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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-007 0 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

226 Purity, Race, and ereo/ism

candidate's baptismal information (with affidavits from priests) b III the latter half of the colonial period, which began in the 1670s, ?ecame a standard feature. As the seventeenth century dosed these Ish . d . . I ' par-recor s were mcreasmg y using the formula "people of reason" " "b " f 5 . d ' as In 0 pamar s and other castes of people of reason" (bautismos

y demas castas de, de raz6n). The discourse of lirnpleza de sangre and the colomal sistema de castas that it inspired had entered the Age of Reason.

CHAPTER NINE

Changing Contours (Limpieza de Sangre' in the Age

of Reason and Reform

two decades ago, a series of paintings that are unique to eighteenth- rP''''",V Spanish America began to attract the attention of students of

The which modern scholars have labeled "casta paint- and was developed in the viceroyalty of New Spain. '

a growing metropolitan curiosity over the nature and in- New World, Mexican artists produced the vast majority

paintings to represent the different "types" of people that sexual «I"ioo" among Amerindians, blacks, and Spaniards had engendered in

Americas. The main subject of the paintings, in other words, was population of mixed descent. The painters, a good number of whom

were creoles,2 shared a concern with depicting how reproduction among .. the three main colonial combinations (Spanish-Indian, Spanish-black, and black-Indian) unfolded in the course of several generations. To il- lustrate this process of generational mestizaje, they relied on multiple panels-normally three to five for the first two units and several more for the third-and on the family trope. A typical series consisted of six- teen panels, each featuring a mother, father, and a child (sometimes two); an inscription providing the casta terminology for the particular family members; and a focus on skin color distinctions. The intended audience for at least some of the paintings was European, because several of the series were commissioned by colonial officials who intended them as gifts for relatives or institutions in Spain. l Casta sets were also destined for the Real Gabinete de Historia Natural (Royal Cabinet of Natural History), which Charles III founded in Madrid in 1771 in order to dis- play objects from different pans of the world, including Castile's over- seas territories. Together with minerals, fossils, rocks, flora, and other

u8 Purity, Race, and Creolism

products from the Americas, various paintings were shipped across th a?d consumed by a Spanish public. Yet some sets stayed in

lCD, Implymg that there was a local market for them as weJI.4 With the possible exception of only one series, by Luis de Mella, Cast

paintings situated the different colonial lineages in secular COntext a They also have a strong ethnographic flavor. The European interest ,.'.

b . n ? sc.rvmg, recording, .".'hieh in the eight:cmh century IllsplCcd a number of sCIentific expeditions to the Amcncas, was not new. In previous centuries, the Western ordering impulse had led to the "natural histories" of all sorts of things, including plants, animals, and humans. What became increasingly common in the eighteenth century was the e.mphasis on the visual, on recording difference not only through taxonomIC systems but also through the catalogue. 5 As a genre that most certainly privileges vision in the production and representation of ethno- graphic distinctions, casta paintings appear to be a part of the Enlighten_ ment project. But it would be a mistake to see them simply as a product of that project and of European encyclopedic and taxonomic trends more generally. Rather, as art historian Ilona Katzew has argued, casta paint- ings were largely the result of the growing sense of creole identity and identification with the local. 6

They must also be understood in connection to the socioeconomic context in eighteenth-century central Mexico, the changing relationship between metropole and colony, and the discourse of Iimpieza de san- gre. This chapter focuses on these issues. It stresses that casta paintings, which emerged during a period of deepening anxieties about the shift- ing social order, construct a narrative of mestizaje informed by the dis- course of purity of blood. They also reflect some of the changes that the concept of limpieza de sangre had undetgone in colonial Mexico, most notably its association with whiteness. The chapter emphasizes that the existence of multiple definitions of purity of blood, some religious, oth- ers more secular, helped fuel a creole patriotic defense of Spanish-Indian unions at a time of growing concerns about mestizaje and its supposed degenerating potential.

AN ICONOGRAPHY OF MESTIZAJE: PAINTINGS

AND THE INTERSECTION or RACE, CLASS, AND GENDER

At the end the seventeenth century, various Spanish arbitristas (authors of treatises on economic and fiscal reform) were convinced that both the Castilian state and economy were in crisis. They mainly attributed the country's lamentable economic situation to its failure to develop its

Changing Contours 229

.Iu",i" and to its being reduced to exporting agricultural products return for manufactures. Politically, (he monarchy was weak and death of Charles II in 1700 plunged the country and other parts of

into a war of succession {170I-13} between supporters of Arch- of Austria and those of Philip of Anjou, respectively, the

!a and Bourbon contenders. By the second decade of the eight- century, Spain had not only a new king, Philip V {1701-46}, but a

",,' dyna",y in power. The Bourbons would devote a great deal of time to explain why the coumry had fallen behind other parts of west-

and strategizing about how to strengthen the crown and the . Their efforts would yield a series of reforms that had sweeping

in both Spain and its colonies. The "Bourbon reforms," however, did not begin in earnest umil af- the middle of the eighteenth century. By then, Mexico had already

undergoing important socioeconomic and cultural changes. Demo- ral,h.ealily the region wem from having a population of about 1.5 mil-

in 1650 to having between 2.5 and 3 million people in the early The native population's "recovery" played an important role in

increase, as did the rapid numerical growth of people of mixed an- 7 The demographic upsurge together with shifts in the economy,

.cludin! a rise in silver production that stimulated economic activities northern resulted in an expanded market for internal goods.

goods included textiles, most of which were produced in obrajes manufactories) or domestic artisan establishments; pulque, the

Ico,holi·, beverage of pre-Hispanic origins; and tobacco, which until crown brought the industry under its control in 1765 was sold by

shopkeepers and street vendors. The virtual self-sufficiency and "",""di·ng market and productive capacity that Mexico enjoyed in the

of the eighteenth century, not to mention the economic in- it still had on other parts of Spanish America, made its political

economic elites confident about its future and not a little arrogant their capital's place in the hemisphere. The most prominent of

elites lived in Mexico City and Puebla, which had emerged not as the viceroyalty'S main sociopolitical centers but as its principal of artistic production. 9 It was in these two cities that many of the

:art"" who produced casta paintings were trained and in the fanner that the genre was born.

The first paintings to exhibit conventions of the casta genre were done by a member of a family of artists from Mexico City, the Arellanos, at the request of the Viceroy Alencastre Norona y Silva. Two works in particu- lar, both dated 17 I I, are considered early manifestations of the art form. The first is titled Sketch ora Mulatto, Daughtero{ a Black [Woman] and a

fIG. 4· Arellano. Dicei/o de Mulata yia de negra y espai/o/ en la Ciudad de MeXICO. Lahesa de La America a 22 de Agosto de 17' , (Sketch of a Mulatto, Daughter of a Black Woman and a Spaniard in Mexico City, Capital of America on the H of August of 171 l). SOURCE: Courtesy of Denver Art Museum: Collection of hederick and Jan Mayer. © photugraph Denver Art

Changing Contuurs 2) ,

in Mexico City, Capital of America (Fig. 4), and the second, of a Mulatto, Son of a Black [Woman] and a Spaniard in Mexico

Capital of America. III The mulata is dressed in sumptuous clothing lOw,."pearis around her neck and wrist, a figure certainly worthy of

"seat" of the Americas. Her male counterpart, the mulato is likewise adorned with fancy attire, including a Spanish

and hat that rest on his left shoulder and arm. The figure looks di- into the eyes of the viewer as he holds a substance up to his nose,

scent of which he is clearly appreciating. The substance is tobacco, the exotic import from the Americas to become a product of mass con-

ompdon in western Europe,ll but one that Mexico produced exclusively internal market. Standing beside the male mulatto is a little boy

,.spi"g a wooden horse with one hand and a flag or streamer with the The two canvases were meant to function as a unit, thus rendering

family triad that was to become characteristic of casta paintings.ll While the two Arellano representations of mulattos anticipated casta

it was the work of the Mexico City artist Juan Rodriguez (1675-1728) that first exhibited the principal traits of the genre.

"",most among these traits was a concern with depicting how repro- between people of different ancestries unfolds in the course of

generations. This process of ongoing mestizaje was represented a sequence of separate images or family vignettes. Starting with works belonging to the casta genre were produced as series,

normally consisting of separate canvases or copper plates. A few the different images on a single surface. Each image normally fca-

a man, a woman, and their child. ll Some indude two children, the standard family unit of casta paintings was a trinity. Series were

in order to facilitate the ordering of the images. each vignette included an inscription providing the no-

for the family members. Most casta sets, for example, begin the representation of an elite Spanish male, an indigenous woman

of high socioeconomic status, their offspring, and a title that reads f",m,,,hing like From a Spaniard and Indian [Woman] a Mestizo Is Born

Espanal e India nace Mestizo) (fig. 5). Casta sets are somewhat different depending on the painter and pe-

riod in which they were produced, but they nonetheless share a number of underlying principles that produce a particular narrative of mestizaje. One of these principles is the idea that blood is a vehide for transmitting a host of physical, psychological, and moral traits. The most explicit series in this regard was by Jose Joaquin Mag6n, an artist from the city of Puebla who worked during the second half of the eighteenth century. One of the two casta sets that he completed indudes inscriptions listing the qualities that children supposedly received from one or both parents.

FIG. 5· Jose de Ibarra, De espana/ e india. mestizo (From Spaniard and Indian, Me,tizo), ca. 1725. Oil on canvas, 164 x 91 cm. SOURCE: Courtesy of Mu,eo de America, Madrid.

Changing Contours 233

first painting, for example, starts with the message that in "the ;,.,,,i,,,, people of different colour, customs, temperaments and lan- are born" and then describes the mestizo born of a Spaniard and won",,,, "generally humble, tranquil and straightforward." The

and last vignette in the unit explains that the Spanish boy, born of man and a castiza, "takes entirely after his father." He appar-

inherited nothing from his indigenous great-grandmother or any of ancestors. The next sequence of images begins by announcing that "proud nature and sharp wits of the Mulatto woman come from White [male] and Black woman who produce her" and ends with a

that features a child called torna atras (return backwards) and that describes him as having "bearing, temperament and

r, " Another idea present in casta paintings is that while mixture is a po-

infinite process, it is not irreversible; returning to one of the purity is possible. In particular, they allow for the possibil-

that a Spanish-Indian union can on the third generation result in a Spania<·d" if its descendants continue to reproduce with persons of

descent. However, while admitting that reproduction with Span- can also Hispanicize or whiten blacks, casta paintings as a whole

that black blood inevitably resurfaces, that "blackness" cannot entirely absorbed into Spanish lineages, or native ones fot that mat- The last generational unit of a typical series, which is characterized

the total or ncar-total absence of Spaniards and by ongoing reproduc- between people of African and indigenous descent, normally links

to incomprehensibility (as conveyed by terms such as "hold r< in mid-air," "return backwards," "lobo return backwards,"

return backwards," "lobo once again," and "I don't get you") in some cases to moral degencration.1'i

The narrative of mestizaje constructed by casta paintings also de- an the strong interdependence of race and gender. The first se-

Iqu"",,, of a typical set normally begins with the family of a Spanish and an indigenous female, and the second, with that of a Spaniard

a black woman. Some representations of black men with Spanish ''')me< do appear, but these are not common, and rarer still arc images of Spanish women with Amerindians. 16 That in the majority of casta sets

,the Spanish-Indian and Spanish-black unions involve Spanish males . not only promotes the notion that elite white men were in command of the sexuality of all women (thereby emasculating other men), but con- Struct a gendered image of New Spain's three main populations. Sexual subordination essentiatty functions as a metaphor for colonial domina- tion. However, casta paintings gender indigenous and black people dif- ferently. Whereas the genre links the former to biological "weakness"

FIG. 6. Andres de Islas [Mexican), NO.4. De espaiio/ y negra, nace mufata (From Spaniard and Black, Mulatto), 1774. Oil on canvas, 75 x 54 cm. SOURCE: Courtesy of Museo de America, Madrid.

Changing Contours 235

it implies that their blood can be completely absorbed into Spanish it associates blacks with strength and thus codes them more as

casta iconography imbues them with the power, for example, ",.m,mit their qualities to their descendants. In some of the paintings that have images of domestic violence (Fig. 6),

is mulatto women in particular who are masculinized. These Ii tend to feature Spaniards serving black or mulatto women or the victims of female aggression; they thus reverse traditional gen- roles and figure women of African ancestry primarily as atavistic violent forces. J7 Not all images of African-descended people in casta

.intin.g' are negative, but the genre's inclusion of violent black women absence of similar representations of indigenous women are consis- with its overall privileging of the family, the images

. are generally characterized by patriarchal domestic harmony, rank, and a return to purity. The implication that Spanish blood

be restored when it mixes with that of native people but corrupted that of blacks suggests that the paintings draw on a set of notions

generation, regeneration, and degeneration. In a sense, the genre offers a secularized recasting of Christian my-

not only in that the family images are obviously a product of imagination (joseph, Mary, and Jesus; Father, Son, and

Spirit) but in that the degeneration narrative can be read as a kind from grace, one that always begins with the sexual act. As in

thought, "the fall" is not irrevocable; redemption is possible. Edenic ideal, embodied in the actual body of the Spanish male, can

into a state of "barbaric heathenism" (if his descendants can- to reproduce with native and black people), but it can also be re- . Spanish (Christian) blood has redemptive power. But again, the

"",,",i1il:, of complete redemption is admitted only for Spanish-Indian and not for those involving blacks. From this perspective, the

of casta paintings is not so much the castas but the Spanish male, is warned that reproducing with black women can lead to the loss

purity, and identity, to the corruption of his "seeds." reveal the importance of the Spanish male within the

narrative as dramatically as the first canvas (Fig. 7) of a 1763 Cabrera It features a Spanish male [0 the

. woman [0 the right, and their daughter in the mid- dle. l In the is a wall, and between it and the figures, a stall with neatly arranged, luxurious Mexican textiles, indicating that the SCene takes place in a marketplace. The male, who stands perfectly erect, is turned toward the adult female. His right hand rests on his daughter, and with the left he points toward the indigenous woman, displaying her

FIG. 7. Miguel [Mexi.canj, I. De espaiio/ y de india, mestiza (From Spaniard and Indian, Mestiza), 1763,011 on canvas, 132 x rOI em. SOURCE; Private collection.

Changing Contours 237

the viewer of the painting. The Spaniard's face is not shown, but his "Slm"md hand gestures leave no doubt as to where his eyes are fixed.

object of his gaze is the native woman, who returns the look with slightly raised eyebrow and somewhat flirtatious expression on her

She holds her daughter by the hand and is standing in front of the of finely detailed textiles, as if she herself were a commodity. The

girl, who is holding a Spanish fan and like her mother is dressed in iislpa"ic attire, looks at her father with an expression of deference.

Both the positioning of the figures in relation to each arher and body language create an idealized patriarchal order, one based

Aristarelian formulations of family and polity in which children are .b<"dlin,", to adults and women to men and in which the authority

the father is linked to that of the king. The painting consists of four of vision: that of the Spanish man, which is directed at

woman; that of the latter back toward the Spaniard; that also directed at the male figure; and that of the viewer of the

.h"i"g, whose eyes are first led to the mother and then to the child exoticized products from New Spain {the textiles in the back-

and the pineapple on the lower right corner of the frame}. These ,m,ii"" paradoxically position not the woman and child, which are be-

displayed, but the Spanish male as the center of the painting. Indeed, is he who through the whole visual rhetoric of the painting-the three

body language, the deployment of the male gaze, and the spatial of humans and objects-is rendered as in command nar

the wealth and products of New Spain, but of the sexuality and rep,wduction of the native female, his most valued possession.

Through its fetishized portrayal of barh the textiles and the indige- woman, Cabrera's painting hints at the process of creole class for-

one fetish conceals the work that produced New Spain's enterprises and therefore most of its wealth; the other hides

labor, dumestic and reproductive, that gave rise to a guod number Spanish colonial estates. The implied phallus in the painting, the in-

through which some indigenous women were inseminated and II which Spaniards were able in the course of a few generations reproduce themselves, stands as a symbol of patriarchal control, eco-

exploitation, and racial dispossession-a signifier of multiple and overlapping structures of domination. Through the iconography of pro- ductive sexuality in the domestic sphere, Cabrera's casta set thus exposes the dynamic relationship of race, class, and gender and the importance of the Spanish appropriation of the labor and reproductive capacity of native women to the colonial order.

Purity, Race, and Creolism

born in (now Oaxaca), was eighteenth-century MexICo s most promment pamter. He produced a large body of officialJ sponsored works featuring religious themes as well as portrait painting; including one of the Virgin of Guadalupe and another of the

Mexican writer Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz. Credited by some art historians with taking casta paintings to their highest levels of artis_ tic sophistication, Cabrera also was involved in introducing important changes into the genre. These changes include more attention to emotion and contact the figures, a stronger reliance on clothing to mark socioeconomIC dtfferences, and a greater stress on order and hi- erarchy.2u Nonetheless, sets from the second half of the century contin_ ued to convey the message that parents transmit a series of traits to their children through their blood, that after three generations the descen_ dants of Spanish-Indian unions can return to the Spanish pole, and that black blood eventually stains pure lineages-ideas that were all part of the discourse of limpieza de sangre as it had developed in New Spain. The paintings also still generally offered a vision of Mexican society in which race, gender, and class intersected and in which Spanish men's control over female sexuality, especially over that of their own women, enabled the survival of colonial hierarchies. Paradoxically, the period in which casta paintings were produced was one in which those hierarchies and the very category of Spaniard were becoming highly unstable.

TilE SISTEMA DE CASTAS IN FLUX AND

TIlE PROLIFERATION OF STATUTES AND STAINS

This instability of the sistema de castas in central Mexico was partly due to changes in marriage panerns and legitimacy rates. In the capital and Puebla, for example, marriages between Spaniards and women of partial African descent experienced slight but significant increases in the final decades of the seventeenth century. The church might have played a role in these increases, for it intensified its campaign to compel couples in informal unions to marry by threatening them with excommunica- tion.21 Thus, when in 1695 the Inquisition asked the bishop of Puebla to compile a list of the couples that had wed under those circumstances, it learned that during the preceding five years, twenty Spanish men had married African-descended women, free and enslavedY By the start of the next century, legitimacy rates among the broader casta population were rising, and Spanish women were taking men from other groups as husbands at higher rates than before. 2l Because the church had a history

Changing Contours 239

upholding the principle of free will in choice of marriage partners parental wishes (a policy that the state had for most of

seventeenth century), families had no legal or Illstuutlonal mecha- to halt such unions, at least not yet. 24

The growing instability of the sistema de castas was also due to the complexity of colonial society, which witnessed a dramatic surge

the population of mixed ancestry, the beginnings of a working class (especially in the northern mining towns and in Mexico City

Puebla), and increasing social mobility due to the expansion of mer- capitalism. Mobility went in both directions, however, and eco- trends were by no means uniform. Improvements in mining and

ogrind"",,d production and greater integration into the Atlantic econ- gave Mexico modest but steady economic growth rates. But not

followed the same trajectory, and some experienced more than growth. In Puebla, for example, signs of economic prob-

relatively early. In 1724, a number of Puebla's residents regarding the city's downturn and the flight of many of its af-

vecinos, namely, business owners and merchants, to Mexico City OaxacaY The out-migration had been so large that a section of

capital, comprised of several neighborhoods, came to be known as Puebla."

According to those who testified, many of the Spaniards that remained inPu,bla had become impoverished, and the city itself had lost some of

charm. Previously opulent homes had fallen into disrepair; the popu- had dropped significantly; and many private citizens, convents,

obrajes had been unable to collect rents on their properties (some of in the most exdusive streets) because of the shortage of currency

the city. Viceroy Fernando de Alencastre Norona y Silva (1711-16), Duke of Linares, called attention to similar problems. Puebla, he

in a 1723 report, was blessed with good agricultural production, but many of its·industries, including its wool, soap, and glass worksho.ps,

suffering because of competition from other regions and movmg "el,e'Nh,,,,, Only the city's craft guilds were doing well. 2f, Economic co?-

. . in Puebla took a turn for the worse in 1736, when harvest fatl- l d .. Z7 ures and an epidemic that hit the central region created a 00 cnsls.

As the viceroy suggested, during these decades of economic problems and fluctuations, colonial officials looked to the craft guilds as models

- of order and regimentation. Especially strong in Mexico City and Puebla but also important in other cities, these bodies were in charge of ing a good portion of the working population and thus played a III reproducing social hierarchies. In the capital, for example, one-third to

Purity, Race, and Creo/ism

one-half?f working males participated in artisan crafts, which despite the growmg number of non-Spaniards owning their own shops tend d to be structured according to racial lines. 2S Even if master artisans w.e

no longer all. Spaniards and creoles, and even if workers were by means exclusIvely people of indigenous and black ancestry the . , "Im_ portam trad.es and obrajes were still controlted by people of European descent, whICh gave the semblance of order and the sense that the sis_

de castas was alive and well. For example, the textile worksho s III the Puebla-Tlaxcala basin, the Bajfo, and the Mexico City area almost all owned by Spaniards (who in the case of the first two regio . I . I n, were mam y penmsu ars married to wealthy creole wives), but their workforce consisted primarily of people of mixed ancestry and black

29 surviving hierarchical nature of certain trade occupations mIght explam why a num?er of them are represented in casta paintings of the second half of the eIghteenth century. The vision of order that the paintings project, however, was more illusion than reality, and this be- came especially evident as the colonial period dtew to a close.

The instability of the sistema de castas was parodied in a 1754 man- uscript titled "Ordenanzas del Baratillo de Mexico" ("Decrees of the Baratillo of Mexico"), which turned the system of classification on its head, poked fun at its failure to work as intended, mocked its effort to create institutional exclusivity on the basis of blood-putity laws and invented castalike categories based on the marking of ("one-half Spanish," "one-quarter Spanish," and so forth).3(1 Although the manuscript correctly identified cracks in the system, the fluidity that it conveyed did not apply to the entire population. Social mobility did not really affect the upper class, which was constituted by the owners of large estates and mines, wholesale merchants, high-ranking royal offi- cials and clerics, and large-scale retailers; nor did it apply to the bottom social levels, which mainly consisted of unskilled indigenous manual lab- orers. Fluidity primarily characterized colonial society'S growing mid- dle strata, which included creoles and peninsulars in artisan and retail occupations, people of mixed descent, and acculturated Amerindians. Although mobility among these groups could go in both directions, in the second half of the eighteenth century it mainly went downward.

This downward trend was accelerated by the Bourbon reforms, which were first aggressively promoted during the reign of Charles III (1759-88). One of the central goals of the king and his enlightened was to promote "free trade"; another was to make Spain's political and eco- nomic domination over its colomes more efficient. The relative auton- omy that Spanish America had enjoyed during the previous century had allowed for the different provinces to be under the control of creole

Changing Contours

(namely, lawyers, landlords, and churchmen), peninsulars who had in the region for a long time, and great merchants. To impose

mercantilist policy that worked, the crown believed it was necessary curb the power of these regional elites as well as to launch a major

Pto'g".m of administrative, fiscal, and social reform. 31 In Mexico, the architect of the reforms was the visitador Jose de Galvez {I765-7I},

accomplishments included creating a new military district in the Io.·th"," frontier, introducing a system of intendancies, and tripling

rents. Galvez was also responsible for creating royal monopolies certain colonial products {including tobacco and pulque},J2 for de-

the power of Mexico City's consulado (merchants' guild), and the system of alcabalas (sales or excise taxes). Spain's new trading policies, Galvez's changes to the

reconfiguration of certain interests and industries, and es- of royal monopolies on some colonial products led to a

increase in Mexican commerce. The region's exports included (a red dyestuff used for textiles}, sugar, hemp, cacao, vanilla,

and hides, that is, mainly raw materials that were in high de- of the Industrial Revolution. But by far the most impor-

New Spain sent abroad was silver, the production of which crown had increased by lowering taxes on it and on mining

It constituted about three-fourths of the value of the region's and toward the end of the colonial period represented two-

of the crown's income in the Americas. Silver remittances from Spain and G.alvez's revenue-raising policies led to a significant im-

in Spain's fiscal yields. In the 1730S, the Royal Treasury of yearly tax collections amounted to about 6.3 million pesos;

the 1780s, they had jumped to between 10 and 20 million pesos and continue to rise.H Mexico had become the indisputable "jewel in

imperial crown." Whereas the Bourbon reforms were a fiscal success for Spain, their

jeffeets on the Mexican economy were much more mixed. Economic ex- pansion created more wealth for some but did not lead to noticeable structural and institutional changes, the modernization of manufactur- ing sectors, or a significant increase in wages. 34 Some enterprises, such as the obrajes or textile manufactories, flourished for a time because of internal demand, but were technologically stagnant and suffered as New Spain became increasingly integrated into the Atlantic economy.3' Furthermore, the dramatic assertion of the state's extractive role did not help spread economic wealth within colonial society. By the late eight- eenth century, New Spain's population paid 70 percent more in taxes (han that of Spain. \6 Because approximately 40 percent of tax revenues

Purity, Race, and Creolism

went to Madrid and because colonial governments had to absorb the costs of greater defense obligations and bureaucratic reconfiguration Mexico's budget deficit grew at an alarming rateY At the same tim:' the already acutely uneven distribution of wealth Indeed' the little upward mobility there was tended to favor peninsulars (mai '

of the expansion of the bureaucracy), while mg royal tax and tnbute demands elevated pauperization rates arnon the rest of the population. Among the most affected were rural working people, who underwent a decrease in their real wages and incomes. creoles also experienced some downward mobility. Toward the end of the century, thcy were increasingly joining the lower ranks of the "gente decente" (respectable people).39

Far from providing an accuratc picturc of the social order, then, casta paintings presented a highly distorted view. Spanish men were never in full command of female sexuality, but whatever control they had de- creased in the eighteenth century, when they did not even have a mo- nopoly on their own women in the marriage market. The Upper crust of society might have consisted almost exclusively of Spaniards and creoles and the lower one of unskilled indigenous laborers, but the relationship between race and class-never clear-cut to begin with-was becoming messier, especially as more and more whites joined the lower middle ranks. The racialized order that characterized some craft guilds was no longer as representative of the larger society as before, and a number of artisan occupations did not uphold strict racial hierarchies. Given the circumstances in which casta paintings were produced, their ongoing production and the interest they gencrated might have been tied to nos- talgia for a more stable, hierarchical past, and more concretely to elite anxieties about the changes that were threatening to radically alter the social order. Rather than calming these anxieties, however, the paint- ings made them worse.

By the 1740s, some creoles began to express conCern that casta paint- ings were creating the impression that most of New Spain's population was mixed and, more unacceptable from thcir point of view, that much of it had black ancestors. One such creole was Andres de Arce y Miranda, a theologian who was born to an established family from Huejotzingo (ncar Puebla) and enjoyed various high-ranking offices in Puebla's ca- thedral chapter. In 1746, he sent a manuscript entitled "Noticias de los escritores de la Nueva Espana" to Juan Jose de Eguiara y Eguren, pro- fessor and rector of MexIco's university, in order to help him compik hi;, BibllOteca Mexicana, a bio-bibliography of Mexican writers meant to undermine European claims regarding the lack of intellectual pro- duction in the In a letter that accompanied the manuscript,

Changing Contours 243

y Miranda cautioned Eguiara y Eguren to treat as "incidental" the I .. ;;xtu" of lineages" that had occurred in the viceroyalty in order not

encourage the perception on the other side of the Atlantic that every- in the colonies was the product of mestizaje. Referring explicitly

some casta sets, the theologian regretted that they reflected only the (utiles) and not "noble" minds of New Spain, and that they

not include the best pairing of all, that between Spaniards and cre- H casta paintings were initially a manifestation of pride in the 10-

by the 1750S they had dearly become a source of consternation for 101''n;'al' who did not want to be perceived as anything but pure.

The perception that creoles were impure had been growing not just in but in New Spain itself, among peninsular Spaniards. For cxam-

letters from tbe 17305, the Mexican Inquisition explained to the that the shortage of applicants for familiaturas in the region

b: from the prohibitive costs of the probanzas, the obscure gene- of those who had been born in Spain, and the uncertainty about

social status (caUdad) and purity of blood of the wives of candidates to the "mixture of castes" (mezcla de castas) in the viceroyalty.41

lel",;n, to the same shortage again in 1753, the inquisitors observed the most qualified individuals were those who came from overseas

that they were usually not interested in being ministers or familiars lecau"e they did not have a fixed residence. Creoles, on the other hand,

generally not eligible because in New Spain many were illegiti- or lacked the quality (calidad) of pure Spaniard due to the high of "mixture" in the viceroyalty. Turning to candidates from other of the kingdom did not resolve the problem because conducting

gel,ea,o!,,',,", investigations in faraway places was difficult and opened possibility of accepting "illegitimates as legitimate" and "mulattos as

:Span;"d,,"42 Other colonial officials expressed similar concerns about the rising . of mestizaje and in particular about Spanish lineages' being

'. by black blood. In their reports and correspondence with the 'crown or Suprema, they convey an almost paranoid fear of "bla.ckness," o of its capacity both to be invisible (hidden in the blood) and to mfluence , phenotype and other biological traits. The reasons for this fear are entirely clear. Although Mexico's population of slaves had dedlO- ing since the middle of the seventeenth century, people of Afncan de-

o scent (free and enslaved) continued to have a strong presence in Mexico o throughout the end of the colonial period, particularly in Mexico. City.43 This presence, however, does not in and of itself explain the ehte pre- occupation with black blood. Perhaps the preoccupation was linked to increases in marriages between creoles and castas, or perhaps Simply to

PUrity, Race, and Creo/ism

fears that those types of unions might become more common as s cial mobility for the latter became more feasible. 44 Whatever the case 0- the Mexican Holy Office's correspondence suggests, some Spaniards were linking creoles with illegitimacy and mixture, out those who had African blood as impure, and focusing on WOrne g as the sources of contamination. Similar to what had occurred in Spai n two centuries earlier, the rising obsession with safeguarding limpieza sangre resulted in the feminization of impurity and masculinization of women deemed to be impure.

The increasing marking of creoles as impure made the use of the word criollo become the subject of debate. Arce y Miranda, who was troubled by the failure of casta paintings to convey the message that unions between Spaniards and creoles took place, proposed expelling the word from the dictionary and from the language altogether. Because it had been created for the "sons of slaves born in America," he con- sidered its application to American-born Spaniards to be "ridiculous," "derogatory," and "inflammatory."45 Casta paintings do not include the term crioiJo, thus giving the category of Spaniard a unity it was clearly lacking. Chronically unstable due to the absence of a dear legal distinc- tion between metropolitan and colonial space and the slippage between blood and culture in Spanish definitions of purity, the category became even more problematic as the eighteenth century unfolded and Mexico's preoccupation with black blood and mestizaje in general continued to rise. This pteoccupation not only compelled colonial institutions to at- tempt to become more exclusive, but led religious and secular officials to become more aggressive about discouraging Spanish and native unions with people of African descent.

CREOLE FICTIONS: PURITY, THE VIRGIN,

AND TilE RISE OI' A CATHOLIC MESTIZO PAT RIA

The exclusivist trend in colonial institutions was manifested in the pro- liferation of categories of impurity. By the end of the eighteenth century, many probanzas de limpieza produced in New Spain identified four stains: descent from Jews, Muslims and heretics; descent from blacks and (some) native people; descent from slaves ("stains of vulgar infamies"); and descent from people who had engaged in "vile or mechanical oc- cupations." Furthermore, a greater assortment of secular and religious bodies introduced or formalized purity policies. These bodies included town councils, guilds, academies, convents, colleges, and seminaries. 46

Changing Contours 24'

is as if society was going in one direction and these institutions were to go in another. The number of statutes and stains grew in part

of efforts by creole and Spanish elites to stem the tide of people African and mixed ancestry attempting, in some cases successfully, enter the more prestigious occupations, the medical profession, and universities as well as to further restrict their access to ecclesiastical public offices."? But the rising obsession wit.h pucitr and also fueled by the crown's social and admllllsrrauve polines, and • its passage of the 1776 Royal Pragmatic on Marriages (or

't Sanction). moment in the history of the Spanish state's curtailment of the

IIm,cI,', independence on matters of marriage, the Pragmatic Sanction parental consent necessary for matrimony for people under

.. ,nt"-fi,,. stressed the importance of encouraging marriages between and shifted the power to mediate disputes between parents

CnHa,," over spousal choice from ecclesiastical to royal law was extended to the Americas in 1778 along with other de- that ordered royal officials (especially those in the armed forces)

marry in the colonies to provide proof of purity of blood for :IJ and their betrothed. 49 Marriage, however, was not the only

that felt the crown's interference in limpieza de sangre matters. educational bodies also adopted purity requirements,

Mexico City's Real Colegio de Abogados (Royal College of and the Colegio de Mineria (Mining College). The latter,

opened its doors in 1792, demanded proof of for stu- admitted into its mining seminar. By the end of the eighteenth

"'''"<v,purity requirements had become so pervasive that some parents ''''""ed purity certifications for their young children in order to improve

future marriage and professional opportunities. III What do the probanzas produced in the century of the Enlightenment

about the ways in which the Spanish discourse of purity of blood transformed in the course of the colonial period? As has already

been stressed in previous chapters, one of its first and most significant . transformations was its extension to colonial populations and in par- ticular to people of African innovation tha.t the acknowledged and approved in 1774. II Although variOUS lllStitutlons had a statute of purity that explicitly barred Africans and their de-

. scendants, the Inquisition did not formalize its own until that year. The change came about because of a case involving the limpieza de sangre of Josef Thomas Vargas Machuca, an alderman and chief constable (al- guacil mayor) in the Mexican town of Salamanca who had applied to be

Purity, Race, and Creo/ism

a familiar a couple of years earlier. S1 The commissioner assigned to the case had gone to Vargas Machuca's native town and interrogated nine witnesses, all of whom said that the petitioner's maternal bloodline Was pure and among the most noble of the region, but that his paternal one was mixed with "the vile caste of mulattoes," specifically the branch that carried the last name of Zavala. The stain in his genealogy, they added, was a matter of public knowledge, as were the problems that some members of his family, including an uncle who had entered the priesthood, had faced when attempting to certify their purity status.

The commissioner did not uncover evidence of impurity in the birth records that he examined, however, and therefore sent the case back to Mexico City with a recommendation that Vargas Machuca be granted the title of familiar. finding the case to be incomplete because not enough witnesses had been interrogated and because an investigation had not been done in the hometown of the allegedly "infected branch," the Holy Office's prosecutor ordered that further inquiries be made, par- ticularly on the paternal grandparent who carried the surname of Zavala and the uncle whose purity had been questioned when he entered the priesthood. This second investigation unearthed more damaging details about Vargas Machuca's bloodlines, including various probanzas for the uncle that contained contradictory information about his purity. It also revealed that the petitioner's paternal grandmother, Brfgida Zavala, had been granted a dispensation to marry a man who was related to her within the third degree. The dispensation referred to her as the daughter of a mestizo and "coyote," which meant that she had native and black ancestry. The commissioner also turned up evidence that another of the candidate's relatives, also a descendant of Brigida Zavala, was known co have the "race of mulanoes."

When the case was complete, the Mexican inquisitors declared the candidate to be impure because of the "prolonged stain that his direct ancestors and collaterals carried for having mixed with mulattoes." They also used the ca!>e to ask the Suprema to amend the purity statute and questionnaire. The inquisitors explained that their tribunal had raised the issue on repeated occasions because the form they used in inter- rogations continued to adhere to the traditional categories of limpieza. In most cases, what they had opted to do was add a handwritten ques- tion about whether the petitioner descended from "mulatos, coyotes, lobos, mestizos," and other castas. The inquisitors justified the addition on the basis of numerous past occasions in which the Suprema had ap- proved their rejection of candidates who had black blood as well as on popular opinion regarding the effects of reproducing with blacks. These

Changing Contours 247

opinions, they added, held that "blackened blood [sangre denegridaJ never disappears, because experience shows that by the third, fourth, or fifth generation it pullulates, so that two whites produce a black, called tornatras or saltatras."I.l

The question of mulattos and other castas had not been included be- . fore, the Mexican inquisitors observed, because the issue of Iimpieza, a

matter of faith, had been intended for the descendants of Jews, heretics, and Saracens, groups that were hostile to the Christian faith. Basically repeating what the Suprema had stipulated at the end of the seventeenth «,ntucy, they pointed out that strictly speaking, the statute did not af-

people who descended from gentiles unless their gentility was re- within the cuatro costados (their parents and grandparents), but

even then mainly on the basis of illegitimacy. Because Vargas Machuca's "stain" originated with his great-great-grandparents (rebis-

he was technically eligible for Iimpieza status. Therefore, if the Suprema wanted to reject his petition and others like it (as it had done with similar requests in the past), it should finally resolve, first, whether

requirement could be used against the descendants of gentiles ,w;.th"ut limitations on how far back the stain ran and, second, whether

African ancestry to the categories of impurity in the limpieza I . The Suprema agreed, but it took a definitive stance only

the second issue. On January 8, J774, it gave the Mexican Inquisition I to add a question regarding mulattos "and other castes held in disdain."14 After more than a century and a half of having a de

facto purity policy against people of African ancestry, the Holy Office formally included blacks and mulattos as impure categories.

Another change in the discourse of Iimpieza de sangre was the grow- ing interaction of the notion of purity with concepts related to "class"

, or social status. The acceleration of mercantile capitalism and greater possibilities of social mobility that it created and the growing accep- tance of individual achievement and other principles of enlightened ra- tionalism gradually peppered the language of purity of blood with terms such as caUdad, condicion, and clase. The change, which went hand in hand with the proliferation of stains, is obvious in probanzas de Iim- pieza de sangre. I n these documents, phrases such as "calidad de mulato" and "calidad de espanol" started to appear almost as often as "casta de

. mulato" and "casta de espanol," and both Inquisition officials and wit- nesses began to use caUdad (which had multiple connotations) and casta interchangeably. II furthermore, the ancient regime'S lexicon of purity of blood increasingly merged with "bourgeois" concepts of diligence, work, integrity, education, and utility to the public good. In 1752, for

Purity, Race, and Creo/ism

example, don Jose Tembra (or Tenebral a cleric from the diocese ofTI I ' ax-a, argued that in order to ensure the "public good," (he state should

discourage uneljual marriages, that is, unions between honorable men and who were ?ot of the right condici6n because they lacked the

limplezas of social status, caste, and occupation.% His example tYPically framed the problem of inequality as one that involved Spanish or creole men and women of a lower status. Inquisitors, members of the

and casta painters all appeared to share a concern with preserv_ mg the purity of the white male. . The concept of limpieza de sangre also underwent partial seculariza_

tion. If the declarations of people who testified in eighteenth-cemur investigations are a good indication, the meaning of

punty moved farther and farther away from religious practices and be- came embedded in a visual discourse about the body, and in particular about skin color. Spanish concerns with phenotype were present during the early stages of Iberian colonialism,17 but these became much more ac.ute .in the Age ?f Reason, and not just in Spanish America. A growing sCientific and philosophical interest in determining the effects of living in the Americas on people, animals, and plants and in a related set of questions about human generation and evolution led to the production and circulation of numerous theories of skin color in the Atlantic world as a whole. In Mexico, these theories reinforced the concept of purity of blood's links to "Spanishness" and "whiteness," which had begun to

in the second half of the previous century. Purity certifications mdlcate that witnesses increasingly used the category of

Spaniard" (espana/ puro) and expressions such as "Old Christians, whites of pure blood" (cristianos viejos, b/ancos de limpia sangre).'Y They also suggest that the colonial body started to become the main text through which ordinary people read the issue of purity of blood.

For example, several of the witnesses who testified in the J702 Fran- ciscan investigation in Queretaro to determine if the Velasco brothers were of "the bad race of mulattoes" declared that they were impure not only because of the skin color and hair texture of some of their ancestors, but because of [he two siblings' own pigmentation and "physiognomy."oo In 1748, two of the witnesses in the probanza of Donado Francisco Mariano Gomez, a candidate for the novitiate in Puebla's Franciscan convent, declared that questions about the status of the petitioner's ma- ternal grandfather as a "mestizo," "castizo," or "Spaniard" had been raised because of his skin color, which was trigueno (olive).61 The com- ?lissioner, however, turned to generational formulas to argue that even If the grandfather was a "mestizo," the father was a "castizo" and the petitioner therefore a "Spaniard." He added that if the candidate was

Changing Contours

within four degrees of the "stain," the defect had disappeared two witnesses had mentioned it; the others saw him as a

is For the commissioner, public reputation trumped anCestry. Purity of blood could be established, as in the past, by descent or rep-

but also by skin color or phenotype in general. But as Donado Mariano G6mez's probanza and numerous other purity cases

witnesses tended to rely more on phenotype than did Spanish and secular officials, who generally tried to adhere to more

genealogical and repurational formulas. The breach between definitions of limpieza de sangre and more popular ones points

the extent to which the concept had taken a different course in the ""lion,', ,II context and had become strongly intertwined with Spanishness

skin color. This transformation of the concept is illustrated, liter- in casta paintings, which recast the norion that it took three or generations for New Christians to become Old Christians and for

descendants of Spanish-Indian unions to claim purity in terms of And just as the discourse of limpieza de sangre seldom al-

the descendants of Spanish-black unions the status of purity of the paintings suggest that they could never become Spaniards or

white. Thus, the union of an albino-a person with predominantly ,Sp"ni,h blood but some African ancestry (usually one-cighth)-with a

not produce a "white" child, as one would expect given tl logic of the genre, but one of dark complexion.

Despite the various transformations that the notion of limpieza de it retained old layers of meaning. For one, religion

to be important to its definition. Spaniards and creoles who probanzas almost always emphasized their loyalty to the faith

impeccable Old Christian ancestry. Religion also continued to be ! the basis of the concept of native purity, whkh despite the association of limpieza and Spanish ness was still recognized in royal legislation and Some colonial establishments. The purity status of the indigenous popu- lation and its religious basis were actually invigorated in the first half of the eighteenth century, when the government tried to uphold the special privileges of pure and noble Indians and along with the church estab- lished new institutions for them. These institutions included Mexico City's convent of Corpus Christi, which was founded in 1724 exclusively for indigenous women of cacique or principal rank. It required that can- didates submit proof of their purity, nobility, and legitimacy; confirm that they did not have idolatrous antecedents; and ascertain that their parents did not engage in disdainful occupations. 6z In the following twO decades, convents with similar requirements were founded elsewhere, including Valladolid and Oaxaca.

FIG. 8. Jose de Ibarra [Mexican], De mestizo y eS{Jaiiola, castizo (From Mestizo and Spaniard, Castiw), ca. 1725. Oil on 164 x 91 cm. SOUItCE; Courtesy of Museo de America, Madrid.

FIG. 9. Jose de Ibarra, De castizo y espaiio/a, eS(Jaii()/ (hom and Spaniard, Spaniard), ca. 1725. Oil on ..:anvas, 164 x em. SOURCE: Courtesy of de America, Madrid.

Purity, Race, and Creolism

One of the factors motivating the establishment of these institutions was a strain of Catholic thought that the religious utopias of the six_ teenth century had turned indigenous people into a theologically privi_ leged community. This current of thought was strengthened with the spread of the cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe, believed to have appeared to the humble indigenous convert Juan Diego in IH!. Her image, which had been taken from the hill of Tepeyac to Mexico City in 1629, had grown in popularity throughout the seventeenth century, and in particu_ lar after the 1648 publication of Miguel Sanchez's Imagen de la Virgen Maria Madre de Dios de Guadalupe milagrosamente aparecida en Mexico. 63 It was officially recognized in 1737, the year that it was placed in the capital's cathedral and formally named by the city council as its new patron. Several other cities subsequently made the same pronounce- ment. In 1746, Archbishop Antonio de Vizarr6n y Eguiarreta (1730-47) and delegates from all dioceses held a meeting that resulted in her being declared their universal patron, a decision that the papacy approved in 1754. During these decades, countless copies of her image were painted, including one by Miguel Cabrera in 1756, the same year that he authored Maravilla Americana. In this work, he made a case for the divine nature of the original image and supported it with the opinions of other paint- ers, including some who were also producing casta sets and renditions of the Virgin of Guadalupe. 64

As the cult of Guadalupe reached its apogee, her image became part of an increasingly complex symbolism. Not only did her apparition to Juan Diego come to represent the promise of a renewed Christendom in Mexico and a kind of collective baptism of its disparate populations,"1 but members of clergy incorporated it into a vision of New Spain as a product of two spiritually unsullied communities: one brought the Catholic faith; the other was redeemed by it. Within this vision, it was the latter community, the indigenous people, that at a symbolic level was the more important. The Virgin's appearance on the hill of Tepeyac had accelerated the eradication of idolatry, thereby sacralizing both the land and its original inhabitants; she had made Mexico into the new Holy Land and the Indians her chosen people. Thus, when Francisco Antonio de Lorenzana (1722-1804), a Spanish prelate who served as archbishop of Mexico from 1766 to 1772, referred [Q Spaniards and native people as "Mexicans" favored by the Virgin of Guadalupe, he stressed that al- though her image protected both groups, it especially cared for the lat- ter, "the last to convert but the first [Q enter [God's] kingdom."66

The spread of the cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe and its exaltation of the native people's theological status enabled the rise of a creole vision of a Catholic mestizo kingdom under her protective image. This vi;,ion

Andres de Islas, NO.5. De espafio/ y mulata, nace morisco (From Spaniard d'"ul",,,,a Mori,co is Born), 1774, oil on canvas, 75 x 54 cm. SOURCE: Courtesy

de America, Madrid.

FIG. II. Andres de Islas, No.6. De eSj)afio/ y morisca, nace albino (From Spaniard and Mori,ca, an Albino is Born), 1774, oil on canvas, 75 x 54 cm. SOURCE: Courtesy of Museo de America, Madrid.

• 12. Andres de Islas, NO.7. De espaiwl}' albina, nace torna-atras (From Spaniard Albino, a Return Backwards is Born), I774, oil on canvas, 75 x 54 cm. SOURCE:

:""",,,y of Museo de America, Madrid.

25 6 Purity, Race, and Creofism

is captured in Luis de Mena's 1750 casta painting, to date the only One of the genre known to have overt religious iconography. Produced four years after Mexico declared the Virgin of Guadalupe its universal pa- tron, the painting is dominated by her image, which spills over into the first sequence of family vignettes. The first vignette atypically features an indigenous man with a Spanish woman. Because he wears almost no clothes and carries a bow and arrow-conventions that were used to represent "heathens" and "barbarians"-the image functions as an allegory for the "civilizing" and Christianizing process. The second vi- gnette, From Spaniard and Mestizo, Castiza (De Espanola y Mestizo nace Castiza), shows the mother and daughter staring adoringly at rh; Virgin; and the next, From Castiza and Spaniard, Spaniard (De Castiza y Espanol, nace Espanola), depicts the Spanish girl-the final product of the Spanish-Indian union-also captivated by the image.

Together the first three family images in Mena's painting allude not only to the Christianizing process but to the redemptive powers of Old Christian Spanish blood and the divinely sanctioned "marriage"-literal and metaphorical-of the Spanish and indigenous communities. By con- trast, the next sequence, which deals with the Spanish-black union, re- sults in an "Albino tornatras" ("albino return backwards"). The paint- ing thus includes people of African ancestry within the Virgin's fold but, like the rest of the genre, renders their blood as ineffaceable, as not quite compatible with Old Christian Spanish blood and incapable of entirely transmuting into "whiteness." The work therefore captures the anxie- ties that Spanish and creole elites were expressing about Spanish-black unions as well as some of the implications that the indigenous people's exalted place in New Spain's spiritual economy had for the region's sym- bolics of blood and dominant notions of communal belonging. Stated differently, it illustrates how the religious dimension of the concept of limpieza de sangre influenced central Mexico's constructions of race as well as its patriotic imaginaries.

Perhaps at no point in the colonial period was the Mexican vision of a Catholic mestizo patfia and its roots in the discourse of purity of blood expressed more clearly than after the passage of the Royal Pragmatic on Marriages. The Jaw, which stipulated that in Spanish America so- cial inequality referred primarily to racial or "caste" disparity, prompted prominent creoles and Spaniards (mostly members of the clergy) to de- fend unions with the indigenous population. Reviving the early mission- ary idea of creating "one people out of two" through intermarriage and reproducrion,67 this defense was passionately articulated by the exiled Jesuit priest and historian Francisco de Clavijero. In addition to roman- ticlLing the achievements of the pre-Columbian ALtecs and portraying

PIG. 13. Luis de Mena, painting, (.:a. 1750. Oil on Canvas, 120)( 104 (.:m. SOURCE: Courtesy of Museo de America, Madrid.

their empire as New Spain's classical antiquity, he strongly lamented that the biological ties between creoles and native people had not been strong enough to create a single (mestizo) people. b8 religiou.s and lay figures expressed similar vindications of Spanish-Indian mamages, among them Archbishop Lorenzana and the enlightened Jose Antonio de Alzate y Ramirez (1737-99). Clearly favonng certam

25 8 Purity, Race, and ereo/ism

biological mixes over others, both men proposed that native people should be encouraged to marry Spaniards but not blacks, mulattos, or zamboes (zambahigos) because of the negative consequences that unions with the last three categories would have on their lineages.

Mexico City's audiencia must have agreed, for in 1784 it prompted priests to warn their indigenous flock that if they married persons of African ancestry, their descendants would not have access to munici_ pal honorific positions. 69 Although some religious and secular officials worried about shielding the native population in general, they were al. ways more protective of indigenous noblewomen, whom they saw as having a particular claim to religious virtue, honor, and genealogical purity. As Archbishop Lorenzana explained in his sermons, if the Virgin of Guadalupe favored the Indians as a whole, she was most protective of indias, for whom various convents, including that of Corpus Christi, had been founded. 711 Native noblewomen occupied a special place in Mexico's order of signs, a consequcnce of the extension of the concept of Iimpieza de sangre and attendant ideas about endogamy, legitimate birth, and female chastity to the "Indian republic" as well as of the role of the daughters of caciques and principales in Spanish ennoblement and creole class formation.

Although the urgency with which some creoles and Spanish clerics defended Spanish-Indian marriages in the last decades of the eighteenth century would suggest otherwise, the emerging Mexican vision of a Catholic mestizo patria was not incompatible with the Bourhon govern- ment's social policies. Indeed, even though the Pragmatic Sanction's pro- vision of inequality caused some confusion among colonial officials who were not certain or disagreed about which unions they were supposed to discourage, the 1778 order and subsequent decrees emphasized that the prohibition was to be applied primarily to Spaniards or native people who planned to marry people of African descent. In other words, mar- riages were "unequal" when they involved unions bctween blacks and nonblacks. 71 The Pragmatic Sanction and related marriage legislation thus did not erode, but rather consecrated, the principle of indigenouS purity.

Other Bourbon social policies did so as well, including those pertain- ing to the legal instrument:.. called gracias al sacar. These instruments were part of a Spanish tradition in which monarchical authority super- ceded laws about legitimacy and various other matters related to birth status and ancestry. They allowed, for example, those who were illegiti- mate, impure, or (in the colonies) not white to purchase edicts (cidula s de gracias al sacar) erasing the "defect" of their birth. The edicts, which reflected the lcgalty sanctioned distinction between the private and public domains, had existed for centuries, bm in 1795, the crown for rhe first

Changing Contours 259

issued a list of prices for purchasing them. 71 That the list focused dispensing the status of pardo (dark skinned) and of quinter6n (one-

black) amounted to a tacit recognition that black ancestry was that was deemed legally and socially impure and, by extension, that descent was not.

And indeed, Bourbon institutional policies continued the tradition of black ancestry with impurity and recognizing the principle of

For example, the Royal College of Attorneys included ancestry" and "vile or mechanical trades" as stains, but made

mention of indigenous descent as a cause for disqualification. The College encouraged applications from "noble Indians" and, in

with the viceroy, determined that because mestizos were al to receive the sacred orders and were exempt from tribute, there

no reason to exclude them either, especially if they were of the "first " (half Spanish, half indigenous).71 Accordingly, the informaciones

probanzas submitted by candidates to the seminar include "negros, and Moors" as impure categories but not "indios" or

. " As Archbishop Lorenzana and Alzate y Ramirez had insinu- when they argued that native people should avoid marrying blacks,

:heeonti,nuing stigma of black blood was clearly related to the purity-of- requirements and the greater social implications they had for the

d",eend,m" of Africans than for other colonial populations. Eighteenth-century Mexico's discourse of purity of blood had been

primarily by the laws, institutions, religious cosmologies, and and archival practices that accompanied Spanish colonialism. But people had also participated in its construction. The passage of

r697 decree confirming their purity of blood and the privileged sta- of caciques and principales led to a rise in the production of inJig-

genealogical documents. Following the traditional definition of lirr'pi,,,a de sangre but with a colonial twist, caciques and principales

purity claims primarily on the basis of the absence of any stains idolatry in their lineages since their (sixteenth-century) ancestors had

" converted to Christianity and oftentimes also their lack of black blood. 74

,Furthermore, indigenous communities throughout central Mexico cre- ated images and histories that made baptism, the vassalage pact with the Crown of Castile, and the conversion of the collectivity into main cornerstones of their founding myths. Energized by local cults to the

, Virgin and other Catholic symbols that made the native population into a new chosen people, these patriotic narratives strongly interacted with creole ones. 71

Needless to say, creole attitudes toward the native population were not uniform. Indeed, as Mexican responses to Galvez's efforts to ap-

. point mainly peninsulars to senior posts in rhe political and ecclesiastical

260 Purity, Race, and Creolism

hierarchy make dear, the emerging vision of a Catholic mestizo patr' d·d I·· h " I. not e Iffilfiate t e strong ambivalence that novohispanic political elites tended to have toward mestizaje. 76 This ambivalence is palpable' h M ·· ·1 on t e eX1CO city counu 's 1771 Representacion, Of address to the crow

which complained about the exclusion of American Spaniards (the criollo was not used) from the viceroyalty's top honors. Like previous creole appeals [0 Spain,77 the document argued that access to public offices was supposed to be exclusive to natives of the jurisdiction and contrasted the "nativeness" of the American Spaniard with the "foreign_ ness" of the European one. It also emphasized that creoles were just as noble as peninsular Spaniards and, in a transparent attempt to claim a historically deeper local pedigree, even referred to the pre-Columbian imperial blood of some of the members of the ayuntamiento. Yet the au- thor was quick to point out that Spaniards on both sides of the Atlantic constituted one political body and that American ones were as "pure" as those in Old Spain. 7s

The 1771 Representacion, the "last grand statement of the traditional themes of creole patriotism in New Spain before the debates of vehemently denied accusations that all Spaniards in the Americas were "Indians" or "mixed." These accusations, the document contended, were false because native women were too "ugly," "dirty," and "uncuhured," among other things, and because the children of mixed unions would not have access to the honors, rights, and privileges granted to Spaniards and pure Indians. Mixture with blacks was even less likely, it pointed out, because it implied higher social costs. The author then rejected the notion that the mixture of Spaniards with blacks was common in New Spain, as had been "painted" (probably a reference to casta paintings). It was true, he conceded, that in the first years Spaniards had fathered children with Indian women, bur because the laner had tended to be noble, their descendants did not suffer any social or legal consequences. The Spanish-Indian combination was "a mixture that by the fourth gen- eration has no importance in nature or politics; for anyone who has one Indian great-grandparent out of sixteen is by nature, and for all civil purposes, a pure Spaniard, without the mixture of any other blood." In fact, the author continued, many noble houses in Spain had that partiv ular "mix."

The town council's 1771 statement to the king was but one of anum· ber of documents from the time that reflect both the growing sense of creole patriotism and the deep apprehensions that some Mexican cre- ole clites had about native blood and mestizaje. Their identification with a Spanish community of blood continued to be reinforced in the eighteenth century by the system of probanzas de limpieza de sangre,

Changing Contours

remained in place for the ecclesiastical and secular hierarchies conducting transatlantic investigations for both creoles and had become more difficult.SO The proliferation of purity and

requirements in the face of growing social instability not only to an increase in the number of probanzas but enhanced the creole

obsession with genealogy and the past. Their genealogical trees claims became more and more e1aborate. M1 Thus, in 1767, francisco

A.too,;o de Medina y Torres applied to be the Holy Office's alguacil . Just a decade earlier, one of his relatives, a secretary in Mexico's

lu,j;,.,;, who tried to have his purity and nobility certified, boasted he was able to produce genealogical proof for thirty-eight of his

Together with the reports of merits and services, the probanzas de imp;,,,, de sangre helped sustain the creole preoccupation with blood.

also served to reproduce the myth of Spanish origins and to gener- historical narrative that linked the Christian "reconquest" of Spain

the conquest of Mexico. For example, in 1730, Jon Antonio Joaquin Rivadeneyra y Barrientos, the future author of the Representacion 1771, competed for a prebend in Mexico City's Colegio de Todos

Sa,,,o,, for which he submitted proof of his purity of blood, nobility, respectable behavior. In his informacion, he stressed that all of his

"",,,,too·, from both bloodlines had been "Old Christians, dean of all race, and notable gentlemen and hidalgos" and that his parents and

had held honorific posts in Mexico City and Puebla. Don y Barrientos also provided extensive information regarding from his mother's side. He claimed that they had belonged

some of the most illustrious Spanish families, dating back at least to eleventh-century king Alfonso VI, and had participated in the wars

a@:,;,""the "Moors" as well as in the conquest of New The his- tory of Mexico and its pre-Hispanic "classical" past thus became part of a broader providential narrative that allowed creoles to simultaneously

: claim kingdom status for their place of birth, construct a nativeness that was separate from Castile, and vindicate their Spanish bloodlines. As a mural produced in the capital in the middle of the eighteenth cen- tury revealed, Hernan Cortes was a central figure in this narrative, a New World Moses who brought about a new religious order and whose legacy criollos claimed. M4

Don Rivadeneyra y Barrientos's 1730 informacion became part of a report of professional and academic merits that he compiled in 17.)2, when he was serving as an oidor in Guadalajara's auditncia, and that he continued to use as he climbed the ranks of government administra- tion. Beyond recording the elite preoccupation with lineage at a time of

Purity, Race, and Creo/ism

social change, his probanzas and other genealogical histories from th period suggest that the hidalgo-cristiano viejo cultural paradigm-fir e

ce?turies ?y the and church-was alive and In late colomal MexIco. ThIs paradIgm only added to the complexity of New Spain's racial ideology, which even at the height of the construction of a Carholic mestizo patria oscillated between including native peopl in the category of purity and marking them as impure. e

CONCLUSION

Eighteenth-century New Spain gave birth to casta paintings, a genre that reveals a great deal about how colonial artists (most of whom were creoles) conceived of the sistema de castas, the relationship between race and gender, and colonial hierarchies. The paintings' representation of a social order neatly structured by overlapping race and class lines and maintained by white male control over female sexuality was deceptive, for the period was one in which the system of classification became more unstable due to demographic, economic, and marriage trends. As socio- economic shifts made the lower border of Spanish society even more permeable than it had been in the past, not only did the term creole acquire connotations of impurity but the concept of calidad began to compete with that of casta within the lexicon of purity of blood-a .<.ign that rhe categories of the sistema de castas, including that of Spaniard, were increasingly defined by social status and bloodlines.

The growing instability of the sisrema de castas prompted a variety of colonial institutions to attempt to increase their exclusivity by issu- ing or enforcing purity and nobility statutes, which only intensified the Mexican elite's obsession with genealogy and anxieties about mestizaje, particularly about the mixing of Spanish and black blood. These anxi- eries culminated in 1774, when the Inquisition formally added black ancestry to its categories of impurity. By then, the Spanish marking of blackness as an indelible genealogical stain was widespread_ Inquisitors, friars, painters, and government officials (including audiencia judges) deemed black ancestry to be impure, and if the Holy Office is to be believed, so did "popular opinion." In a variety of written and visual sources, impuriry was not just Africanized but feminized, mapped, as it were, onto black women. The century that opened with rhe production of an image of a mulata dressed in sumptuous clothing and representing the scar of the Americas thus closed with an affirmation of the impure status of blacks not only by the Inquisition but by the Bourbon govern-

Changing Contours

institutional policies and social legislation, including the Royal Pa!:<amauc on Marriages.

New Spain, this law not only raised questions abour what con- .;,ut<,d racial inequality but encouraged the production of more lim-

de sangre certificates. These late colonial documents reveal that though the concept of purity of blood had undergone important

them becoming increasingly linked to "Span- and "whiteness"-religion continued to be important to the

in which !o,ome church and government officials defined it. The ,uo-v;,,,1 of the religious-spiritual dimension of limpieza de sangre en-

the continued extension of the concept to the Christianized native shaped central Mexico's patriotic defense of Spanish-Indian

and allowed criolln clerics, intellectuals, and painters to e1ab- a vision of a Catholic mestizo patria. Primarily but not exclusively

function of creole imaginings, this vision was expressed in Luis de T750 depiction of New Spain's diverse populations under the im-

of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Although this was apparently the only with overt religious iconography, the genre as a whole

tc to the patriotic vision by reproducing the underlying prin- of the limpieza de sangre discourse, which granted the indigenous

a favored spiritual and genealogical status, especially vis-a-

The directionality of influences in eighteenth-century Mexican think- about race and mestizaje was extremely complex, however. On one

the generational principles and ideas about which descendants of unions could claim Spanish ness that arc present in casta paintings

from the practices and legal formulas that insrirutions had been to determine limpieza de sangre status; on rhe other, the paintings viewed by government and iOl.Juisition officials and seem to have

way some of them thought about lineage and biological . As the creole vision of Catholic mestizo patria was emerg-

the political and cuhural spheres were clearly shaping each other, as were the material and representational.

Despite its message of redemption through faith, this vision was one that betrayed a strong ambivalence toward native blood; after all, it im- agined not only Hispanicizing and Christianizing the indigenous pop- ulation but whirening it, fusing its blood into Spanish lineages until rendering it invisible. It was therefore a vision very much produced by colonialism as both a system of economic, patriarchal, and racial sub- ordination and a fantasy of sexual domination and biological dispos- session. This fantasy became more elaborate as mercantile capitalism

Purity, Race, and Creo/ism

a main source of national wealth, and turned coloma I bodies Into virtual commodities and as creole p t --d .... ,. ' anOts tne to reconCile their IdentificatIOn as a community on the b .' - -hh" .-. aSlsof

Wit t elr IdentlficaCion as a community on the basis of blood_ hnes. The form that late colonial Mexican patriotic and racial' inings took owed much to institutional policies power struggle .Ima

g d· - 1 -I . . . . .' s, an

socia re that by routlOlZlOg certam archival practices made a set of about blood and lineage purity-a series of genealogical fictions-seem natural, taken for granted, and thus the consequ,o f h- d - d ce 0 Istory eOie as such.

Conclusion

book has analyzed the concept of limpieza de sangre from its ori- amid the complex sociopolitical climate of early modern Spain

its deployment in colonial Mexico, where it served as the ideologi- foundation of the sistema de castas. It has emphasized that in both

the concept of limpieza de sangre was mediated by religion and to a set of beliefs about lineage, legitimate birth, and honor. In

Iberian Peninsula, the notion was closely connected to the idea that . and Muslim converts to Christianity were not yet secure in the

and were therefore potential heretics. This idea became the basis the purity-of-blood statutes, which gave rise to genealogical investiga-

to ascertain that a person's parents and grandparents had all been O"i<,i,o,_. Between the middle of the fifteenth century-when Toledo

what was perhaps the first municipal purity decree-to the mid- of the sixteenth-when the same city's cathedral chapter issued a

similar requirement-the generational limitations on such investigations declined, and the relatively flexible definition of limpieza was replaced by a more rigid one requiring equally unsullied paternal and maternal bloodlines. By the end of the sixteenth century, the concept of limpieza de sangre had become a common (albeit not always effective) mechanism of exclusion and had served to construe con versos and moriscos as New Christians, as converts indefinitely suspended between two religions.

The Inquisition played a major role in spreading the ideology of lim- pieza de sangre, at first by targeting converted communities (thereby help- ing to associate them with heretical tendencies) and, as of the 1570s, by standardizing and disseminating the legal procedures for establishing a person's Old Christian bloodlines. Through the literature it produced for its different tribunals and the genealogical interrogations it conducted in towns all over Spain, the Holy Office not only accentuated concerns

Notes to Chapter 8

University of Michigan 1993), pp. 75-97. On idolatry in the Andes, See Kenneth R. Mills, Idolatry and its Enemies: Colonial Andeall Rel'gion and ExtirpatIOn, 1{}40-1750 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997); and Mills, "The I.imih of Religious Coercion in Midcolonial Peru," in The Church in Co/rmial Latin America, cd. john F. Schwaller (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2000), pp. '47-80.

25· See note 38, p. 332. 26. Ethnic and Social of the Franciscan Friars, pp. ,2-14. 27· Cited In Morales, Ethmc and Social Background of the Franciscan Friars

pp. 16-17. The translation is by Morales. ' 28. jCBULI, vol. 4, fols. 491-504. 29· jCBULl, vol. 5, fols. 165-17IV. 30. jCBULI, vol. 6, fok 761-67. 31. The five friars who reviewed Diego Valdes MOctezuma's stated that

the investigation was not complete because not enough information was gath- ered about his grandparents, bur decided to accept the candidate because two of his brothers had already professed in the Province of the Holy Gospel Without any kind of dispensation.

32. jCBULI, vol. 4, fols. 819-23. According to notes made by the friars, Manuel de Salazar had requested to be accepted into the order on a number of occasions, and they finally decided to accept his candidacy after being <.:on- vi need of his religious devotion.

33· See Ethnic and Social Background of the Franciscall }"riars, pp. I43-44·

34. See Brading, The First America, pp. 373-75. 35. jaime Cuadriello, "Cortes as the American Moses: The Mural Writing

of Patriotic (lecture, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, Novemba 22,20°5); and Cuadriello, Las glorias de fa repliblica de Tfaxc<lla: 0 fa concie7lcia como imagen sublime (Mexico City: Instituto de Esteticas, UNAM, and NacionaJ de Ane, INBA, 2004), p. 78.

36. Colin A. Palmer, "Religion and Magic in Mexican Slave Society, 1.\70- 1650," in Race and Slavery in the Western Hemisphere: Quantitative Studies, ed. Stanley L Engerman and Eugene D. Genovese (Stanford, CA: Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, 1975), p. 314.

37. Lomnitl-Adler, Fxits from the Labyrillth, pp. 267-68. 38. By 1646, New Spain's creole black population amounted to II6,529;

and that of Africans, to 35,089. In the capital, most of the population of African descent consisted of free creoles. See Herman Bennett, Africans III C%/lla/ MeXICO: AbsolutIsm, Christiamty, alld Afro-Creule COIISCJ(JI4weH, '570-1640 (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2003), pp. I .md 18-27.

39· jCBLlU, vol. I, pp. 3-13. 40. jCBLlLl, vol. I, fols. 487-91. For a probanza that used similar language

but wa'i made ill Spain, JCBI ILl, vol. 2, fols. 207-14: Information regard- ing Alonso Gomez, made in the Villa de Niebla, 1617.

41. AGI, Indiferente 2°72, no. 44. As of the 153OS, Spanish laws barred mu- lattos (along with othn categories) from going to the Indies without fint obtain-

Notes to Chapter 9 351

ing a special license. For some unstated reason, the Council of the Indies did not give Catalina and her son, "the free mulattoes," permission to go to Mexico.

42. AHN, libra 1066, fok 379-382V and 389. 43. AHN, Jnquisiclon, libro 1066, fols. 387-390V. 44· JCBLlI.J, vol. n, 612-29. Because Diego Joseph Rodriguez Vargas's

informacion is out of place and incomplete, it was not possible to determine whether he was accepted into the novitiate or not.

45. By the eighteenth century, pardo and moreno were the most common terms used for free colored militiamen in Mexico. Though the former at SOllle point referred to the children of blacks .Ind native people, in central New Spain it eventually became a synonym for mufato.

46. On how the ways in which subordinate groups understand, accommo_ date, or resist domination are shaped by the process of domination itself (resis- tance and domination thus operating within a common discursive framework), see Roseberry, "Hegemony and the Language of Contention," pp. 355-66.

47. Thom.Is C. Holt, "Slavery and Freedom in the Ad.Intic World: Reflections on the Diasporan Framework," in CrossinK Boundaries: C()m(Jarative History ()f Black People In Diasl}()ra, ed. Darlene Clark Hine and jacqueline McLeod {Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UniverSIty Press, 1999}, p. 37.

48. AGN, Bienes Nacionales, vol. 578, expo 21: investigatIOn of the nobility and purity of blood of don juan Velasco and dona jeroninlJ. Munoz, parents of :Fray NicoLis de Velasco and Fray Miguel de VelJ.sco, Queretaro, 1702-5.

49. For example, see jCBLlLl, vol. 4, fol. 826.

CHAPTER 9

l. Recent studies of the paintings include Ilona Katzew, Casta Paintmg: Images of Race ill Eighteellth Century Mexic() {New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2004}; Magali M. Carrer.I, Imagining ldelltity ill New SIMin: Race, LII/eage, alld the Colonial Body in Portraiture alld Casta Paillt- inKS {Austin: University of Texas Press, 2oo3}; Maria Elena Martinez, "The Spanish Concept of l.impieza de Sangre and the Emergence of the 'Race/Caste' System in the Viceroyalty of New SpalIl" (PhD diss., of Chicago, 2002), pp. 1-42; and Maria Concepcion Garda %iz, Las castas //Iexicallas; VII Kenero pictririt:() americaI/O (Milan: Olivetti, 1989). Thus far, more than one hundred sets have been rediscovered, hur many remain undated and anony- mous. for Peru, one by VIceroy Amat, has been iden- tified. See Juan Carlos Estenssoro, l'iiar Romero de Tejada y J'icatoste, l.uis Eduardo Wuffarden, .Ind Natalia Majluf, eds., Los cuadros del mestizGfC del vlrrey Amat: La representac/i)n ctnogra(ica en ef Peru- wlollial (l.ima: Museo del Arte de Lima, 1999).

2. Painters wbo ,."omributed to the genre include juan Rodriguez Juarez, Miguel Cabrera, jose de Paez, jose Alfaro, Ignacio Maria Barreda, Andres de hla" Mariano Guerrero, LUIS Berrueeo, Ignacio de Castro, jose de Bustos, and jose joaquin Magan. A few of the artists, including Andres de hlas, jose de Ibarra, Miguel Cabrera, and juan Patricio Morlete Ruiz, were of mixed descent.

35 2 Notes to Chapter 9

3. For detai!" on commissioned casta sets, sec Efrain Castro Morales, "Los cuauros de castas de la Nueva Espana," jahrlmch fur Geschichte von Staat Wirtschaft, und Gesellschaft Latemamerikas no. 20 (1983): pp. 678-68; Kan.ew, "Casta Painting; Identity and Social Stratification in Colonial Mexico" in New World Orders: Casta Painting 411d Coloniall.atin America, ed. Katl.cw (New York: Americas Society Art Gallery, 1996), pp. 13-14; and Maria Concepcion Garcia saiz, "The Contribution of Colonial Painting to the Spread of the Image of America," in America: Bride of the SlIn: 500 Years of La rill America and the Low Countries: 1.2-31.5.92; Royal Museum of hne Arts, Antwerp, ed. Bernadette). Bucher Belgium: Flemish Community, Administration of External Relations, 1992.), pp. 172.-73.

4. Katzew, Casta Pamting, pp. 7 and 17. 5. On natural history and the emergence after the century

of new ways of linking "things both to the eye J.nd discourse," see Foucault, The Order of Things, pp. 12.8-32..

6. Katzew, Casta Pamting, pp. 2. and 7. 7· By the the population had grown to about 4.5 to 5 million, and III

1810, to more than 6 million. Of those 6 million, about 2.2. percent wt:fe castas, 60 percent were indigenous people, and 18 percent were creoles. Peter Bakewell, A History of Latin America: Empires alld Sequels, (Malden, MA: BlackweH, 1')')7), pp. 2.56 and 277-78; and Mark A. Burkholder and Lyman 1.. Johnson, Colomal Latm America (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1')98) p. 2.78.

8. Silver production began to rise in 1670 and grew at a steady pace from 1700 to 1810. Bakewell, A History of Latin Americ:a, p. 258.

9. See Elisa Vargas Lugo's introduction to francisco Perez HistiJria de la /Jintura en Puebla (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Aut6noma de Mex- iw, Instituto de InvestigaCIOnes Estericas, 1963), esp. pr. 13-16; and Manuel Toussaint, Pintura colonial en MeXICO (Mexico City: Universidad Nacwnal Aut6noma de Mexico, Instituto de InvestigaclOnes Esreticas, 1990).

10. Maria Cotl(.:epcion Garcia saiz, "The ArtistiC Development of Painting" in New World Orders, p. 31. See p. 31 and plate I for reproductions of the two paintings as well Katzew, Casta Pall/tll/g, pp. IO-I I.

II. Robin Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery: From the Ba- mque to the Modern, (New York and London: Verso, 1')')7), pp. 19 and 2.34.

12. Garcia Saiz, "The Artistic Development," pp. 31-32. IJ. A few sets produced in the late eighteenth century included various fam-

ily units within a lands!.:ape. 14. The series, which undated, is reproduced in Garcia Saiz, Las castas

meXlcanas, pp. 102-11. IS. See the sets in Katzew, Casta Painting, pp. 19-20, 30-31, 36, 86, ')J,

98-')9, roo, 116-19, 124-27, 132.-34, 144-46, l53, and 156-59. 16. Garda SaiL, LlS castas mexicanas, p. 38. When black mCll are pictured

with women, they are depicted as belonging to a relatively priv- ileged socioeconomic ,tatus and often appear coachmen. See plates 2 I and 34 in Garcia Saiz, New World Orders.

Notes to Chapter 9 353

17. See 20 and 49 in Garcia Sail., New World Orders, both of which feature black women atta.:king their mulatto children or Spanish males with household objects (e.g., a spoon). Also see plate 42 in the same book and Garda Saiz, /.as castas mexicanas, pp. 146, ISS, and 162..

18. This £763 Cabrera series consists of numbered canvases, most of which are owned by the Museo de Ameri!.:a in Madrid and are reproduced in Joseph J. Rishel and SU1.anne Stratton-Pruitt, eds., The Arts in i.atin Amer- ica, 1492-Ilho (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2006), pp·4 04-4 0 9·

19. Garcia Saiz, I.as castas mexicanas. p. 81. 20. Katzew, Casta Painting, pp. 4, 94-109, and 111-61. Katzew also notes

that as of the 1760s, the paintings echo themes present in the writings of Bourbon reformers, as the problems of drinking, idleness, and gambling and the need for more order, better education, and stronger work ethics.

2 I. Aguirre Beltran, La poblaci()n negra de Mexico, pp. 2.47-48. 22. AGN, Inquisicion, vol. 195, expo 55, fols. 240-243v. :1.3. Seed, To Love, H()nor, and Obe)' in Colonial Mexico, pp. 25,96-98, and

146-47. Aho see Dennis Nodin Valdes, "The Decline of the Sociedad de Castas in Mexico City" (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 1978), pp. 40-42. For ex- amples of late seventeenth-century petitions by mulatto slaves and mestizos to marry Spanish and castiza women in Mexico City, see AGN, Inquisicion, caja 163, folder 16, exps. 4-6; and AGN, inquisicion, !.:aja 163, folders 18 and 2.0.

24. Some families took matters into their own hands and the bloodlines of the would-be spouse. See the 1703 testimony of Juan de Valdez regarding the purity of don ignacio Marquez de los Vald6, in AHN, lnquisicion, leg. 2284.

2.5. AGT, Mexico 827: Testimonies taken by priests from Puebla's cathedral on the city's economic and social conditions from 16')o to 1723, document pro- duced in 1724. Also refer to Guy P. C. Thomson, Puebla de los Angeles: II/dus- tr)' and Society ill a Mexican (;ity, 1700-1850 (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1989).

26. BNM, MS 292.9: from the Duke of Linares to successor, March 2.2, 172.3.

27. AHN, leg. 2280. Eighteenth-century New Spain had several othcr epidemics, the most severe occurring in 1785 and 1786.

2.8. Jonathan Brown, Latm America: A Social History of the Colonial World (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 2005), pp. 2.96-300.

:1.9. Richard.J. Salvucci, Textiles and Capitalism III Mexico: An economic History of the Obrajes, 1539- j 1140 (Princeton, NJ; Prin!.:eton University Press, 1987), pp. 114-86 and 97-134·

'10. KatLew, Casta I'all/ting, pp. 56-61. The manuscript was signed by Pedro Chreslos Ja!.:he, but Katzew speculates that this name was fictitious.

31. In the 1760s, Spam allowed New Spain to trade with its other !.:olo- nics, and in 1778, It abolished the Cadiz monopoly on commer!.:e with Spanish Amenca. furthermore, in 1789, it made policy of "free trade" uniform for all Its American In addition to modifying trade poli!.:ies, the Bourbon

includcd reducing the power of the church, strengthening military for!.:cs, reorganiLing poiiti!.:al admiillstration, and promoting science, the !a,t

.3S4 Notes to Chapter 9

in order to better exploit botamcal and mineral resources in Spanish America. See David A. Brading, "Bourbon Spain and its Ameri<:Jn Empires," in Colonial Spanish America, ed. Leslie Bethell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1987), pp. 112-62; Kenneth R. Maxwell, "Hegemonies Old and New: lbero-Atlantic in the Long Eightcenth Century," in Colonial Legacies: The Prob_ lem of Persistence III Latin American History, ed. Jeremy Adelman (New York and London: Routledge, 1999), pp. 69-90; and Jean Sarrailh, La Espana ilus_ trada de la segunda mitad del siglo XVIII, 4th ed. (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Economica, I992 [rst ed. 1954]l.

32. For more on tobacco, Susan Bureaucrats, Planters, and Workers: The Making of the Tohacco Monopoly in Bourbon Mexico (Austin: University of Texas 1992).

33. Pedro Perez Herrero, "EI mexico borb6nico: (,un hito' fracasado?" in Inter/!retacirmes del siglo X V III mexicano: El impacto de las reformas horbrJl1I_ cas, ed. Zoraida Vazquez (Mexico City: Nueva Imagen, 1992), pp. J 17 and Il7; Bakewell, A History of Latill America, pp. 271-72; and Richard L. Garner and Spiro E. Stcfanou, Ecollomic Growth and Change in Bourho n Mexico (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1993), pp. 25-27 and 241-45.

34. Garner, r.conomic Growth, pp. 246-58. 35. The jump in purchases of European eloth hurt the region's traditional

export-import merchants, obraje owners, and artisans in major cities. See Salvucci, Textiles and Capitalism in Mexico, pp. 3 and 135-69; and Richard J. Salvucci, Linda K. Salvucci, and Asian Cohen, "The Politics of Protection: Interpreting Commercial Policy in Late Bourbon and Early National Mexico," III The Political Economy ofS/!4nish America in the Age of Revolution, 1750-1i'1.jO, ed. Kenneth J. Andrien and Lyman L. Johnson (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994), p. 97.

36. Carlos !vlarichal, "La bancarrota del virreinato: Finanzas, guerra, y politica en la Nueva Espana, 1770-1808," in Interprctaci(mes del siglo XVIII mexicallo, pp. 153-86. Also see John H. Coatsworth, "The Limits of Colonial Absolutism: Mexico in the Eighteenth Century," in Essays 111 the Political, Economic and Social History of Colonial Latm America, ed. Karen Spalding (Newark: University of Delaware, Latin American Studies Program, Occasion,11 Papers and Monographs no. 3, 1982), pp. 2S-51.

37. The Mexican government's debt surged from 3 million pesos in the 1770S to more than 3I million pesos in r8w. Thus, much of the wealth that was generated by New Spain did not remain there. See Brian R. Hamnett, "Absolutismo ilustrado y L1 crisis multidimensional en el periodo colonial tar- dio, 1760-1808," in lllterpretaciones del XVIII mexiwlIo, p. 72; >lnd Brown, Latit! America, p. 419.

38. Refer to Garner, E.C(J1Iomic Growth, p. 255; Richard S>llvucci, "Economic Growth and Change in Bourbon Mexico: A Review Essay," The Americas 5 I, no. 4 (1994): pp. 219-31; and Paul Goorenberg, "On Salamanders, PyramIds, and Mexico's 'Growth-without-Change': Reflections on a Ca,e of Bourbon New Spain," Colonial Lati" America Review 4, no. J (1995): pp.117- 27·

Note5 to Chapter 9 355

39. Some Spaniards and creoles attempted to preserve their soclal preemi- nence by buying of nobility. Chdfles III alone granted at least twenty- three titles (excluding those of marquise and count) to Mexico, most of which were awarded to individuals who provided important military and economic services. Recipients therefore included wealthy miners. See Ladd, The Mexicall Nobility at Indepelldellce, p. 17.

40. Morales, "Los de cJstas," pp. 679-81. 41. AHN, Inquisici6n, leg. 22S0. The inquisitors admitted to not always de-

manding th.at the inveMigations be done in Spain but simply conduering "extra- inquiries into the purity, calidad, and reputation of the wives of can-

didates. 42. AHN, leg. 2282. 43. From the start of the eightecnth <.:cntury to independence, New Spain

imported about 20,000 slaves. By the end of the colonial period, the African- descended population ("Afromestizos"l amounted to about IO percent of Mex- ico's total population, or about 624,461. See Gonzalo Aguirre Beltran, "The Slave Trade in Mexico," Hisl14nic American Historical ReVieW 24 (1944): p. 427; and Dennis Nodin Valdes, "The Decline of Slavery in The Americas 44, no. 2 (1987); p. T77.

44. On the use of different strategies by African-descended people in Cholula to the social ladder and erase the stigma of their past, including inter- marrying with mestizos and the indIgenous population, Norma Angelica

Palma, "MatrimOlllos minos y cruce de la barrera de color como vias para el mestizaje de la poblaci6n negra y mulata Sigllos histriri- cos II, no. 4 (2000): 107-37.

45. Castro Morales, "Los cuadros de castas," pp. 679-81. 46. Attesting to the growing application of limpiCl.a policies are Inquisition

records, which contain limpieza de sangre documents for aldermen, alcaldes (judges), and univenity professors that were not produced by the Holy Office itself but by town councils, royal officials, colleges, and so forth. See, AHN, leg. 2284. For examples of town councds with pu- rity requirements, see AGN, Ayuntamientos, vol. 197, fols. 1-22V, 49, and 65; and AGN, Ayunramientos, vol. IS6. For examples of educational stipends for which the applicant submitted proof of purity, see AGN, Archivo Hist6rico de Hacienda, vol. 20T9, expo 5; AGN, Archivo Hist6rico de Hacienda, vol. 20I9, expo 9; and AGN, Ayunr.amientos, vol. IS6. And for a purity certification granted by the Convento de las Capuchinas de Puebla, see JCBU LI, vol. IT, fok 667-7t. Also refer to the probanza that Francisco Grijalva presented in the I nos to be ordained as priest in the archbishopric of ruebla, which stated that proofs of limpieza were to' ensure "that all those that become part of the ecclesiasti<.:al est>lte are of good quality [calidadJ, pure Spaniards, without the mixture of the ra<.:e or ancestry of Jews, heretics, conversos, mulattos, or people who have been penanced by the Holy Office or punished by the secular justice for another crime that <.:auses infamy." Cited in Castillo Palma, "I.os estatutos de 'pureza de sangre,' como medio de acce>o a las p. I20 (my translation). Note how hy the eighteenth century

Notes to Chapter 9

purity was equated with Spanish ancestry and how mulattos explicitly formed part of the impure

47. Like elsewhere in the Spanish colonies, in Mexico the impulse to exclude people of African ancestry from the UnlversltJes and certain professions intensi_ fied as of 1750. ror example, the University of Mexico, which had been trying to exclude "blacks, mulatos, chinos, morenos," and former slaves since the enteenth century, stepped up its attempts to enforce purity requirements at that time. Tate Lanning, "Legitimacy and /'imllieza de Sangre," p. 47, n. 4l.

48. On the Royal Pragmatic's implications in Mexico, see Seed, To Love, Honor, and Obey, pp. 200-204.

49. For various probanLas done for military men and their wives, see AGN, Indiferente de Guerra, vol. I}O; and for purity certifications for tax coHec_

and otber representatives of the royal treasury and their wives, see AGN, Matrimonios, vol. 45, expo 2, fols. 9-2.0 (year 1800); AGN, Matrimonios, vol. 45, expo 3 (year 1801); and AGN Matrimonios, vol. 39, expo }, fols. 22-58 (year 1802). Some of the petitions for purity certification submitted by military men (mainly to royal audiencias) explicitly refer to the Royal Pragmatic and other royal decrees compelling officers to obtain licenses to marry and to sub- mit proof of blood purity for themselves and their wives.

50. See AGN, Indiferente de Guerra, vol. 130; Acervo Historico del Palacio de Mineria (hereafter AHPM), 1804/IVII27/d.2; and AHPM, 18051V1133/d.7.

51. The concept of impurity was sometimes also used against Asians ("chi- nos") and their descendants. See jCBLlU, vol. 9, fol. 297v.

52. AHN, In!.juisicion, leg. 22.88. 53. The text reads, '\:omo vulgarmente se piensa, la sangre denegrida jamas

por!.jue la expefiencia !.jue a la tefcera, cuarta, 0 quinta generac!()n, pulula, produciendo dos un negro, !.jue lIaman tornatras, 0 saltatds." AHN, leg. 2288.

54. AHN, Inguisicion, leg. 2288. 55. For some examples, see AHN, In!.juisicion, leg. 2282; AHN, Inquisicion,

leg. 2286 (I); and AGN, Bienes Nacionab, \'01. 578, expo 21. Although the concept of calidad already used in the sixteenth cemury, it became mu..:h more common in the eighteenth. By then, it referred to a number of lfl- eluding economic status, occupation, purity of blood, and birthplace, in to "reputation as a whole." Robert McCaa, "Caltdad, Clase, and Marriage in Colonia! Mexico: The Case of Parral, 1788-90," Hispamc American Historical ReView 94, no. 3 (r984): pp. 477-501.

56. See BNM, MS 1870!. 57. Terms such as negra atezada (dark black woman), negra lora (lighter than

atezada), and others that refer to degrees of "blackness" are not uncommon in sixteenth-century Spanish See, for AGI, Indlfcrcnte 425, leg. 2.4, fol. 104; AGI, Indlferente 425, leg. 23, fols. 5 lor-V; and AGJ, Indiferente 2074, N. 50.

58. In the Iberian context, one of the central contributions to the topIC of skin color was made by Benito Geronimo fei)oo (1676-1764), a Benedictine friar and one of the main thinkers of the Spanish Enhghtenment. See A. Owen Aldridge, "Feijoo and the Problem of FthioPJart Color," in Racism ill the

Notes to Chapter 9 357

Eighteenth Century, cd. Harold E. Pagliaro (Cleveland, OH, and London: The Press of Case Western Reserve Univeniry, 197.')' According to Roxann Wheeler, skin color became a central aspect of British race theory in the last third of the eighteenth century, a phenomenon she partly attributes to natural history and

concern with physical characteristics. Wheeler, The Complexion of Race: Categories of Difference in EIghteenth-Century British Culture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2.000).

59. See A(;N, Tierras, vol. 2979, expo 165; AGN, Inquisicion, vol. 1I48, expo II; AGN, Inquisicion, vol. nOI, expo 8; HM 35l74; and AGN, Inquisicion, vol. r2.01, expo 8, fols. }}8-4rl. In the latter half of the eighteenth century, some witnesses started to use categones such as "Spanish European" (europeo eSllaiwl) and "European of the Kingdoms of Castile" (europe/! de los Reinrls de Castilla). See jCBI.fU, vol. II, fols. 65l-72;JCBLlLl, vol. 13, fol. 292; and AGN, Inquisicion, vol. 1148, expo II.

60. AGN, Bienes Nacionales, vol. 578, expo 21. On the concept of physiog- nomy in the eighteenth-century Hispanic world, see Rebecca Haidt, Embody- ing the Enlightenment: Knowing the Body in F.ighteenth-Cemury Spamsh Lit- erature and Culture (New York: Sr. Martin's, 1998), pp. 63-r50; and Carrera, Imagining Identity ill New SI)ain, p. 9.

61. jCBLlLI, vol. 9, fols.1023-38. Also see JCBLlU, vol. 10, fols. 294-306v; jCBLlU, vol. 4, fols.491-504; jCBLlLI, vol. 6, fols. I97-l.O}V; jCBLlLI, vol. 6, fols. 818-823\'; and AHN, Inquisicion, leg. 2284.

62. See Asuncion Lavrin, "Indian Brides of Chflst: Creating New Spaces for Indigenous Women in New Spain," Mexican Studies/estudius Mexicanos 15, no. 2 (1999): pp. 225-60; and Ann Miriam Gallagher, R. S. M., "Las monjas in- dfgenas del monasterio de Corpus de la ciudad de Mexico, 1724-1821," in Las mUJeres latillo-americallas: l'erspecth1as histilricas, ed. Lavrin, trans. Mercedes Pizarro de Parlange (Mexico City: Fonda de Cultura Economica, 1985), pp. 177-201.

63. Key works on the origins and development of the cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe include D. A. Brading, Mexican Phoemx; Our Lady of Guada- lupe: Image and Tradition Across Five Centuries (Camhridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Lafaye, QuetzalC(Jatl and Guadalupe, pp. 2TI-53 and 2.74-98; Edmundo O'Gorman, Destierro de las sombra; Luz en el origin de la imagen y cuito de Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe del Tepeyac (Mexico City: Universidad N.lcional Aut6noma de Mexico, 1991), pp. 2.7-61; and William Taylor, "The Virgin of Guadalupe in New Spain: An Inquiry into the Social History of Marian Devotion," American ethnologist 14, no. 1 (I987): pp. 9-".

64. Katzew;' Casta Painting, p. 17. Also see GUIllermo Tovar de Teresa, Miguel Cabrera: Pintur de Camara de la Rema Celestial (MexiCO City: Inver- Mexico Grupo Financiero, 1995); and Ahel.'lfdo Cari 1I0 y Gariel, M/i.;uel Cabrera (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia, 1966).

65. La Quetzalcoatl and Guadalupe, p. 2.30. 66. JeBL, Rare Book Collection, Oraci(Jn a nuestra senora de Guadalulle,

c()mpuesta por e/Illmo. Senor D. Francisco Antonio de Lurellzana, arzo/Jispo de Mexico. Printed in Mexico by don Joseph Antonio de Hogal, 1770.

Notes to Chapter 9

67· See the r526letter that a group of Franciscan friars wrote to Charles V in Joaquin Garda Ica.lbalceta, ed., Coleccitjn de documentos para ta histon ' de Mexico, .vol. II (Mexico City: Joaquin Garcia kazbaketa, 1866), pp.

68. UavlJero wrote In part to relute arguments by the Comte de Buffon the Abbe Raynal, the historian William Robertson, and the naturalist Cornelius de Pauw about how all nature, physical and human, degen_ erated in the Americas. See Phelan, "Neo-Aztecism in the Eighteenth pp. 760-70; Brading, The first America, PP·450-62 (esp. pp. 461-62); and

How to Write the History of tlie New World, pp. 246-47. 69. Rout, The African Experience, pp. 143-44. 70. JeB!., Rare Book Collection, Oracirin a nuestra senora de Guadalupe. 7I. Seed, To Love, H{JI1or, and Obey, pp. 205-6. Also refer to Martinez_

Alier (now Stolch), Marriage, Class and Colollr in Nineteenth-Century Cuba, pp. II-lj; and Susan Kellogg, "Depicting Gendered Images of Ethnoral'e in Colonial Mexican Texts," journal of Women's History n, no. 3 (2000): p. 73.

72. Twinam, "Racial pp. 249-72. Twinam notes that the fifteen ap- plications that were submitted between 1795 and r 816 wae all from pardos and mlilatos. Twinam, "Racial Passing," p. 2jO. were from Mexico. Also rder to Rodulfo Cortes, E/ N!ximen de las "'xracias al sacar" en Venezuela durante el periodo Iiispdllico, vol. i (Caracas: Academia Nacional de la Historia, 1978).

73· AHPM, I79IIV/52/d.I; and AHPM, I79III1!49/d'5. for informaciones de limpieza de sangre submitted by applicants to the mining seminar, see AHPM, 17 84/ IV/7/d .7; I78j/lIIho/d.27; 17911fI/49/d.j; 1791IH/49/d.6; 179I /II!49/ d.9; 17931I1!6I/d.19; 1798/ll!93/d.I4; I798!I1I93/d.19; r800/IVlr07/d.Ir; and I80I/WIlO/d·5· These were handled by the Real Tribunal General de Mineria but induded the participation of alcaldes, intendants, and subdelegates from different mining regions (such as Taxco, Guanajuatu, Pachuca, and Sinaloa). They were approved by the Real Audiencia.

74. Mainly intended to encourage indigenous rulers and nobles to produce proof of their purity in order to have their titles to offices and lands validated, the 1697 decree circulated in various parts of Mexico. Copies of the decree appear in a host of colonial legal documents, induding petItions to entail estates, struggles over cabildo offices or lands, and daims regarding pure

See, for example, Bancroft Library, MS M-M 13; and AGN, Bienes vol. 553, expo 8.

75. Jaime Cuadriello, Las giorias de la republica de Tlaxcala, pp. 1.6-27, 63-86 pasSim.

76. On Galvez's maneuvering to diminish the role of in audiencias, town councils, and cathedral chapters while he was minister of the Indies (1776-86). See Bakewell, A Histor}' of Latm America, p. 270-72; and Kenneth Mills and William B. Taylor, eds., "Royal Cedu/a that American and European Vassals are to be Equal" (Madrid, January 1778), in C%nial Spanish Amer- ica; A Documelttar}' History (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1998), pp. 270-7 2.

77. Sce the 1725 "representation" to Philip V by Juan Antonio de Ahumada, a bwyer in Mexico City'S audiencia. It built on older argumentS

Notes to the Conclusion 359

about the rights of creoles as well as anticipated some of the more militant ones of the last third of the eighteenth century. RNM, MS 19124. Also refer to Brading, The First America, pp. 379-8r.

78. BNM, MS 1110; "Representaclon de la ciudad de Mexico hecha a S.M. en 1771, de interes comun para toda Ia America 1771. The J771 was a respome to C;iilvez's attempts to establish the dominance of peninsulars in the ayuntamiento and audiencia and to break the power of the Consulado of Mexico. It was also a reaction to a secret report allegedly sent to the crown that denigrated creoles and argued that they were not suitable for upper-rank In a l792 lctter to IV, the ayun- tamicnto reiterated the same points it had made in 1771. Sce David A. Brading, The Orixins of Mexican NatllJnalism (Cambridge: Centre of Latin American Studies, University of Cambridge, 198j), p. I;; and Brading, The First America, PP·479-83·

79. Brading, The First America, p. 483. 80. Although the Mexican Inquisitlon's complaints about the difficulty of

doing probanzas increased in the eighteenth century, it continued to some to Spain, where genealogies for Spaniards in the continued to be

still entailed probing into the candidate's an- cestry and overall Christian conduct and reputation. ror references to problems associated with doing probanzas, see AHN, lnquisicion, legs. 2280-83. t'or ex- amples of cases sent to Spain, see HI. MSS 35173 and 35174; AGN, inquisid6n, vol. II48, expo II; AGN, Inquisicion, vol. n87, expo 2; AGN, lnqnisicion, vol. I229, expo 10; and AGN, Inquisicion, vol. 1409, expo 6.

8I. The incrcasing production of genealogies and genealogical trees appears in a host of Inquisition cases, not just that pertained to lirnpieza de sangre. See, for example, AHN, inquisicion, Itbro 1066, fols. 379-382V and 387-390v; and AHN, lnquisicion, leg,. 2278, 2279, 2281-82, 2284, 2287-88, and 2291.

of these cases strcss both Iimpieza and noblcza de sangre. 82. AHN, lnquisicion, leg. 2284. 83. AHN, Inquisicion, leg. 2282. Also see the probanzas of don Luis Maria

Moreno de Monroy Guerrero VIllaseca y Luyando, a lieutenant colonel and alderman, and of don M·anue! Joachin Barrientos Lomelin y a eanon in Mexico City's Cathedral, lawyer in the royal audiencia. and university rec- tor. AHN, leg. 1.282 and 2284.

84. Cuadriello, "Cortes as the American Moses."

CONCLUSION

r. See, for example, Castro, ES{Jaiia en su histona. 2. As late as the century, Franciscan friars examining an infor-

macion in New Spalll the oplilion that birth records establish legiti- ma<.:y, while oral (reputation) determined Iimpicza de sangre status. See JCBl.Il.I, vol. I3, fols. 304-6.

.J. Michel-Rolph Troudlot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Productiolt of History (Boston: Beacon, 199;), pp. xix, 25, and

4. Cuadriello, Las g/vrias de fa rept/hliea de Tlan'ala, pp. 26-27 and 6r86 .