "symbolics of blood"wl-evidenced III probanzas de limpieza de sangre and in numerous colonial texts, reports, and legislation-was partly due to the ideological importance of conversion for the Spanish colonial project and in particular to the Amerindians' status as free Christian vassals of the Crown of Castile. It was also determined by the transatlantic slave system, and its role and legacy in perpetuating ideas about the so-called religious infidelity and supposed debased origins of African-descended people. Colonial racial ideology was influenced, furthermore, by the survival of a small bur important number of pre- Hispanic lineages and by the strong kinship and social ties established between native elites and Spaniards in the early colonial period. Finally, the importance of the two-republic model of social organization also cannot be underestimated. It provided the legal and political framework for constructing a "contractual" relationship between the crown and in- digenous communities and for extending notions of purity and citizen- ship, albeit on a limited basis, to the native population and their mestizo descendants, thereby strongly influencing the form and categories of the sistema de castas.

The early history of these categories reveals several important aspects of Mexico's sistema de castas. First, Spaniards had begun to use some of the classifications and to place them in hierarchies by the late six- teenth century. By that time, they had also started to articulate some of the sistema's main ordering principles-including that reproduction be- tween different castas produced new castas; that black blood was more damaging to Spanish lineages than native blood; and that the dants of Spanish-Indian unions could, jf they continued to reproduce with Spaniards, claim limpieza de sangre. From its inception, the dual- descent system of classifiLation promoted a sexual economy in which

Initial Stages of the 'Sistema de Castas'

of the sexuality of Spanish women (and to a certain extent also of noblewomen) was necessary for the reproduction of the hierarchi-

social order. It also produced a gendered symbolics of blood. These native blood as unsullied but weak and tended to p: black blood. The colonial discourse of limpieza de sangre

thus connected to gender not only through sexuality and reproduc- but through its coding of different colonial groups as masculine or

""iini,"" which served to construe certain unions and castes as compat- and redeemable and not others.

Second, when the metropolitan discourse of limpieza de sangre started be extended to colonial categories, it was during a period of increas-

inquisirorial activities and growing Spanish pessimism (especially the friars) regarding the conversion of the native population. The

rol,l"mof purity was therefore initially framed, as in Spain, in religious generational terms. Thus, when Geronimo de Mendieta argued the Indians could be excluded from institutions that had limpieza

eq"in,ment' because, like the conversos, they were not yet secure in faith, he implied that at some point they would be eligible for Old

:hIisrian status. Thanks to the early modern belief that blood was a ve- for the transmission not just of physical but of moral and spiritual

"mixture" with Spaniards could accelerate that process. These t1 and biological formulations could have been applied to blacks

well because they too were relatively recent converts (especially if arrived directly from Africa), but their associations with slavery

infidelity generally prevented their descendants from making legally . genealogical claims, a crucial part of the process of certify-

i of blood. At the end of the seventeenth century, persons of ancestry would nonetheless begin to try, using the religious and

formulas of the concept of limpieza de sangre, to appropri- the category of cristiano viejo.

Finally, the early history of casta classifications in central Mexico in- how rapidly the discourse of limpieza de sangre and its genealog-

practices and procedures were adapted to the colonial .. The In'lui,iti"", which since the 1560s had established guidelines m Spam to

the purity of blood of its officials and familiars, exemplified a.nd this discursive adaptation. Not long after the Mexican Holy Office

"ibu,"al was formally established and began to conduct investigations certify Old Christian ancestry, its commissioners resorted to genea-

logical formulas for graming or denying the status of limpieza to people of mixed ancestry. These formulas were necessary because, as the Holy

'Office's early disparaging remarks about castizOs indicated, ongoing

334 Notes to Chapter 6

65. See Brackette Williams, Systems Revisited: Kinship, Caste Race, and Nationality as the How of Blood and the ,<.,pread of Rights," in Natur: a/izillK Power: Essays in Fellll1list Cultural Analysis, ed. Sylvia Yanagisako and Carol Delaney (New York and London: Routledge, 1995), pp. 201-36.

66. See AGI, Mexico 2606; AGI, Mexico, leg. 295; and AGI Mexico 8u. 67. Lavalle, Las {lromcsas ambiguas, pp. 59-61. 68. Sulorzano Pereira, Po/itica India/la, vol. I, pp. 442-43.

CHAI'TlR 6

1. See, for example, Patricia Seed, To Love, Honor, and Obey in Colonial MexIco: Conflicts Over Marriage Choice, 1574-18.1.1 (Stanford: Stanford \.1m, versity Press, 1988), p. 251 n. 25; and Cope, The Limits of Racial Dnminatlull, p. 24. Note that in certain places, parish books for people of mixed ancestry were never kept, and in those that they were (mainly in larger citIes), the timing varied.

2. AHN, Inquislci6n, libro n66. The word mozarahe eventually came to designate who had lived under Muslim rule (especially in Toledo) and adopted aspens of Islamic culture.

3. Dominguez y Company notes that in sixteenth-century Havana and other Spanish American towns, the children of Spanish males, even if das- sified as mesti.w or mulatto, were considered vecinos, and some were able to access land and even political Dominguez y Company, "La condicion de vecino," pp. 713-14.

4. Of the remaining fifty-four, forty-four had Castilian wives and ten were single. See "Relaci6n de 105 vecinos que habia en Ie Ciudad de los eI ai'io de 1534," Epistoiario de Nueva Espana, vol. 3, pp. 1}7-40.

5. For example, III the 1534 report, Pedro Gallardo, Cristobal Martin, and Cristobal de Morales were all listed as married to women "from the Lind." When their (legitimate) children were registered in the Sagrario's bapti,mai

however, no mention of thelf mothers being indigenous was made, and they were not classified as mestizos. Academia Mexlcana de Genealogia y Heraldica, Libras de Bautislllos de bpanoies de! Sagrario de Puehla (hereafter I.BESP), vol. I, fols. If, 4r-jV, and 20r. The same pattern of classification can be found in the Sagrario for the children of other conquerors and vecino, who were married to native women.

6. The time the <:ategory of mestiw(a) was used in the Sagrario's bap- tismal records on Augu,t 3, '544. Signifi..:amly, the word appears out In the following manner: The entry recorded for the daughter of Benito Mendez aad his wife, who i., not named, but WJS indig- enous. The next rime the term appeared was in the year 1550. LllES!', va!. I (IH.)-91), fok J v and 10.

7. AHN, Inqui5icion de Mexico, libra 1049, fols. Hf-57v: Report from Pedro de Vega regarding the population of Mexico City, Puebla, and other elt- ies, 1595. The report was based on a census taken in New Spain III 1592. ror Mexico City, Vega estimated a population of 60,000, consisting of 40,000 Jay Spamards; 2,000 religious (friars and nuns); 400 clergymen; I,IDO studenr,;

Notes to Chapter 6 335

2,000 mestizos; T ,$00 free blacks and mulattos; 10,000 slaves; and },OOO "for- eigners." The for the Spanish population wa, ba,eJ on a count of male heads of households times eight (assumed to be the average number of people in a Spanish household, induding parems, children, and servants).

8. See AAPAC, vo!' 5, doc. 167; AAPAC, vo!' 6, docs. II7, 124, 264; and AAPAC, vol. 8, doc. 97. In 1556, the city (.:ouncil ordned "mestizos, mulatos, indios," and free bJa(.:ks not to live in the (.:ity or o<:cupy any of ib lots without first obtaining speCIal licenses. Biblioteca Nadonal de Antropologia e Historia (Mexico City), Microfilm Collection (hereafter BNAHMC), Serie Puehla, roll 8I, fols. 47V-48.

9. The Sagrario's baptismal records are consistent with Peter Boyd-Bowman's study of African slaves in mid-sixteenth century Puebla, in which he concluded that few had surnames. Boyd-Bowman, "Negro Slaves in Early Colonial Mex- ico," The Americas 26, no. 2 (1969), p. 145·

to. l.BESP, vol. I, fol. }or. While the terms IIllllata and negra appedr rela- tively soon, that of indIa hegins to be used only in the last decades of the teenth century and even then only sporadically. See, for example, LBES}>, vol. 1, fol. 131V; and LBES!', voL 3, fo!' 27v.

II. Elizabeth Anne Kuznesof stresses the same point in her study of par- ish rewrds from sixteenth-century Lima and Vera<:ruz. "Ethnic and Gender Influences on 'Spanish' Creole Society in Colonial Sp<lnish America," Colonial Latin American RelJiew 4, no. I (1995): p. 164·

12. AGI, Mexico 168: Letter from GonzaJo DiaL de Vargas to the Spanish king, May 2, 1556. My translation and interpolations.

13. See AGI, Mexico 280: LeTTer from Fr<ly Cfuzate requesting royal funds to e'stablish a home for the daughters of Spanish males and indigenous women, June 12, 1<;49; AGI, Indtferente 427, leg. 30, fols, 7}f-T,V: Decree ordering New Spain;s viceroy and royal audiencia to assign tutors to orphaned boys and girls and to look out for their well-being, February 18, 1555; anJ AGI, Mexico 1064, leg. 2, fols. 136-I36v: Decree to the viceroy of New Spain, re- questing a report on the status of the monastery for orphaned young March 3, 1585. Also to Antonio r. Garcia-Abasolo, Martin t:nriquez y ta Reforma de 15611 ell Nueva bpana (Sevilla: Excelentisima Diputaci6n Pro- vincial de Sevilla, 1983), pp. 212-57; and teyes de Indlas, vo!. 2 (Madrid: Bl- blioteca Judi(.:ial, 1889), p. 128.

14. Charles Gibson, "The Identity of Diego Munoz Camargo," Hispanic American Historical Review 30, nn. 2 (1950): pp. 199-205.

15. Ibid., p. 207· 16 For a listing of colomal parish records and the books kept by year, refer

to I. Robinson, ed., Research InventlJry of the 'Mexican Collection of Cn/rJllwl Parish Registers (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1980).

17. Eva Alexandra Uchmany, "[I mestizaje en el siglo XVI novohispano," Historia Mexicalla 37, no. 1 (1987): pp. 31-}4·

18. BNAHMC, Serie Pllebla, roll 8T, fol. I}V. A 1590 report by Viceroy Velasco (the son) described the Spaniard, arriving on every fleet as a miserable a.nd a, thieves with man)' immoral habits. Velasco indi(.:ated that he was

Notes to Chapter 6

a rural police forct: or Hermandad to deal with all the "lost" peoplt: of the vice_ royalty, "white and black." AGI, Mexico 22, 11. 24.

19· Andrt:a Martinez Baracs and Carlos Sempat Assadourian, cds., Suma y ell/loga de toda la descripcitln de Tlaxcala, p. 169.

20. Some guilds, such as for silk producers, were closed to blacks but others allowed them membt:rship and somt: mobdity. The lant:r included the guilds for gold beaters, hat makers, glove makers, nt:edle makers, candle makers, and leather drt:ssers (the last two acceptt:d them as masten). Rubert LaDon Brady, "The Emagence of a Nt:gro Class in Mexico, 1524-1640," (PhD diss., of Iowa, 1965), pp. 65 and 113. Also see Richard Kont:tzke, "Ordenanzas dt: gremios durante la epoca colonial," in Estudios de Historia So- cial de Espana (Madrid: Superior dt: Investigaciunes Cientfficas, 1949), PP·4 8)-524.

21. BNAHMC, Serie Puebla, roll 81, fols. 52-52V and roll 98, fols. 89-89v. 22. Cope, The [.imits of Racial Domination, pp. 18-24.

In 1536, the crown madt: the succession uf encomiendas limitt:d to in- dividuals of legitimatt: birth, whil·h affected many of the childrt:n of Indian unions. Thirtt:en years latt:r, it barred from acquiring native labor through the reparrimiento and from serving in royal or public posts. Richard Konetzke, "Estado y Sociedad en las Indias," Estudios Americal/os 3, no. 8 (1951): p. 57.

24· Marner, Race Mixture in the History of Latin America, pp. 42-43; C. E. Marshall, "The Birth of the Mestiw in New Spain," Hispanic American His- torical Review 19 (1939): pp. 160-84; and Richard Konetzke, "EI me,tizaje y su Importancia en eI desarrollo de la poblacion hispano-americana durante Ia epoca colonial," Revista de Indlas 7, no. 24 (April-June, 1946): p. 230.

25. AGI, Mb;:ico 1064, leg. 2. 26. See, for t:xample, Aguirre Beltran, l.a poblaci()n negra de Mtixiw,

pp. 153-54; Ben Vinson Ill, Bearing Arms fur his Majesty: The Free-colored MI- litia in Colomal Mexico (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Prt:ss, 2001), p. 3; and Robert Jackson, "RaCe/caHe and the Creation and Meaning of Identity in Colonial Spanish Revista de Indias 55, no. 203 (I995): pp. 150-73'

27. Among the Spanish writers whu linked the to the Jews were Diego Dur-.in, Jose de Acosta, and Gregorio Garcia. The theory was popular in the Atlantic world as a whole. See Richard H. Popkin, "The Rise and Fall of the

Indian Theory," in Menasseh bell israel mid his World, ed. Henry Mcchoulan, and Richard H. Hopkin (LeiJt:n, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 19119), pp. 63-82.

28. fray Antonio V,izquez de Espmosa, Descripci(in de la Nueva Espana en eI Siglo XVlI (Mexico City: Editorial Patria, 1944), pp. 49-50. The similarity be· tween the i and the i, as well between tht: u and the n, in early modern manu-

has led many a re-dder to confuse the word indio for judio, and vice 29. Ibid., pp. 41-45. VazqueL de Espinosa suggt:sted that the Indians

scended from Issachar, who in the Bible (Genesis, chap. 49) is likened to a do· mestlcated beast of burden ("a strong satisfied with a pleasant plCce of land dnd willing to becomt: a slave to the Canaanites.

Notes to Chapter 6 337

30. AIIN, Inquisici(lll de Mexico, libro 1047, fols. 4.,0-34: Correspondence from the Mexican Inquisition to the Suprema, November 5, 1576.

31. DiccirJ1larlO de Auturidades, vol. II (Madrid: Editorial Gredos, 1990 {I7321}, pr. 14T and 204·

32.· AHN, libro IOSl, fols. 223-224v: Letter to the Suprema from Dr. Bazan de Alhornoz and Dr. Juan Gutierrez Flores regard- ing heretic Indians ("indios Mexico, 1619. Tht: word ladilio had first been used in the Iherian Peninsula to refer to Muslim, and "foreigners" who were able to use the Castilian lan/<uage so well that Spaniards were not able to tell their accents apart from their own. The word was also evt:ntually applit:d to Jews and in particular to the languagt: spoken by the Sephardim. In the colo- nial contt:xt, depending on the region, it referred to H isp'Jnicized native people, mestizos, or blacks and others who wt:rt: fluent in Spanish and had adopted other e1emt:nts of Castilian culture but were not quite considered Spaniards. On the term\ meanings in Spain, sec Covdfruhias, Tesoro de la lengua Castellmta, p. 697; and Corominas, Diccirmario aitico etimolrJgico, vol. I, pp. 9-10.

33· Ma, Mexico 347· 34. Francisco Moralt:s, O. F.M., Ethnic and SOCIal Background of the FrallC/S-

can Friars m SClienterl/th-Centuf)' Mexico DC: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1973), p. 16.

35. Jeronimo de Mendieta, Historia eclesidstica indiana, vol. 11, Bib/wteca de Autores Espmloles, vol. 261 (Madrid: Ediciones Aria" 197.,), pp. 59-61.

36. See Gruzinski, La wirlllizacir)n de (o imagmaflo, pp. 146-83, esp. ISO-57 and 170-72; and Inga Clendinnen, "Ways totht: Sacred: Reconstructing 'Religi(;n' in Sixteenth Century Histor)' and Alfthro/J()log), 5 (1990): pp. 105-41.

37. The term is borrowed from Gruzinski, La co{omzaCl611 de io imagmario, p. 15 6.

)8. Ht:rzog, Defining Natiolls, pp. 43-63, esp. 44-45. 39. Garda, Origen de los indios del Nuevo Mundo, pp. 79-128. The book

was first in Valencla, Spain, in I607. 40. Garda, Origen de los indim del Nuevo Mundo, p. 102. 41. AHN, lnquisicion ro50, fol. 341. The word /laci(in was also

used to refer to socidl groups (such as or soldiers), womt:n, and mem- of a kingdom (a, III the "Castilian In the late 1700S, it started

to be used in a more modern political territorial sense (as in naci6n espanola), but even then, several of the term\ older connotations were still in usc. Pedro Alvarez de Miranda, Palabras e ideas: EI iexiw de la l/ustracl')1I temprana eSlmnofa (1680-1760) (Madrid: Real Academia EspaflOld, 1992), pp. 2Il-26. Also set: Monica QUIjada, nacl6n? Dinamicas y c!icotomfas de Ia nacion en eI imaginario hispanoamt:ricana del siglo in 'magmar la lIaci()". cd. Frallo;ois-Xavier GUl;rra and Monica Quijada (Munster and Hamhurg: I.it, 1994), p. 22. points out that in early modern Europe, the con- ceph of race and nation both derived from "lineage" or "stock." Hudmn, "'From 'NatIOn' to 'Race': The Origin of Racial Classification in Eighteenth-Century Thought," Eighteenth-Century 5t11dics 29, no. 3 (l996): pp. 247-64.

42. Garcia, Origen de los indios del Nllel'(J Mundo, p. 73.

Notes to Chapter 6

43· As Stoler has observed, when sexual symbols are used to represent co- lonial domination, they are more than metaphors and not Just about gender but about other social relations, including class and ra(.:e. See Stoler, "Carnal Knowledge," pp. 54-55.

44· Cartas de lndias (Madrid: Mmisterio de fomento, 1877), p. 299. 45· Robin Blackburn, "The Old World Ba(.:kground to European Colonial

Slavery," William and Mary Quarterly 54, no. 1 (1997): pp. 70 and 73-75. 46. According to James H. Sweet, antihla(.:k imagery and the association of

"bla(.:kness" and slavery in Spain surfaced as early as the eighth century, when Muslim rulers mtroduced increasing numbers of sub-Saharan African slaves into the peninsula. Sweet, "The Iberian Roots of American Racist Thought," pp. 145-50. Also see David B. Davis, Challenging the Boundaries of Slavery (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 2003), pp. 7-8. And on blacks in southern Iberia, see Ruth Pike, "Sevillian Society in the Sixteenth Century: Slaves and Freedmen," Hispanic American Historical Review 7, no. 3 (1967): pp. 344-59.

47· "White slaves" (esc!av(Js hlancos) included Berbers, and Jews who had had been captured in North Africa. Although they were initially al- lowed in Spanish America, Spanish kings Issued various decrees, starting in 1501, which prohibited the practice. Aguirre Beltran attributed the to fcars that the presence of and other "infidels" In the colonies would undermine the Christianizing mission. Aguirre Beltran, La IJOhlaci6n negra, pp. 104 and 156.

48. See Matthew "Black Conquistadors: Armed Africans in Early Spanish America," The Americas 57, no. 2 (2.000): pp. 167-205; Restall, Seven Myths fl{ the Spanish Conquest, pp. 44-63; and Dominguez y Company, "La condi(.:ion de vecino," pp. 7 I 3-T 4- For vecino titles granted to blacks 1Il l'uebla during the 1530S and 1540S, see AAPAC, vols. I and 4-

49· See Pagden, Fall of Natural Man, p. 33; William D. Phillips Jr., "The Old World Background of Slavery in the Americas," in Slavery and the Rise of the Atlantic System, cd. Barbara L Solow (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge UniversiTY Press, 199rl, pp. 43-61; John Thormon, Africa and Afriwns ill the Makmg of the Atlantic W(Jrld. /400-1/100 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Pres>, 19911), pp. 13-12.5; and Peter Wade, "Negros, e identidad na<:ional en Colombia," in lmaginar la nacilJn, ed. Fran'fois·Xavier Guerra and Monica Quijada (Miinster and Hamburg: Lit, 1994), pp. 259-61.

50. Juan de Solorzano y l'ereira, De lnd/arum lure. Liber Ill: De retentione lndiamm, ed. C. Baciero et aL (Madrid: Camejo Superior de Cientfficas, 1994), pp. 412-63, esp. 429-31.

5I. Henrique Urbano, cd., TradicilJn y modermdad en los Andes (CUSCO, Peru: Centro de [studio. Regionales Andinos, "Bartolome de las Casas," 199.1.), pp. xxxiv-xxxv.

52. See, for example, the 15liO report by the viceroy Martin Enriquez, who warned his suo;;essor of the need for labor in the mines. lllstrucciolles que [os vlrreyes de Nueva ESIJaiia dC/awn a sus silcesores (Mexico: lmprenta lmpenal, 1867), p. 245·

Notes to Chapter 6 339

53· Letter from the ar(.:hbishop of Mexico to the king, June 30, 1560, in Paso y Troncoso, Epistolano de Nueva Espana, vol. 9 (Mexico City: Antigua Librerfa Robredo, de Jose Porrlia e Hijos, 1939-42), pp. 53-,'j5.

54· See Albornoz, "Tratado sabre la esclavitud," in Biblioteca de Autores Espaiioles, vol. 6,'j (Madrid: M. Rivadeneyra, 1873), pp. 231-33; and Biblio- teca de Autores ESIJaiioles, vol. 65, pp. Ixxxvi-Ixxxviii. For more on opponents of black slavery, see Colin A. Palmer, Slaves of the White God: Blacks ill Mexico, 1570-lfiJo (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976), pp. 167-72..

55· See Emiqueta Vila Vilar, Hispano-America y el comercio de esc!aV(ls (Seville: Escuela de Estudios Hispanoamericanos, 1977), esp. pp. 2.3-91.

56. H. Sweet, Recreating Africa: Culture, Kmshi/J, and Religion in the African-Portuguese World, '441-1770 (Chapel Hill and London: Uni- versity of North Carolina Press, 2003), pp. 3, 15-19, and 117-96. As of the 1580s, slaves increasingly derived from Central Africa, particularly, Kongo and Angola.

57· Garcia-Abasolo, Martin Enriquez y 1'1 Reforma de '568, p. 261. 58. The Spanish began to use the curse of Ham to explain black in

the last third of the sixteenth centurr; the Portuguese began to do a cen- tury earlier. See Palmer, Slaves of the White Gnd, p. }9; and Russell-Wood, "Before Columbus," p. 154. And for a discussion of the of the biblical myth in broader Europe, see Benjamin Braude, "The Sons of Noah and the Construction of EthlllC and Geographical Identities in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods," William alld Mary Quarterly 54, no. 1 (1997l: pp. 103-42.

59· See, for example, AGI, Indifcrente 42.5, leg. 24, foL I}f. 60. Fray Prudencio de Sandoval, Hlstoria de 1'1 vida y hechos del Emperador

Carlos V. Vol 82. of Bibliuteca de Autores Espanoles (Madrid: [diciolles Atlas, 1955 [1606]), p. 319.

61. Sandoval, Histrma de fa vida)J hechos del Emperador Carlos V, p. 319. 62. Patterson, Siallery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge,

MA: Harvard University Press, 19112), pp. 6 and 9. 63. As ClaudIO Lomnitz-Adler has pointed out, the Spanish system of slav-

ery seemed to be on the idea that individual blacks, under the super- vision of their masters dnd church officials, could he brought into the Christian fold, but that as "nations" they were inherently disloyal to the crown and Cath- olic faith and hence not viable as communities. Lomnitz-Adler, Exits from the Lahyrinth, pp. 267-68.

64· For Puebla, see BNAHMC, Serie Puebla, roll 98, fols. 89V-94; and AAPAC, Iibro 9, fol. 2.2..

65. Refer to Nicole von Germeten, Black Blood Brothers: C(}nfratentities and Social Mobility for Afro-Mexicans (Gainewille: University of }']orida, 2006). Recent works on the population of African descent in colonial Mexico also include Adriana Naveda Chavez-Hita, Pardos, mulato:; y lihertos: Sexto Encuelltm de Afromexlcamstas (Xalapa, Mexico: Universidad Veranuzana, 2.001); Ben Vinson, Bobhy Vaughn, and Cidra Garcia Ayluardo, Afromixico: E! pulso de 1'1 /}()"laciIJII Jlegra en Mexico, ul/a historia recurdada, (JIl'idada y

Notes to Chapter 6

a recordar (Mexico, City; Centro de Investigacion y Docencia Economica 2004); Lul. M. Martinez Montiel, Presencia afncalla en Mexico City: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las 1995); Luz M. Martinez Montiel and Juan Carlos Reyes G., Memoria delilf Encuentro NaciIJnal de Afromexical/istas (Colima, Mexico: Gobierno del Estado, InsTltuto Colimense de Cultura, 1993); and the spn:ial issue of Signos histriricos II, no. 4 (.WOO).

66. See, for example, the request for a papal dispensation for his "defect of birth" by Nicolas Antonio de Anijo, a physician in the city Puebla who in 1707 tried to be ordained as a priest. AGI, Mexico 709.

67. In the eyes of colonial officials, free blacks and mulattos demonstrated their political disloyalty through their rebellious tendencies and refusal to pay tribute to the crown, which they supposedly owed because they were living in the lands of Castilian monarchs and enjoying the benefits of the system of "peace and justice," and because they had achieved their liberty. The claim that blacks wae disloyal was also tied to the perception (whether justified or not) of their mobility and lack of fixed residence, which automatically lack of integration and hence another violation of the duties of a vecino. See AGI, Indiferente 427, leg. 30, fols. 248r-249r: Royal decree ordering that blacks and mulattos be made into tributaries, 1574; AGI, Contaduria 677: of black and mulatto tribute for Mexico, l576-7!!; and AGI, Mexico 22, no. 24: Memorial of Villamanrique's government (included in the letters of his ,ucces- sor, Viceroy Luis de Velasco, the younger), 1590.

68. See Vinson Ill, Bearillg Arms for HIS Majesty. Also see the collectIOn of articles on black militia participation in colOiliall.atin America in journal of Co/rmialism and C%mal History 5, no. 2 (2004). Thanks primarily to their military contributLOm in regions vulnerable to foreign encroachment, free (and in some cases enslaved) blacks were able to obtain, if not the political rights of vecindad, economic ones, such access to land. See Jane G. Landers, Black Society in S1Jamsh Florida (Urbana: UniverSity ofIlIinois r999), pp. 21-13 and 20:l.-:l.8; "Acquisition and Loss on a Frontier: Tht hee Black Homesteaders of Florida, 17!!4-r81I," in Agaillst the Odds: Free Blacks in the Slave Societies of the Americas, ed. Jane G. Landers (London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass, r996), pp. !!5-101; and Kimberly S. Hanger, "Patronage, Property and Persistence: The Emergence of a Free Black Elite!Jl Spanish New Orleans," in Against the Odds, pp. 44-64.

69. See Frederick Bowser, "Africans in Spanish American Colonial Society," in The Cambridge History of Latill America, vol. II, ed. Leslie Bethell (Cam, bridge and New York: Cambridge Univenity Press), pp. 366-67.

70. A number of laws at tht turn of tht century tned to curb the trend. In 1601, for example, Viceroy Gaspar de Zutliga y Azevedo limited the number of blacks and mulattos who could accompany allY Spaniard to three. AGI, 1-1cxlco 2.70: Decree regarding of blacks and mulattos, 1601.

7r. See note 3:l. in thiS chapter. 72. See Maria Elena Martinez, "The Black Blood of New Spain: /.impiaa

de Sangre, Racial Violence, and Gendered Power in Early Colonial Mexico," William ami Mary Quarterl)·, .'lrd ser., vol. LXI (july 20°4): pp. 479-520.

Notes to Chapter''£,

73. Compare, for example, the fantasies that surfaced in 1612 with the fears that Spaniards in Mexico City had about the possibility that blach and mulat- toS would try to rebel in the year 1666. Martina., "The Black Blood of New Spain"; and AHN, Inquisici6n, lihro [060, fols. 175-20F.

74. Corominas, Dicciollarj() critico etimoltigico de la leI/gila castellana, pp. 7H-24. Corominas disagreed with Covarrubias's claim that the word casta derived from the Latin eastus, which alluded to chastity.

75. Dominguez Ortiz made the same observation in La clase de los conver- 50S en Castilla ellla edad moderna, p. 55·

76. "Castizos," Covarrubias, "we call those that derive from good lin- eage and caste." Tesoro de la lengua castellana, p. 282.

77. Because the word casta referred to people who were "mixed," it meant the opposite of what caste meant when the British (who borrowed it from the portuguese) applied it to the Hindu system of differentiation, which was based on endogamous social groups. In Spani$h Americ'J, then, the sistema de castas was a function of the instability, not ngidity, of "caste." See Julian Pitt- Rivers, "On the Word 'Caste,''' in The Translatioll of Culture: Essays to E. E. Evalls-Pritchard, ed. T. O. Beidelman (London: Tavistock, 1971), pp. 234-35· Iberians also the word casta to designate the place of origin of slaves who had been born in Africa in casta angola) and thus applied it to "pure blacks. According to Leslie Rout, all blacks were considered part of the castas, even if they had no native or Spanish ancestry, because it was African blood itself, not necessarily mixture, that was deemed to have a degenerating effect. Leslie B. Rout, The African Experiellce in S/Janish America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), p. Il7.

78. AGN, lnquisicion, Cajd l63, fols. 1-nV. 79. AGI, Mexico 280. My translation and interpolations. 80. See Williams, "Classification Systems Revisited," pp. wl-36. 8I. Garcia, Ongen de los indios del Nuevo Mund(), p. 65· 82. Lewis, Hail of Mirrors. pp. 22-25· 83. JCBLlLl, vol. I, fols. 487-9I. Also see JCBLlLI, vol. 2, fols. w7-14: in-

formacion of Alonso Gomez, made in the Villd de Niebla (Spain), 1617· 84. AGI, Mexico I2l, r. I. 85. Covarrubias Orol,co, Tesoro de la lengua castellana, p. 75I. For Coro-

minas, the word mestizo waS of uncertain origin, but he speculated that it might have come from the Latin mixtus. Corominas, DicclOnario aitico etimo/ligico de la lel/gua castellalla, vol. 3, p. 359·

86. Forbes writes that, in Mexico, the term mulat() continued to be used for the descendants of blacks and Indians into the 165,oS and that within the Spanish empire, the term generally meant a person who was half African and half something else. As such, it could be applied to various comblllat1ons. Jack D. Forbes, Black Africans and NatilJe Amenca1lS: Color, Race and Caste in the El'oilltioll of R ed-Black Peoples (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1988), pp. 1 62-65· forbes also notes that the term muiatrJ initially appeared in legislation relating to the America ... (p. 173), hut it is not dear whether it was first used in the colo- nial or Iberian context.

Notes to Chapter 6

87. Solor7,ano Pereira, Politlca Indiana, vol. I, p. 445. 88. Covarrubias, Tesoro de la lengua castellana, p. 768. 89· Sec Doris Garraway, "Race, Reproduction and Family Romance in

Moreau de Saint-Mery's ... de Ia partie de l'isle Saint_ Eighteenth-Century Studies 38, no. 2. (2.005): 2.27-46.

90. The Holy Office, for instance, used the word castizo in the 1570S and stated that it was a term commonly applied in New Spain to the children of mestizos (and presumably Spaniards). AHN, Inquisicion de Mexico libra 1047, fols. 430-34; Correspondence from the Mexican Inquisition the Supreme Council of the Inquisition, November 5, 1576. Abo see AHN Inquisicion, libro 1064; Summary report of the bigamy case Banolom€ Hernandez, "castizo," native of the city of los Angeles (Puebla), 1578.

91. In 1539, for example, Viceroy Mendoza instructed Mexico City, Puebla, and other cities not to allow negros or moriscos, whether free or slave, as well as Indians, to carry arms without special permission. BNAHMC, Serie Puebla, roll 8r, foJ. 12V. Viceroy Mendoza aho ordered that any "negro, negra o morisca" who made pulque be punished with two hundred lashes. Condumex (Mexico City), Fondo CMLXI-36, fol. 46. Also see AAPAC, vol. 1, doc. 234; Puebla's city council orders penalties for anyone helping "runaway or black slaves," March 2., 1537. Noting the that Spaniards in Peru made between blacb and moriscos, Lockhart speculated that the latter, who were usuallr described as white, were either Muslim Spaniards or slaves from Morocco, but in Mexican sources there is not enough information to deter- mine whether that was the case. James Lockhart, Spanish Peril, 1532.-J560 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1974), p. 196.

92. See AHN, Inquisicion, lihro 1064. 93· AGN, Inquisicion, vol. 372, expo 14; AHN, Inquisicion, libro 1065; and

AGN, Inquisicion, vol. 684, expo 4. Note the deployment of the word raza to describe moriscos. For more on Beatriz de Padilla's case, see Solange Alberro, "Beatriz de Padilla, Mulatta Mistress and Mother," in Colonial Spanish Amer- ica: A Documentary History, cds. Kenneth Mills and William Taylor (Wilming- ton, DE; SR Books, 1998), pp. 178-84-

94· See, for example, I'hilip II's I582 letter to Mexican secular and rehgious officials, which clarifies that any previous decrees limiting the access of mes- tizos to the should be understood to apply only to the children of Indian and Spanish unions, not to their subsequent See Konetzke, Coleccion de para la historia, pp. 543-44.

95. AGN, Inquisicion, vol. 82, expo 4, fol. II!!. 96. See AHN, Inquisicion de Mtxico, libra 1057; and Ethnic and

SOCIal Background of the Franciscan Friars in Seventeenth-Century Mexico. pp.16-1 7·

97. Lo/)o (wolf) and coyote are zoological terms, while pardo and morenl) refer to skin color and were applied to people of partial African descent. In paintings, the dassifi..:ation c/nf/o was designated to the child of a black and na- tive woman, but colonial officials often used it as a generic name for A,lam, particularly from the Philippines. Thus, when the religious official in charge

Notes to Chapter 7 343

of the Provisorato or Inquisition for indigenous people changed his title in the eighteenth century, he became de Indios y Chinos del Arzobispado" because his extended to the Philippines. AHN, Inquisition, leg. 2.2.86 (I).

98. See AGN, Bicnes Nacionales, vol. 578, expo 21; and AHN, Inquisicion, libro 1067, fok 316-18, and 'jOO-500v. Ca,ta nomenclature came mainly from a zoological vocabulary, particularly from the hreeding of and See NicoLls Leon, Las castas del Mexico cololllai (Mexico City: Talleres Gdficos del Nacional de Arqueologia, Historia y Etnografia, 192.4), p. 27; and Daisy Ripodas Ardanaz, El matrimonio en II/(lias: Realidad social y regulaci611 juridica (Buenos Aires: Fundacion para la Educacion, la Ciencia y la Cultura, 1977), p. 2.6.

99. Ramon A. Gutierrez, Whell Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Wellt Awa)': Marriaxe, Sexlwlity and POlller in Nelli MeXICO, IJoo-1846 (Stanford, CA; Stanford University Press, 1991), pp. 196-2.00; Jackson, "Race/caste and the Creation and Meaning of Identity," p_ ISS; and Steven W. Hackel, Children of Coyote, MisslVllaries of Saint 1-"ranos; India/l-Stlallish Re/atirJ1lS III Colo/lial California. 176y-11i50 (Chapel Hill: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and University of North Carolina 200S), pp. 59-60.

100. See, among others, Patricia Seed, "Social DimenSIOns of Race; City, 1753," Hlstiallic Americall Historical Review 62., no. 4 (19!!2.): pp. 568- 606; Cope, The I.imits of RaCIal DommatlOlI, pp. 49-67; Schwartz, "Colonial Identities and the Sociedad de Castas, "pp. 1!!5-2.01; and Richard Boyer, Cast {sicl and Idelltit}' in Colo/lial Mexico; A Proposal and all F.xamtl/e (Storrs, CT; Providence, RI; and Amherst, rvlA; Latin American Studies Consortium of New England, 1997).

JOT. Foucault used the phrase in his discussion of the importance of blood in the early modern period, which he suggested stemmed pnmarily from its func- tion as a central for a person's place within the largely birth-determined system of estates and from its role as a symbol of the power of life and death over his subjects. foucault, The Histvr)' of Sexuality. pp. 13.')-5°.

CIIAPTER 7

1. Stoler, Race and the Educatioll of Desire, p. 30. 2._ See the 1575 Inquisition letter describmg problems with doing probanzas

de limpieza de'sangre ill Spanish America. AHN, Inquisicion, leg. 2.269. .'1. AHN, Inquisicion de Mexico, Iibro ro.<;o, fols. 2.12.-2.0; Correspondence

from the MeXlcan 1574-75· 4- AHN, Inquisicion de Mexico, Iibro T049, fols. 591':'59IV: Copy of thdet-

ter from Peruvian inqUIsitors regarding genealogical information for the wiveS of familiars, April 14, 160,.

5. AHN, Inquisicion de Mexico, libra W47, fols. 38o-3!!IV: LeTTer to the Council of the Indies from the Mexican Inquisition, September 2.3, 157.<;; and AHN, Inquisicion de Mexico, leg. 2.2.69. When port inspectors the use of a false genealogy or travel permit, they were supposed to request