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

To my parents,
Aurelia Lopez Corral and Nicolas Martinez Corral

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 978-0-847-5648-8 (cloth; alk. paper)
1. Mexico-Race relation~. l-. Racism-Mexico-History.
3. Social classes-Mexico-History 4. Social c1assesReligious a~pects-Catholic Church. I. Title.
fr39l-.ArM37 wo8
305.5' r 2l-0890097.l.-dl'l-ll-007 0 3875 1
Typeset by Thompson Type in roll l- Sabon

To mygrandparents (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, thatgave us life

..
Acknowledgments

As this book comes to fruition I am overwhelmed by the sense of gratitude that I feel toward the people and institutions that in one way or
another helped me complete it. I am grateful to my dissertation committee, Friedrich Katz, Tamar Herzog, Claudio Lomnitz, Thomas C. Holt,
and Tom Cummins, for the support and guidance they gave me at the
University of Chicago, where the hook first began to take shape.
I also thank the foundations, institutions, and centers that provided
me with the grants that made my research and writing possible. These
include the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Humington Library, the American
Bar Foundation, the Fulbright-Hays Fellowship Foundation, the John
Carter Brown Library, the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute, the University of Chicago, the Escuela de Estudios I-fispanoAmericanos (Seville), the James H. Zumberge fund at the University of
Southern California, and USC's Center for Law, History, and Culture.
I am grateful as well to Dean Wayne Raskind at USC for providing a
subvention for the book's publication.
Without the help of librarians and archivists, writing this book would
have been difficult, indeed impossible. I want, therefore, to acknowledge
the staffs at the Archivo General de la Naci6n (Mexico City), the Biblioteca Nacional de Antropo[ogia e Historia (Mexico City), the Archivo
del Ayuntamiento de Puebla (Puebla, Mexico), the Archivo General de
Indias (Seville, Spain), the Archivo Historico Nacional (Madrid), the
John Carter Brown Library (Providence, Rhode Island), the Biblioteca
Nacional (Madrid), the Huntington Library (San Marino, CAl, and the
Acervo Historico del Palacio de Minerla (Mexico City). In particular, I
would like to thank Roberto Beristain and Cesar Montoya of Mexico's
Archivo General de la Nadon (AGN), and Oscar Escamilla of the
Acervo Historico del Palacio de Minerla, in Mexico City. Researcher
Cecilia Riquelme helped me find and gather important documents at the

VlLl

Acknowledgments

AGN. I am also grateful to Socorro Prous Zaragoza, whose knowledge

of Mexican documents at the An;hivo General de Indias and research
leads proved to be extremely valuable to my investigation and who became a good friend in the process. I thank Jose Hernandez Palomo of
Seville's Escuda de Estudios Hispano-Americanos for his advice on archives and especially for his hospitality and sense of humor. While conducting research in Spain I also had {he good fortune of getting to know
Patricia Meehan, whose company in Seville and Madrid I will alwa~s
treasure. I am thankful to Elisa de Cabo and Teresa Martin for their
magical friendship and for always making me feel as though their home,
Madrid, is my home as welL
At the History Department of the University of Southern California
I have been fortunate to have many dear colleagues and friends, including Paul Lerner, Marjorie Becker, Lois Banner, Ramzi Rouighi, Peter
MancaH, Jason Glenn, Lon Kurashige, Lisa Bitel, Kyung Moon Hwang,
Charlotte Furth, Judith Bennett, Cynthia Herrup, Terry Seip, Philippa
Levine, Deb Harkness, and Karen Halnunen. I feel deeply indebted to
Carole Shammas, who was chair of the department when I was hired
and who throughout the years has provided me with support [Q develop
as a scholar and teacher. I also thank Steve Ross and Elinor Accampo,
for their encouragement as colleagues and chairs of the department. I am
extremely grateful as well to George Sanchez for his guidance and friendship. I am blessed to have him in my life. My years at USC have been
very much enriched by colleagues in other departmems, among them
Carol Wise, Judith Halberstam, Karen Tongson, David Roman, Judith
Jackson Fossen, and Macarena Gomez-Barris. I thank Lori Rogers and
Joe Styles for keeping the history department afloat as ,,:,ell as La Verne
Hughes and Brenda Johnson for their administrative assistance.
lowe Tamar Herzog and Ilona Katzew for their feedback and suggestions on parts of the manuscript and to the two anonymous reviewers secured by Stanford University Press. I would also like to thank
Hane C. Lee for proofreading the manuscript, and Norris Pope, EmilyJane Cohen, John Feneron, and Margaret Pinette for their help with various aspects of the editing and production p~ocess. Of course, the boo~'s
shortcomings should be anributed only to ItS author. I extend a speCial
gracias to the participants of the Tepoztian Institute for Transnational
History of the Americas, for providing a congenial intellectual atmosphere, and to Pamela Voekel and Elliot Young for inviting me to be part
of such a stimulating project.
Writing this book would have been much more difficult without the
companionship, advice, and humor provided by dose friends. In particular, I thank Ilona Katzew, Augie Robles, Virginia Chang, David Sartorius,

..

Acknowledgments

Carmen Aguilar, Barbara Shaw, Theresa Mah, Clementine Oliver, and

Chase Ru~monds ..Their friendship, generosity, and sybaritic inclinations
have sustamed me m more ways than I can articulate.
I ~m profo~ndly grateful to Sarah Gualtieri for reading and commentIng on t?IS book at v~rious stages and most of all for all the years
of support, discovery, and lOy. I thank the forces of the universe for a
strong bonds, which in trying times have nourished us with much cou~~
agt;, I am also fortunate to have shared part of my life with Princesa and
Rel~a, who passed away not long before the book was finished. The affect.lon and playfulness of my two angels kept me sane during difficult
pef1?ds, and they therefore deserve partial credit for its completion.
Fmally, I want to thank my brothers, Jesus Artuto Nico and Enrique
for a child~ood full.of humor, sports, and h'istory q~izzes: and my par:
ents, Aurelia and Nicolas, for instilling in me a love of Mexico that inspir~s me and my work. in more way.s than I probably realize. My father s strength, sharp mind, and passion for life and music marked me
foreve.r; my m?ther's gentle soul, optimism, and uncanny ability to see
grace m acts.blg and small gave me a hope in humanity that not even the
bleakest of times in this beautiful but suffering planet can ever entirely
sup'pres~. I am eternally grateful for the great sacrifices they made for
rhelf children to have opportunities in life that they did not.

WI.

Contents

Introduction

PART ONE:

Iberian Precedents
1. The Emergence of the Spanish Statutes of Limpieza de Sangre, 25
2. Race, Purity, and Gender in Sixteenth-Century Spain, 42

3. Juridical Fictions: The Certification of

Purity and the Construction of Communal Memory, 61
PART TWO:

Religion, Genealogy, and Caste in Early Colonial Mexico

4. Nobility and Purity in the Republica de Indios, 91

5. Nobility and Purity in the Republica de Espaiio/es, 123

6. The Initial Stages and Socioreligious Roots

of the Sistema de Castas, 142
PART THREE:

Purity, Race, and Creolism in

Seventcenth- and Eighteenth-Century New Spain
7. The Probanza de Limpieza de Sangre
in Colonial and Transatlantic Space, 173
8. Religion, Law, and Race:
The Question of Purity in Seventeenth-Ccntury Mexico,
9. Changing Contours:
Limpieza de Sangre in the Age of Reason and Reform,
Conclusion, 26.;

200

227

xu

Contents

Appendix: Questionnaire Used by the Spanish Inquisition, 279

Glossary,

281

Abbreviations, 285
Notes, 287
Bibliography, J 61

Maps and Illustrations

Index,39 I

MAPS

I.
2.

Sixteemh-century Iberia, 32

Central New Spain and surrounding cities, 95

ILLUSTRATIONS

I.

Page from the purity of blood investigation

of Dr. Santiago de Vera, 183

2.

Cover page of Dr. Santiago de Vera's purity

of blood investigation, 184

3 Page from a Spanish Inquisition document containing

deliberations over mestizos and mulattos, 213
4 Manuel Arellano, Diceno de Mulata yja de negra y espanal
en fa Ciudad de Mexico (Sketch of a Mulatto, Daughter
of a Black Woman and a Spaniard in Mexico City), 2}0
5

Jose de Ibarra, De espanal e india, mestizo

(From Spaniard and Indian, Mestizo), 232

6. Andres de Islas, NO.4, De espanal y negra, nace mulata

(From Spaniard and Black, Mulatto), 234
7 Miguel Cabrera, I. De espanal y de india, mestiza
(From Spaniard and Indian, Mestiza), 236
8. Jose de Ibarra, De mestizo y espanola, castiza
(From Mestizo and Spaniard, Casrizo), 250

i
Maps and Illustrations

xiv

9. Jose de Ibarra, De castiza y espanola, espanal

(From Castizo and Spaniard, Spaniard), 25 I
10.

Andres de Islas, Na. 5, De espanal y mulata, nace morisea

(From Spaniard and Mulatta, a Marisco is Born), 253

11.

Andres de Islas, No.6, De espanal y marisca, nace albino

(From Spaniard and Morisca, an Albino is Born), 254

12. Andres de Islas, NO.7, De espanol y albina, naee torna-atras

(From Spaniard and Albino, a Return Backwards is Born), 255
13.

Luis de Mena, casta painting, ca. 1750,257

Genealogical Fictions

Introduction

PROBLEM ANn OBJECTIVES

This book charts the rise of categories of limpieza de sangre ("purity

of blood") in Spain and their journey from the Iberian Peninsula to the
Americas, where they eventually took on a life of their own. Having
originated in late medieval Castile, the concept of purity of blood and its
underlying assumptions about inheritable characteristics had by the late
seventeenth century produced a hierarchical system of classification in
Spanish America that was ostensibly based on proportions of Spanish,
indigenous, and African ancestry, the sistema de castas or "race/caste
system."l This use of the concept would probably have surprised the
Spaniards who first deployed it against Jewish converts to Christianity,
the conversos, or "New Christians." They defined blood purity as the
absence of Jewish and heretical antecedents and, as of the middle of
the fifteenth century, they increasingly wielded the notion to deprive the
conversos of access to certain institutions and public and ecclesiastical
offices. The concept acquired greater force during the next one hundred
years, as Iimpieza de sangre statures-requirements of unsullied "Old
Christian" ancestry-were adopted by numerous religious and secular establishments in Castile and Aragon, the Spanish Inquisition was
founded to identify "secret Jews" and root out heresy, and the category
of impurity was extended to the descendants of Muslims. By the middle
of the sixteenth century, the ideology of purity of blood had produced a
Spanish society obsessed with genealogy and in particular with the idea
that having only Christian ancestors, and thus a "pure lineage," was
the critical sign of a person's loyalty to the faith. Descent and religion"blood and faith-were the two foundations of that ideology, and the
same would be true in Spanish America.
H

Introduction

The transfer of the Castilian discourse of limpieza de sangre to Spanish

America did not mean, however, that it remained the same in the new
context. As much as Spaniards tried to recreate their society in "New
Spain" (colonial Mexico), they had to face circumstances, peoples, and
historical developments that inevitably altered their transplanted institutions, practices, and cultural-religious principles. The survival of native
communities and part of the pre-Hispanic nobility, the importance of
the conversion projecr to Spanish colonialism and to Castile's titles to the
Americas, the introduction of significant numbers of African slaves into
the region, the rapid rise of a population of mixed ancestry, the influx of
poor Spaniards seeking to better their lot if not ennoble themselves, and
the establishment of a transatlantic economy based largely on radalized
labor forces-these and other factors ensured that the Iberian concept
of limpieza de sangre would be reformulated and have different implications than in Spain. In Castile, for example, it did not produce an elaborate system of classification based on blood proportions as it did in the
colonies, though signs that such categories might develop appeared in
the sixteenth century, partit:ularly in the Inquisition '5 genealogica I investigations. Furthermore, in Spanish America, the notion of purity gradually came to be equated with Spanish ancestry, with "Spanishness," an
idea that had little significance in the metropolitan context. The language of blood and lineage also underwent modifications. Nonetheless,
at the end of the colonial period, the concept of limpieza de sangre was
still partly defined in religious terms. What were the implications of this
religious dimension for colonial categories of identity, racial discourses,
and communal ideologies? Answering this question is one of the central
aims of this book.
More to the point, the book seeks to expose the connection between
the concept of limpieza de sangre and the sistema de castas. Although a
number of scholars of colonial Mexico have referred to this connection,
they have not fully explained it. 2 They have not clarified how a concept
that had strong religious connotations came to construct or promote
classifications that presumably were based on modern notions of race.
Exactly when, how, and why was the notion of purity of blood extended
and adapted to the colonial context? This critical question has received
little attention in the literature because, until recently, most historical
studies of the sistema de castas have focused on the eighteenth century
(when notions of race were starting to become secularized) and in particular on the problem of the saliency of "race" versus "class" as mercantile capitalism expanded. 3 The privileging of the late colonial period in
the historiography has meant that both the origins of the system and its
relation to the concept of limpieza remain unclear. Works that do refer

Introduction

to the system in the early colonial period generally link the concept of
purity of blood to race without elaborating on what exactly either of
these terms meant at that time. furthermore, they normally describe its
rise as a function of the displacement of Inain peninsular status categories (no~le, comm~ner, and s.lave) onto the three primary colonial groups
(respectively, Spamards, Indians, and blacks) and explain the disruption
of this tripartite order by the growth of populations of mixed ancestry.4
This rendition of the emergence of the sistema de castas is seductive
because of its simplicity; but it is also deceptive because it deprives the
process of its contingency, docs not explain why more than one category
of mixture was created, and obscures the religious dimension of Iimpieza de sangre and therefore also its implications. \
This book provides an analysis, first, of the linkages between the concept of limpieza de sangre and the sistema de castas with special consideration to the role of religion in the production of notions of purity
and impurity, the historical specificity of Castilian categories such as
raza (race) and casta (caste), the intertwined nature of peninsular and
colonial discourses of purity, and the fluidity and ambiguities that characterized the system of classification throughout the colonial period.
It is informed by critical race theory and in particular by scholarship
that posits that race is not merely a consequence of material interests
(an "effect" of class) but rather is linked in complex ways to economic,
political, and ideological structures; social conditions; and systems of
signification. 6 Philosopher Cornel West has termed this approach "genealogical materialist." He has stressed the importance of investigating
the origins and trajectory of racial ideas within specific cultural and
historical traditions and their dynamic interaction with both micro- and
macrolevel processes, including those related to political economy {local ~nd global}, the reproduction and disruption of power (say, through
particular languages, idioms, or representations), and the construction
of notions of self. West chose Nietzsche's concept of genealogy because
be wanted to underscore the importance of undertaking deep and caref~ ex:~avations of the meanings of race within the particular culturalhlst~Clcal context in which it develops and of explaining its connections
to different levels of existence.
In this study, the concept of genealogy is central both because it allu~es to. the process of historicizing race and because in the early modern
H,sp~mc world it was ubiquitous and consequential, the foundation of a
multItude of practices and identities that helped mold historical memory
at both the individual and collective levels. It docs not presuppose the
a';'-tomatic deployment of the concept of limpieza de sangre against colonial populations and simple displacement of peninsular status categories

Introduction

Introduction

onto them. Nor does it assume that the meanings of early modern notions of purity and race are self-evident, a mistake that can lead to the
tautological argument that the system of classifying "blood mixture"
arose because "race mixture" occurred, an argument that reproduces
the idea of races as biological givens rather than challenging it by interrogating why categories arise, become reified, and get contested. Instead,
this book prioritizes analyzing the discursive tradition that the concepts
of limpieza and raza were part of and which, together with certain practices, those two notions helped to constitute? It begins by addressing
the following questions. What exactly did the concepts of limpieza de
sangre and raza mean in Spain, when and why did they first start to he
deployed in Mexico, and how were they adapted to the colonial context?
Was their growing usage related to events in the metropole, Spanish
America, or both? Which institutions adopted purity-of-blood requirements and when did they begin to target people of mixed ancestry? Did
definitions of limpieza de sangre change over time, and if so, how? And
what practices and identities did the ideology of purity of blood promote? These are the questions that constitute the first of three main lines
of inquiry in the book.
A second line of investigation pertains to the connections of the concept of limpieza de sangre to gender and sexuality.~ The book argues
that these connections were strong not just because of the centrality of
biological reproduction (and by extension, female sexuality) to the perperuation of community boundaries and the hierarchical social order
in generaL They were also powerful because Spanish notions regarding sexual and reproductive relations between the three main popula9
tions reflected and interacted with other discourses of colonial power.
Recurring ideas regarding blood purity and mixture, for example, construed native people-the transmission of their traits-as weak, thereby
echoing paternalistic religious and government policies that depicted
relations among Spaniards, indigenous people, and blacks in gendered
forms. Political, religious, and genealogical discourses in fact mirrored,
complemented, and reinforced each other through the use of notions of
strength and weakness that by coding different colonial groups as male
or female naturalized socially created hierarchies.
Only in the eighteenth century, however, would invocations of nature
as the basis of difference between men and women as well as between
human groups begin to emerge as a prominent discourse. A growing interest, particularly among ~atural philoso.phers, in questions abo~t the
origins of different populations and function of men and women III the
generation of life influenced how the sistema de castas was represented.
As scientific explanations to sexual and racial difference gained ground

over religious ones, colonial Mexico's population became subject, like

the animals and plants in natural histories, to increasingly elaborate and
visual taxonomic exercises that made the gendering of race and racing of
gender as well as social hierarchies seem to be ordained by nature. This
penchant for classification and naturalization was manifested in "casta
paintings," a genre that illustrated and labeled the unions of different
"castes" as well as their offspring and that betrayed barh how some
of Mexico's artists conceived of the appropriate relationship of gender
race, and class and the lingering importance of the discourse of limpiez;
de sangre.
A third main line of inquiry tracks the importance of the statesponsored organization of colonial society into two separate commonwealths or "republics"-one Spanish, the other indigenous-to discourses of blood and lineage. Although strict segregation between the
two populations was never achieved and some Spanish jurists and legislation allowed for the day when the native people would be fully incorporated into Hispanic colonial society, the dual model of social organization nevertheless had profound repercussions. At least in central
Mexico, the republica de indios ("Indian Republic") was not just an
ideological device, and it continued to have practical significance well
into the eighteenth century. It promoted the survival of pueblos de indios (native communities) with their own political hierarchies and citizenship regime, the creation of special legal and religious institutions for
the indigenous people, and the official recognition of Indian purity. This
recognition, which mainly pivoted on the argument that the original
inhabitants of the Americas were unsullied by Judaism and Islam and
had willingly accepted Christianity, made it possible for some of the
descendants of pre-Hispanic dynasties to successfully claim the status
of Iimpieza de sangre, in the long run altering some of their conceptions
?f blood and history. Their genealogical claims became morc frequent
m the last third of the seventeenth century, amid increasing efforts to
preserve communal lands and histories.
But native nobles and rulers were not the only group to be influenced
b!.the Spanish state's promotion of two polities and corresponding dual
Citizenship and purity regimes. All colonial identities, after all, were the
~esults of complex colonial processes. 1II Maintaining a system of "provtng" purity in the "Spanish republic" necessitated the creation of birth
records, classifications, and genealogies and obliged those who wanted
~ccess to the institutions or offices with Iimpieza requirements to submit
hneages, produce witnesses, and keep records of their ancestors. Among
~reol:s (Spaniards born and/or raised in the Americas), these adminIStratIVe and archival practices helped foster a historical consciousness

Introduction

that encouraged their identification with a broader Spanish community

of blood even as they developed a strong attachment to the land. By the
eighteenth century, they established their purity not so much by stressing their lack of Jewish and Muslim ancestors as by providing evidence
of their Spanish descent. Yet this formulation of limpieza de sangre as
Spanishness did not entirely undermine the idea that the indigenous people were pure and redeemable because of their acceptance of Christianity,
Instead, it produced paradoxical attitudes toward reproduction or mestizaje ("mixture"} with Amerindians among creole elites,11 particularly
as their patriotism intensified and they began to imagine the merger of
the two republics in reproductive and biological terms.
The book, then, centers on three main issues: the relationship between
the Spanish notion of limpieza de sangre and Mexico's sistema de castas;
the intersection of notions of purity, gender, and sexuality; and the linkages of religion, race, and patriotic discourses. Framing the exploration
of these subjects is an emphasis on the role of the state, church, and
archives in promoting a preoccupation with lineage in central Mexico,
particularly among creole and native elites. In other words, one of the
hook's thematic threads is how the rourinization of genealogical requirements in the secular and religious hierarchies helped shape social practices, notions of self, and concepts of communal belonging. Which is not
to say that the Spanish colonial state was powerful and that its laws were
always or even frequently obeyed, only that it set guidelines for government and religious institutions and through them shaped the nature of
social relations. The term archival practices thus generally refers to the
record-keeping activities of the state, church, and Inquisition that produced and reproduced categories of identity based on ancestry linked to
particular legal statuses (to certain responsibilities, rights, or privileges).
These archival practices promoted genealogical ones, including official
and unofficial investigations into a person's ancestors-involving examinations of birth records, interrogations of town elders, inspections of
tributary lists, and so forth-and the construction of family histories
through, among other thino-s, the maintenance, purchase, or falsification of written genealogies, certifications of purity of blood, and copies
of baptismal and marriage records.
Another recurring theme in the book is the interaction of metropolitan and colonial notions of purity and, more broadly, discourses about
the New Christians-which drew on anti-Semitic tropes-and the converted populations of the Americas. Special attention is drawn to the
similarities and differences in Spanish attitudes toward the conversion
potential of Jews and native people and especially to how stereotypes
that were used to describe one group tended to be mapped onto the

Introduction

Finally, the book underscores the instability of the sistema de casIt stresses that, like all hegemonic projects, it was a process, powerand pervasive because it was promoted by the state and the church
",,,Ou,,... ,ed and was subject to contestation. 12 The relative fluidity of
sistema de castas was partly due to inconsistencies in the discourse
limpieza de sangre, which, for example, characterized native people
pure and impure, as both perfect material for Christianization and
idolaters. Hegemonic discourses tend to derive power from
construction of subjects in a doubled way.
. The sistema's fluidity was also a by-product of the Spanish imperial
which incorporated Spanish America into the Crown of Casbut
to clearly outline what that meant in terms of the rights
:~~~::i~~:~ of different populations. For example, despite the various
of laws for the "Indies" (derecho indiano) that Spain proin the seventeenth century, it did not issue a legal code specifically
the casus and did not entirely clarify the status of creoles as "na,'-rives" of a particular jurisdiction. The political vagueness of imperial
-and piecemeal nature of colonial legislation prompted individuals
to attempt to challenge or redefine statuses, policies, and
These features also resulted in unexpected political imones that a rigid distinction between a metropolitan core and
periphery cannot begin to capture.

inco."i!,ibl ,

,"...."""e,

"0',..,

LIMPIEZA DB SANGRE, RACE, AND COLONIALISM

IN THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD

, -',,' Scholars of early modern Spain have not paid much attention to the
relationship between the concept of limpieza de sangre and Spanish
American racial ideology.]) Their disinterest in the problem can be
::~'-,': blamed on the lamentahly persistent tendency within the profession to
:t:~-;, tftat the histories of the Iberian Peninsula and colonial Latin America
.r~r~ s~parate analytical fields. But it is also indicative of a broader Spanish
-;?i,,'- de~lIal about certain aspects of Spain's colonial past. I first encountered
;t1-?:-~IS. denial when I arrived at the Archivo General de Indias (AGI) in
~~~:~:seville ~o. conduct research for this book. After I explained the purpose
,~;-;t::,Qf
my VISit, the director of the archive informed me that I would not find
<~;,.
. .
X;, ,ny sources on hmpleza de sangre there. The response took me aback
2-~'~use I had a list of references for documents related to my topic that
J~: other historians had found at that archive. But after being in Spain for
, few months, I realized that it was part of a general reluctance among
contemporary Spaniards to recognize the importance that the concept of

Introduction

purity of blood had in the Americas, namely because of what it implies

for their national history, which has tended to minimize (if not deny)
the role of processes of racialization in Castile's overseas territories.
This reluctance cannot simply be attributed to ignorance, for even some
Spanish historians of colonial Latin America tried to convince me, when
at the onset of my research I presented at a reputable research institution
in Seville, that the problem of purity of blood was one that never spilled
out of the borders of the Iberian Peninsula and that the concept was
used exclusively against converted Jews and Muslims. It soon became
dear that the organization of archives-the way that many limpieza
de sangre documents were classified or not classified, subsumed under
other records, or mislabeled-was intimately connected to this national
historical narrative.
That the same historians who tried to convince me of the irrelevance
of the concept of limpieza de sangre outside of Spain were well acquainted with purity documents produced in Spanish America only
added a surreal quality to the discussion that followed my presentation
in Seville. But the strangeness of the experience did not end there. To
bolster his case, a specialist in Andean history offered the observation
that many Spanish colonists had reproduced with native women and, in
cases where acquiring land was at stake, even married them! A people
concerned with blood purity would not be willing to "mix" with the
Amerindians was his point, one that clearly echoed the arguments made
by some scholars in the first half of the tweD[ieth century regarding
Iberians' relatively benign attitudes toward native people and Africans.'4
This curreD[ of thought, which had among its many flaws the propensity
to see early colonial sexual relations not as acts of power but as signs of
a more gentle or open approach to colonization (sometimes attributed
to the history of Spanish and Portuguese "commingling" with Jews and
Muslims) is part of the White Legend of Spanish history, an apologetic
view of Spain's actions in the Americas. The view to some extent surfaced in reaction to the body of propagandistic literature that began
to be produced by Spain's European rivals (especially the British and
Dutch) in the late sixteenth century and which gave rise to the Black
Legend. Seeking to discredit Castile's claims to the Americas, this legend
focused attention on the conquerors' cruelty toward indigenous peoples,
their unbridled greed, and their hypocritical use of religion as justification for their deeds. 11
The Black Legend survived into the twentieth century and colored
Anglophone scholarship on both Spain and Spanish America. Its influence is evident, for example, in the modernization studies of the 1950S
that compared Latin America's apparent continuity in political, social,
and economic forms-its history of authoritarianism, sharp inequali-

Introduction

ties, a?d financial dependency-with the more democratic and capitalist trajectory of the United States. 16 These studies tended to blame the
"feudal" and "absolutist" foundations of Spanish colonial societies for
the region's troubled path to modernity. Many framed the problems associated With. the latifundia (the absence of a yeomanry), the Inquisition
(the suppression of freedom of political and religious thought), and the
church's collusion with the state (the clergy's ongoing support of absolutism) as medieval holdovers that Castilians took to the Americas
where they obstructed economic entrepreneurship, mdividualism and
democratic ideals, among other things. The causes of Spain's inability to
modernize a la other parts of Western Europe and the United States also
explained Latin America's "backwardness."
In the past few decades, the Black Legend has taken on a new twist.
Some of the scholarship on the history of race and racism has been casting early modern Iberia as the site of a precocious elabonition of racial
concepts and practices. A recent historical overview of the problem, for
example, begms by discussing developments in Spain, "the first great
colonizing nation and a seedbed for Western attitudes toward race."I?
Iberia's pioneering role in the development of racial ideologies is sometimes linked to its participation in the early stages of the transatlantic
African slave trade and in the colonization of the Americas. 1M But it is
more often associated with the Spanish statutes of limpieza de sangre.
Indeed, particularly in the literature that seeks to excavate the "origins" of race, it has become almost commonplace to postulate that the
Castilian concept of blood purity was the first racial discourse produced
by the West or at least an important precursor to modern notions of
difference. '9 Anti-Semitism was endemic in late medieval Europe and
in the two centuries preceding Spain's 1492 expulsion of its Jews F;ance
and England had on repeated occasions tried to do the same with their
Jewish. populations, but it apparently makes for a much more satisfying
narrative when race and racism can be given a single starting point and
a linear trajectory. Thanks to its contribution to racism via the purity
statutes and Inquisition, early modern Spain can finally make a claim to
modernity. It was ahead of its time in something.
~hether the intention of its proponents or not, the argument that
c~edlts Spain with establishing the first modern system of discrimination fits neatly into the package of the Black Legend, which might help
to explain why Spanish historians would be less than enthusiastic about
s!udying the extension of the concept of limpieza de sangre to the other
side of the Atlantic. To acknowledge that a discourse of purity of blood
surfaced in the Americas would be to risk adding yet another dark chapter to a history that includes the expulsion of the Jews, the establishment
of the Inquisition, the forced exile of Muslims and moriscos (Muslim

Introduction

converts to Christianity), and the conquest and colonization of ~ative

peoples. Given that the concept of purity of blood w~s re~evant ill all
of these developments, how does one approach the subJcct In w~ys that
avoid prcsenting historical actors in terms of simplistic dichotom~es a~d,
more generally, the politicization of history? Perhaps, as the hlsto~lan
Steve Stern has stressed, the conquest and colonization of the Amencas
can never be disentangled from politics-from the politics of the past and
the present, the history and historiography21l-but the point here is not
to vilify Spaniards or suggest that they were worse, as the Black Legend
would have it, than other colonial powers, or for that matter better, as
the White Legend camp claimed. No expansionist European country
could claim the moral high ground with respect to their attitudes toward and treatment of the peoples they colonized and/or enslaved, only
some differences in timing, methods, and guiding principles. This book
does not intend, therefore, to provide material for the perpetuation of
the Black Legend (whether it is used as such is an?ther matter) or to,reinforce the tendency in recent studies on the origms of race and racism
to single out early modern Iberia, as if those phenomena were unknown
in other parts of Europe or somehow spread from the peninsula to t~e
rest of the continent. Its main concern is not with the history of Spain
but with that of New Spain, although the tWO are clearly interrelated,
and that in itself is a point that the study tries to reiterate as it charts the
,
transatlantic paths of the problem of limpieza de sang~e,
If Spanish historians can be criticized for their failure to recogmze
the importance of limpieza de sangre in the colonial context, U.S. scholars of Spanish America can be accused of not having paid adequate ~t
tention to the complexity of the uses and meanings of the concept In
Iberia which has tended to result in oversimplified and at times anachronistic renditions of the ways in which it shaped racial discourses in the
American context. For their part, Mexican and other Latin American
academics can be taken to task for their general aversion to treating
race as a legitimate subject of inquiry for understanding their region's
history. It is fair to say that they tend to regard it as an issue that m~i~ly
has had relevance in the United States and other former slave societies
(as opposed to "societies with slaves"), whereas they see class as much
more salient for understanding the Iberian American past (even when
it comes to regions in which slavery was extremely important, such as
Brazil and Cuba). Thus, although some Mexican specialists of the colonial period might agree that the notion of limf:'i~za de san~re was of
some significance (it is hard to miss references to ~t 10 the arc~lves), ther
commonly dismiss the problem of race by stressmg that social o~g~llI
zation was based on an estate model. 11 If different groups had distinct
rights, privileges, and obligations, it was because of the hierarchical na-

Introduction

wre of Spanish society, which at the time of the conquest continued to

consist of three main estates and numerous corporations with specific
functions within the social body, not because of modern notions of biological difference.
The argument that using the notion of race to study the period prior
to the nineteenth century is anachronistic has of course not been made
exclusively by Latin Americans. Indeed, the standard chronology (and
teleology) of the concept is that it had not yet crystallized-assumed
its full essentializing potential-in the early modern period because attitudes regarding phenotype usually combined or competed with ideas
of cultural or religious difference. According to this account, race did
not appear until the nineteenth century, when pseudoscience anchored it
in biology, or rather, when biology anchored it in the body much more
effectively than natural philosophy and natural history ever did. It is
true that the concept of race generally became more biologistic in that
period, and it is of course important not to project its modern connota~
dons to previous eras, But arguing that racial discourses took a particular form in the nineteenth century is one thing; contending that they
did not operate in the early modern period, quite another. In the past
three decades, a number of scholars have demonstrated that the meanings and uses of the concept of race have varied across time, space, and
cultures and that even in modern times, it has not relied exclusively on
biological notions of difference but rather has often been intertwined
with culture and/or class. To elevate "race as biology" to an ideal type is
to set up a false dichotomy-to ignore that racial discourses have proven
to be remarkably flexible, invoking nature or biology more at one point,
culture more at another, 21 The shifting meanings and uses of race simultaneously underscore its social constructed ness and suggest that there
is no single, transhistorical racism but rather different types of racisms,
each produced by specific social and historical conditions, V The historian's task is precisely ro excavate its valences within particular cultural
and temporal contexts, study the processes that enable its reproduction,
and analyze how it rearticulates or is "reconstructed as social regimes
change and hisrories unfold."14
Several historians of colonial Latin America have argued that it is necessary to keep limpieza de sangre and race analytically distinct for the
sake of historical specificity and in particular to attempt to be faithful to
~he ways in which people of that time and place understood their social
Identities. Some scholars fear that equating notions of lineage, blood, and
descent with race would mean characterizing all premodern societies, and
!hose studied by anthropologists, as racially structured.l.l The argument
~s compelling, and it is certainly difficult to dispute the point that there
IS a significant difference between the racial discourses that European

Introduction

colonialism unleashed and indigenous kinship systems. But attempting

to draw a rigid analytical line between purity of blood and race is tricky,
first, because the twO concepts gained currency at about the same time
and appear side by side in virtually all probanzas (certificates) of limpieza de sangre, and second, because the former influenced the latter in
no small ways. Indeed, there was no neat transition from early modern
notions of lineage to race. In the Hispanic Atlantic world, Iberian notions
of genealogy and purity of blood-both of which involved a complex of
ideas regarding descent and inheritance (biological and otherwise)-gave
way to particular understandings of racial difference. 26
There is nothing original about asserting that there was a link between
European genealogical notions and racial discourses. As the anrhropol.ogist Ann Laura Stoler has observed, both Michel foucault and Benedict
Anderson alluded to this link, albeit in different ways. Foucault, who
viewed the problem of race mainly as part of Europe's "internal and
permanent war with itself" and therefore did not consider colonialism's
relevance to it, implied that a discourse of class had emerged from the
"racism" of the European aristocracy. For his part, Anderson suggested
that race had its origins in ideologies of "class" sprung from the landed
nobilityY Thus, for one scholar, the aristocracy's racism informed class;
for the other, its elitism shaped race. To some extent, these twO different
formulations stem from confusion over how to characterize the nobility's obsession with "blood," which more often than not was accompanied by concerns with biological inheritance, anxieties about reproduction outside the group, and a series of insidious assumptions about the
inferiority and impurity of members of the commoner estate. Medieval
representations of peasants, for example, rendered them as a lower order
of humanity and associated them with animals, dirt, and excrement. 28
The beastialization of the peasantry could reach such extremes that a
historian of slavery has suggested that it was an important precursor to
the early modern racialization of Jews and blacks. 29
Whether medieval and early modern concerns with blood and lineage
-in Europe and elsewhere-can be classified as racism will most likely
continue to be debated, especially by those who favor using a loose
definition of race that makes it applicable to most naturalizing or essentializing discourses and those who opt for a narrow one that basically limits its use to the nineteenth century and, beyond .. The. deb~te
is important but frankly less pressing than analyzmg the historical significance of those concerns-the social tcnsions that produced them,
the terms people used to express them, and the ways in which they were
reproduced or rearticulated over time an.d acros,s geocultura,l contexts.
This book therefore uses the word race 10 relatIon to the discourse of

Introduction

lirnpieza de sangre but does so with caution, stressing that both concepts were strongly connected to lineage and intersected with religion.
Through much of the early modern period, they remained part of a grid
of knowledge constituted not by scientific (biologistic) discourses bm by
religious ones and operated through an "episteme of resemblance" in
which similitude dominated the organization of symbols and interpretations and representations of the universe . .111 The book also emphasizes
that concepts of blood purity and race were neither contained in Europe
nor simply a consequence of the continent's "internal war with itself."
They operated in a transatlantic context, and their continued salience
and fluctuating meanings over the centuries were partly, if not greatly,
determined by colonialism.
In sum, by underscoring the interrelated nature of dis(;Qurses of purity of blood in Iberia and the Americas, this study undermines the view
(especially prominent among Spanish historians) that the problem of
limpieza de sangre was primarily an Iberian phenomenon as well as the
contention (made by some scholars of Spanish America) that it can be
separated from that of race. Furthermore, it problematizes the conceptual division that the literature on race sometimes makes between colonial racism and anti-Semitism. Some studies have argued that the two
types of discriminatory regimes are manifestly different; that whereas
the former has heen characterized by the construction and maintenance
of (colonial) hierarchies, the latter has typically promoted exclusion or
outright extermination (as in the case of Nazi Germany). Bur as Etienne
Balibar has stressed, a stark distinction between an "inclusive" colonial
racism and an "exclusive" (usually anti-Semitic) one is untenable because
historically, the two forms have not only exhibited similar characteristics but have depended on each other; rather than having separate gene~
alogies, they have a "joint descent.")1 Few historical phenomena demonstrate this close relationship between anti-Semitic and colonial discourses
of difference better than the ideology of purity of blood, which spread
while Spain was forging its overseas empire. Like the ships, people, and
?terchandise moving to and from Europe, Africa, and the Americas, the
Ideas and practices associated with the notion of limpieza de sangre circulated within, and helped forge, the Hispanic Atlantic world.
If the area to which this book most directly contributes is the study of
race in Spanish America, it also has implications for a number of other
topics, including ones related to periodization, nationalism, and comparative colonialisms. For one, the centrality of the seventeenth century to
t~e development of the sistema de castas places the focus on a period that
historians of colonial Latin America have tended to understudy. Perhaps
unduly influenced by anthropologist George Foster's characterization of

'4

Introduction

colonial Latin American culture as having "crystallized" or acquired

its basic social institutions by 1580, the historiography has generally regarded the years between that decade and 1750 as largely uneventfuL3Z
Neglect of this "long seventeenth century" or middle phase of Spanish
colonialism might also be explained by its shortage of events as dramatic
as those of the conquest and its aftermath. How can the period compete, for example, with the years that witnessed the early evangelizing
campaigns and their inspiralion in biblical, messianic, and eschatological interpretations of his[Qry; the Spanish "debates" about the humanity of the Amerindians; and the civil war that erupted among some of
Peru's conquerors? It may also be that the seventeenth-century's difficult
paleography and less extensive secondary literature have made studying
other eras more appealing.
Whatever the case, the period was anything but static. Sevemeenthcentury Spanish America not only had strong connections with Spain
but underwent crucial social and cultural transformations. Included
among these changes was the rise of creole patriotism, a topic that has
been explored by David Brading, Bernard Lavalle, and others and which
is analyzed in the present study in relation to the ideology of limpieza de
sangre. By interrogating the complex relationship of patriotic, religious,
and blood discourses, the hook makes an intervention in discussions of
nationalism in Latin America. Nationalism, however, is not an explicit
subject of inquiry, in part because it did not appear until the end of
the colonial period, if then. The region's independence movements were
primarily triggered by Napoleon's invasion of Spain in r808 and imposition of his brother Joseph as the new king, which on both sides of the
Atlantic led to political assemblies and discussions that quickly became
much more than about the restitution of Ferdinand VII to the throne.
Thus, Latin American nationalism seems to have been the result, not
the cause, of the independence movements, and to speak of eighteenthcentury "creole nationalism" is to walk on shaky argumentative ground. 33
Furthermore, as a number of historians who responded to Benedict
Anderson's thesis about its rise in Spanish America have pointed out,
not only was creole patriotism compatible with continued loyalty to the
Spanish Crown, but the early modern notion of "nation" (nacion) was
exceedingly ambiguous with regard to territory and bloodlines. 34
That a strong identification with the local community existed prior to
independence does not mean that there was a causal connection between
the two or between crioflismo (creal ism) and nationalism. Assuming
such a connection amounts to "doing hist{)[y backwards," that is, projecting modern categories onto a world in which those forms of thinking

Introduction

'5

had not ye~ c?me ab.out.H It also fo~ecloses the possibility of studying
creole patriotism on ItS Own terms-Its meanings, motivations, and political effects at different points in time. But if patriotism and nationalism should not be conflated, examinations of colonial political ideology
social developments, and cultural movements are necessary to under:
stand ~he form tha.t Mc~ican nationalism took after independence. By
explOring the relatIOnship between the religiously inflected concept of
limpieza de sangre and notions of citizenship (vecindad) in New Spain
this study seeks to provide a basis for further discussions about how th~
particularities of colonialism in Mexico shaped its postindependence political projects, gendered and racialized imaginings of the nation and
legal formulations of the citizen. 36
'
It also aims to highlight some of the specificities of Spanish colonialism. Although there are continuities and similarities between different
colonial projects, colonialism cannot be reduced to a single model; it has
multiple hisroricitiesY The Spanish colonial project, the earliest in the
~mericas, was driven by historically and culturally specific forces, and
Its course was determined by early modern dynamics on both sides of the
Atl~ntic. .It ~iffered most from modern imperial projects. For example,
unhke Bfltam and France when they launched the second major phase of
European colonialism starting in the second half of the eighteenth century, when Spain invaded the Americas, it was not an industrial power
seeki.ng raw materials and markets for its manufactured goods. Its ex~anslon west was initially propelled by the search for gold (increasingly
~mportant ~s a ~edium of exchange in international commerce), and
ItS. economic project came to be based primarily on the exploitation of
m~neral wealth and on state-controlled systems of extracting labor and
tnbute from native populations that had few parallels.
Furt?~rmore, Spanish colonialism began long before the emergence of
the p~lJtlcS of nationhood, liberalism, and Enlightenment-inspired universalist concepts of freedom, equality, rights, progress, and citizenship.
Together with the expansion of capitalist relations, these modern developments generated new ideological frameworks for justifying colonial
rule ~s well as a deep tension between the particularism of colonialism
(predicated on the creation and perpetuation of colonial hierarchies) and
t~ universalism of western European political theory.38 Spanish coloniahs~ in the Americas, based more on the concept of status than on the
nOtion of rights, did not have to contend with this tension at least not
at first. During its first two centuries, its main ideological c~ntradiction
stemmed from, on one hand, universalist Christian doctrines that touted
the redemptive powers of baptism and the equality of all members of

Introduction

Introduction

the church and, on the other, the construction of different categories

of Christians. The extent to which religion played a role in justifying
expansion and colonial rule was another aspect of the early modern
Spanish colonial project that distinguished it from modern ones.
Readily distinguishable in certain respects from nineteenth- and
twentieth-century imperialism, Spanish colonialism becomes less distinctive when it is compared to other formative or early colonial projects
in the Americas. Contrary to what the Black Legend would have us believe, during the ioitial phase of European expansion, Spaniards did not
have a monopoly on the unbridled use of violence against native peoples. The British and Dutch amply demons[fated their capacity for barbarity. Furthermore, Spanish, Portuguese, English, and French colonial
projects shared a number of features, including expansion through settlement; efforts to recreate European ways of life; and religious utopias,
Catholic and Protestant alike. 39 But similarities among these "setr!ertype" colonialisms can be overstated, among other reasons because each
power had its own economic, political, and religious agendas, even if
at certain historical moments some of these overlapped. The Spanish
state's control over some systems of labor, its transformation of large
indigenous populations into tributaries, and its collective incorporation
of native people as Christian vassals of the Crown of Castile were exceptional, especially when compared to British policies in Anglo North
America. And although efforts to convert native people to Christianity
were by no means exclusive to Spaniards, nO other European colonial
power, not even the other Catholic ones of Portugal and France, relied
on the church to spread the faith, support the government, and structure
colonial society as much as Castile. The historical moment and cultural
context were both crucial. That religion was integral to Spanish colonialism was due in large measure to its importance in sixteenth-century
Spain itself, where Catholicism was the only religion allowed, where the
church and state had developed an extraordinarily strong relationship,
and where the twin notions of "Old Christian blood" and genealogical purity had emerged as powerful cultural principles and exclusionary
weapons. Religion, lineage, and blood would in turn be used to organize
the Spanish colonial world.
In conclusion, Spanish colonialism was shaped by particular economic, political, and religious goals; by historical circumstances in early
modern Spain and Spanish America; and by distinctive principles of social organization. As a result, its categories of discoutse, mechanisms of
inclusion and exclusion, and forms of establishing the boundaries of the
Spanish wmmunity were unique or, at the very least: substantially diffe.rent from modern colonial projects in Africa and ASia. Some of the maIO

differences and reasons for them will be apparent in the chapters that
follow, which discuss religious and social developments in early modern
Castile, Spanish political ideology in the Americas, and the organization of colonial Mexican society. Before describing the book's comem in
more detail, a word on sources and methodology is in order.

,6

'7

ARCHIVES, SOURCES, AND CHAPTER DESCRIPTION

Research for this book entailed trips to various Mexican, Spanish, and
United States archives in search of documents pertaining to the issue of
purity of blood, the most obvious types being the informacion de limpieza de sangre ("information of purity of blood") and the probanza de
limpieza de sangre ("certification [or proof] of purity of blood"). The former normally consisted of genealogical information that a person (hereafter referred to as either "petitioner" or "candidate") seeking to access
an institution or post with purity requirements would provide. The latter generally contained documents from the actual investigation process
through which Iimpieza de sangre was "proven" and certified. Although
the informaciones were usually placed in the probanza dossier, it is not
rare to find copies of the first without the second, perhaps because at
some point they became misplaced or because, for some reason or another, the investigation did not take place. It is also not rare to find
documents in which probanzas are called informaciones, which suggests that the two words became somewhat interchangeable. In general,
however, an informacion functioned as a kind of affidavit and did not
in and of itself constitute the "proof" of limpieza de sangre, which in
theory required a formal investigation imo the petitioner's ancestral and
religious history. If the results of the investigation were positive, the perSOn received certified copies of the probanza.
Rather abundant in archives with colonial Latin American holdings,
probanzas de limpieza de sangre tend to be quite uniform in language
a~d in procedure. Some variations do occur, especially when the offiCIals conducting the investigation suspected "impure" ancestry, but for
t~e most part, the task of reading documents from this genre is repetitIve and tedious, which might account for the lack of systematic studies
~f the problem of limpieza de sangre beyond a particular case or institutIon. Such studies are made even more difficult by the scattered nature
of the sources and the way some have been classified. At times labeled
simply "genealogies" or subsumed under other types of documents (such
~s Probanzas de meritos y servicios, or "proofs of merits and services"),
hmpieza-related documents are currently dispersed in archives across

,8

Introduction

Latin America, Spain, and the United States, and on occasion, btrac~
ing a single case can involve research not only in various archives ut In
several countries. For example, I found several references to and parts
of a probanza in Mexico's Archivo General de la Naci6n and Spa.in's
Archivo Hist6rico Nacional, but I did not find the actual genealogical
investigation until I examined the Mexican Inquisition Collcl:tion of the
Huntington Library, in San Marino, California. Given that thousands
of prohanzas were generated in the course of the colonial period (and
beyond) and their scattered nature, scholars studying the problem mIght
be tempted to look at the records of one institution, for example, .those
of the Mexican or Peruvian Inquisition or those of a single guild or
convent.
Like studies of specific groups of people (bureaucrats, merchants, women,
slaves, and so forth) and of particular places for short periods of time,
works on limpieza in one institution might result in important findings but in general do not promise to generate conclusion~ regarding
the workings and evolution of colonial society. The observation that the
historian William Taylor made of social historians-that their challenge
is to explain how the small picture fits into the bigger one and thus
to put "more history into social history"-applies to institutional ones
as well. 4 (1 To be sure, documents produced by institutions such as the
Inquisition are important, and more than a thousand were analyzed for
the present study in order to provide a careful reading of the conc~pt ,of
purity of blood, the language that accompanied it, and changes In Its
definitions over time. 41 But the issue of limpieza de sangre transcended
the establishments that had purity requirements and, whether in New
Spain or elsewhere, is therefore not found exclusively in probanzas. Furthermore, the definitions contained in such documents do not tell the
whole story. As historians know fully well, the rules, meanings, and prescriptions offered in laws, decrees, institutional consritutio":s, and o~her
normative instruments cannot be taken at face value, certamly not 111 a
society like that of colonial Spanish America, where the breach between
theory and practice was widened by the legally and socially sanctioned
distinction between private and public lifeY
Research for this book therefore involved studying sources produced
by the Inquisition and other institutions, but it a~so :ntailed mining .a
wider array of sources that r fer to the problem of hmpleza de sangre, d~
recdy or indirectly. These include inquisitorial correspondence, me~on
als by theologians and jurists, juridical texts, licenses granted to Ibenans
to go to the Americas, spatial regulations, land petitions and grant.s, nobility documents, inheritance records, criminal and civil. cases, ~111~tes
from town council meetings, indigenous histories, marrIage legislation,

Introduction

and in the late colonial period, paintings. Purity information is likely to

be provided in applications by Spaniards or creoles wanting an inquisitorial or ,religi~)~s post, but it can also be found in a high-ranking military
officer s pelltlon to marry a woman from the colonies, or in legal cases
like that of a widow of an eighteenth-century miner from Guanajuato
who wished to prove her limpieza status in order to strengthen her claims
over certain lands. It might also be found in documents in which a native ruler tried to prove his noble and pure ancestry to defend his right
to public office in his town or, indirectly, in portraits of creole or native
elites that included genealogies. And so forth. As the eclectic quality of
the sources indicates, the problem of limpieza de sangre cut across socioeconomic, religious, and cultural domains and constituted a discourse, a
knowledge-producing instrument that promoted certain practices, social
relationships, and identities and that was inextricably linked to operations of powerY
To provide a history of this key concept, its relationship to colonial
Mexican racial ideology, and its imbrication with religion, the book begins not in America but in the Iberian Peninsula. Chapter I provides
an overview of the social and political circumstances that in fifteenthand sixteenth-century Spain helped to produce the statutes of limpieza
de sangre and a concept of race intimately tied to lineage, culture, and
religion. Chapter 2 underscores the importance of the Inquisition in exacerbating genealogical concerns in early modern Hispanic society and
the related emergence of a model of classifying purity that was based on
paternal and maternal bloodlines. This dual-descent model heightened
Old Christian anxieties over reproduction and marriage with the descendants of Jews and Muslims and also over controlling the sexuality
of "pure" women. Chapter 3 focuses on the procedures that, as of about
the mid-sixteenth century, many Spanish institutions with purity statutes devised to examine the genealogies of potential members and their
creation of a new genre of documents: the probanza de limpieza de sangre. An exclusionary device that was transferred to the Americas by the
state, church, and Inquisition, the genre merits close attention because it
mobilized a series of archival and social practices that not only made the
status of limpieza de sangre highly unstable but helped foster genealogical mentalities in the broader Hispanic Atlantic world.
Shifting the discussion to developments iPl central New Spain, Chapt~r 4 focuses on the rise of an Indian republic-separate from but subordinate to the Spanish one~the creation of a special juridico-theological
Status for the native people, and the production of a discourse of indig~nous purity. It argues that lineage became a key reproductive strategy
In the "Indian republic," where it was first used by the descendants of

Introduction

Introduction

pre-Hispanic dynasties to prove their noble status and where the concept
of purity, which acquired force in the eighteenth century, was used not
just by individuals but also by groups or communities to make certain
political and economic claims. Chapter 5 discusses the initial importance
of genealogy in Spanish cities. Specifically, it focuses on the rise of a creole aristocracy in central Mexico, its development of local interests, and
its increasing preoccupation with ancestry and purity at the end of the
sixteenth century. This preoccupation with lineage was encouraged by
royal policies pertaining to immigration, by the dispensation of grants
for the descendants of conquerors and first colonists, and by the requirements for some religious and public offices. It was also nourished by creoles' belief in their right, as patrimonial sons of the land, to monopolize
positions of power and influence and by their willingness to use the concept of purity to curb the political and economic claims of the growing
population of mixed ancestry.
Chapter 6 examines New Spain's sistema de castas; its origins, language, and sociocultural logic. It explains its emergence as a function
of processes of sociopolitical exclusion as well as of Spanish anxieties
about the results of the Christianization project. These anxieties, which
increased from the 1560s onward because of the continuation of "idolatry," facilitated the extension of Iberian notions of impurity to colonial
populations. The notion of limpieza de sangre, closely tied to the concept
of heresy in Spain, essentially entered into the colonial space through
the back door of idolatry, generating acute contradictions in the status
of the native peoples and their descendants. The chapter also underscores the crucial role that slavery played in shaping the classification of
Africans and their descendants and more generally in determining the
form that the sistema de castas took. Unlike native people, blacks were
not recognized as a community or republic, were not collectively incorporated into the Crown of Castile as free Christian vassals, and were
not officially declared pure of blood, all of which affected their ability to
make genealogical claims.
Chapter 7 elaborates on the procedures that colonial institutions used
for proving purity of blood, their transatlantic dimensions, and their
implications for part of the creole population. Initially the products of
the Christianization project and anticonverso policies, these procedures
served to create the fiction of New Spain's lack of Jewish and Muslim
antecedents and, as in Spain, turned the probanza de limpieza de sangre into a part of the public domain and culture of honor. The purity
requirements also reproduced archival practices that fostered a genealogical and historical consciousness among elite creoles that throughout
the colonial period reinforced their identification with a Spanish Old

Ch~ist~an ~omm~~ity of blood, even as their attachment to the land of

their birth IIltenslfied and even as they began to forge a nativeness (naturaleza) separate from Castile. Chapter 8 closely examines the extensio
of t~e ~iscourse of limpieza de sangre to colonial populations and con~
tradlctlOns between how the concept was officially defined and how it
operated. It argues that these contradictions emerged not only beca .
..
. were frequently not in harmony, but also -beprescnptlon
an d ~ractlCe
cause o~ the ambiguous religious standing of native people and blacks
the elusiveness of the category of Old Christian, and the appropriatio~
of the concept by people of native and African ancestry.
Ch.apter 9 outlines some of the changes that Iimpieza de sangre underwent III the second half of the colonial period, including its identification
of more sources of contamination (of more "stains") and the gradual. _
sociation of purity with Spanishness. It also discusses how this secula~~
zati?n o~ th~ concept----:-made visual in casta paimings-gradually came
to link hmpJ~za to whn~ skin color and thus mapped it Onto the body.
The last section deals WIth creole patriotic discourses during the period
of the Bourbon reforms, a time of greater state intervention in the i _
stitutions of marriage and family and in colonial society in general. ~t
argues that the .for~ that these discourses wok reflected the weight of
t~ concept of li~pl~za de sangre in Mexican society and the complex
attitudes to,;,ard ~ndlgenous and black blood it had helped [0 generate
~mong S~amsh elites. Late colonial patriotic vindications and imaginarIes were mformed by tradi.tional Castilian definitions of political rights,
but they were also deeply mfluenced by religion and race.

..
,~,,\,

PART ONE

Iberian Precedents

CHAPTER ONE

The Emergence of the Spanish Statutes

of Limpieza de Sangre

The emergence and spread of the Spanish statutes of purity of blood

was a complicated, contested, and drawn-out process. They appeared
on a gradual, piecemeal basis and, for one hundred years after the first
municipal statute was issued, received only sporadic support from the
crown. Some statutes were vigorously challenged, others rescinded only
to be reinstated, and yet others were not rigorously implemented. Nonetheless, duting the sixteenth century, numerous religious and secular
institutions established limpieza de sangre requirements, and these continued to be an integral feature of Spanish society for centuries to come.
What implications did the proliferation of the statutes precisely at the
time of Iberian expansion to the Americas have on Spanish colonial
society? How did they influence religious thought and social dynamics
after the conquest? What genealogical beliefs and practices did the requirements of limpieza de sangre bequeath to the Americas? Answering
these questions first requires an examination of the meanings of the
concept of purity of blood in Spain and the context in which it gained
importance. This chapter and the following two (which make up Part I)
provide such an examination.
SpeCifically, the chapters trace the development of the ideology of
limpieza de sangre from its initial appearance in the middle of the fifteenth century to its crystallization one hundred years later and subsequent merger with notions of nobility. The main objective is to discuss
general social, religious, and political developments in Castile that help
to explain when and why the idea of purity of blood acquired importance and the ways in which it was related to notions of genealogy and
race. Although they deal strictly with the discourse of purity of blood in

lberian Precedents

The Emergence of the Spanish Statutes

Iberia, Chapters T through 3 focus on those dimensions that would also

charaClerizc it in Spanish America. These dimensions include the idea
that blood was a vehicle through which all sorts of characteristics and
religious proclivities were transmitted, the deployment and rcification of
the categories of Old Christian and New Christian, the reliance on female sexuality and reproduction to the maintenance of the social order,
the link between bloodlines and the honor system, and the establishment
of Iimpieza status through juridical procedures.
This chapter begins with a brief discussion of the social and religious
circumstances that prompted the first major waves of Jewish conversions to Christianity in late medieval Spain, the older Christian community's increasingly negative attitudes toward the converts from the 14305
onward, and the passage of the first purity requirements in the middle
of the fourteenth ccntury. It thcn delves into factors that helped give
the statutes momentum in the second half of the fifteenth century, including the growth of a discourse about secret or "crypto-Judaism,'" the
revival of a crusading spirit during the reign of IsabeJla and Ferdinand
(monarchs of Castile from 1474 to 1504), and the establishment of the
Inquisition. In addition to drawing attention to the political, economic,
and institutional dynamics that contributed to the growing significance
of the principle of limpieza de sangre, this section stresses that growing
social anxieties over conversion, shifting community boundaries, and religious loyalties also played a crucial role in turning lineage into a mechanism for promoting order, fixity, and hierarchy.

during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, violence against Jews increased in Iberia, as it did in broader Europe, and that it was accompanied by their increasing demonization in Christian popular mythology
folklore, and iconography.l These developments occurred in the contex~
of heightened social tensions resulting from the transition to a monetary economy and the devastation wrought by the Black Death. The latter struck western Europe between 1347 and 1351 and had several subsequent phases, including one in the years 1388-90. The Spanish purity statutes did not appear until later, bur their history is usually traced
to that turbulent period and in particular to the mass conversions that
anti-Jewish movements catalyzed at the end of the fourteenth century.
In 1391, a wave of anti-Semitic attacks that started in Seville spread to
other dties (including Toledo, Valencia, and Barcelona), resulting in the
deaths of thousands of Jews. 4 Violent incidents of the sort had occurred
before, but the late-fourtcenth-century pogroms, which occurred amid
a severe economic depression, were particularly significant because they
produced the ~rst major wave of Jewish conversions to Christianity, the
first commutllty of conversos.S Faced with the possibility of becoming
the targets of angry Christian mobs once again and subject to a growing number of professional, economic, residential, and sumptuary restrictions, tens of thousands of Jews felt compelled to accept baptism.
Conversion implied assimilating into the dominant society, for it made
them eligible for public and ecclesiastical offices and allowed them to live
outside of Jewish quarters (juderias) and to stop wearing distinctive clothing. It also granted the converts the freedom to marry other Christians.
Although the sudden conversions en masse created the impression among
contemporaries that they had been insincere, the church for the most
part accepted them and regarded the conversos as Christians. During the
eariy fifteenth century, it concentrated mainly on proselytizing in Jewish
~ommunities and maintaining the boundary between Christians (includmg .those who converted from Judaism) and Jews, historically the main
baSIS of Christian identity.6
Aggressive missionary activities by the Dominicans and Franciscans
led to more Jewish conversions to Christianity, especially during the
years 1412-15, but efforts to make the conversos sever their residential,
SOcial, and cultural ties with their former community were generally unVarious towns particularly Valladolid issued laws aimed at
I'successful.
..
'
,
ImltlIl~ all kinds of interaction between the two groups, but they apparen~l~ did not have the intended results because anxieties over policing
~e1~gIOUS boundaries continued to escalate. By the mid-I4Jos, these anxletle~ .were being manifested in ever-more-disturbing w~ys. The more
traditIOnal Christians-"Old Christians" (cristiano IJiej()s), as they later

26

MASS CONVERSIONS, ANTI-SEMITISM, AND THE RISE

OF THE STATUTES IN LATE MEDIEVAL SPAIN

One current of scholarship on medieval Spain paints the region as a kind

of Garden of Eden that for centuries aJlowed the "coexistence" (convivenciaj of Christians, Jews, and Muslims and that fostered the rise of a
Jewish "Golden Age."1 According to this current, the convivencia, which
was at its peak from the eighth century to the middle of the twelfth,
came to a definitive end in the 1400S, when the first statutes of purity of
blood were passed and the Spanish Inquisition was established to deal
with the supposed problem of crypto-Judaism. Certain scholars also claim
that with the systematic use of ancestry against Jewish converts to Christianity, racial, as opposed to religious, anti-Semitism emerged for the
first time in history.2 Although the notion of convivencia with its lingering connotations of tolerance has been challenged by a number of
historians, among them David Nirenberg, scholars generally agree that

27

Iberian Precedents
called themselves-were not only beginning to express serious doubts
about the conversos' commitment to Christianity but were increasingly
relying on genealogy to think about and determine identities. The growing concern with lineage was not exclusive to Christians. The conversions of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries were followed
by disputations, apostasies, and migrations (sometimes involving various shifts in faith) that posed new classificatory challenges for Spain's
three main religious communities. Christians, Jews, and Muslims all responded by turning to new and mutually informed forms of communal
identity that privileged ancestry.7
Among Old Christians, the newly invigorated concern with lineage
was rooted in the idea that "Jewishness" was transmitted in the blood,
that it was a natural, inheritable condition. Some therefore came to believe that having even partial Jewish ancestry compromised Christian
identity, values, and understandings. This naturalization of a religiouscultural identity coincided with the emergence of a lexicon consisting of
terms such as raza (race), casta (caste), and linaje (lineage) that was informed by popular notions regarding biological reproduction in the natural world and, in particular, horse breeding. ~ It was also accompanied by
an emergent Old Christian preoccupation with avoiding sexual, reproductive, and marital relations with the converts and their descendantswith protecting "pure" Christian lineages from converso {understood
as "Jewish"} blood.~ As the middle of the fifteenth century approached,
Spanish genealogical concepts were acquiring particular contours, and
social and religious anxieties were beginning to constitute New Christians as a particular type of convert.
The reasons for the dramatic shift in Spanish attitudes toward the
conversos remain a mystery. Historians who believe that the majority of
conversions occurring after the 1391 massacres were not sincere and that
at least a portion of the converts' descendants continued to "judaize"
(to practice Judaism) tend to argue that religious factors played a role or
that worries about the need to safeguard the Christian faith were real.lO
On the other hand, scholars who contend that most conversos became
devoted Christians, espeCially if they had converted before 1492, generally view religion as a pretext. They attribute the hardening of Old
Christian views toward that community either to social factors-particularly, resentment of the converts' rapid socioeconomic advancement,
ability to secure public and ecclesiastical appointments, and integration
into patrician oligarchies-or to sheer racism.11 Whether the incipient
anticonverso movement (whose impetus is identified sometimes more
with the noble estate and at others with the Old Christian "masses")

The Emergence of the Spanish Statutes

was propelled by religious, social, or anti-Semitic factors or all three
by the mid-fifteenth century, the image of the "secret Jew," so central t~
early modern Spanish thought, was starting to appear alongside a strident .Old C?ristian i,de~ti~y rooted. in. the traditional military nobility
and III the Idea of ChnstJan supenonty over Jews and MuslimsY At
the sa~e time, charges of crypto-Judaism were beginning to playa role
in pohtiCal struggles between the crown and nobility, in conflicts over
laxation and local autonomy, and in factional competition over control
of municipal government. As events in central Castile demonstrated the
confluence of these trends provided the momentum for exclusionary 'policies that singled out the conversos.
Tole~o, seat of ~he Primate o~ Spain and host to the most numerically
and SOCially promment population of conversos, was the site of the first
major struggle to establish purity-of-blood policies. In early 1449, as the
city's religious and secular leaders encouraged resistance against the repressive tax policies of King Juan II (1406-54) and converso tax collectors were made into the scapegoats of new fiscal impositions, a series of
riots erupted that mainly targeted the juderia and New Christians. When
royal forces arrived to reestablish order, the city found itself in a virtual
civil war. Pero Sarmiento, the city's ambitious alcalde mayor (chief magistrate) and leader of a group of rebels who accused Alvaro de Luna (the
king's minister) of being partial to the conversos, took advantage of his
control of the government and, along with other local officials, drew up
~ d~c~ee that mad.e converted Jews and their descendants permanently
I?~hglble for public offices and all municipal appointments.l.l Some poittlcal and religious figures raised their voices against the proposal, but
they could not prevent the town council from approving it. Historians
of early modern Spain consider this decree, the Sentencia-Estatuto, one
of the earliest statutes of limpieza de sangre, if not the first. 14 Its supporters, who clearly resented the conversos' prosperity and role in municipal
government, claimed that the New Christians could not be trusted bec~n:se of the insincerity of their conversions; deep hatred of christianos
vleJos ~jndos ("dean/beautiful Old Christians"); and crimes against
~od, kmg, and the public goodY The city, they argued, had to protect
1~lf and the Catholic faith by ensuring that only people with unsulhed
. Ch"
nstJan I'meages were in positions of power and authority. Pope
Nicholas V and a number of Spanish writers some of whom were Old
Ch' .
,
. Cls.tlans, strongly condemned the Sentcncia-Estatu(Q for violating the
prlllciple of the unity of the church and undermining the redemptive
PO~ers of baptism, but to no avail. lt Juan II, apparently in an effort to
gaIn support at a time of great social instability in Castile, approved it in

Iberian Precedents

The Emergence of the Spanish Statutes

August 1451, about five months after he had granted a general pardon to
the residents of Toledo for their insubordination. l7
Toledo's Sentencia-Estatuto had powerful forces behind it, and its language was indicative of the extreme levels that anti-Jewish and anticonverso rhetoric was reaching in Spain in the middle of the fifteenth century. Jewish people were increasingly depicted as a hybrid and corrupted
lineage, sometimes even as the outcome of monstrous mixtures-of
crosses with monsters, demons, and animals-and their supposed traits
were being projected onto the conversos.1 8 As anticonverso hostility
spread from Toledo to other cities (including Ciudad Real, Cordoba,
jaen, and Seville) during the 1460s and 1470s, claims ab.out the treachery and heretical tendencies of the descendants of Jewish converts to
Christianity were repeated again and again, and different institutions
began to adopt exclusionary measures based on the same genealogical
and naturalizing logic as the Sentencia-Estatuto. During these decades,
the discovery of cases of (alleged) crypto-Judaism in some religious
orders and other establishments, including the Jeronymites, helped to undermine the arguments of the opponents of the Sentencia-Estatuto and
to cast suspicions on all conversos. It also convinced a number of church
officials that the converts' religious beliefs were still being corrupted by
their ongoing contact with Jews, and they therefore called for more intense efforts to separate them. Frustrations over the failure of similar
efforts had of course been expressed before, but in the politically and
religiously charged climate of the last third of the fifteenth century, they
would have extremely grave consequences for both groups.

exemption from certain taxes; senores, owners of smalJ territorial possessions, or seilOrios; and grandes, the titled nobility. In the mid-century,
wealth, land, titles, and political posts were concentrated in the last
category and, more concretely, in the hands of about two dozen noble
families. In a Spain that was still predominantly rural, their economic
and political power rested primarily on their control over large tracts of
territory.19
Enrique IV, whose first decade in power was relatively stable but who
nonetheless inherited the problems of factionalism and civil conflicts
that plagued his father's rule, tried to weaken the political muscle of the
grandes through a series of administrative and centralizing reforms. 20
His attempts were for the most part unsuccessful. Accustomed to governing towns with considerable autonomy, the nobility resisted the push
toward political centralization. The consolidation of royal authority in
Castile had to wait until the reign of Enrique IV's successor and halfsister. Isabella (1474-1504), whose claim to the throne was solidified
only after a civil war between her supporters and those of her niece,
Juana la Beltraneja. The civil war ended in 1479, the same year in which
the queen's husband, Ferdinand, inherited the Crown of Aragon. The
marriage of the "Catholic Kings," as the couple was later called by Pope
Alexander VI, united the crowns of Castile and Aragon and made a
"double monarchy" possible in Iberia. 21
The two monarchs, who are perhaps best known for their support
of the voyages of Columbus that eventually resulted in Spain's acquisition of a vast overseas empire in "the Indies," essentially expanded on
Enrique IV's reforms but more effectively dealt with the nobility by simultaneously affirming its socioeconomic prt:eminence and curbing its
political strength. The weakening of the aristocracy had implications
for the emerging bourgeoisie (composed of merchants, scribes, doctors,
and other urban professionals), for the crown no longer had to rely on
it as much as it had in the past to offset the power of the nobles. The
Catholic Kings also improved and enlarged the administration of justice
(thenceforth centered more on their own regional courts, the audiencias
and chancillerias), promulgated civil law (most notably, by passing the
leyes de Toro in 150.,), and created a system of councils that included
tbe reorganized Council of Castile, the Council of the State, the Council
of Finance, the Council of Orders, and the Council of Aragon. Finally,
they increased royal authority by strongly associating the Crown of Castile with the Christian cause, which they did not only by establishing
the Holy Office of the Inquisition but by declaring war on Granada, the
only remaining Muslim-controlled region in' the Iberian Peninsula.

30

POLITICAL CENTRALIZATION, CHRISTIAN MII.ITANCY,

AND THE FOUNDING OF THE INQUISITION

The worsening plight of Spain's conversos and Jews occurred during

a period of great social and political turmoil and heightened religious
zeal. In Castile, the decades between the Sentencia-Estatuto and the establishment of the Inquisition were marked, among other things, by the
weak leadership of kings Juan II and his successor Enrique IV (1454-74),
royal efforts to curb the political power of the upper nobility, and a crisis
of succession that led to a civil war. The nobility included descendants
of soldiers who during the period of the Reconquista (the Christian
"reconquest" of Iberia from Islamic rule) had received land and status
for providing military service to the monarchy. This estate consisted of
three main categories: hidalgos, who mainly enjoyed local prestige and

Iberian Precedents

32

The Emergence of the Spanish Statutes

KINGIIOM Of' CASTLE

~
(lAUeiA

IlJlSOU~
KINGDOM
PROYIJOCU
OF

'r--...
" ...."'_...,
;

N"VARIlE

,,'"

CATALOHlA

Zatogoz

l/aIIadohd

"CO

CASTILE

EXTREMADURA

also operated in the Crown of Aragon starting in the year 12)2 , but
by the fifteenth century, it was for the most part inactive. In Castile, a
region that apparently did not produce any formal heresies during the
late medieval period, inquisitorial tribunals were virtually unknown.2.l
But this changed in the last third of the fifteenth century, when concerns
over the religious loyalty of the conversos escalated to unprecedented
levels and were manipulated by certain groups to further their political
and socioeconomic designs.
In the 1460s, support for establishing an inquisition in Castile grew
among members of the religious orders who wanted to create an official
organism to identify and try conversos suspected of heresy. The Franciscans in particular favored the creation of such a tribunal, and they
pressured the Jeronymites into raising the issue with the crown. The
general of the Order of Saint Jerome, Fray Alonso de Oropesa, opposed
the mushrooming anticonverso movement and the abuses it was perpetrating in the name of the faith but nonetheless considered the problem
of religious heterodoxy among some of the converts important enough
to warrant a solution. After initial hesitation, he supported the proposal
of establishing an inquisition in Castile, one that would serve more as a
tool of reform and instruction than as a means to punish.24 Fray Alonso
found a sympathetic ear in King Enrique IV, to whom he was a key adviser, and in the early 1460s, the monarch sent a proposal to Rome. But
it was not until numerous reports of alleged "judaizers" (crypto-Jews)
in Seville and elsewhere reached Ferdinand and Isabella that they pursued, and received, permission from the Vatican to establish the Spanish
Inquisition. H
The Inquisition was a tribunal set up to investigate charges of heresy
among Christians and in particular among conversos. It had little jurisdiction over Jews and dealt not with Judaisrh per se but with the problem of crypto-Judaism.2~ Signed by Pope Sixtus IV in 1478, the papal
bull that granted Castile the right to found its own inquisition referred
to the problem of apostasy among the conversos but did not indicate
just how serious it was. By 1480, a tribunal consisting of three inquisitors was functioning in Seville. The subsequent discovery of a supposed
Converso plot against the Inquisition seemed to confirm allegations that
the threat of heresy or "judaizing" was real, particularly in Andalusia,
and led to the establishment (sometimes temporary) of tribunals in other
Cities, including Cordoba (I48z), Ciudad Real (1483), and Jaen (1483).27
8~ 1483, the Inquisition had been extended to Aragon, or rather, the old
trIbunal and its appointments and salaries were placed more under the
authority of the crown than under that of the pope. 2~ Two years later,
the tribunal that had been operating in Ciudad Real was transferred to
"

~
'""

3.1

AR.lGON

eTOIoOO

NEW CASTILE

eC6<dob.

MAP To Sixteenth-century Iberia. SOURCE: After James B. Lockhart and

Stuart B. Schwartz, Early Latin America (New York: Cambridge University
Pre~s, 1983) p. 21. Drawn by Maria Elena Martinez.

The Holy Office was not an entirely new institution. Ecdesia~tic.al.in

quisitions had existed in latt medieval Spain and other par,ts o,f Ch~l~t1an
Europe. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, a nse In splfIt,ua\
movements that were considered heretical led the papacy to order bIshops and an:hbishops to condud regular visits to the parishes within
their jurisdictions where incidences of heresy had occurred, report on
the spiritual life of their communities, and turn in any suspected heretics to secular authorities. When this method of relying on "episcopal
inquisitors" proved ineffective, the Vatican began. to appoint !u.dges.to
undertake special investigations in designated regIOns, thus glvmg nse
to the "papallnquisition."22 This institution, which becaus~ ~f a shortage in judges became increasingly dependent on the Dommlcans and
Franciscans (Mendicant orders founded in the thirteenth century) for
the investigation of heresy, mainly functioned in ~rance, Germany, an~
Italy. Due to the spread of heretical movements In southern France, It

Iberian Precedents

The Emergence of the SPanish Statutes

Toledo, where the first permanent court and seat of the Inquisition were
established. It was also in that city that the Supreme Council of the Holy
and General Inquisition (the "Suprema"), founded between 1483 and
1488, was based. Initially consisting of three ecdesia~tical members and
a presiding inquisitor general, the first being Tomas de Torquemada,
the Suprema was in charge of coordinating activities among tribunals
in Castile, Leon, and Aragon. Later it was also responsible for overseeing all matters handled by the Holy Office in the Americas. The crown
selected the members of the Suprema and all other inquisitorial officials.
In theory, the pope exerted some influence on the choice of inquisitor
general, but he too was presented by the monarchs. Because the crown
ultimately determined the inquisitors, a number of historians have regarded the Holy Office as more of a royal than ecclesiastical tribunal, as
an instrument of civil power, and even as an expression of Spanish absoImism. 29 And because it consisted of various regional tribunals that were
all accountable to one central body~the Suprema was the only governmental agency that had jurisdiction over the entire Spanish empire~
it has also at times been viewed as Spain's, if not Europe's, first protonational institution.
Historian Jaime Contreras, for example, views the rise of the Inquisition as a result mainly of the "pseudonationalist" concerns of the Catholic Kings. He concedes that the problem of heresy might have been real
but argues that it also provided the crown with the perfect excuse to establish an institution that, while deriving a great deal of authority from
its links to the church, was ultimately under royal control. In Contreras's
view, the Holy Office was used by Ferdinand and Isabella to strengthen
the legitimacy of their rule, which they did on the basis of their defense of
the faith. 30 Other scholars grant the Inquisition more of a dual character.
They argue that it was mainly created because of the fear that cryptoJews were trying to subvert the faith from within and that it continued
to be concerned with religious issues, but they also stress that as a close
ally of the crown, the institution also offered clear political advantages,
such as helping to turn the Christian faith into an element of cohesion
in a Spain where no real political unity existed. 31 Finally, because the
Holy Office confiscated the estates of the persons it prosecuted and disinherited the descendants of those it burned, some historians stress that
economic factors also played a role in its founding and perpetuationY
Of course, these diverse explanations of the founding of the Inquisition
are not incompatible with each other. The institution could have served
multiple purposes, depending on the time and place. But its emergence
and rapid transformation from a temporary to a permanent institution
cannot be fully understood without taking into account the combined

, effect ~f.anxietie~ ove.f crypto-Judaism and the militancy that Spanish

J5

CatholiCism acqUired III the 1480s, (0 which the campaign against Granada strongly contribuwJ.
In 14 82 , Ferdinand and Isabella responded to a Muslim attack on a
Christian town by waging a war against Granada, by then a tributary of
Castile. Although the Reconquista had actually ended two centuries earlier, they framed the enterprise as the culmination of the reCOnquest. The
war, which lasted ten years and resulted in victory for the Christians
resuscitated a crusading spirit, bolstered the popularity of the Catho1i~
Kings, and increased the prestige of the monarchy, now solidly identified
with Christianity. H Roughly coinciding with the Inquisition's first decade of persecutions, it also made Spain's rulers less tolerant of religious
minorities, particularly the Jews. H Blamed by the Holy Office and some
church officials (particularly members of the Dominican order) for the
allegedly ~ersistent problem of cry pm-Judaism among conversos, they
were partially expelled from Andalusia in the early 1480S and in the
middle of the decade from certain AragoneStl dioceses. These partial expulsions augured the decree of March 31, 1492, which ordered Spanish
Jews to leave the region that had been their home since about the first
century.
Issued by the Catholic Kings shortly after Granada's surrender and as
a fierce religious zeal was sweeping across the peninsula, the expulsion
decree of 1492 compelled all Jews who did not convert to Catholicism
within four months to leave Castile and Arag6n. (Portugal issued a similar decree in 1496 and Navarre in 1498.) As had been the case with
the previous decade's partial expulsions, the decision was strongly influenced by the Inquisition and the cases of crypto-Judaism it claimed to
have foundY At least officially, Jews could not remain in Spain not because they were Jews but because they were thought to be contributing,
whether directly or indirectly, to the problem of heresy among the conversos. The decree of expulsion prompted conversions to Catholicism
on a greater scale than ever before. At first, church officials, including
Cardinal Mendoza and Bishop Hernan de Talavera, undertook peaceful
Campaigns to indoctrmate the new converts. But the nature of their eff~rts remains a mystery, as do the reasons for their apparent failure. It is
sttll not known, for example, if the clergy assigned (0 the evangelization
campaign used sermons and catechisms among their new flock.
. As for Spanish Muslims, they too were faced with the choice of adopt109 Christianity or being deported, but this did this not happen until
1502 in Castile and 1526 in Aragon. The treaty signed after the defeat of
Granada allowed those who lived there to remain in the town continue
to practice their religion, and enjoy juridical autonomy. Duri~ the next

36

Iberian Precedents

ten years, however, they became increasingly alienated as the relatively

gentle policies of conversion of Bishop Hernan de Talavera were replaced

by the more aggressive methods of Francisco Jimenez de Cisneros, who
served as archbishop of Toledo, the queen's confessor, and inquisitor
general. At the cnd of the decade, Cisneros's campaigns and burning of
more than one million Islamic texts triggered an uprising in rhe Muslim
quarter of Granada and the first rebellion of the Alpujarras, which helped
prompt the 1502 expulsion decree. In Aragon, where many Muslims
lived under harsh semifeudal conditions, the Islamic community was
not expelled for another two decades primarily because it was protected
by the nobility, which relied on it for a large part of its income. The
absence of a community of Muslim converts to Christianity might also
have mattered, for it meant that the fear that Muslims would try to win
back former co-religionists did not yet exist. 36 Because most Muslims ill
Castile and Aragon chose conversion over exile, by the third decade of
the sixteenth century, Spain not only had an important community of
Jewish converts to Christianity but a significant population of moriscos,
Christians of Islamic origin ..l7 While the latter community was new, the
con versos had already been in existence for over a hundred years; it was
they who were at the center of fifteenth-century Spanish concerns over
the problem of heresy and who initially provided the Inquisition with
most of its victims.

THE PROBLEM OF CONVERSION DURING

AND AFTER THE REIGN OF THE CATHOLIC KINGS

The Inquisition's treatment of condemned heretics usually involved forcing them to participate in autos de fe, public, sometimes private, acts
of religious penitence. Public autos, which over time became elaborate
spectades involving inquisitors, royalty, and large audiences, featured
a procession to the square and stage where they were held, a mass and
sermon, and a reading of the crimes of the accused. The culminating
moment of the act was the "reconciliation" of sinners with the church.
Punishments were divided into three categories: relaxation, reconciliation, and penance. The first, reserved mainly for unrepentant heretics
or relapsed ones, resulted in the person being handed over to the civil
authorities to be executed (the church could not directly stain its hands
with human blood). When the condemned person escaped or was not
alive, he or she was burned in effigy. The second category, reconciliation,
meant that the person was accepted back into the fold of the church after
confessing, repenting, and undergoing some kind of spiritual penance

The Emergence of the Spanish Statutes

37

atonement. It involved penalties such as confiscation of belongings,

"
imprisonment, work in the galleys, and the wearing of san. benitos (from saw bendito), yellow penitential garments typically with
.. black Saint Andrew's cross drawn on them. The third type of punishPlent, penance, was applied to people who .abjured their offences-de
levi in the case of lighter crimes, de vehementi when the transgression
was more serious-and swore never to commit them again. It tended to
imply relatively mild sentences, such as haVing to wear a sanbenito for
,limited time, paying fines, working in the galleys, or being banished
from the community for a spel:ified period.
~<
Depictions of early modern Spain as fanatical, especially those produced in Protestant literature, have often focused on the autos de fe-on
their supposed popularity, violent spel:tacles, and high execution rates.
But these depictions frequently rest on faulty logic or require qualifica'cion. For example, although normally witnessed by large audiences, the
actual popularity of the autos de fe is almost impossible to gauge, because attendance was required and not participating aroused suspicions
of nonconformity. Furthermore, the main event at autos de fe was not
the hurning of heretics, which generally took place outside cities and not
in the ceremonial itself. The focus, rather, was on the public shaming
of religious deviants, beginning with their having to wear sanbenitos
while walking in the procession, and on their reconciliation with the
church.3~ Finally, the Inquisition did not have as high an execution rate
as previously believed, especially when compared with secular tribunals
in Spain and broader Europe. In fact, most of the people that the Holy
Office "relaxed" were burned in effigy. But if the Inquisition was generally not as bloodthirsty as a tradition of literature had claimed, it did
tend to reserve its most extreme punishments for convcrsos and moriscos. The first fifty years of inquisitorial activities (I480-IBo), and in
particular the first twenty, were the bloodiest, producing thousands of
deaths at the stake and a good number of the relaxations that took place
during the Holy Office's entire existence. J, This was the period in which
the Inquisition concerned itself principally with the problem of judaizing
Conversos.40
Was the problem of crypto-Judaism at the turn of the fifteenth centurya real one, nr was it simply a creation of the Holy Office and fanati~l Old Christians? This has been one of the most contentious questions
In the literature on early modern Spain. Although few historians dispute
that crypto-Judaism existed, there is no agreement about how widespread it was or about whether it was even a problem. Some have argued
that many of the descendants of the Jews who had converted in the late
fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries continued to practice Judaism

Iberian Precedents

The Emergence of the Spanish Statutes

during the reign of the Catholic Kings, while others v.ch~me~~ly a~sert
that by then the majority of conversos were .true Chnstlanso.. ~e~the~

tbe preparation of special food, and the koshering of meat, among other
things, were all indications of a commitment to Judaism, Jewish law,
and a Jewish way of life. 46 Verbal attacks on Christian dogma were thus
pot necessary to arouse suspicions of heresy; early modern religion was
understood and lived as a system of beliefs as well as practices.
For Muslims, who arguably had less cultural overlap with Christians
than Jews (in Spain, the last group tended to speak Castilian or other Romance languages in higher numbers, for example), conversion to Christianity implied an even greater transformation in ancestral practices.
just how sweeping this transformation was expected to be is illustrated
in the campaigns to convert Granada's moriscos that took place in the
early sixteenth century. The campaigns entailed not just religious instruction but a whole series of efforts to weaken traditional family structures, which were seen as central to the reproduction of the Islamic faith.
These efforts included the promotion of "mixed" marriages with Old
Christians-rhe favored arrangement being a "pure" male with a morisca
-the creation of special colleges to separate morisen children from
their parents, and the banning of polygamy and "double marriages."47
Legislation in Granada also tried to prevent the use of Muslim names
and surnames, circumcision, the survival of Arabic, and certain forms of
inheritance and fictive kjnship.4~ In short, campaigns to ensure the conversion of former Muslims to Christianity encompassed just about every
sphere of life and therefore implied complete assimilation. Some scholars contend that for the moriscos and conversos themselves, cultural
practices were inseparable from their religious identities and that their
attachment to certain traditions was in fact an indication of a continued
commitment to their ancestral faithsY The latter claim is a particularly
Contentious issue, but the point is that the lack of a clear disllnction
between cultural and religious identities greatly complicated the process
(then and now) of discerning between genuine and false conversions. \(1
This problem became especially serious when, as occurred in 1492 with
the Conversos and in T502 with Granada's moriscos, conversions occurred en masse and the traditional structures of those two communities
could not be immediately dismantled.
. Acknowledging the complexity of religious identities in fifteenth- and
Sixteenth-century Spain does not undermine the thesis that political and
economic factors played a role in the establishment of the Inquisition
a~ its subsequent activities, but it does challenge the notion that religIOn Was merely a pretext for the persecution of the converts and their
descendants. The instability and vagueness of Christian identity, the
P!csence of con versos (and cristianos viejos) who straddled the categoties of Jew and Christian, and the lack of clarity about what religious

38

of these positions does justice to the complexity of the New Chnstlans

religious commitments, and both reify their idenrities ~cross space and
time. As recent studies have convincingly argued, dunng the fifteenth
and early sixteenth centuries, some conversos were c.rypto-.1ews and others were fully committed to Christianity, but most, mcludm~ those who
left the Iberian Peninsula, fell in between these twO categones and ~ar
took in a variety of Christian and Jewish practicesY Between outrl.ght
acceptance and rejection of the Catholic faith, there were many ~ossl?l.e
responses, shaped by individual faith and circumstances, t?~ sOCIopolJt1cal context, life experiences, and certain structural condltlo~s (su~h as
access to knowledge of Judaism, exposure to Christian doctrlOe, ties to
Jewish communities, and so forth). ,!,he con.v~rsos,. furt?~rmore, were
not the only ones without dearly defined rehglous Identl~les. New and
Old Christians exhibited a wide range of beliefs and practices, and these
overlapped with each otherY Indeed, the insuf~ciency of religious instruction among cristianos viejos, particularly 10 rural areas, led the
church to target them, as well as moriscos, in its Christianizatio~ campaigns.44 Despite the religious militancy of the times, the question of
who or what was a true Christian did not have a clear answer.
Complicating the problem of religious identity before and after t~e ~s
tablishment of the Inquisition was the lack of clarity about how to dlstlOguish a false from a true conversion. Was the sincerity of conversos to be
measured by their beliefs, practices, or both, and which o~es? Resolving
this question proved difficult not only because what ;onst~tuted the true
Christian faith was still open to debate before the eouncd of Trent but
also because of the virtual impossibility of untangling "religious" from
"cultural" practices. Whether for Christians, Jews, ~r Muslims, spir~
tuality was not confined to a few spheres of life durlOg the late medieval and early modern periodsY And precisely because ~ulture and .reIigion were not compartmentalized into diff~rent domams, co~verslon
to Christianity meant much more than the disavowal of old beilefs and
commitment to new ones; it also implied dramatic changes in ancestral
traditions, habits, and rituals. Jews who converted to Christianity, for
example, were expected to radically alter practices related, a.mong. other
things, to diet, dothing, and hygiene. Most of these practICes dl~ not
directly challenge church doctrine and were therefore not techOlcally
heretical, but inquisitors and many contemporaries saw them as external signs of an internal affront to Christianity. They assumed that the
use of dean linen or clothes on certain days of the week, the refusal to
eat pork or to work on Saturday, the lighting of candles on the Sabbath,

39

Iberian Precedents

The Emergence of the Spanish Statutes

conversion entailed-these and other factors generated real social tensions. To be sure, these tensions had existed before, as had anxieties
over crypto-Judaism and ongoing interactions between conversos and
Jews. However, they acquired a new imporrance in the la~t third of t~e
fifteenth century, as the Catholic Kings used religion to mcrease their
popularity, as different social groups and members of th.e Mendicant
orders mobilized against the conversos, and as the war agamst Granada
intensified Christian zeal. In this context, religion mattered not so much
in the sense that crypto-Judaism was a serious problem-perhaps its
main importance was that it was perceived to be-but in the sense that
it powerfully shaped Old Christian attitudes, motivation~, and actions
(prompting them, for instance, to interpret almost anythmg conversos
did as "Jewish") and intensified other social conflicts-such as those between segments of the traditional nobility and the wealthy urban classes,
the commoner masses and the converso "bourgeoisie," and factions that
competed for control of local government.

,_
Christian, Jewish, and Muslim understandings about the
: intertwined nature of ancestry and religious identities, abo~t the function of "blood" in rhe transmission of certain beliefs and practices. The
importance of religion, furthermore, only increased after the establishment of the Inquisition. As a "national" tribunal in charge of investigating and punishing heresy and that at any moment could be unleashed
against neighbors or rivals, the Holy Office exacerbated frictions between New and Old Christians. And as a knowledge-producing institution that in identifying "crypto-Jewish" and "crypto-Muslim" practices
further blurred the line between religious and cultural practices, it also
contributed to the preoccupation with purity of blood and displacement
of anxieties over contamination onto women.

CONCLUSION

Although their exact origins are still a mystery, Spain's infamous statutes of purity of blood surfaced in the second half of the ~fteenth c~~
tury amid a climate of political and social unrest. Economic and poh~l
cal factors played a role in their emergence, but (hey cannot fully e~plam
why social strife took the form that it did-why, for example, st.I~~a
tization was based mainly on allegations of heresy, why the InqUisition
initially targeted not just conversos but heretics in general, and why conflicts between different groups (in religious orders, cathedral chapters,
town councils, and so forth) often involved anxieties about conversion.
Articulated with various other levels of existence, religion in fifteenthcentury Spain cannot be subsumed under other social relations and cannot be underestimated in terms of its ability to influence the actions of
various groups as well as individual subjectivities and collective identities. Its central role in Spanish life was due in part to the power of the
church in Castile, which had shaped not only politics but juridical culture and civil legislation, and ideas about the body, blood, reproduction,
and (he self. To paraphrase Stuart Hall, religion was the domain into
which all other social relations and ideological structures had to enter. 51
That some Old Christians manipulated it to ostracize conversos does
not minimize its role in establishing the terms of discourse, the acceptable criteria for exclusion and inclusion. The mass conversions of the
late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and subsequent events in fact

Race, Purity, and Gender

43

THE SPREAD OF THE L1MPIF.ZA

CHAPTER TWO

Race, Purity, and Gender

in Sixteenth-Century Spain
A la muier casta D/Os Ie basta
-Popular Spanish

expres~ion

2Y si tu bel/eza no ruese tu pureza?

-Graffili scribbled on a sueel wall in Seville, 1999

The statutes of purity of blood began to spread in earnest in the last

decades of the fifteenth century and in the first half of the sixteenth
garnered increasing royal and papal support, which in turn made them
acquire more momentum. During those years, the idea of limpieza de
sangre was not static. Old Christians not only extended it from conversos to other groups, but made it progressively more essentialist by
modifying its genealogical formulas and altering its relationship to both
race and gender. This chapter discusses those changes in the discourse of
limpieza de sangre. After describing the multiplication of statutes during
and after the late fifteenth century, it focuses on the meaning and transformation of the concept of purity of blood, its relationship to heresy
laws (and attendant notions of cultural and biological inheritance), and
its increasing reification of the categories of Old and New Christians.
This reification, the chapter argues, was accompanied by the increasing
deployment of the Spanish notion of raza and had gendered implications,
for it involved not only parting with traditional (patrilineal) genealogical
formulas but making women-and the female body in particular-into
main sources of "contamination."

DE SANGRE STATUTES

Writings on the statutes of limpieza de sangre are usually part of broader

studies of the Spanish Inquisition, which has fostered the impression
that it was that tribunal that initially promoted them. The Holy Office
certainly contributed to the preoccupation with purity of blood once it
came into being, but it dearly was not solely responsible for it. When
the Inquisition was founded in 1480, hostility toward the con versos had
already produced various limpieza requirements and not just in the city
of Toledo. ' Furthermore, the Holy Office did not officially require that
its officials submit proof of their purity of blood until about the 15 60s.
, By then, the statutes had reached a number of institutions and corporations in both Castile and Aragon, including the Jeronymite monastery of
Guadalupe (J486); Catalonia's Benedictine house of Monserrat (1502);
Seville's cathedral chapter (ISIS); the Spanish province of the Observant
. J, franciscan Order (1525); the church of Cordoba (1530); and the Capilla
de los Reyes Nuevas (IHo), a chapel in Toledo's Cathedra1. 2 The pheQomenon was not exclusive to religions bodies, and at least one geographic area, the Basque country's lordship of Vizcaya, passed a law in
1482 that denied entrance to all the descendants of Jews into the region.
In 1522, the Suprema ordered Salamanca, Valladolid, and Toledo not to
.. "\ issue university degrees to people with converso or heretic ancestors. The
prohibition restricted access to the learned professions and thus also to
most public and religious posts . .! By the middle of the sixteenth century,
acceptance to the three great military orders (Santiago, Alcantara, and
Calatrava) and a number of greater colleges (co/egios mayores), brotherhoods, guilds, and cathedral chapters in both Castile and Aragon was
conditioned on purity of blood. 4 Limpieza de sangre credentials were
sometimes also made necessary for private legal procedures, such as the
transmission of noble estates through the lllstitution of mayorazgo.
Despite the strong ecclesiastical and bureaucratic nature of the bodies that first had purity-of-blood requirements, neither the papacy nor
crOWn played a direct role in the establishment of the statutes, at least
not initially. Under the ancien regime (old order), Iberian institutions
tended to be of a quasi-private nature, with the juridical capacity to establish their own membership rules. The crown did not have enough authority to order the multitude of "communities" and corporate bodieseach cathedral chapter, military order, guild, and so forth-to implement purity-of-blood policies, which helps to explain why the statutes

44

Iberian Precedents

spread in a piecemeal fashion and why not every Spanish organization

adopted them. 5 But even if the sovereign had had the power to make
the "statutes" into "laws," that is, to require all establishments to adopt
them, it is not certain that it would have done so or when. Up until
the mid-sixteenth century, the policies of both Spanish kings and the
Holy See on the issue of limpieza de sangre were far from consistent.
Pope Nicholas V, for example, condemned the city of Toledo's 1449
statute, as did some top-ranking Castilian secular and religious officials. Conversely, Clement VII and several other popes confirmed the
Franciscan order's addition of a purity requirement into its constitution.
Starting in 1525 and continuing into the eighteenth century, each time
that a candidate for the order was examined for his qualifications, be it
in Spain or the Americas, the papal bulls and the guidelines for membership that they sanctioned were invoked as sources of authority. As
for Spanish monarchs, after equivocating, Juan II approved Toledo's
Sentencia-Estatuto, and Enrique IV supported a similar statute that Ciudad Real issued in 1468. Charles V backed the establishment of purity
requirements in greater colleges and Toledo's cabildo (town council),
among other places. 6
The Spanish crown and the papacy continued to vacillate during the
early decades of the sixteenth century, sometimes opposing, sometimes
confirming, the passage of statutes of limpieza de sangre by different
institutions. In the late 1)40S, however, official support for the doctrine
of purity of blood became more explicit. Once again, and almost a hundred years after the Sentencia-Estatuto, the city of Toledo took center
stage. After much maneuvering by the city's infamous archbishop, Juan
Martinez Silfceo, the top two religious and secular authorities approved
the decision of the cathedral chapter to demand proof of purity of blood
from its members-the pope in 1555 and King Philip II in 1556.1 The
significance of these developments cannot be emphasized enough. As the
primate of Spain, the Church of Toledo waS an extremely important religious center in Iberia and Europe in general, in terms of wealth and
power second only to St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome. By publicly condoning the cathedral's exclusionary policy, the crown and the Holy See
essentially encouraged other institutions, religious and secular, to pass
their own requirements of limpieza de sangre.
If Rome continued to be ambivalent about the issue 9f purity of blood,
Philip II for the most part promoted it. In 1566, for example, he ordered
Toledo's town council, which had fWO benches, one for "citizens" and
one for nobles, to make limpieza a requirement for the former. It was
also at around this time that the king ordered the Inquisition to ensure the purity credentials of its members. His policies, it is true, were

Race, Purity, and Gender

45

not entirely consistent, for he apparently granted some conversos rehabilitaciones, licenses that allowed them to participate in activities and
bonors from which they were otherwise excluded or dispensations that
pardoned their pu.nishments. s In addition, toward the end of his life,
Phillip II was conSidering placing a limit on limpieza investigations. De,.1'
spite these signs of flexibility toward the purity requirements, the king
generally supported them and never suggested that they he banned altogether. It should therefore come as no surprise that the number of
establishments, particularly churches, that adopted purity requirements
during his reign increased. At the turn of the sixteenth century, for example, at least twenty-one cathedral chapters of the thirty-five that existed in Castile had purity statutes. 9
One of the polemics in the historiography on the statutes revolves
around the question of whether they had an official or legislative ba';)' sis. Henry Kamen, for example, has argued that they were never a part
;;y of Spanish public law; had no judicial or legal sanction; and were restricted to a few, mainly private, institutions.1I) Although it may be true
that neither the Castilian cortes (parliament) nor the crown ever issued
a national blood law, the statutes cannot be reduced, as he implies, to
mere admission requirements by a few organizations in certain parts of
-, Castile. They were in fact publicly legitimated by the royal, ecclesiastical,
and legislative support that they eventually received. As rhe inquisitor
Juan Roco Campofrio stated in the early seventeenth century, the requirements acquired a great deal of authority precisely because they were
repeatedly confirmed by popes and kings, because those of the university
colleges were approved by the general laws of Spain, and hecause they
were sanctioned by Spanish common law and the laws of the kingdom of
Castile. It was also no small matter, he added, that limpieza status was
necessary for many public honors, dignities, and offices. l1 In short, the
absence of a general or national blood law should not obscure the royal
support that the statutes received, especially as of the mid-sixteenth century, and the public nature of some limpicza requirements. In Spanish
America, where the crown was freer to issue laws for the entire region,
official endorsement of the principle of purity of blood was to be even
Dlore explicit.
The continuing spread of the limpieza statutes in the second half of
the sixteenth century and more overt support that they received from
the crown were related to several developments, including the rise of
LUtheranism in parts of Castile. Especially from 1559 to 1,~61, Spain
focused on eradicating all manifestations of Protestantism, and this new
attack on heresy did not favor the suppression of the purity requirements.ll Furthermore, during this period, two other groups surfaced

Iberian Precedents

that, at least in the eyes of the Inquisition, were threatening to the unity
of the faith: the moriscos and the Portuguese conversos {cristaos nov(Js).D
The latter, which tendcd to have a strong group consciousness and included descendants of Jews who had left Spain in 1492, started to arrive in significant numbers after 1580, when the crowns of Castile and
Portugal were united. According to some of the proposals to reform the
statutes, Castile was compelled to retain purity requirements after its
conversos were no longer engaging in crypto-Judaism because of the
emergence of the two new communities of "unstable converts."14 finally,
the proliferation of the limpieza statutes was also related to Spanish colonialism, which in addition to producing rapid demographic and socioeconomic shifts in Iberia, transformed the issue of purity of blood into
a transatlantic preoccupationY As discussed in Chapter 7 of this book,
not only was Old Christian ancestry made a precondition for going to
Spanish America, but many an administrator who was assigned there
had to provide genealogical information and proof of his status. The organization of Spain's American colonies thus served as one of the motors
that kept the statutes and issue of limpieza de sangre alive in the Iberian
Peninsula.
The multiplication of the statutes of purity of blood, dramatic as it
was, has detracted attention from other changes that the requirements
underwent in the first one hundred years of their existence, particularly
in terms of the catcgorics and definitions of impurity. To grasp the nature and significance of these changes, it is first necessary to excavate
the conccpt of purity's initial ideological underpinnings, its early connection with notions of heresy, blood, and culture. The text that follows
will consider three main questions. How was heresy defined in late medieval Spain? What factors were thought to influence the transmission
of heretical behavior from parents to children? How did treatment of
heresy in canon law inform the Spanish statutes of purity of blood?

HfcRESY, BLOOD, AND

THE ESSfcNTIALIZATION OF "RACE"

By the time papal inquisitors first became active in the late Middle Ages,
the church defined heresy as a doctrinal error, based on an incorrect
reading of Scripture and publicly professed, and the heretic as someone
who had been baptized and taught the main principles of the faith but
rejected some or all of them.16 Those who were found guilty of the crime
were punished in a variety of ways and disqualified from the priesthood

Race, Purity, and Gender

47

and e~cles!astical posts. This. disqualification, furthermore, was applied

to theIr children an.d grandchildren. The "stain" of heresy, which implied
the legal status.of Illfamy, was thus passed down to direct descendants
for two gene~atJons. Certain institutions also denied membership to heretics and .t~e.lr progeny, bu.t there was some variation in how they applied
the prohIbitIOn. Some religloLls orders, for example, applied it to two
generations by the masculine line and one by the feminine. 17 This meant
that a candidate, say, for the Franciscan order, was subject to an investigation of the .religious history of his parents and paternal grandparents,
but not of hIS maternal grandparents. Furthermore, some institutions
t"
even excluded the great-grandchildren of heretics, thus denying eorrance
to all th?se w~o :-vere, within four generations of the source of infamy.l~
. Despite va.rlatlons III how heresy was punished, policies regarding hcretJc~ and their descendants were all based on the belief that people who
m:v,ated from church d~gma were likely to "infect" the family members
~Ith whom they came. mto contact. As one seventeenth-century SpanISh commentator explamed, the three-generation prohibition {three after
the heretic} was a lega~y of Saint Thomas Aquinas and Saint Augustine,
,' . , both of ~hom had wfltten that a sinner bequeathed his sins to his greatgrandchIldren but no more, "because a man can only get to see his dclCendants as far as the fourth generation, and after this time there is no
longer the fear that the successor will imitate the predecessor."I~ Central
to the treatment of heresy within canon law was thus the notion that it
was within the intimate sphere of the family that religious beliefs and
~eba~ior were reproduced. Just what role "blood" was believed to play
In thIS process-and what it stood for-was by no means clear, however.
The seventeenth-century commentator implied tbat heretical tendencies
were learned from parents, acquired through early exposure to deviant
, Jdeas. In this sense, "blood" was a metaphor for indoctrination within
the family rather than for biological reproductive processes. Yet contemporaries seldom articulated a clear distinction between "nature" and
"nurture." Rather, they tended to attribute the transmission of beliefs
and behavior to both cultural and biological inheritance and to conflate
the two.
Th: conflation of culture and biology in assumptions about heretical
, behaVIor partiy stemmed from shared understandings about human reProdUction, derived from religious texts (including the Bible and works
by the church fathers and medieval scholastics) and scientific theories re8ardin.g conception and generation. IO The main physiological theories of
t~ Middle Ages, heavily influenced by ancient Greek science and mediCine, tended to accord semen, breast milk, blood, and food a part in the

Iberian Precedents

creation and function of life. Food had a role in the generative process
because, at least according to the Aristotelian tradition, it was supposed
to transmute to blood after consumption. Blood, in turn, changed iota
sperm in men and into milk in women, the first helping to create life,
the second to sustain it. Because body, mind, and soul were seen as connected, the physical constitution of the parents, their bodily fluids, were
thought to contribute to the child's physiology and to his or her moral
and psychological traits. In short, biology was believed to be crucial
in determining the religious and behavioral dispositions of a new life,
but cultural factors such as food (and sometimes environmental ones
as well) were also deemed important, for they could, for instance, help
determine the potency of the male "seed."21
Various medieval theories granted both parents a role in the creation
of the embryo and in the biological transmission of physiological and behavioral traits to the child. Theories inspired by Galen, for example, held
that two seeds, one from the father and one from the mother, contributed to conception and that maternal blood nourished the new life both
inside and outside the womb because breast milk was transformed menstrual fluid or "blood twice cooked." Some medieval natural philosophers feared that Galen's ideas about conception actually gave too much
credit to the mother, but in general they acknowledged that she contributed to the generation of life and the baby's "physiological stuff."ll Despite recognition of the role of women in generation, most theories made
semen the key agent in the reproductive process and hence posited that
children resembled their fathers (exactly how much depending on the
"potency" and "movements" of sperm during conception). Some Aristotelian formulations went so far as to claim that female bodies were
capable of only making milk because they lost blood through menstruation and were never hot enough to produce the intense "concoction" neCessary for the creation of the "thick fluid" or male seed.23 According to
these formulations, the female body was too weak to decisively influence
the physiology and personality of the child, and in any event, the mother's breast milk, which at one point had been blood, was the substance
through which she herself had received the "physiological stuff" of her
male ancestors. Z4 Por all their emphasis on biological heredity, however,
none of the prevailing physiological theories construed the religious,
moral, and physiological traits in a given lineage as permanent. Whether
or not they privileged paternal descent, they all allowed for the possibility that these characteristics could change over the course of several generations. "Natural" traits were by no means rendered immutable.
The extent to which physiological theories developed by medieval
theologians and scientists influenced Spanish popular understandings

Race, Purity, and Gender

49

of h~w biology and human behavior were related is impossible to dett:rmme, but they c1e~rly informed the legal construction of heresy and
discourses o~ blood. for e~a~ple, beliefs about the role of both biology
and cultu~e III the transmiSSion of all sorts of characteristics from parents to C~I~~, the more prominent role of the father in this process, and
the pOSSIbility of mutability over time were partly responsible for the
tendency of laws On heretics to transfer "sins" through more generations
in the paternal line of descent than in the maternal one. In other words
tbe punishm~nts that were extended to a heretic's descendants were sup:
posed to be In place for a longer period of time if the culprit was a man
bec~use fathers were thought to leave more enduring physiological, behavioral, and psychological marks on their children, especially if they
were boys (because they were considered less malleable). This line of
thinking is explained in Didlogos familiares de la agricultura cristiana
'. a work by the franciscan Juan de Pineda completed between 1578 anj
1580. Written as a series of "dialogues" between four main i~terlocu
.' ~rs and m~dele~ on works from classical antiquity, it includes a discus'. Sian of the Illhentability of customs that renders women as weaker than
me~. ~nd therefore more able to leave behind their parents' values and
traditions and adopt new ones. The discussion ultimately suggests that
.' !Ilthough unions between members of "good" and "lesser" castes should
. ~erally be discouraged, if rhey were to happen, the pairing should
Involve a male of the superior group and a female of the inferior one.
Fathers were supposedly stronger than mothers and therefore their traits
. were passed down for more generations.
. These gender.ed and temporal assumptions helped shape heresy laws
as well as Spallish notions of nobility. Indeed, hidalguia (nobility) was
almost always determined and acquired on the basis of paternal ancestry.2S Kings could bestow nobleza de privilegio (nobility of privilege)
on a worthy commoner, for instance, and allow the status to be passed
<i?wn from father to son. On the third generation, nobleza de privilegm bec.arne nobleza de sangre (nobility of blood), the most valued noble
~atus 111 Spanish society because it implied being part of a privileged
~neage since "time immemorial." The strong Spanish belief in nobil, I,?, as a natural condition, as an "essence" transmitted by blood, thus
did not p~edude the possibility that it could be acquired through the
paternallme of descent and, after a few generations, transformed into
a permanent status. A similar patrilineal and generational logic at first
also operated in the discourse of purity of blood and informed the usage
, of the categories of New and Old Christians.
'. Initially modeled on the treatment of the children and grandchildren
of heretlcs
. Wit
. h
I
. .
III canon aw, the statutes of hmpleza de sangre were

Race, Purity, and Gender

Iberian Precedents

based on the notion that unstable Christians and their descendants had
(0 be deprived of access to a host of honors, privileges, and postS until
they had proven their loyalty to the faith, a process that w~s s,upposed
to require two or three generations. The first statutes thus limited how
far back manchas (stains) could be traced to the grandparents or what
contemporaries called the cuatro costados (four quarters). That Toledo's
Sentencia-Estatuto did not was certainly a bad omen, but by and large,
the early purity requirements applied a three-generation limit and placed
greater emphasis on the transmission.of "imp.urity" throug.hFaternal descent. The influential 1488 Instructions wntten by InqUiSitor General
Torquemada, for example, barred from public office and the holy ord.ers
the children and grandchildren of conversos who had been found gud.ty
of judaizing. The Catholic Kings approved this policy and in 1501 ISsued twO decrees prohibiting the descendants of convicted crypto-Jews
within tWO degrees on the parernalline and one on the mater~al fr~m
holding any offices of honor and from exercising certain professIOns, including those of notary public, scrivener, physician, surgeon, and apo~h
ecary.26 The Church of Seville and other institutions that adopted ~u~lty
statutes in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries placed similar
limitations on how far back stains could be traced. At least in theory,
such limitations meant that the great-grandchildren of all converts to
Christianity were eligible for Old Christian status and that the chance.s
that a person of "mixed" descent would be declared ~ure were better If
his or her Jewish ancestry ran on the maternal bloodline.
But if the statutes of purity of blood generally followed some of the
gendered and tempOral principles operating in canon law's treatment of
the descendants of heretics, they also differed in significant ways. Most
obviously, they identified two separate categories of impurity: descent
from condemned heretics and descent from Jews. Whereas the first category had its antecedents in canon law, the second, bas~d on .t~e argument that many conversos had not yet fully embraced CathoiJClsm and
were therefore potential heretics, did not and posed a profound problem
for the Spanish church. As critics of the Sentencia-Estatuto and later
advocates of reforming the statutes pointed out, the distinction between
cristianos viejos and cristianos nuevos undermined the principle of the
equality of all Christians. Apparently invoking Paul's Episrl~ to the Galatians (Gal. 3:28), they stressed that those who accepted baptism, whether
they descended from Greeks, Jews, or any other "nations," were supposed to be fully incorporated into the Christian community.l.7 ~uring
the Middle Ages, it was not uncommon for converts and their Imrr.'ediate descendants to be barred from the priesthood, but that practice
was informal and did not systematically target one particular group.
The statutes did, thereby undermining the notion that conversion was

5'

means for achieving redemption and a relatively expedient vehicle for

"transforming ancestral beliefs and practices.
Supporters of the statutes retorted that the blood requirements were
; ",mIPo,""Y measures, mechanisms to ensure that the faith was not endan~
by
of converts, and that eventually the cOl1ver,: 50S would be
I members of Christian society. 2~ The extent to which
. these concerns with safeguarding the faith were genuine is difficult to
" ..,eel"ain, but certain institutions and Iimpieza decrees initially did not
c-iassify
as sources of impurity, only those who had actually
, been convicted of crypto-Judaism or heresy.19 This restricted definition
the category of impurity was short-lived, however. During the first
of the sixteenth century, the statutes increasingly classified as imthe children and grandchildren of all converted Jews, independent
whether they had been associated with heresy or not. Furthermore,
:~,her.,."" first they tended to treat only the descendants of persons who
been relaxed or reconciled by the Holy Office as stained, any genea'1o!!i,,.1 connection to individuals (converso or not) who had been in any
penanced, sometimes even just tried, by an inquisitorial tribunal
to constitute a blemish on a lineage. JO These changes created a
: ::~~: a~~ chasm between the notion of limpieza de sangre and that of
,'l
one that became even wider when the statutes were altered in
additional respects.
The most obvious change was the extension of the concept of imto people of Muslim ancestry. For decades after the conquest of
~~~~s~:~a~s~some moriscos were able to make the case that they were Old
f~'
a category that their descendants continued to cling to when
were expelled a century later. 11 Their ability to claim purity of blood
l~::~~;~to depend on whether they had converted before 1492, because it
,':
that they had turned to the faith more or less voluntarily, as wen
on whether they had Old Christian fathers. Again, the logic operating
one that emphasized paternal descent and the role of the father in
,.,~.,;, ~:~~.:~,t~l~he religious and cultural inclinations of children. Bur by about
.:;
of the sixteenth century, when religious and secular authorities started to consider the conversion campaigns in Granada a complete
'~.,;' failure, descent from a Muslim was systematically included as one of the
': impure categories. The Second Rebellion of the Alpujarras (1568-7),
".,'
by Philip Ii's reissuing of orders to prohibit all sorts of practices
',':, "
were supposed to be associated with Islam, including the use of
.: Arabic, contributed to this process. The rebellion reinforced the idea
that this community was a serious religious and political problem and
led the government to try to disperse it throughout the kingdom. J2 These
attempts, however, did not dissipate the belief that the moriscos were
too wedded to Islam to become sincere Christians.

Race, Purity, and Gender

Iberian Precedents

The statutes also changed in that they began to hinge as much on maternal as on paternal ancestry.33 Whereas having an Old Christian father
had earlier allowed some moriseos to claim purity status, this was no
longer the case in the second half of the sixteenth century. Even though
the paternal bloodline generally continued to be more important in social and legal terms and in certain types of inheritance, especially as of
the 1560s, the purity status of the father no longer prevailed over that
of the mother; a stricter dual-descent model of limpieza de sangre classification operated. Finally, the limitations on how many generations
back stains could be traced began to disappear. This process started in
the THos. By the end of the century, the most imporant religious and
secula~ bodies in Spain, including the Church of Cordoba, Toledo's cathedral, the great military orders, the Inquisition, and the major colleges and universities, did not restrict purity investigations to the cu~tro
costados.34 The possibility that the descendants of Jews and Muslims
could, after a few generations, claim the status of Old Christian had all
but disappeared. The category of cristiano viejo, which had appeared
before but entered into regular use only in the sixteenth century, came
to be defined as someone whose ancestry was proven to be pure since
"time immemorial."3s
To summarize, the statutes of limpieza, which rested on gendered genealogical and reproductive principles, were modeled on certain heresy
laws and their assumptions about rhe links between kinship, blood, and
religious identification, but during the sixteenth century, they came to
differ in significant ways. They generally classified as impure not just
the descendants of actual heretics but of all Jews and Muslims and of
anyone punished by the Inquisition, they placed equal importance on
maternal and paternal descent, and they did not establish any temporal
limits on the investigation of genealogical stains. Certainly, variations in
how different institutions determined the status of limpieza continued to
exist. But the general trend was one of rupture with the patrilineal and
generational formulas that had informed legal constructions of heresy
and nobility and, consequently, a dramatic restriction of the category
of purity. The shift to a more rigid dual-descent model of classification,
coupled with the elimination of limits on how far ~ack stains cou~d ?C
traced, transformed purity of blood from a naturaltst to an essentialist
principle,36 one that no longer allowed for the possibility of the mutability of "natural" traits over the generations-except, that is, through
biological "mixture." The overall significance of this transformation
was the construction of conversos and moriseos as a particular type of
convert, never fully able to rid themselves of their ancestral beliefs and
therefore never capable of becoming fully realized Christians.

53

The essentialist nature of the concept of limpieza de sangre was reflected in the deployment of the Castilian word raza against the converts
and their descendants. Although the exact origins of this term are uncerrain. perhaps dating as far back as the thirteenth century, its use started
to become prominent only in the I500sY Like its equivalents in other
European languages, raza at this time generally referred to lineage. 3s As
such. its connotations varied and were not all negative. Sometimes the
word simply alluded to the succession of generations, for example, while
at others it appeared in phrases such as good race. It was also frequently
used to distinguish between nobles and commoners. 19 During the sixteenth century, however, the term was strongly attached to religion and
came to refer not so much to ancestry from pecheros (taxpayers) and vi/:,: Janos (commoners) but to descent from Jews, Muslims, and eventually
: _other religious categories. In the process, it shed virtually all of its positive and neutral connotations. Thus, by the early seventeenth century,
the Castilian linguist Sebastian de Covarrubias Orozco wrote that when
;, it was used to refer to lineages. the word had a pejorative meaning, "like
baving some Moorish or Jewish race."41l For this reason, Old Christians
seldom applied it to themselves. Jews, Muslims, and even Protestants
were marked through the concept of race, but not the people with putar .': tively long and unsullied tics to the Catholic faith.
To be sure, the early modern concept of race, whether in Spain or
other western European countries, operated within a Judea-Christian
': tystem of beliefs still firmly rooted in the idea of monogenesis, of a comInOn creation. Used mainly to "designate a set of persons, animals or
connected by common descent or origin," the word race "was
part of a conceptual scheme in which the distinctive characteristics of
: ',' specimens were explained genealogically, by showing where they be"', longed in God's creation."41 The notion that all people descended from
, Adam and Eve, however, did not prevent the use of putative lineage or
.' i~agine~ biblical origins to create, or account for, human groupings and
~
;.":' hierarchIes. Certain communities were believed to derive from different
ancestors, and thus some were thought to have more privileged
, :'>',;', hneages than others. As fray Juan de Pineda wrote in his "dialogue"
~'
the importance of marrying women of good caste (casta), the idea
that Old Christian males should not marry females of the "Jewish race"
:".- (taza judia) or Jewish converts to Christianity (marranas) was not in"-,::,
.
with the theory of a common treation. Just as all horses were
bf
same "race" but some were of a better "caste" than others, human
, !ineages had particular origins and hence specific characteristics. And
;> JUst as one tried to produce better horses by not breeding those of good
".,,'."" with lesser ones, so with humansY

r ','.-

.'

54

Iberian Precedents

If genealogy helped to construct race In the early modern period,

it was not deployed in the same way across Europe. For example, in
sixteenth-century France, the idea of noblesse de sang (nobility of blood)
and the word race were used primarily to distinguish between nobles and
commoners. 43 Espousing quasi-biological notions regarding "natural"
inequalities between the two estates, the French aristocracy used the concept of race to justify its domination of nonnobles (roturiers) and to discourage marriage and reproduction with commoners, whose "tainted
blood" was said to have a corruptive effect on noble lineages. 44 To the
extent that ideas about genealogy, noble blood, and race operated jointly,
the French concept of race mainly constituted a "class" mode of discourse. Notions of nobility of blood were of course also important in
Spain, but as argued above, during the sixteenth century, Castilian conceptions of lineage and race came to be deployed more to religious groups
and their descendants than to estates. Linked to sin and heresy, the word
raza tended to be applied to communities-namely, Jews, Muslims, and
sometimes Protestants-deemed to be stained or defective because of
their religious histories. 41 It therefore constituted more of a religious
mode of discourse. The term limpieza de sangre itself is said to have
come from Judea-Christian religious concepts associated with protecting the faith from defilement and the purity of the community.46 What
made the early modern Spanish notion of race distinctive, then, was its
direct and powerful link to Judaism, Islam, and heresy, a linkage that
the spread of the statutes reinforced and that had solidified by the second half of the sixteenth century.

TilE INQUISITION'S PRODUCTION OF HERESY

AND THE FEMINIZATION OF IMPURITY

The transformation that the concept of purity of blood underwent in

the sixteenth century-its increasing essentialism and connection to the
notion of raza-can partly be attributed to Old Christian attempts to
make access to key institutions more difficult in order to reserve positions of power and influence for themselves. But it was also a product of
the Inquisition's campaigns to stamp out clandestine Judaic and Muslim
practices, which strengthened preexisting assumptions about the transmission, through the blood, of beliefs and behavior from parents to children and also altered them by feminizing religion. Key in this process
were the lists of external signs of heresy that were read to the public by
inquisitors during the regular announcement of "edicts of grace" and
"edicts of faith," periods in which people were encouraged to confess

Race. Purity. and Gender

"

. their sin~ (and/or denounce others) with the promise of receiving rela. tively mild sentences and of reconciling with the churchY These lists
included a host of practices that took place in the home, and therefore
rnainly located religion in a female domain. The disappearance of aU
Jewish and Muslim institutional life, in which men had played a central
role, made the Holy Office turn its gaze to the more private sphere of
tbe household. Not a few inquisitors believed that conversas and moriscas raised their children as Christians until a certain age, and then told
them of their Judaic or Muslim origin as well as instructed them how to
behave, both secretly and in public.~x Whether this allegation was true
or not, a disproportionate number of the conversos and moriscos that
., the Holy Office executed or otherwise punished during the sixteenth
century were women. Oftentimes denounced by kitchen servants slaves
or neighbors, these women were tried for reproducing Jewish or Muslin;
uaditions in t.h~ home,. for turning the domestic domain into a space
of cu.ltural-rel~glous resistance through, among other things, cleaning,
cookmg, dancmg, and death rituals. 49
The Holy Office's persecution of convcrsas and moriscas as key agents
,
..
.
re~pectivcly, of Jewish and Muslim identities roughly
CQlDclded With the shift to a dual-descent model of dassificarion that
.. with the modification of previous genealogical formulas and f~1l extension of notions. of impurity to women. Was this shift influenced by
knowledge of the Importance that maternal descent had in Jewish cul.. ~re? Possibly, b~t equally or more significant were the Inquisition's particular constructions of crypto-.Iudaism and crypto-Islam, which shifted
the focus of the "heresy problem" to the family and helped to construe
~omen as main sources of impurity. Indeed, the imagery of contaminatwn was ubiquitous in sixteenth-century Spain, and the female body
was undoubtedly at the center of it. Concerns that the milk of "impure"
wet nurses (nodrizas) would contaminate Old Christian children, for
.',. example, were at an all-time high during this period. These concerns
Were most acute with regard to the king, whose nodrizas were suppos~d to be. carefully screened, but they were not exclusive to the royal
famdy. Various authors of Spain's Golden Age of literature wrote that
Old Christian infants raised on the milk of conversas would judaize,
a~ popular belief similarly held that even if pure by the four corners,
~luldren who were raised and suckled by morisca wet nurses would be
Islamized" (amoriscados). \0 Once infected, these children were permanently marked. As a colloquial saying from the period put it, en 10 que
>- en ~a L~che se mama en La mortaja se pierde (loosely translated as "that
which IS imbibed in breast milk is retained until death"). Because of its
as sactatlOn
..
wit h b lood {the vehicle through which natural traits were

Iberian Precedents

supposedly transmitted to children), breast milk in fact became one of

the main metaphors of cultural and biological contagion-a dear sign
that women's bodies became the symbolic territories in which communal boundaries were drawn. 51
The frequent allusions to breast milk as a contaminating agent were
symptoms of how the ideology of limpieza de sangre had increased concerns with endogamy and created a particular sexual economy, one
that assigned separate value to women depending on their purity status. Stated differently, the constrw.:tiun of con versa and morisca bodies
as impure was inextricably linked [0 anxieties about sexual, marital,
and reproductive relations between Old and New Christians. These concerns had appeared a century earlier-with the first statutes-but became much more pronounced as the limpieza requirements proliferated,
as the inquisitorial eye focused on heretical practices within the sphere
of the family, and as the social and material costs associated with marrying impure women increased. Some institutions began to require that
members establish their limpieza as well as that of their wives. As of
the 1560s, for example, access to almost all inquisitorial offices and titles was in theory denied to applicants who were married to "stained"
women. Some confraternities, including that of the Sangre de Jesucristo,
also did not accept members who had any "race of confesos [conversos] or Moors" or who were married to women who were not pure. 52
furthermore, once the status of purity of blood depended equally on
paternal and maternal descent, an Old Christian male who wed a New
Christian woman could not "redeem" his progeny. Not only were his descendants ineligible for a series of honors, professions, and public and religious offices, and sometimes even for inheriting mayorazgos (entailed
estates) but his lineage was permanently "tainted." This process was vividly illustrated in the Holy Office's classification of the children of mixed
unions. It designated the offspring of a New and an Old Christian as
"half New Christians." The children of a "half New Christian" and a
"full Old Christian," were considered "quarter New Christians," "quarter Moors," or "quarter Jews." The categories conrinued until the person was only "one sixteenrh of a New Christian"; beyond that, he or
she was simply listed as "a part of New Christian."" The Inquisition's
system of "hybrid" classifiC1.tions-a key precursor to Latin America's
sistema de castas-did nO[ leave much of a terminological legacy in the
Iberian Peninsula but was indicative of how the statutes of limpieza de
sangre constructed "mixture" between Old and New Christians as an
irreversible corruption of pure lineages, as a process of degeneration that
not even the "holy seed" of cristianos viejos could prevent. Even if suppressed for a few generations, the "natural" traits and "inclinations" of
Jews and Muslims would return: natura revertura. 14

Race, Purity, and Gender

57

If the statutes produced a sexual economy that generally lessened the

desirability of conversas and moriscas as wives,-H they had different COilsequences for Old Christian women. Because the status of limpieza was
determined by both bloodlines and required legitimate birth in order to
establish paternity, marriage to a cristiana vieja became indispensable
for the maintenance of genealogical and family preeminence. At the same
time, the Old Christian fear that pure women would secretly introduce
. _!."
tainted blood into a lineage made their sexuality more subject to control. The statutes thus reinforced Spanish notions of familial honor that
stressed chastity for unmarried women and fidelity for married ones. 56 A
number of authors, including Fray Luis de Leon, Juan de Espinosa, Juan
Luis Vives, and Juan de la Cerda, wrote texts or "manuals" detailing
proper conduct for women, particularly married ones. 17 Their prescriptions, which invariably stressed virtuous sexual behavior, enclosure, and
obedience, appeared as the Virgin Mary was being transformed from a
symbol of fertility to one of passive motherhood and as the cult of her im. maculate conception began to grow, particularly among the Franciscans.
" In the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, she became a powerful
" symbol of female purity, a transformation that was probably not unrefated to the Spanish society's concerns with safeguarding Old Christian
I ~~~~~::~through control of women's sexuality. \~ For a married woman,
ii~
Vives in 152.3, two factors are of utmost importance: chastity and
do.., her husband. These two virtues, he added, were also those of the
church, "which is most chaste and tenaciously preserves unshaken faith
in its Spouse, Christ. Though harassed internally by suitors, which is to
. _ aay, baptized heretics, and attacked externally by pagans, Moors, and
-." Jews, it has never been contaminated by the least stain, and it believes
" and senses that all its good is found in the spouse, Christ."59
],.
Given the context in Spain when the author wrote his manual in
which conversos were being tried for heresy by the Inquisition, Vi:es's
re~rence to the church's being harassed and "courted" by baptized heretiCS seems to function as a message to Old Christian women to remain
loyal to their men as well as to the church. The analogy as well as the
language of purity and pollution links religious, sexual, and genealogical contamination. To be sure, the rise in concerns with policing female
chastity was not due exclusively to the spread of the ideology of limpieza
de sangre. The tridentine reforms' emphasis on regulating marriage and
morality strengthened efforts to repress women's sexuality in the whole
of Catholic Europe. But in Spain, these efforts (by no means a comier Success) were made all the more urgent by the doctrine of purity of
its privileging of endogamic marriage and legitimate birth, and
'~ff.:;~:~~.:~:~ different implications for men and women as well as for
Cl
categories of women. Religion, lineage, gender, sexuality, and

f,,,

58

Iberian Precedents

Race, Purity, and Gender

rtproduction were all integral components of a social and symbolic order

premised on the natural superiority of Old Christians over all others.

systematically study, classify, and rank human groups according

'UI'P""d biological distinctions and degrees of rationalityY But the
particular definition of race during the passage from the ancien

CONCLUSION

During the first cemury that the ideology of Iimpieza de sangre spread
across Spain, it was not only extended from con versos to moriscos and
other religious categories, but it encouraged a shift in thinking about
genealogy and the different roles that men and women played in {biological and cultural) reproduction. Paradigms of sex and gender were
altered in relation to changing historical circumstances and dominant
notions of social organization. As Christianity became more militant
and the Im.Juisition's investigations of heresy seemed to confirm assumptions about the "intractability" of Jewish and Muslim identities, relatively fluid definitions of purity of blood gave way to more essentialist
ones that promoted endogamy and mapped anxieties over contamination Onto female bodies. Fears of women as contaminating agents were
reinforced by the social and material consequences that, thanks to the
spread of the statutes and support they received from the church and
state, awaited individuals of "pure" Christian ancestry who mixed with
people of "tainted" lineages. By the last third of the sixteenth century,
any drop of Jewish or Muslim blood could result in disqualification from
important religious and secular institutions and from various public
honors and posts. The notion of Iimpieza de sangre, at first deployed as
a temporary tool to ensure the purity of the faith, had been transformed
into a mechanism of exclusion that no longer allowed for "purification"
through temporal or gendered genealogical formulas.
The features that the Iimpieza statutes had acquired by the midsixteenth century led a number of historians who saw them as mainly
a function of a religious problem-who believed that crypto-Judaism
was common-to admit that they had become more about race.611 But
notwithstanding the recent wave of works that locate the origins of racial discourse in early modern Iberia, the claim that race was operating in the sixteenth century continues to be polemical, vulnerable to
charges of anachronism by scholars who argue that because the term
race acquired its modern biological connotations only in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it should not be applied to earlier periods, when more cultural understandings of difference prevailed.~l It
is true that the concept began to undergo significant changes during
the Enlightenment and expansion of mercantile capitalism, as natural
philosophers, anatomists, and skull collectors, among others, began to

\9

~~~:~~t:o~;m:;'~'d~,~'~}nity
does not mean that the term can be used only to
modern phenomena or that it had salience only from the late

onward. Race is not stable, and history has produced

one but many racisms, some of which predate modern capitalism
the Enlightenment.~3 Moreover, no racism is entirely novel; "fragments of its past incarnations are embedded in the new."64 Rather than

:;:r;~~l~t~:h~~e

study of race in the early modern period, then, the rise of

makes imperative deeply historical (genealogical) inof its past incarnations.
daim that race can be used only to describe modern phenomena
..' is problematic because it rests on the belief that there is a single, transhi,,,,,i'031 racism, and because it is frequently based on the assumption
the notion is operating only when it deploys biological notions of
.d,iff,,,,nc,.This assumption has in fact framed the debate about whether
statutes of purity of blood were about race (i.e., biology) or religion.
present the problem of limpieza in those terms, however, is to fall
.. into a conceptual trap, to rely on a rigid definition of race that renders
raci~m"

ti:~~~~:::,3a:n~d cultural/religious constructions of difference as mutually

. The concept does not always need biology to "do its work."
nationalisms that have posited cultural differences as timeand insurmountable have amply demonstrated that even in modern
culture itself can be essentialized and come to function as race. 65
:.
a key feature of racial discourse is that it does not just natural.:~ ize or biologize but "allows for a strategic equivocation between nature
,
culture."66 Even if appeals to biology were a necessary component
the concept would still not have to be reserved for the study of
: modern phenomena, for no matter how vaguely articulated and protean
.
medieval and early modern theories of reproduction and generawere, quasi-biological-or rather, genealogical-arguments dearly
01..," a role in shaping notions of purity and nobility of blood.
TllO point is that there are no compelling theoretical or historical reaIOns for not using the concept of race to describe conflicts between Old
.. and New Christian~ and the problematic of limpieza de sangre; after all,
., '. early modern Spaniards did. The categories of Old and New Christian,
.. furthermore, were built on binaries, including puritylimpurity, beauty/
, ugliness (cristianos lindas), and rationality/sensuality, that arc all-toofamiliar tropes of racial discourse. That said, it is important to reiterate,
: ,.' ~rst, that Spain was not the only early modern European country where
. : . Ideas about race were being produced and hence cannot take credit for

60

Iberian Precedents

giving birth to Western racism. Although the level of institutionalization

that ideas of purity of blood achieved in Iberia might make it tempting to set it apart from the rest of Europe, anti-Semitism was rampant
throughout the continent, and other countries also rdied on genealogy to construct "race." Arising more or less simultaneously in various
countries, the concept's sudden conspicuousness was linked to internal
European dynamics as well as to expansion to the Americas, the establishment of the transatlantic slave reade, and other "global" processesY
Granting Spain a special place in the history of racism while ignoring
or underplaying the phenomenon outside its borders is not only historically problematic but reinforces the Black Legend. Second, it is crucial
to emphasize that the early modern concept of race must be understood
in all of its historical and cultural embedded ness. In Spain, it acquired
its significance in the context of the spread of the statutes of purity of
blood, which constituted a complicated discourse-a system of meaning
production-about lineage, culture, and religion and about conversion,
generation, and degeneration. Applied mainly to Jews and Muslims and
occasionally also Protestants, the notion of raza was incubated in religious cosmologies; informed by late medieval understandings of genealogy and reproduction; and intimately tied co discreet practices within
the familial, domestic domain.
Recognizing the imbrication of race and religion in early modern
Spain is important for the historicization of racial ideologies and for understanding the form that Spanish colonial ideology would take in the
Americas, where casta categories were strongly shaped by metropolitan
ideas about conversion, genealogy, and "blood mixture" and where a
community's purity status was largely determined by its presumed relationship to the Catholic faith. Before venturing into the American context, however, it is necessary to explore one more aspect of the concept
of purity of blood: how it was "proven." The ways in which limpieza de
sangre was certified in different institutions and functioned as a juridical category of personhood had profound implications for early modern Spanish culture. As discussed in Chapter 3, the legal formulas and
procedures used in determining limpieza status made genealogy and
filiation central to the constitution of Spanish identities and made the
juridical process a constant site of contestation and manipulation. These
formulas and procedures also promoted an obsession with origins that
laid the groundwork for the development of particularly strong links, in
both Spain and Spanish America, among religion, race, and "nation."

CHAI'TER THREE

Juridical Fictions
The Certification of Purity and the
Construction a/Communal Memory

notions of purity and impurity of blood were fictions, ideoconstructs based on religious and genealogical understandings
diff,mK' that despite their invented nature were no less effective at
social practices, categories of identity, and self-perceptions. I If
by the educated elite, popular literature, and colloquial expresare any indication, the concept of limpieza was not exclusive to
segment of the Old Christian population but was embraced by sigportions of the nobility and commoner masses. Although there
no consensus on whether the statutes' main impetus came from the
or upper estate, various scholars strt!SS that the idea of purity of
had appeal not only for aristocrats who felt threatened by upmobile conversos, hut for peasants and other commoners who
to bolster their sense of honor vis a vis the converso or "mixed"
'?:::::i.~.':,R::esentment toward the converts and their descendants because
It
or social reasons, the leveling effect of the concept of purity
the Old Christian population, and the resonance of the idea of
intractable "Jewish nature" with medieval anti-Semitic discourses
>Ilconoribu,",d to the spread of the statutes. These factors, however, do
entirely explain the longevity of the ideology of limpieza de sangre
Spanish society. Outliving the Inquisition, some purity requirements
not abolished until the 1860s. How did the concept of limpieza
sangre and its underlying assumptions about religious identities get
"t~:~~::,i::n::to the everyday life of early modern Spaniards? Through what
and practices were they reproduced? And how did purity
blood operate as a juridical category? In short, what social forces,

il . .

Iberian Precedents

Juridical Fictions

institutions, and legal and archival mechanisms helped reproduce the

discourse of purity of blood?
This chapter analyzes these questions and in particular some of the
institutional and legal mechanisms that contributed to making the categories of New and Old Christian into salient, ongoing, and taken-forgranted distinctions in early modern Spain. It focuses on the procedures
for establishing purity of blood developed by the Inquisition because,
thanks to the Holy Office's various regional tribunals and authority on
matters of the faith, its genealogical and juridical formulas for proving
limpieza de sangre not only became models for other institutions but
were disseminated among populations in both Spain and America, in
both contexts having a long-lasting effect on racial thought. These juridical procedures were implicated not juSt in the homogenization of definitions of purity but in making the use of the categories of New and Old
Christian enter into the realm of the habitus, a form of mediation that
by making certain social practices seem natural, part of a commonsense
world, turns history "into nature, i.e., denied as such."3
The chapter stresses that legal mechanisms for certifying purity arose
for a number of reasons, including concerns among some Old Christians
that with the passage of time, memory of "stained" lineages would fade;
that false genealogies were proliferating; and that persons of Jewish or
Muslim descent could not be easily identified through external, physical
signs. It also explains the significance that the probanzas placed on nativeness and citizenship for determining the status of limpieza de sangre,
a topic that is later elaborated upon in discussions of legal and social hierarchies in Spanish America. Finally, the last section focuses on some of
the contradictions and consequences (Intended and otherwise) that the
process of certifying purity engendered in early modern Iberia. Meant
to serve as mechanisms of exclusion and tools through which to deteCl
impurity, the genealogical and juridical formulas involved in the process
were not only constantly manipulated but also paradoxically fostered
communal memories that helped to produce the myth of a pure Spain.

did not establish explicit guidelines for the verification of "clean"

in,age" apparently because Spaniards still remembered the COnvertook place after Toledo's Sentencia-Estatuto and after the
nquis,iti,on began to try cases of heresy.4 As the memory of these two
of conversions declined and along with it the ability to identify
winnow out "the impure," certain institutions started outlining and
~~:;;'i~;:; the procedures that were to be followed in genealogical inThe identification of con versos and moriscos was made even
by their lack of distinguishable characteristics. As the sixteenthy ;~:~~~"W~~"~iter Juan Gutierrez remarked, "These descendants
11
and Judaic races, cannot be distinguished by any
extrinsic act, by any ocular external note or sign, from authenSpaniards.'" External signs such as skin color and hair would play
more prominent role in Spanish America's discourse of limpieza de
but there, too, legal procedures for certifying pure genealogies
surface.
Spain's Church of Cordoba might have been the first to develop a pucertification process, in 1530, but in terms of setting the tone for
!thee ,establi,],mcn's, the IH7 decision by the Capilla de los Reyes Nueto require that genealogical certificates be produced and submitnot by the candidates themselves bur by designated officials was of
transcendence." By that time, the shift toward more rigorous prowas being propelled not just by the need to establish more efficanu,.",,, of tapping into and preserving communal memory of stained
m"al,og"es . It was also motivated by the perception among certain reI that a growing number of people were using fraudulent
to access institutions with statutes of purity of blood, by the
that the struggle against heresy had acquired as Protestantism
Europe, and by SiHceo's relentless efforts to exclude conversos
Toledo's cathedral. In short, the probanza developed in the context
increasing concerns with memory, institutional exclusivity, and reliorthodoxy, all of which, as reflected in the shift to a strict dual~sc"ntmodel of determining limpieza status, favored the restriction of
category of Old Christian.
Given its mission to protect the faith, its long jurisdictional tentacles,
its burgeoning archival infrastructure, the Inquisition was ideally
to take a leading role in the development of the probanza system,
pointed out in the previous chapter, it did not do so immediately.
f'l'h"""h orders that Inquisition officials had to be Old Christians had
in the institution's books since at least 1513, they started to be
;im'pl"m',m,d only after Philip II issued several decrees (in 1553, 1.,\"62,

THE HOI.Y Or.FlCE'S PROCEDURES AND THE PROBANZA

DE L1MPIEZA ut: SANGRE

The statutes of purity of blood produced the Spanish legal genre called
the probanza de limpieza de sangre ("probanza" for short). The origins
of this genre were bound up with the problem of memory. Though some
institutions had adopted limpieza requirements in the fifteenth century,

Iberian Precedents

Juridical Fictions

and 1)"72) that made purity of blood a requirement for all Holy Office
perso~nel, including inquisitors, cunsultores (advisors on legal matters),
familiares ("familiars" or lay informants), commissioners, and secretaries? The only official who did not have to abide by this requirement was
the inquisitor general, presumably because he was supposed to be more
of a papal than royal appointment (he seldom was). The 1572 decree
called for the Holy Office to verify, always through trustworthy and respectable witnesses, that its members were Old Christians without any
genealogical ties to Jews or Muslims or to persons who had been relaxed,
reconciled, or penanced. This verification could not be waived, even if
the candidate enjoyed a canonry or other dignities within the church and
had submitted proofs of Iimpieza to other communities or corporations,
including the prestigious military orders. The decree also stipulated that
all married candidates and those who wed after receiving their titles had
to submit proof of purity for their wives. This provision sought mainly
to safeguard institutional honor and credibility. A male's marriage to an
"impure" woman linked him to an unclean family and "contaminated"
his descendants, and the Inquisition, in charge of safeguarding the faith,
could not afford to be linked to lineages assumed to have a proclivity to
engage in religious subversion. Crucially, the decree did not specify how
far back genealogical stains could be traced.
Although the 1572 decree contained a few instructions regarding the
purity certification procedure, the Inquisition actually developed many of
them during the last third of the sixteenth century. The principal change
during this period was the greater emphasis on determining the social staws of the candidate and ensuring that neither he nor any other member of
his family had been involved in "vile or mechanical trades" ("of/cios viles
o mecanicos").~ The requirements for familiars in particular became more
rigid and exclusive, as the Inquisition sought to eliminate from its ranks
individuals of commoner origins. But if by the early seventeenth century a
certain degree of wealth was necessary for becoming a familiar, being affluent did not necessarily work in the candidate's favor. Worried that people with means but of humble origins were using bribes to obtain offices
and tities, the Suprema in 1602 urged inquisitorial tribunals not only to ascertain that their members were pure of blood and of good social standing,
but to protect themselves from infiltration by "new money."~ Like other
early modern Spanish institutions, the Holy Office tried, albeit sometimes
without much rigor, to reinforce aristocratic privilege at the expense of
merchants, artisans, and other members of the incipient bourgeoisie.
The Inquisition's role in the regularization of the process for certifying purity of blood increased its power. As the only institution with

statute that had extensive and reliable archives, it acquired authoron limpieLa issues, especially as memory of stained lineages faded.
'fhough i" genealogical investigations were often the source of anxieties,
probanzas were coveted, even by some nobles who did not seek its
or offices and who had already proven their purity to the military
"Nl<rs . '" The influence that the Holy Office gained as a result of its dei~:~~:~;'~: of formal procedures for certifying limpieza extended to the
~
context. As of the 1570s, it began sending detailed instructions
questionnaires to all of its tribunals, including those that were just
established in the Americas. Before long, a transatlantic probanza
was in place that helped spread concerns with purity outside of
Iberian Peninsula. This system operated without interruption until
century and contributed to the longevity and relative
;j~~:':;:;i~~~'::;~;'~~
of the discourse of limpieza de sangre in the broader Hispanic
then, did the Inquisition certify limpieza de sangre? The process
I,o,.""ally began when the person wishing to be considered for a title,
or ministerial post petitioned the nearest tribunal. He did this by
lul,mitting his genealogical information, called informacion de limpieza
sangre, informaci6n de genealogia y limpieza de sangre, or simply
inJ'orm"ei,on," and sometimes by also presenting a number of people
could attest to its contents.l1 If the petitioner was married, he also at
time provided an informacion for his wife. Each genealogical form
to include the names as well as the places of origin or "nativeness"
l~~~~:.~~~~; ,C~'iii~n:';,:c;n,~shiP (vecindad), and domicile (long-term or penna~
parents and four grandparentsY This data was supto direct officials to appropriate registers and to people who might
information about the petitioner'S birth and lineage. Identifying the
de naturaleza (native towns) of the candidate and all of his ancesIOrsw,,, "fspecial importance to the Inquisition because it believed that
was only there that it could confirm the purity and religious orthoof
Once the genealogical information was recorded,
a commissioner (comisario or comisario inforto conduct an investigation, and he in turn chose the scrivener
secretary that was to accompany him. If the candidate was applying
a ministerial post rather than to be a familiar or lesser official, the
might assign the secretary itself. The comisario, who performed
of duties for the Inquisition (such as filling out paperwork and
. inio"ming regional tribunals of denunciations of heresy in his jurisdic.: non), was usually a parish priest from the district in which the probanza
" \\'as to be done.

66

Iberian Precedents

The first, and secret, part of the investigation commenced when the
commissioner traveled to (he petitioner's native town, if different from
where the official was stationed, and examined all available public, private, and ecclesiastical records-including parish registers when they
existed, Inquisition archives, censuses, and nmarial documents {e.g.,
wills and dowries)-for information regarding the person's birth status, lineage, and general family history. Illegitimacy tcnded to disqualify
the candidate not only because it was considered "infamous" by law (a
public dishonor) but also because it called into question his biological
parenthood, thus making it impossible to ascertain his purity of blood.n
If no stain of illegitimacy or any other irregularities were found, the
comisario proceeded to the second, oral part of the investigation. His
first task was to find the local or district familiars and with their help
identify eight to twelve people who could serve as witnesses in the case.
Inquisition guidelines instructed commissioners to draw a list of all potencial informants and cross out individuals who might be biased toward
or against the petitioner (such as dose relatives or enemies). In keeping
with the gendered Spanish tradition of privileging the viejos (elders) of
each town as sources of information and authority, the witnesses were
to be selected from among the oldest Old Christian males of the community. When women did testify, it was either because no other witnesses
could be found or because their husbands were absent and they were
asked to represent them. The entite process was supposed to be repeated
in different towns if the parents or grandparents had been residents,
citizens, or natives in more than one place.
Once the witnesses were selected came the most important and solemn part of the entire process; the depositions. Each testimony was
given separately and tecorded verbatim by the secretary. In addition to
the scrivener, one or more public notaries were present to attest to the
legality of procedures. Before the questioning began, witnesses had to
swear that they would not divulge any information about the case or
their participation in it, in part because the Holy Office liked to shroud
most of its operations in mystery but also because secrecy minimized the
possibility that those who deposed were bribed, harassed, or punished
for their testimonies. They were also asked to take an oath of truth while
making the sign of the cross and warned about the penalties for lying,
which by the early seventeenth century included the possibility of excommunication. The oath was followed by a tightly controlled interrogation
process, one in which the questions were almost entirely scripted (as
was generally true in Spanish legal proceedings}. As of the late sixteenth
century, the comisarios tended to be equipped with an instruction sheer
and a questionnaire, complete with the questions thar were to be posed

Juridical Fictions
witnesses and sometimes blank spaces in which the answers were
recorded. The lists of questions seldom varied, and official instrucio,."li"u.d,ed commissioners from inquiring more than was necessary.
of the questionnaires used by the Inquisition during the first half of
century can serve as an example.14

Ihe",,yen""'>fh

How to interrogate witnesses in purity investigations

First, [ask] if they know the said person for whom the investigais being done. [Ask also] how they know him, for how long, and
his age is.
2. [ask] if they know the father and mother of the said person. And if
do, [ask] where they are native to ["de donde son naturales"1, and
they have lived, and where they have been vecinos and for how
"'lpma how they know.
[ask] if they know [the paternal grandparents] of the said person.
if they have any information whatsoever about any other ancestors
the paternal line, they should declare how it is that they know them
for how long, and where they are originally from, and where they
been vecinos and had residence.
[ask] if they know [the maternal grandparents] of the said person,
where they are originally from, and where they have been vecinos,
resided, and how they know them and for how long.
[ask] the witnesses whether any of the general questions apply.
basically consisted of whether they were declared enemies or
relatives of the person whose genealogy was being investigated.]
6. [ask] if they know whether the person for which this investigation
. made is the son of the said [parents] and is thought, considered,
commonly reputed to be ["avidos, tenidos, y comunmente reputatheir legitimate son. Ask them to declare the affiliation and how
I.

[ask] if they know whether the said person's father and paternal

".n,dp. ",",'" and all other ancestors by the paternal line, all and each
everyone of them were and are Old Christians, of clean blood,

wi"h,>u, the race, stain, or descent from Jews, Moors, or conversos, or

any other recently converted sect, and as such have been thought
and considered and commonly reputed to be. And that there is no
or rumor to the contrary and if there was, the witnesses would
or would have heard, because of the knowledge and information
had and have about each and everyone of the said persons.
whether they know that the said person or his father or pagrandparents which are named in the previous question, or any
\>tIO.., a"c<"",,>, have not been punished or condemned by the Holy Office

!I>'",h,,,

68

Iberian Precedents

of the Inquisition, and that they have not incurred any other infamies
that would prevent them from having a public office and honor. They
should say what they know about this, and what they have heard, and
what they know abour the good habits and prudence and judgment of
the said person.
9. [ask] if they know that the said mother of the said person and
the named maternal grandparents and all other ancestors by his mother's side each and everyone of them have been and are Old Christians,
clean and of clean blood, without the race, stain, or descem from Jews,
1>.1oors, or con versos, or from any other recently converted sect, and as
such have been thought of, and considered and commonly reputed [0 be.
And that as such they are held by public voice and fame ["publica voz y
fama"] and by common opinion, and that there is no fame or rumor to
the contrary and if there was, the witnesses would know, or would have
heard, and that there is no possibility that they wouldn't, given the information that they had and have of each and every of the said persons.
TO. [ask] if they know whether the mother of the said person and all
of the other ancestors which were specified in the previous question have
not been condemned or punished by the Holy Office of the Inquisition,
and that they have not been associated with any other infamies that
would prevent them from having a public office and honor.
I I. (ask] if they know that everything that they have declared is public voice and fame.
The person that conducts the interrogation should make sure that the witnesses
respond promptly to each point III each question, without accepting general respon~es to the question. And as for any other questions not in the interrogatory,
he should only make those that from the depositions are deemed necessary to
investigate the truth, without making impertinent or excessive questIOns.

As the questionnaire reveals, the first part of the interrogation (questions I to 6) sought [0 verify the candidate's biographical information,
namely, his legitimacy, the names of his parents and grandparents, and
his ancestors' native towns. The next, and key, part of the process centered on whether his maternal and paternal bloodlines were pure according to the two definitions of limpieza. Specifically, questions 7 and 9 ask
whether the candidate had any Jewish, Muslim, or converso ancestors;
and questions 8 and TO ask whether he descended from anyone who
had been tried by the Inquisition for heresy or other serious offenses.
Although the interrogation process as a whole focused on the candidate's
parents and grandparents, all maternal and paternal ancestors were included in these purity questions. Finally, in the last part of question 8,
witnesses were asked to comment on the petitioner's conduct, values,

Juridical Fictions

character, which afforded them an opportunity to refer to such matas his religious behavior, marital status, and standing in the com)n"n'i'y, In the second half of the seventeenth century, some inrerrogaforms added specific questions about some of these issues as well as
the candidate's occupation, services to the republic, and loyalty to
crown. II For the most part, however, the examination of witnesses
'<:;:~:~;~'~ to follow the format and content of the questions listed above,
JI
because tribunals kept old copies of questionnaires.
Since numerous witnesses were questioned, the certification process
take several weeks, sometimes months, and even years. The length
~;~:,~:r:,,~~~~ on whether the genealogical investigations had to be
,~
in one or several places and especially on whether doubts
the purity of blood of the petitioner or any of his ancestors were
In the second scenario, the commissioner had to try to determine
which genealogical branch the stain ran and if there was any "hard
..id,,"co," to substantiate the claim, such as the existence of sanbenitos.
were the penitential garments that persons convicted of heresy
to wear and which after they died were left hanging, indefinitely, in
churches with an inscription bearing the name of the heretic and
describing the nature of his or her crime. Intended to preserve
community's memory of its "stained" lineages-among other things
that "pure" families would avoid being contaminated by them-the
r"nh,eni'", served as a visual proof of impurity. Once the comisario finwith the entire investigation, he wrote down his impressions of the
and any other pertinent information and sent the dossier
that had commissioned the case. The main job of the
who received it was to verify that all aspects of the investigahad been conducted according to proper legal form and to evaluthe evidence. If they concluded that enough information had been
fiZ~~:;:,':i they issued a decision, wrote it down in the file, and finalized
t:
the required signatures and seals. The case in its original form
stored in the Holy Office's archives (much to the benefit of future
cbiisr'''i.m and genealogists).16
When the Inquisition concluded that an applicant was impure, it
:~;~~ not to inform him of the decision, but its prolonged silence was
notification enough. The Holy Office refrained from calling atto these rejection cases in order to avoid hurting the reputation
institutions or corporations with which the said person was already

~:~~:;;~~~T~he idea was to protect them from being perceived as havens

a problem that some religious-'Orders had faced in the late

century. But despite the Inquisition's efforts to keep its geneainquiries secret, communities generally knew when the purity

70

Iberian Precedents

of one of their own was being investigated. The arrival of commissioners, their archival investigations, their conversations with familiars, and
their interrogation of witnesses were unlikely to go unnoticed, especially
in small towns. And once the case mrned into general knowledge, public
opinion could playa role in different stages of the probanza process, not
just in the witnesses' testimonies. A lengthy investigation process, for
instance, could arouse suspicions that the application had been rejected
and damage the reputation of the candidate, which could in turn affect
the outcome of the casco
As to those who were fortunate enough co have their purity-af-blood
status approved, they were generally given three or four official copies
(traslados) of the probanza, which they could simply keep or try to submit to other institutions with limpieza requirements. But even though
their symbolic capital was substantial, inquisitorial certificates were not
necessarily accepted by other establishments, and they did not guarantee
the holder protection from future accusations of impurity. Individuals
and families were sometimes forced to produce several proofs of limpieza, a practice that Philip IV tried to curb with his Real Pragmatica of
1623. The pragmatic included a "three positive acts" decree mandating
that a candidate for a post or honor who was able to show that his direct
ancestors had on three separate occasions had their purity of blood certified by specific institutions (among them the Inquisition, the Council
of Orders, certain university colleges, and the Church of Toledo) was
exempt from having to prove it himself. However, this decree, which
was mainly the result of the Duke of Olivares's efforts to gain supporter:;
by making it easier for individuals to enter the military orders, did not
have significant consequences. 17 If anything, it underscored how difficult
"proving" limpieza and ha 'ing it count had become in early modern
Spain. Unlike the status of nobility, which after being transmiued for
three generations could become a permanent and therefore "natural"
condition, that of purity of blood could at any point be lost.

THE PROBATORY AND UNSTABLE NATURE

OF PURITY OF BLOOD

The Inquisition's procedures for certifying purity of blood were of

course its own and not necessarily those adopted by the other institutions. Because of the corporate nature of early modern Spanish society,
each "community," secular or religious, had the right to determine not
only whether to have a statute but the terms by which limpieza was confirmed. For this reason, certification procedures differed somewhat by

Juridical Fictions

1O';.tu,jo.,. The Inquisition's probanzas were considered rigorous, but

much as those of Spanish university colleges, which in some cases
not only extensive genealogical information but details about
family's estate and a minimum income level. These colleges were
important institutions because they basically produced the
bureaucracy, professional civil servants who usually
in law or theology. Procedures for obtaining military habits
"",.11.0 quite elaborate because the Council of Orders (a mainly royal
that assessed, administered, and advised the military orders) rethat the candidates prove their purity and nobility of blood. In
investigations, a minimum of twenty-four witnesses were needed
establishing limpieza and at least another twenty for verifying noand other qualities; some involved as many as five hundred inter",,,;,>0,,.'" In the case of candidates for ecclesiastical posts or benewho in general did not need to have noble ancestry but who somedid have to prove that they were not associated with any "vile
mechanical trades," the certification process resembled that of the
"::;:!:~~:; Cathedral chapters acted as the tribunals in charge of the
.,
investigation and assigned a commissioner (sometimes the same
who served the Holy Office) to examine public registers, interrogate
Itnesses, and submit a report. The chapter made sure that proper prohad been followed and made a decision on the case.l~ Other cer,",,,;,on processes were less demanding and mysterious. ror example,
confraternities the candidate played more of a role in the inves1!'1':;~"" and the decision was made not by a committee or tribunal but
all the members of the sodality. 20
Despite the corporate nature of the statutes, they were not limited to
bodies" or to a nonpublic sphere. Some town councils, includthat of Toledo (1566), established limpieza requirements and were
~oo",,,e not private institutions. Candidates for local public office pretheir genealogical information to the corregidor (a royal munidofficial), and the latter submitted a report to the Royal Chamber
Camara). The Inquisition made use of public notaries in its purity
"';6',,';on procedures, sometimes also alcaldes mayores and other fig10,',1 government. It also habitually presented town councils and
judges with the names of familiars, and this list became a part of
~:~~:~::~~::;~ records. To be sure, not all institutions implicated the
government and the justice system in their certification pronumber of them (such as military and religious orders) relied
services of both secular and religious officials, thus making the "pri~:;!'~~~~~,~: system intersect with the public domain. Furthermore, de~
in their purity investigations, these different institutions

...,0'

7'

Iberian Precedents

followed similar procedures and developed a general pattern or model

for "proving" Old Christian ancestry. As the inquisitor Diego Serrano
de Silva explained in the early seventeenth century, because the limpieza
statutes had no precedent in canon or any other type of law, the certification process had to be created, but new practices gradually were
regularized and a particular form of proceeding emcrged. 21
At least three aspects of this procedural pattern made purity-ofblood status fundamentally unstable. First, as mentioned by Serrano de
Silva, the probanLa represented an atypical type of legal procedure, one
that hardly ever settled the matter of limpieza once and for all. Within
Spanish common law (ius commune, an amalgam of canon, Roman, and
feudal law), the traditional type, used in criminal cases, was the proceso
en forma, in which a judge studied and announced the charges against
the accused, the different parties had the right to present evidence, defendants could argue their own cases or hire lawyers to represent them,
a sentence was pronounced, and it was possible to appeal. Limpieza de
sangre cases, however, fell under the category of expediente, which was
meant to be a more expedient legal process.H Although a committee
acting as a tribunal could be involved, the case was not in the hands of a
judge, no lawyers were allowed to participate, the questions posed to the
witnesses were almost entirely predetermined, and no sentence was issued, only approval or rejection. Furthermore, all that the person whose
lineage was "on trial" was normally allowed to do was present his genealogical information and, when applicable, that of his wife, and pay the
required fees. He did nor have the right to know who the witnesses in
his probanza were, let alone the substance of their allegations. 21 In addition, most bureaucratic establishments with the statute did not allow
the candidate to appeal decisions nor for investigations to be reopened,
although in the case of the Inquisition, it did make some exceptions. 24
One such exception occurred in the early years of the seventeenth
century. Diego Gonzales Monjarrcs applied to be a familiar and submitted his genealogy and that of his wife to the inquisitorial tribunal in
Valladolid. After a series of lengthy investigations in various towns, he
was granted the title. Subsequently, several people went to the inquisitors to urge them not to allow Gonzales Monjarn~s to be a familiar because he descended, on his maternal bloodline, from Diego de Castro,
who was reputed to be a New Christian-mainly because he was a
clothes merchant and moneylender, professions that in the popular imagination were strongly linked with Jews and conversos. The Suprema
reviewed the testimonies and ordered that his title be removed and his
name be withdrawn from Valladolid's list of familiars. Contending that
his accusers were unjustly trying to strip him of his honor, Gonzales
Monjarres took matters into his own hands and mel with elders from

juridical Fictions

73

the city of Valladolid who had information about his ancestors, in the
process uncovering copies of a power of attorney, dowry, and other legal
documents that demonstrated that even though a brother of his greatgrandfather had married the daughter of Diego de Castro, he himself
was not a direct descendant of the alleged New Christian. He was related
to him, but by "transversal," not "direct," bloodlines. Armed with this
new information, Gonzales Monjarres appealed to the Suprema, which
ordered a new investigation, the result of which supported his contentions. The councilors concluded that the people who had denounced the
~ familiar had been mistaken about his genealogy and ordered that his
.: tide be reinstated. They also ordered a11local justices and other munici:.: pal authorities (regidores and corregidores) of Valladolid to reinsert his
name in the local list of familiars, record the outcome of the case in the
.; town council's registers, and grant him a copy of the decision. 25
Gonzales Monjarres's appeal to the Suprema demonstrates that it was
p"",ible to contest the Inquisition's decisiOll<)fl a limpieza case and that
some instances written records carried more weight than oral testi",oni,.,. The late sixteenth century and early decades of the seventeenth,
memorials in favor of reforming the statutes proliferated, when
Sp,ani,h monarchs were somewhat receptive to trying to curb some of
worst abuses of the probanza system, and when at least one converso
:;~'~o:w::as made eligible for Old Christian status, was a particularly
time to challenge unfavorable decisions in purity investigaStill, Gonzales Monjarres's successful appeal was exceptional, and
must have known that himself, just as he was aware that his title of
'~'m.~,,"did not gu~uantee that the purity of his lineage would not again
challenged in the future. Wanting to spare his descendants the trouble
he had gone through to ckar his name, Gonzales Monjarres left them a
.w,itl,n statement describing the reinstatement and listing the archives
. and documents that they should consult if anyone tried to link them genealogically to Diego de Castro, the alleged New Christian. He also ad vised them to make sure to select spouses that were pure Old Christians,
-because only on that foundation can one aspire to make more money
and not lose one's entire estate."26 finally, Gonzales Monjarres depos: ited a copy of his title at the Congregacion del Senor San Pedro Martir,
, a confraternity associated with the convent of San Pablo that tended to
accept only familiars, in case any of his descendants wanted to enter
,into it. It is as if he anticipated that in the future the purity of his lineage
would once again be questioned, probably with good reason.
;,: '
Because the probanzas and other legal processes that fell under the
, , category of expediente did not result in a sentence, approval of a geneal;, ogy by one institution, though considered juridical because it followed a
certain form, did not have to be accepted by other cstablishments, hence

74

Iberian Precedents

the need to keep proving it. The Pragmatica of 1623 and its "three positive acts" decree, which constituted the first attempt by Spanish kings to
regulatc an aspect of the purity certification process as a whole, tried to
apply principles of common law, in particular, of the proceso en forma,
ta the probanzas de limpicza by declaring that purity of blood could
under certain circumstances be considered a judged, and therefore permanent, status. But the legislative effort failed precisely because of the
reluctance by different institutions to relinquish their autonomy to decide on such matters. F Corporatism, at least in this instance, prevailed
over royal authority. The status of limpieza de sangre thus continued
to be unstable, accessible but easily lost, depending on one's reputation
within the community (which was not necessarily fixed), personal relationships, and the outcome of the next probanza.
A second feature of the certification process that made iimpieza a
fragile status was its reliance on the "public voice and fame."2~ As the
Inquisition's probanzas suggest, purity-of-blood cases primarily admitted two main types of evidence (three if one counts visual forms such as
the sanbenitos). The first came from written records, namely, registers
and archives, and attested mainly to the legitimate birth of the candidate and his immediate ancestors, sometimes also to other genealogical
information. The second was oral and relied on the memory of a select
group of men who were supposed to be authorities on their community's
past generations and on the public reputation of its members. Because of
the importance that early modern Spanish society placed on a person's
social standing according to the "public voice and fame," it was the oral
type of proof that usually established the purity or impurity status of
the individual. As historian Antonio Dominguez Ortiz observed, this aspect of the process was the most radical as well as the most problematic,
because it essentially meant that the whole case relied on the presumed
impartiality of witnesses. 2~ The Inquisition and other institutions tried
to ensure objectivity and truth by not allowing "intimate friends," "declared enemies," or relatives of the person for whom the probanza was
being made to testify and by warning witnesses that lying could result in
their excommunication, bur these measures were not foolproof deVICes.
Furthermore, beyond the problem of objectivity was the critical issue of
how deponents acquired, constructed, and communicated their knowledge. Some Spanish kings tried to discourage the indiscriminate use of
hearsay as evidence in the probanzas de Iimpieza. The 1623 Pragmatica,
for example, stressed that rumors and other information provided by
witnesses had to be verified. But for both commissioners and witnesses,
discerning between what was "public voice and fame" and what was
merely rumor or gossip was probably easier said than done.

Juridical Fictions

7.'

The probanza system's privileging of public opinion made it open to

; abuse by all parries involved in the investigations. Witnesses sometimes
accepted bribes; at others they demanded them in return for positive
testimonies. By the end of the sixteenth century, the statutes had produced a new social category: the linajudo, or expert in local lineages
(linajesj. Prominent in Seville and other major Spanish cities, linajudos
volunteered their services to various institutions that had purity and/or
nobility requirements, among them the military orders, the Inquisition,
the religious orders, and tried to extort money from candidates in
rem'" for providing favorable genealogical records and testimonies in
investigations.lIl Inquisition officials and familiars were themselves
immune to corruption. As key informants in the web of investigain which so much privilege and symbolic capital was at stake, the
were in fact among the most susceptible to accepting bribes. JI
:Not'wi,rh"tanding the precautions that the Inquisition and other bodies
to prevent corruption and perjury, then, the probanza system was
f~"j~~~i;W:;i:~th problems. For the petitioner, the best scenario was that
:,1
and witnesses selected held him in high regard and would
try to profit from the case; the worst was that anyone involved in
investigation had a vendetta against him or his family. Either way,
process could turn out to be quite expensive, especially because for
institutions it generated income. J1 All of this meant that those in:di'viduai> who had their purity of blood certified were not necessarily
who were pure bur those who could afford to pay for a probanza
were well connected.
Given the high cost of obtaining a certificate of purity, the possibility
: dlat the process could result in the discovery of stained ancestors, and
limited transferability of the probanzas, why would anyone apply
one? In addition to the obvious reason that they provided access
~ [() certain institutions and posts-which for some might mean secur,.,ing a place in the privileged estate-and represented symbolic capital,
':
were also motivated by the desire to preserve, or rather con;: steuct, a certain memory of their past. Gonzales Monjarres, for exam, pie. claimed to have applied for the title of familiar because he did not
, Want his descendants to become the victims of attempts by others to
. defame them, to paint them with the brush of impurity. Concretely, he
to create a paper trail and public record that his children could
to in order to preserve and defend their honor as well as their
estates. Although the probanzas were intended to preserve memory of
lineages, they also could serve to create different histories, in
" tome cases even to manufacture clean lineages out of "impure" ones.
The manipulation of memory could work both ways. \1 The promise of

76

Iberian Precedents

establishing an archival record favorable to a family and its progeny

could compensate for the expense and anxiety that subjection to the
probanza implied. As to the incentives that institutions had for requiring the proofs, there were many. Not only did the probanzas allow them
to have a tightly controlled admission process that theoretically allowed
them to select good Christians of a certain social and religious background, but they sometimes generated revenue. Moreover, having purity
requirements protected secular and religious establishments from accusations that they were harboring con versos, whereas not having them
tended to be interpreted as being lax about admitting stained people.
The need to safeguard institutional honor partly explains why the statutes remained in place long after the original motive for establishing
them-the threat that conversos supposedly represented to the Christian
faith-had disappeared.
A third aspect of the certification process that rendered the status
of purity of blood unstable, even farcical, was that ultimately, the category of Old Christian was established on the basis of negative proof.
Detecting impure ancestry-through records of people tried by the Holy
Office, sanbenitos, hearsay, and so forth-was much easier than finding
positive or conclusive proof of limpieza de sangre. The latter was in fact
not feasible because it involved verifying that a person did not have any
Jewish or Muslim ancestors and no links to people who had been associated with heresy. But genealogies, particularly those of ordinary people,
could be traced only to a certain point, and there were obvious limits
to the memory of a local community. Thus, the best that the Inquisition and other establishments could do to establish someone's purity of
blood was to show that there appeared to be no evidence to the contrary.
For this reason, the system was somewhat favorable to individuals with
obscure origins, those who were less likely to have genealogical documents and other historical records. That limpieza could be established
only through negative proof also meant that the system placed as much
of a burden on the "pure" as on the "impure."34 While the latter were
in theory the targets of the investigations, the former were also obliged
to show that they were untainted, but again, this was virtually impossible and even the most loyal Christian lineages could be falsely accused
and defamed. The system essentially turned the search for security in
matters of purity of blood into a quixotic quest, which was one of the
reasons why Miguel de Cervantes and other writers of the Golden Age
could not resist but to satirIze it.35 Their fascination with reality and illusion, a central theme not only in literature but in painting, dioramas,
and other optical devices of the period,36 was rooted in the disconcerting
realization that their relationship was dialectical.

Juridical Fictions

77

The impossibility of proving limpieza beyond a shadow of a doubt

not acknowledged by the formulaic language that witnesses in
pl,ol,"",,' were compelled to use. As many of the tratadistas (authors
treatises or memorials) who wrote about the statutes observed usu, ally in reference to the Inquisition's 1572 requirements, in order f~r purity status to be approved, people who deposed could not simply state
,"~
~I.~t they did not know that the candidate was not an Old Christian,
they had to assert that they knew that he was and "that there
[was] no fame or rumor to the contrary and if there was, the witnesses
: would know, or would have heard, because of the knowledge and in., formation that they had and have about each and everyone of the [the
candidate'S ancestors]." In legal terminology, Old Christian ancestry
could be not presumptive but affirmative and positive ("no es presump tWa sino afirmativa y positiva"),l7 Why this stress on the unambiguous
,. affirmation of limpieza de sangre? In part it can be attributed to linformulas meant to secure testimonies that, by being framed
~~~~I~:~::~::a; terms, enabled commissioners and inquisitors to arrive at
".
about the case. But the carefully mntrolled language and
;. procedures used in the interrogations, which created a kind of staged
environment evocative of Cervantes's "theatre of marvels" (teatro de las
':~~;~~:~a~~~;:: short play about a "magic play" mounted and viewed exby those who were "pure" in which no one acknowledges that
"llOthing happens for fear of being declared tainted-was also implicated
- in the creation of a particular historical memory. For by exalting Old
_Christian ancestry and favoring those with obscure origins (the masses).
'-: over the long run, the probanzas also paradoxically contributed to the
production of a teleological historical fiction: the Christian foundation
of Spanish communities. 38 The statutes might have sought to limit the
activities of conversos in some secular and religions institutions and in
politics, but what mattered most was the abstract ideal, J9 that is, the appearance of a pure Christian realm, achieved through the legal fiction of
having pure blood.

""he<.

~::

TELEOLOGICAL FICTIONS

The Spanish crown, which during most of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries claimed to have a providential mission to protect the church
and faith, relied on this fiction. structuring society not only around the
principle of nobility, as other European monarchies did, but around that
of purity of blood. The second principle extended the concept of honor
to the masses and was initially directed mainly against those segments

Iberian Precedents

juridical Fictions

of the noble estate that had been tarnished by intermarriage with upwardly mobile converso families. The purity movement's antiaristocratic
(and antibourgeois) dimension was evident in Si]fceo's struggle to establish a statute in Toledo's cathedral chapter, which a number of scholars
consider paradigmatic of the popular sector's resentment of the conversos' rapid social mobility. Siliceo was an Old Christian of commoner
(peasant) origins who studied his way to the upper levels of the church
and who, once in power, turned against the New Christians. According
to jaime Contreras, he represented the victory of the villano and the castizo, and his struggle stood for that of peasant masses against the urban
bourgeoisie. 40
The antiaristocratic thread within the purity movement was also
manifested in the linajudos' policing of noble lineages and in the production and circulation of numerous books anc~ compilations identifying
"infected" families of the privileged estate, including the notorious Libra
Verde de Aragon (1507) and Tizon de la Nobleza de Espana (1560). The
former, "The Green Book of Aragon," was written by an assessor of the
Zaragoza Inquisition and targeted the Aragonese aristocracy; the latter,
"Blot on the Nobility of Spain," was a memorandum written by Cardinal
Francisco Mendoza y Bobadilla to Philip II that claimed that virtually all
of the Spanish nobility were stained. 41 Popular resentment toward the aristocracy grew in tandem with the commercialization of nobility, which
was at its height in the last quarter of the fifteenth century. In this period
the Catholic Kings sold patents of nobility, cartas de privilegio (or privilegios de hidalguia), mainly to persons who had provided military and
personal services. Involvement in transatlantic commerce also opened
up new avenues to the privileged estate. Some wealthy merchants, for
example, obtained offices (regimientos) in the town council and then either acquired noble titles or married into the Old Christian aristocracy.
In Seville of the late fifteenth and the whole sixteenth centuries, a good
number of conversos who had been enriched by the transatlantic trade
ennobled and "purified" themselves by these meansY The Carrera de
Indias (navigation and commerce between Spain and its colonies) became a promising track to wealth, public office, and ennoblement.
Despite this "bourgeoisification" of Spain's nobility (or "feudalization" of the bourgeoisie?) the inflation of honors did not sit well with
Castilian rulers, especially those who followed Isabella I and ferdinand V, because it decreased the value of noble status. However, financial
need and pressure from the Council of Finance compelled them [0 continue the practice. After IS57, sales slowed down. The patents became
more expensive, and therefore less accessible, and Philip II,like his father
before him, made it illegal for the patents to be sold to the descendants

heretics, jews, and comuneros (citizens of Castilian communities

rebelled against the rule of Charles V and his administration beAprillfi, 1520 and February 3, TS22), among others. 43 It was at
this time that the crown began to reconstitute its ties to the aris,.,cra,c~. According to the historian juan Antonio Maravall, after pacifydefeating the nobles during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth
~';ntu,;e" the monarchy forged a kind of deal with them that allowed
to consolidate its power.44 This pact essentially consisted of reserving
public offices and certain professions for the Old Christian nobilparticularly hidalgos, at the expense of the wealthy urban classes,
,.,nong which the conversos were well represented. The limpieza statargues MaravalJ, were part of the process by which the medieval
Spam;,h nobility, with the help of Spanish kings, became a relatively
ruling elite.
Early modern Spain thus produced two discourses of limpieza: one
on the "feudal" notion of pme aristocratic lineage (nobleza de santhe other on that of purl' Christian ancestry. If initially the second
,ge,ne<.lIyfavored commoners of obscure origin, their victory was ephemIn the middle of the sixteenth century, the two discourses began to
4.1 The traditional nobility reacted to the attack on its honor and to
infiltration of conversos and members of the commoner estate ioro its
by making purity of blood a prerequisite for noble status, thereby
,
only safeguarding its prestige but spearheading a "refeudalisation" of
Castilian society.46 Especially after 1600, seignorialization in Castile expand"d, reinforcing the traditional social structure as well as the bond bethe crown and the landed aristocracy. This process revived the no::l:~,::~noble qualities were inherited through the blood, which had been
:~
by the Spanish monarchy's sale of patents of nobility as well as
the Renaissance's stress on personal and achieved nobility. Thus, by
seventeenth century, Spanish genealogical texts usually made a strong
:' distinction between nobility of blood (nobleza de sangre) and nobility of
t~~:I~~:,,~(n~'~',~b:l,eza de privilegio), and in general, popular opinion did not
,
upon noble status that did not date from "time immemorial" or that
holder had been compelled to prove through ejecutoria, a
legal process resulting in a public document that consecrated decisions or
. sentences made by tribunals of justice. In short, the sale of privilegios de
bidalguia led to a certain "bastardization" of the noble estate, but the inHation of honors was strongly resisted by the traditional aristocracy and
in the end did not weaken either traditional social hierarchies or notions
of nobility and purity of blood but just the oppositeY
Although the revival of "feudal" notions of blood occurred in varying degrees throughout western Europe, in Spain it took a particular

79

Iberian Precedents

Juridical Fictions

form because of the prominence of the discourse of purity that had been
brewing there since the mid-fifteenth century. The merger of (he two
limpieLas-one referring to the absence (or remoteness) of commoner
ancestry, the other to the lack of Jewish, Muslim, or heretic ancestorsproduced the uniquely Iberian paradigm of the "hidalgo-cristiano viejo"
and with it a whole culture of social differentiation based on blood
and religion. 4H Because this paradigm crystallized in the context of the
Counter-Reformation and was nourished by the strong links that the
church and Castilian crown had forged in the fight against heresy, it
exalted not only traditional noble notions relating [0 genealogy, precedence, and civic virtue but also religious orthodoxy, loyalty to God
and king, and the complex of sexual and family values promoted by
the Council of Trent.49 Human perfection was thus embodied in an Old
Christian male of legitimate birth, honorable lineage, and impeccable
Catholic credentials who expressed loyalty to God and king, policed
and defended the sexual virtue of the women in his family, and obeyed
(or at least appeared to obey) the church's main views on morality. The
cons.truction of this ideal, which reinforced concepts of familial honor
and male authority over the sexuality of women, is discernible in the
system of probanzas. Not only the Inquisition but other institutions began to demand proof of various limpiezas and to inquire about the morality, behavior, and political inclinations of candidates.
By the late seventeenth century, a number of key bodies required proof
of legitimate birth and of purity of blood, purity of noble ancestry, and
"purity of profession" (limpieza de oficios). The multiplicity of manchasa blatant rejection of personal and meritocratic nobility-exacerbated
the Castilian obsession with blood and genealogy. This obsession was
manifested in the pervasiveness of a language of blood constituted by
terms such as sangre (blood), casta (breeding), generaci6n (lineage), raiz
(root), tronco (trunk), and rama (branch),5o as well as in the privileging
of "Gothic" ancestry. To "descend from the Goths" (descender de los
godos), a common expression during this period, meant to derive from
the ancient lineages of the north of Spain, regions never conquered by
the Muslims and which initiated the Reconquista. Because those lineages
were considered the most pure, Christian, and noble in the whole of the
peninsula, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century genealogists, magicians
in their own right, often undertook extraordinary feats of historical reconstruction to locate the origins of aristocratic families in Asturias, the
mountains of Burgos, Navarra, and especially the Basque provinces of
Vizcaya and Guizpuzcoa. \I Reality shaped illusions and illusion shaped
realities. The manipulation of history and genealogy created a climate
of distrust of external appearance, masterfully captured in some of the
literature of the Golden Age.-11

To the extent that the statutes of purity ensured that only people of
certain status and ideological and religious disposition could have acto the power, wealth, and honor that being associated with certain
:in,,,;.u.iion, implied, they nor only made Castilian society more exclubut promoted the cultural-political projects of the church and state
well as of the traditional aristocracy).53 However, the system was
riddled with contradictions and engendered a host of unanticipated
::~:~~:~'~:~, Some inconsistencies have already been mentioned: The
were considered juridical instruments, yet they did not result
legal judgment of limpieza; the statutes were membership requirevoluntarily adopted by "private" bodies, but they helped make
U~:~:~~at into a public matter; and the proof of purity was required of
'(
religious and public officials (such as inquisitors, royal scribes,
canons in many cathedral chapters) but not for others (the inquisi'<e<gen",.i, parish priests, bishops, archbishops, aldermen, corregidores,
so forth).H But these contradictions in the way that the statutes
were minor when compared to those that they as a whole pro:~"C<'d, which threatened to undermine the Catholic image of Spain, the
of the king, and the very underpinnings of the concept of purity
blood.
Although in theory the probanzas were supposed to promote the
of the Spanish population (by excluding the impure from posiof power and privilege and discouraging marriages between Old
New Christians), the chronic abuses in the certification system by
,j><",p,ie with personal or political motives, the rise of the linajudos, and
absence of limitations on genealogical investigations resulted in the
:~::~;;';:,.~ invention) of so many ancestral "blots" that by the early
~:~
century, not only the honor of the nobility was in jeopardy,
that of the Iberian Peninsula as a whole. As the Dominican fray
'1Ij!u,,,;n Salucio and other advocates of reforming the statutes pointed
the manner in which they were being implemented was producing a
:.Io;o,nin Europe of Spain as a predominantly "Jewish" nation. He prothat his country learn from the example set by France two hunodretl Y,"'" earlier, when it allowed the Jews who chose to convert rather
the country to forget their ancestry and become full members
the body social. By nor placing limits on how far back stains could
traced, Fray Salucio observed, the statutes helped keep the memory
stained lineages alive and promoted divisions with the realm. He
p.:Op,o,ed that allowing converts to become Old Christians, "Christians
time immemorial," was the best way to erase the memory of their
past and hence resolve the problem of crypto-Judaism. s-I Some
Slpa,a;,h monarchs expressed a willingness to ameliorate the problems
Salucio and others identified, but because their plans were never

80

OI"",,,,d

Iberian Precedents

actualiLed (Philip II died before the junta that he convened to analyze

the limitation of the statutes finished), were too timid, or were roo unacceptable ro the most important institutions with purity requirements,
the system was not altered in any significant way. The obsession with
purity and genealogy therefore continued unabated throughout most of
the seventeenth century.
Furthermore, even though the purity statutes legitimated the Spanish
monarchy's role as protector of the faith and increased its social base
because of the popularity they ostensibly enjoyed among the masses as
well as sectors of the arisrocracy, they might also have inadvertently lessened the power of kings. Although the statutes did not deny rulers their
traditional ability to help their subjects transcend their birth status, ,f, to
redeem their "blood," Spain's monarchs apparently did not make much
use of this power with regard to conversos and moriscos. The descendants of some conversos, most notably, those of the Bishop Pablo de
Santa Marfa (former rabbi of Burgos Solomon ha-Levi),57 were granted
royal dispensations that entitled them to purity and Old Christian status, but studies have yet to demonstrate that these cases were numerically significant. In any event, some seventeenth-century advocates of
reforming the statutes frequently stressed that the probanza system had
undermined the crown's ability to confer grace and called on the king
to exercise his power to remove genealogical stains, which they argued
would help deify him. One of Cuenca's inquisitors, for example, argued
that just as Roman emperors had granted slaves the opportunity to transcend their condition and eradicate blots in their past, and just as rulers
had the authority to ennoble their vassals, so should His Majesty grant
"karats of purity and pure blood" to erase the "race of Moors and conversos." This power should not only beautify his vassals and benefit the
republic as a whole, he added, but make His Majesty act in the likeness
of God.5~ Part of an extensive number of discussions and debates about
the role of "blood" in Spanish politics and society, the inquisitor's arguments did not have much effect, probably because Spain's seventeenthcentury Habsburg kings did not enjoy absolute power or assumed that
exercising it in that way would make them unpopular.
Finally, the statutes also exposed and exacerbated contradictions inherent in the notion of purity of blood, a naturalizing concept that both
presupposed and promoted the idea that descent (and thus the "natural"
process of biological reproduction) determined a person's behavior, beliefs, and identity. The belief that Judaism and "Jewish ness" were "communicated" through the blood, transmitted by nature, not nurture, had
of course been one of the initial justifications for the statutes-some
of which distinguished between the converSos and "Old Christians by

Juridical Fictions

pature" (cristiallos vie;os de natural-and it was still thriving centuries

later. Even if he converts to Christianity, wrote one late-seventeenth_
. ~:'::~:~I;,:,:;u:pporter of the statutes, the Jew continues to be a threat to
because he "begets" (engenelra) children with heretical inclipations. 59 However, the concept of limpieza was not as essentializing as
this construction of an intractable Jewish nature would suggest. Even
after the changes that the notion underwent in the sixteenth century,
when various institutions turned to a more rigid dual-descent model and
, removed limits on genealogical investigations, it continued to accommo date a temporal and cultural-religious definition, that is, to allow for the
_possibility that the descendants of conversos would eventually be fully
committed to the faith and be eligible for equality with Old Christians.
example, the Inquisition, which like other institutions with the limstatute conflated "purity of faith" and "purity of blood," had to rec ognize that even if they were inherited, Jewish and Muslim beliefs and
"inclinations" could be transcended; otherwise how could it explain the
.
of converso and morisco heretics with the church? From
,. the point of view of some members of the Holy Office and of the ecde~
~ siastical hierarchy, Judaism, Islam, and heresy were transmitted in the
blood, but they were ultimately spiritual "maladies" that baptized Chris.
could overcome. Through extraordinary efforts and dedication to
c,,,holi,i,m, faith could prevail over nature. 611
Tensions between the notions of purity of faith and purity of blood
an integral part of the limpieza certification process. As the questi<,m,.i "'" that were used in probanzas reveal, the status of purity had
be determined not just by the absence of Jewish, Muslim, and heretic
blood but also by religious orthodoxy, usually measured by the lack
of encounters with the Inquisition but by behavior more generally. The
.: two definitions of purity of blood-as descent and practices-created a
deep ambiguity in the concept of limpieza as a "natural" condition, all
the more heightened by the probanza system's privileging of the "public
". voice and fame." According to some of the 'authors of treatises on the
" Statutes, purity of blood was not a natural condition but could be gained
or lost, depending on one's actions and reputation, thus the need to keep
proving it. Whether a person actually had Jewish ancestry or other genealogical "imperfections" simply did not matter as much as whether it
'Was the common opinion in his or her place of origin. 61 Some Spanish
thinkers did prefer to define limpieza as a "natural" essence transmit ~d from parents to child through the blood and to rely on genealogical
Information contained in written records more than on hearsay, but the
legal procedures established for the probanzas tended to favor the public
YOice, thus further thinning the line between purity of blood as a status
; I

Iberian Precedents

determined by biology and one that was determined by behavior and

social perceptions. This slippage between biology and culture, rather
than destabilizing the concept of limpieza, made it more powerful, for it
could be deployed in multiple ways, here against people because of their
descent, there because of their actions and reputation. The "strategic
equivocation between nature and cuhure"~to borrow the words of the
anthropologist Peter Wade~in the process of certifying and defining
purity produced a discursive flexibility that facilitated the presetvation
of social hierarchies and structures of inequalities in periods of change.
In the end, the multiple contradictions of the discourse of putity of
blood did little to undermine the statutes during the Golden Age. The
century of baroque literature that captured the deep skepticism about
external appearances in early modern Spanish society as well as its obsessive genealogical concerns was also the period in which the ideology
of limpieza de sangre was at its apogee. Not until the late seventeenth
century did the controversies over the probanza system start to die down
and the purity requirements begin to be relaxed. Scholars tend to stress
that although statutes were still being implemented, some even adopted
for the first time, the probanzas and issue of limpieza lost much of their
importance because Castile's converso community was by then numerically insignificant or had almost fully assimilated into Old Christian
society, because the problem of crypto-Judaism was no longer deemed
a serious one (the last major wave of Inquisitorial prosecution was during 1720-33 and it mostly targeted Portuguese New Christians), and
because the monarchy was not focused on fighting heresy anymore.M
Despite these developments, however, purity requirements remained in
force for a variety of titles, posts, and professions and in numerous institutions throughout the eighteenth century and into the nineteenth. b)
That the Bourbon kings did not abolish the statutes and that the Cortes
of Cadiz did not even raise the issue could be interpreted as indications
that the probanzas had become unimportant. Bm an equally plausible
explanation is that even if they were a dead letter, the requirements were
still serving to reproduce a symbolic order premised on the irreducible
otherness of Jews and Muslims and the Christian foundation of Spanish
communities. The abstract ideal is what mattered most.

Juridical Fictions

geoisie, the integration of relatively large numbers of conversos and

JJloriscos into the rest of Christian society, the administration of a large
empire, the spread of heresy in broader Europe, and the strugbetween the crown and parts of rhe nobility. Determining the sig.;Ulfie,,"'.' of limpieza during this turbulent period and its connections
different ~ocial forces is a daunting challenge, all the more so berhere are still many unanswered questions regarding the system of
~:;~::~;;"~; For example, how did the certification process operate in the
;' j
century and early sixteenth centllCy, before it became systema:' rized? When were the procedures first developed, by which institutions,
, and what legal sources inspired them? In what ways did their implemendiffer by both institution and period? And most important, what
" purposes did purity requirements serve? Naturally, the answer to this
. last question will differ somewhat by corporate body and temporal coni 'teXt, but a growing number of studies are suggesting that as mechanisms
'to exclude conversos (moriscos are seldom the focus of the scholarship),
, the statutes were not always effective and that frequently a wide gap
, existed betwecn how they were supposed to be operating and how they
"actually were.
In sixteenth-century Toledo, for example, some members of promiconverso families, despite having been tried by the Inquisition,
able to sidestep purity requirements and access both public offices
~ and military habits. 64 In Seville, not even the high number of linajudos
, could prevent New Christians from obtaining military habits, becom:'. Inquisition familiars or officials, and entering religious orders.65 In
institutions, conversos were able to prevent the adoption of the
statute ahogcther. This occurred, for example, in Burgos's cathech,p'", which in the second half of the sixteenth century tried to
, establish a statute modeled after that of Toledo's cathedral. 66 In Lorca
and Murcia, efforts to remove con versos from municipal government
and the local oligarchy between 1550 and 1570 also failed. 67 The grow>, ing body of evidence suggesting that the statutes did not represent an
.
, barrier for those of Jewish ancestry has led some historians to conclude that limpieza de sangre was an instrument through
" which to control upward mobility that had little to do with either religion or race.os Marxists historians in particular tend to characterize the
Statutes as weapons that the traditional aristocracy (or in some cases,
Old Christian commoners) deployed against a converso bourgeoisie. To
a certain extent thcy are right. The contention that the statutes were
"social weapons" has some validity, and various scholars agree that especially after 1560, they helped make Castilian society more exclusive.
'fhe merger of nobility and purity requirements in somc institutions and
growing exclusion of those associated with "vile or mechanical" work are

0"'"'0'''

CONCLUSION

The rise and spread of the statutes of purity of blood was a complex
phenomenon that took place from the mid-fifteenth century to the midseventeenth century, a period in which a semi feudal Spain tried to grapple, among other things, with the expansion of an incipient urban bour-

8,

86

Iberian Precedents

signs that increasingly the statutes were attempting to reserve domains

of power, honor, and privilege for Old Christians of aristocratic stock.
But the statutes did not merely serve as weapons of social exclusion.
They operated within a contested field, one in which limpieza was used
in different ways by various groups and was not the exclusive [001 of any
onc "class" or estate. Probanzas were sometimes used, for instance, to
produce clean genealogies out of impure ones, and the extent [0 which
they benefited the traditional arislOcracy is by no means dear, especially prior to the mid-sixteenth century. Furthermore, having Jewish or
Muslim ancestry was sometimes an obstacle for accessing offices, professions, and institutions thar had purity statures, and having "stained"
ancestors probably dissuaded many from even attempring to enter those
establishments. Those cases of people being discouraged would not be
part of the historical record, making the significance of the statutes even
more difficult to gauge. Finally, the religious and anti~Semiric arguments
and sentiments that inspired the statutes continued ro serve as their rationale long after the original reason for establishing them, the so-called
threat that "backsliding conversos" posed to the Christian bith, existed
in any serious form. Social strife can take many forms; that in early
modern Spain it was often cast in theological and genealogical terms
suggests that the issue of purity of blood was much more than an instrument of exclusion, more than a tool of this or that class-in short, more
than an epiphenomenon. The ideology of Iimpieza became pervasive
precisely because of its articulation with different social relations and
its ability to rearticulate levels of religious, social, and political life in
times of change.
The reproduction of the statutes and ideology of limpieza de sangre
cannot be attributed to anyone source or single domain. The mass conversions and rise in anxieties over threats that the recent converts posed
to the unity of the faith (whether real or not but which the Inquisition's
"discoveries" and autos de fe seemed to confirm), the resonance of Old
Christian representations of the New Christian as a backsliding Jew with
long-standing constructions of the Jews as obstinate adherents of their
faith and enemies of Christianity (passed down through such things as
religious sermons, Passion plays, and tropes), the commoner estate's appropriation of concepts of purity to bolster its sense of honor, the nobility's own reclaiming of the concept of limpieza in order to restore its prestige and exclusivity in the face of a mercantile class (expanded thanks
largely to transatlantic trade networks) with aristocratic pretensionsthese were among the religious and socioeconomic factors that provided
initial and ongoing momentum for the discourse of limpieza de sangre.
Political dynamics also played a role, particularly rhe crown's more ex-

Juridical Fictions

'; plidt support of the statutes in the mid-sixteenth century, bur also local
"- struggles in which the issue of Iimpieza was often used and abused to discredit enemies and to try to compel the Inquisition to act against them.
Finally, the discourse of purity also derived its lifeblood from the archival and genealogical practices that the system of probanzas established and routinized. The presence of familiars in many towns across
Spain, the visits and investigations by commissioners, and the countless
testimonies that community elders provided' from the sixtcenth century
to the end of the eighteenth helped not only to create local memories but
also to reproduce notions of limpieza and make rhe disavowal of Jewish
and Muslim ancestry into a taken-far-granted aspect of everyday life.
Early modern Spanish society camc to accept as normal that a candidate
':, for a religious order would present the hierarchy with genealogical in. formation about his Old Christian antecedents, that a Holy Office commissioner would inspect local archives and conduct interrogations about
a certain lineage, and that a nobleman or wealthy commoner would pay
a genealogist to invent him a pure pedigree. These and other behaviors
and personal interactions were embedded in the discourse of purity of
blood and the way it shaped individual and collective practices. This
',discourse was energized by Spain's establishment of a transatlantic em'. pire that was also structured around the concepts of recent convert and
. Old Christian but thar in addition produced a whole range of intermedi': ate categories of purity.

PART TWO

Religion, Genealogy, and Caste

in Early Colonial Mexico

CHAPTER rOUR

Nobility and Purity

in the Republica de Indios

, At the rime of expansion to the Americas, the Castilian crown was char" acterized by its close relationship with the church, partly a function of
, the Reconquista, and by its sizeable bureaucracy, mainly the result of
,
centralizing reforms begun by Enrique IV and brought to fruition
the Catholic Kings. 1 These two aspects of the monarchy strongly in-

l ;~~~~I:::,~the

nature of Spanish colonialism, which was never exclusively

with extracting mineral wealth for the metropolc or with
mercantile interests. From virtually the beginning, the crown
-'. set out to establish a much more encompassing relationship between its
SI,""i,h subjects and the native population, one that implicated a host
agents, institutions, aml ideological weapons. In ccntral Mexico, the
defeat of the Mexica ("Aztecs")l by Hernan Cortes and his minions in
15 21 was quickly followed by the arrival of church officials, government
bUft'aucrars (the top being the viceroy), and colonists, who along with
'he conquerors waged a muhifaceted assault on the peoples and landscape of Mesoamerica. 1 Early experiments with different forms of labor
extraction were accompanied by the religious orders' conversion campaigns; the establishment of Castilian-styled town councils (cabildos),
municipalities (ayuntamielltos), and high courts of justice (audiencias);
the building (or rebuilding) of cities according to the Spanish urban grid
plan; the surveying and parceling out of lands; the intensive study of native languages; and the collection, organization, and production of knowledge about indigenous societies and histories. 4
By the middle of the sixteenth century, the Spanish state-the crown
and its public institutions for administration, justice, and finance-was
creating a political, economic, and institutional framework that simultaneously obstructed the rise of a feudal colonial aristocracy (the subject

Religion, Genealogy, and Caste

of Chapter 5) and extended its own jurisdiction over the native population. This framework, which consisted of two separate but interrdated
politics or "republics," the Indian and the Spanish, was one of the most
distinctive aspects of Spanish colonial rule. It essentially allowed for the
political and socioeconomic subotdination of the indigenous people at
the same time that it gtanted them a special status as Christian vassals
of the Crown of Castile. According to Spanish colonial ideology, the native people's acceptance of the Catholic faith made them inca a spiritually favored and unsullied population while their voluntary subjection
to the Castilian monarch earned them rights similar to those enjoyed by
natives of Spanish kingdoms. The colonial relationship of vassalage was
peculiar, however, in that it was between the king and indigenous communities (not individuals). 5 Construed as contractual and voluntary, this
relationship required that native towns pay tribute and remain loyal to
the Catholic faith and the Spanish crown in return for the right to maintain internal hierarchies, retain their lands, and enjoy relative political
autonomy.
Although efforts to maintain a strict segregation between the tWO republics failed,6 the dual model of social organization had long-term social
consequences. It not only led to the establishment of special legal and religious institutions but extended notions of citizenship to the native population and produced a discourse of Indian purity that throughout the
colonial period promoted a concern with blood among indigenous elites.
This chapter focuses on these three processes. It begins with an overview
of the significance of genealogy among the Mexica before the conyuest,
explains the ideological and institutional foundations of the republica
de indios, and describes some of the ways in which Spanish colonialism
made blood figure into the reproductive strategies of indigenous rulers
and nobles. The last sections analyze the consequences of these strategies
on central Mexican notions of genealogy, history, and race.

THE RISE 01-' THE MEXICA IN THE LATE POSTCLASSIC

AND THE COLONIAL "REPUBLIC OF INDIANS"

When the Spaniards arrived in the Valley of Mexico (actually a basin),

the region was dominated by the Mexica, who had risen to power during Mesoamerica's Late Postdassic period (1200-1521). The fall of Tula
(ca. 1168), seat of the Toltec culture which thrived from the tenth to
the twelfth centuries, was followed by the arrival of refugees from the
northern Mesoamerican frontier into the area and by the emergence of

Nobility and Purity in the 'Republica de Indios'

93

, various "city-states"-independent political units consisting of a city and

: surrounding countryside-many composed of militaristic bands of di~ verse cultural origins. During that period of political fragmentation,
which lasted about one hundred and fifty years, the different polities
came to idealize the Toltecs and adopted clements of their culture, government, and religious ideology, including the cult of kingship. The ob., session with Tula, generated mainly by the relative newcomers' need to
establish their authority in the region, extended into the realm of kinship and genealogy. Wanting to claim direct ties with the polity that
central Mexican legends associated with the arrival of civilization, local
leaders eagerly married members of its royal and noble dynasties, some
: of whom had survived in Culhuacan, the last remnant of the Toltec
state. 7 Those unions occurred mainly between rulers and Toltec royal
women and therefore increased the importance of matrilineal descent
: for the transmission of posts, titles, and estates. They also produced
nobles (pipiltin) who were favored for high offices in the individual city states and who began to marry among themselves. Kinship ties among
the ruling groups of different polities in turn facilitated the creation of
military coalitions. By the early fourteenth century, two main confed: erations had been formed in the central valley: the Tepanecs, centered
in the town of Atzcapotzalco, and the Acolhua, consisting of various
capitals including Texcoco. In this increasingly militaristic context, a
; few small polities-Xochimilco, Chalco, and Culhuacan-struggled to
remain independent and maintain peace with threatening neighborslast one by marrying off sons and daughters of Tohec noble blood to
rulers of other city-states.
The Mexica, a migratory people from the northern frontier who ar rived in the Valley of Mexico around the early twelfth century, were
initially not troubled by their lack of Toltec pedigree and continued to
rely on their traditional leaders until the last third of the fourteenth
century, when members of the upper classes started to marry into TuIa's
prestigious lineages. In 1376 they selected the son of a Mexica warrior
and Culhua princess as ruler, Acamapichtli, their first true monarch
(tlatoani).~ Conflicts between the new lineage groups and the traditional
leadership ensued and endured until the reign of Itzc6atl, which began
in 1426 (or 1427) and lasted until J440. Itzc6atl's ascension marked the
triumph of dynasties boasting Toltec ancestry and led to a remarkable
effort on the part of the new leadership to rewrite the past, to construct a
historical narrative that made the Mexica the direct heirs ofTula's civililation and rulers. One of the most dramatic moments of rhis effort came
When the t1atoani and one of his main advisors, Tlacaelel, ordered the
burning of all pictograms and ancient codices (pictographic histories)

94

Nobility and Purity in the 'Republica de Indios'

Religion, Genealogy, and Caste

because these assigned a minor and unflattering historical role to the

Mexica. In subsequent years, new codices, as well as songs, stories, and
monuments, gave birth to migration narratives that began with the departure of rhe group from its homeland (Azthin) and ended with the
foundation of Tenochtitlan (in IJ25 or 1345) on an island in the southwestern part of Lake Texcoco, the "promised land."9 These narratives
contained new historical myths and new conceptions of space and time,
all suited to the Mexica project to cast themselves (and their religion) as
protagonists in the Valley of Mexico and as the political, cultural, and
genealogical heirs of the Toltecs,lO
The myths promoted by Itzcoatl and his advisors not only created a
cosmological vision that turned the Mexicas into the chosen people of
the Sun, but also signaled the beginning of a powerful warrior ideology,
one that developed in tandem with the group's violent rise to power.
Although they initially served as mercenaries and allies in conquests,
during the reign of Itzc6atl they helped form the Triple Alliance (consisting of Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan), which between 1428
and 1433 defeated the Tepanec confederation. The Mexica eventually
asserted their supremacy over the other tWO members of the Triple Alliance by conquering a number of surrounding polities, including Tlateloleo (1473), Tenochtitlan's sister city. Thanks to the frenetic pace of
their military campaigns, by the last third of the century they had subjugated much of the central region, parts of the arid north and lowlands of
Tehuanrepec (southern Oaxaca), and large stretches on both coasts. The
Mexica made conquered peoples into tributaries, but allowed some local
rulers, especially those based in more remote lands, to retain political
control, never quite absorbing their polities into the "empire."]] Although
the conquest of a few groups, such as the Tarascans and Tlaxcalans, remained elusive and towns frequently rebelled because of onerous tribute
demands, they became the undisputed power in Mesoamerica. Imperial
expansion made possible a dramatic increase in tribute and the establishment of extra local commercial networks at the same time that the reforms instituted by Itzcoatl and his nephews T1acaeJeI and Moctezuma I
accelerated the concentration of power, wealth, and lands in the hands
of the state and upper social classes {rulers, warrior elites, and the nobility).12 The Mexica thus developed into a highly stratified society whose
economy was based on state-oriented tribute (most in the form of commodities rather than labor), the local market, and long-distance tradeY
Therefore, when Cortes and his men arrived in central Mexico, they
encountered not only a highly militaristic and religious society, but a
complex political economy and hierarchical social order that included a
number of social and occupational groups. At the summit of this order
were rulers and nobles who lived mainly from tribute rendered by con-

9,

oZacatecas

2.

Central New Spain and surrounding cities.

SOURCE:

After Peter

i~~~;,:;;~:\~ History of Latin America: Empires and Sequels, 1450-1930

;~

MA: Blackwell, 1997), p. xxi. Drawn by Marfa Elena Martinez.

regions and their own communities, associated "blood" with

and political authority, and considered genealogy and marriage
extremely serious matters. All of these characteristics of the
crust of Mexica (and more broadly Nahua) society survived the
Span,i,h conquest, and in particular, the last two. Aristocratic concerns
blood were actually reinforced by the colonial administrative sysdependence on preexisting social and political structures and by

r~:::f.~~;'s,.~~t~::~:~c'3 of pre-Hispanic dynasties. This recognition made

:~

central to the reproduction of indigenous political and ecoas well as to the symbolic and cultural codes of the repude indios.
New Spain's "two-republic model" came about gradually and imperand was the result of a Spanish political ideology that initially
the colonial enterprise on the basis of the need to convert the
people, of the crown's desire to deter the emergence of colo1
and of the royal interest in reproducing a population of
. The Christianizing mission of colonization was spelled out
the 1493 papal bull Inter Caetera, which granted Castile jurisdiction
_OVer most of the lands that came to be known as the Americas. Inspired
, by a providential conception of history that was strongly fortified by

Religion, Genealogy, and Caste

the 1492 defeat of Granada and the Columbian voyages, Spain initially
linked its right to rule "the Indies" to its responsibility to spread the
Catholic faith,H a task that, after the military conquest of the Mexicas,
it took to accomplishing with a small but tenacious army of friars. These
friars were mainly selected from the Franciscan and Dominican orders,
which like the Spanish church as a whole had undergone important reforms in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Reformist currents were especially strong among the Franciscans, a branch of which,
the Observants, was completely devoted to a life of austerity, simplicity,
and poverty. It was from this branch that the twelve friars who arrived
in Mexico in IP4 to preach the Gospel were chosen. As is well known
among historians of colonial Mexico, when the friars were greeted by
Cortes, he-the conqueror and representative of the king-kneeled before them, a dramatic gesture symbolizing the subordination of the political order to religion.
Known for their religious zeal, commitment to saving souls (the Observants had been active in the evangelization of moriscos in rural Spain),
and messianic millenarian ism, Mexico's early Franciscans suffused the
colonial religious project with an intense utopianismY They were convinced that the dramatic events of 1492, including the expulsion of the
Jews, prefigured the unification of humanity under Christianity, the second coming of Christ, and the apocalypse. The friars also believed that
Spaniards had been selected by God to convert as many non-Christians
as possible in order to save their souls. Delighted with the initial results
of their efforts, some regarded Mexico's indigenous inhabitants as prime
material-"soft wax" in the words of the Franciscan Geronimo de
Mendieta-for Christianization because they had "willingly" accepted
conversion and because they were "uncontaminated" by Islam and
Judaism. '6 Both of these claims would strongly influence the juridicotheological statuS of the native population and set it apart from other
colonial groups, particularly blacks, and from Iberia's New Christians.
Although those who successfully resisted being "reduced" (reducidos)
to the Spanish Christian order were labeled "barbarians," "infidels," or
simply "gentiles," during the second half of the sixteenth century, indigenous people in general came to be officially regarded as recently converted Christians who did not have tainted blood in their veinsY
As gentiles no infectados (uninfected gentiles) who, at least according
to the official view, had accepted Spanish rule and embraced the Christian faith, the Indians became free vassals of the Castilian king. Their
freedom, however, was not a foregone conclusion. Spanish monarchs at
first wavered between allowing and prohibiting native enslavement, a situation that conquerors and colonists fully exploited. Part of the problem

Nobility and Purity in the 'Republica de Indios'

97

that the legal and ideological justifications for Spanish rule, on

the issue of slavery hinged, were not fully developed until about
middle of the sixteenth century and in fact continued to be revisthroughout the next one hundred years. The papal bulls that had
~;r;;:dcastile sovereignty over most of the Western hemisphere and
:d
its missionary enterprise proved to be an insufficient foundane,n"" Spain's titles because they were not based on natural law, which
Christian law was supposed to apply to all nations. furthermore,
P;~~:,:~~t countries did not recognize the papacy's authority. Spanish
I]
therefore convened various juntas to discuss the nature of
jurisdiction over the territories and peoples on the other side of the
~~:~:::~;,;
and theologians who participated in these meetings or
.." were in charge of coming up with moral and legal justificafor Spain's right to property (lands and bodies) in the Amcricas.l~
arguments, particularly those of the Dominican Bartolome de las
strongly influenced Spanish legislation regarding the native peoand status, particularly the New Laws of 1-'42.
These laws, the mmt important body of legislation during the early
pet"Od, consecrated the native people's right to freedom. Spestipulated that Indians who accepted Christianity and Span____ ---- were entitled to their liberty. Although some Spaniards continto enslave natives, especially in areas such as Sonora and Panuco,
;indil!"oa,,, people were supposed to be freed, and not a few religious offervently defended that right on both religious and legal grounds.
a group of Franciscan friars asserted in 1594, the Indians "are in their
lands, where they were taught the Holy Gospel, which they received
with great enthusiasm, and for having accepted it, they should not be
",.ted like slaves but remain free as before, and [in] their republic with
its permanent set of privileges."'9 As this passage suggests, the native
people's right to freedom and to communal existence was defended on
the grounds that they were in their territories and had collectively wel'corned Christianity. Of course, not all Spaniards embraced the notion
i that indigenous persons were entitled to freedom and their own republic.
Indeed, the various debates that took place in Spain about the nature of
:. its overseas rule gave way to a variety of formulations about the Castilian
... crown's right to sovereignty (imperium) and property (dominium) in the
Americas, a number of which continued to garner support even after the
. passage of the New Laws.
These formulations, which were developed as the lands and economic
privileges of native lords in central Mexico started to be transferred
to Spanish hands, fell into three main lines of thought. One current,
espoused by the Dominicans Francisco de Vitoria and Bartolome de Las

Religion, Genealogy, and Caste

Nobility and Purity in the 'Republica de Indios'

Casas, argued that although native people had come under a new sovereign, they were entitled to retain their own institutions, lands, and
laws as well their governors. The role of the Castilian crown was there_
fore of a foreign prince, and its main responsibility was to promote the
evangelization enterprise. 1u A second line of thought, represented by
Geronimo de Mendieta and other early Franciscan missionaries, was in
some respects similar to the first, but tended to advocate the creation of
two separate commonwealths, each with its own institutions and law.
Many of the first Franciscans in Mexico believed that the presence of lay
Spaniards was counterproductive to the conversion project and general
well-being of the native population. They were the first, therefore, to articulate the idea of dual republics. 21
At the opposite extreme of the Franciscans' utopian and millenarian vision was the position held by some jurists, viceregal officials, and
colonists who wanted the native people to be placed under Castilian institutions and law and in the same republic as the Spaniards. Advocates
of Spain's "civilizing" mission ("civility" here associated mainly with
Christianity and urbanity), they claimed that the Amerindians had lost
property rights because some of their institutions and alleged practices,
particularly, cannibalism and human sacrifice, were against nature. 12
Juan Gines de Sepulveda, Las Casas's main ideological foe, articulated
his argument against native property rights in Spain, but his ideas
reached New Spain and were enthusiastically received by members of
Mexico City's town council and many of the colonists. These parties
opposed the Franciscan project to segregate the indigenous population
because it made their access to laborers more difficult; they were also
receptive to arguments that could be used to undermine efforts by native
rulers to claim rights to the land.
Although the general tone of the New Laws and other mid-sixteenthcentury legislation reflected the strong influence of Las Casas and the
Salamanca scholars, the crown never clearly defined its position on the issue of creating one or twO republics, and its policies on the matter lacked
consistency. Whether the native people should be exposed to Spanish
culture and to what degree, whether it was possible or even desirable to
Christianize without Hispanicizing them, and whether proximity to the
coloniSts would provide them with examples of virtuous life or simply
result in unbridled exploitation-all of these questions, which had first
been raised in the Caribbean, continued to be controversial through the
end of the sixteenth centuryY Spain's objectives in the Americas were
also not clearly explained. Were religious goals going to dictate government policies, or did political and economic concerns have priority? At
once medieval and Thomistic (because it was based on the ideal of a

';~~::~;~'i:~ society in which religion was at the apex and which was
by the principles of Christian justice) and Renaissance and
~a"hiav<,lIian (because it contained a humanist and utopian strand and
the creation of a strong state), the political model that surfaced
entirely resolved tensions between the different objectives. 14
The absence of uniform royal policies was in large part due [0 the
fd;~~:~;r colonial groups and interests that the crown had to take into
~
and try not to alienateY Spanish colonialism was not a monoenterprise; the conquest and its aftermath consisted of related but
,mnperingSpanish ideological frameworks of "multiple paradigms, fanutopias."26 Furthermore, official positions on a given issue
shift in accordance with changing social, political, or economic
. The process of creating a stable order was thus one that
a degree of political and social experimentation, the careful
of different Spanish interests (ecclesiastical, royal, and civilthe ability to respond to unforeseen events, including the acand reactions of indigenous peoples, whose initiatives at times a1the terms of colonial power relations. Nonetheless, the crown genfavored the existence and reproduction of a republica de indios,
l<I,uate from Spanish colonial society. It encouraged the perpetuation
republic through spatial segregation policies and through numerlaws and institutions that separated the indigenous people from the
of colonial society and subjected them directly to royal authority. By
",,:OI:ni,i"g citizenship rights within native communities, namely, acand office holding, the crown also promoted the creation of
panillel citizenship regimes.27
The project to forge a dual spatial order had its origins in the 1530S
was linked to the government's efforts to phase out the encomienda
~~~~"i;~o,;w~h;:ic'h individual Spaniards (encomenderosl received grants of
in return for promising to oversee their Christianization.
, those years, Mexico City's second audiencia (1530-35) started to
.~ experiment with the creation of separate towns for native people and

99

I(

;~;::~;'ia project that initially resulted in the almost

simultaneous
2X

of Puebla de los Angeles and Santa Fe. The first was built
for Spaniards; the second, conceived by the Franciscan Vasco
Quiroga with Thomas More's utopian ideas in mind, for native people in the province of Michoacan. 29 In subsequent decades, a more sysIe,,,,,,,,,' project to create separate towns for Amerindians and Spaniards
.,.__ P""", even as the question of what the proper relationship between
two republics should be continued to be debated. The project was
greatly propelled by the congregaciones program, an aggressive effort
to nucleate native communities and transform them into Spanish-style

Religion, Genealogy, and Caste

Nobility and Purity in the 'Republica de Indios'

municipalities that as of (he 1540s was facilitated by the decline of central Mexico's native population. Nucleation, the government discovered,
made it easier not only to offer religious instruction to the newly converted but to control native laborers and rationalize the collection of
tribute.
Maintaining the two republics separately, however, proved to be a formidable challenge. Colonial officials simply could nO[ prevent the flow
of native people to Spanish towns, where they provided all sorts of labor services, and of Spaniards to pueblos de indios (Indian towns).
Municipal authorities thus resigned themselves to the presence of Indians
in pueblos de espaiioles (Spanish towns), hut they insisted on reserving
the traza, the "checkerboard" grid area that designated the urban space,
exclusively for Spaniards and ordered indigenous people to live in outer
wards, or barrios. The ideal of order was thus to have separate urban
centers for the two populations, but when economic and other factors
made it impossible, colonial officials tried to apply the principle of segregation within the cities themselves. Thus, in the 155os, Viceroy Luis de
Velasco (1550-64) issued several decrees that were supposed to keep all
non-Indians, excepting priests and a few royal officials, from residing In
the pueblos and wards that had been designated for the native people.
The viceregal government also allowed the populations of the barrios to
have their own town councils and to function as relatively autonomous
political districts. Therefore, a number of Spanish colonial towns had
tWO cabildos, one for each republic.
The Spanish crown also encouraged the establishment of the republica de indios through the creation of a different juridical status for the
native people. They not only had distinct rights and obligations (such as
paying tribute), but were placed under the jurisdiction of separate legal
and religious institutions, including the Juzgado de Indios. 3D This secular court was not formally established until the 15905, but its origins
date back to the years of Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza (1535-50), who
used to set aside days of the week to deal with native petitions. With
permission from Philip II, Viceroy Luis de Velasco II transformed those
previously informal procedures into a more coherent and structured judicial system. 31 The supreme judge of the Juzgado de Indios continued to
be the viceroy. Because the tribunal was intended to simplify legal processes for the native people and reduce their legal costs, it eliminated fees
(costs were covered by a special tribute levy) and some of the formalities
of Spanish law. All native people had the option of taking their caseS
to the Juzgado de Indios, but those who had the means to resort to the
audiencia could still do so, and those who sued Spaniards were obliged
to go through the normal channels of justice.

New Spain's government also created separate institutions and in~:~:,~;~:~procedures for treating native religious issues. Despite initial
iii
with the conversion project's results, the friars had to recogthat acceptance of baptism did not necessarily translate into full, or
partial, acceptance of the Christian faith. Especially troubling to
was the realization that some native rulers and nobles-generally
most Hispanicized segments of the indigenious population-had not
~~::;;I~'~:! their old religious beliefs and gods. Trying them for heresy
~
familiar methods seemed to be the natural solution. Because a
inquisitorial tribunal did not yet exist, during the period from
to the mid-sixteenth century, investigations of religious heterodoxy
undertaken by bishops and members of the monastic orders, just as
had been in late medieval Europe. The most well-known prosecuthese years was that of the cacique (native lord) don Carlos
grandson of Nezahualc6yotl (the poet-king of Texcoco) and
sons of Nezahualpilli. In the late 1530S, don Carlos was
of prompting his people to reject Catholicism and retain their
beliefs. He was tried by the bishop and inquisitor fray Juan de
convicted of being an idolater and "heretical dogmatizer,"
executed. 32 After he was declared guilty, don Carlos was forced to
in a procession and ceremony that resembled an auto de fe.
was paraded around the city wearing a sanbenito before being taken
central square, where his alleged transgressions and punishments
read publicly (and translated to him in Nahuatl) in front of a large
~~i~:~;': that included viceregal and ecclesiastical officials. After the
c
execution, his sanbenito was taken to Mexico City's church,
it was displayed until 1570.
Don Carlos's case was followed by similar trials of native religious
'7.~;:~~,j~;,~ most involving indigenous rulers and nobles. Almost every
',j
early cases indicated that indigenous people were going
policed and punished for religions transgression like Spain's wnw,,,,, and moriscos. However, shortly after the Tribunal of the Holy
Othce.", formally established in New Spain (1571), royal instructions,
. . backed by apostolic briefs, decreed that the native people were to be
'removed from its jurisdiction. The king and some top church officials
'I'p'lt[nrly had not approved of the execution of don Carlos and subsequently decided that it was not appropriate to subject a people who were
just learning the principles of the faith to inquisitorial prosecution. JJ
Although the reasons for the removal of the indigenous population from
the jurisdiction of the Inquisition have never been entirely clear, religious leaders and the crown were concerned about the violent excesses of
zealous friars in the colonies, a worry that seemed all the more justified

,00

p.o.rticil"[[

'02

Nobility and Purity in the 'Republica de Indios'

Religion, Genealogy, and Caste

after news of the Franciscan Diego de Landa's "idolatry trials" and

autos de fe in Yucatan arrived in Spain. The trials, which took place
in the 15605, resulted in the torture of more than forty-five hundred
Mayas, of whom at least one hundred fifty died. H (A strong commitment to the missionary project was not incompatible with excessive cruelty toward "strayed" flock.) The decision to remove the Indians from
the Inquisition's jurisdiction was also influenced by fcars that the Holy
Office's public execution of native leaders would produce martyrs amI
fuel anti-Spanish rehellions. Another factor might have been the rapid
demographic decline of the indigenous population and consequent shortage for labor, problems that would not have been ameliorated by completely unleashing the Inquisition on them.
For all of the questions surrounding the exemption of the native people from inquisitorial prosecution, the decision was actually quite consistent with other royal efforts to constitute them as a separate estate and
place them under the tutelage of the state and the church. H Although the
Holy Office functioned as a royal and ecclesiastical tribunal, it nonetheless retained some autonomy. As it was, the indigenous people were
placed under the jurisdiction of vicar generals and an institution that
operated just like the Holy Office: the provisorato de indios or Office
of the Provisor of Indians. This institution-which has also been called,
among other things, the Ecclesiastical Inquisition, the Natives' Court,
the Secular Inquisition, the Tribunal of the Faith of the Indians, and the
Ordinary-was in charge of handling religious and moral matters in
indigenous communities throughout the colonial period and beyond. 3"
Specifically, the responsibility for dealing with native heterodoxy fell on
the bishops and archbishops, who delegated it to their vicar generals or
provisores (provisors). The provisors in turn appointed commissioners
and other officials in provincial areas. It was not at all unusual for these
officials to call themselves "inquisitors ordinary," to establish tribunals
to try native people, and even to stage autos de fe. Thus, in terms of their
activities, ceremonies, titles, and at times even personnel, there was little difference between the Holy Office and the provisorato de indios.
Furthermore, the Inquisition continued to study native affairs, particularly, idolatry and paganism, well into the seventeenth century, which is
why there is extensive documentation in Mexican inquisitorial archiv6
on indigenous religious and moral practices and why there were many
cases of jurisdictional conflict between the two institutions. 37
The Spanish government's creation of special secular and religions institutions for (he indigenous population was accompanied by the deployment of the categories of l1uevamente convertidos (recent converts) and

13

"~::~a:'I~:i:{~w;:,::e;tched). Between the mid-sixteenth century and Mexico's

ri

, . Council (I.~8S), the church in NewSpain adopted a policy

not ordaining Indians on the basis that they were "tender plants in
faith." This claim enabled the exclusion of native people from the
!;~~;;;~!~ and from certain religious offices and institutions without
contradicting the official discourse regarding their "purity
In other words, it allowed for their construction as not quite
','ilmr'U"," but also as not quite "Old Christians." To be sure, some napeople who were considered exceptionally qualified on theological
moral matters were ordained, espedally in the later colonial period.
the idea that as a whole they were recent converts, indeed even "neo" left ambiguous the issue of when they could he considered full
Ch,i",i.,"" How many years before they were no longer considered new
the faith? How many generations before they could claim Old Chrisstatus? These questions did not have clear answers.
If their status as recent converts placed the indigenous population in
special religious category, their classification as miserables implied a
juridical and social position. The classification, which began
be used around the time that the Office of the Protector of Indians
created, promoted an image of the native people as lacking the racapacity to either fully comprehend the Catholic faith or to govthemselves. According to the seventeenth-century jurist Juan de
~~:,::~~ Pereira, the term miserable was applied to those persons who
~
"naturally [felt] sorry for because of their condition, quality
hardships." The Indi.ms' wretched condition, he explained, placed
in a kind of state of grace that implied special privileges and proi~~!~~.:, thus the special legal tribunals and religious supervision. 3H And
~1
they were supposedly easily induced into alienating their propand losing all of their estates, viceregal officials had the power
annul-without their permission-the contracts that Amerindians
:"'l,m,a, Spanish legislation also included indigenous lords in the category
persons who could be fooled and exploited by others, which meant
they too lost part of their ability to act as free subjects and to disof their properties as they pleased and were not considered legal
;:;;:~;;I:I,;n~'theory, the classification of miserables was meant to lessen the
~]
I
that the native people would be the victims of fraud, violence,
other types of abuses. But it also implied that they were placed in a
P;'''icld.dly strong paternalistic relationship with the Spanish state and
church, akin to children and women within the patriarchal family
because of their supposed need for legal supervision. Even as natjy'tcon,m'Ulliri" were granted a degree of political autonomy and their

:""""ul.,

Religion, Genealogy, and Caste

Nobility and Purity in the 'Republica de Indios'

internal hierarchies were recognized, Spanish laws construed indigenous

people as dependent and weak,39 concepts that were coded female and
that would be echoed in discourses of blood.
The creation of separate legal and religious bodies and of a speCIal
juridico-theological status for the native people might not have presented
much of a problem for the Spanish colonial government had it not been
for the rise of a significant population of mixed ancestry that blurred the
boundary between the categories of Spaniard and Indian. The emergence
of this population made it increasingly difficult to establish institutional
jurisdictions, tributary obligations, and the citizenship rights and privileges that were accorded to the members of each republic, a problem that
led to the growing use of mechanisms to determine "Indian purity." The
Holy Office, for example, frequently had to conduct lengthy investigations to establish its jurisdiction over persons whose identities were for
some reason unclear or disputed. Problems arose for a number of reasons.
Individuals of mixed ancestry who ran afoul of the Inquisition sometimes
claimed that they were pure Indians in order to escape the grip of the
Holy Office.4u Native people who committed moral offenses were at timc~
accused by their enemies of having Spanish-Indian parentage in order to
have them tried by inquisitors. 41 And so forth. Whenever jurisdictional
confusion arose, Inquisition officials attempted to establish the ancestry of
the individuals in question, often by adapting procedures and legal formulas that were used for determining purity and nobility of blood in Spain.4l
Usually officials inspected baptismal records, took testimonies of community elders, and checked to see if the person was included in local tributary
lists. The same methods and principles were used, furthermore, by other
institutions in which Indian purity (as well as nobility) was an issue. 41
But how exactly was a "pure Indian" defined? An invention of Spanish colonialism, the category of indio did not have much meaning for
native people themselves, at least not at first. Particularly during the sixteenth century, they tended to use it mainly when dealing with Spanish
authorities. For the laner, a pure Indian was technically someone who
descended only (or mostly) from pre-Hispanic peoples. For this reason,
formal procedures for determining native purity prioritized the examination of baptismal and marriage records. But when these records did
not exist or did not provide the necessary information, officials were
compelled to rely more on the declarations of local community members,
who on most occasions referred not just to the person's public reputation
but to factors such as physical appearance, language abilities, clothing,
and tributary status. 44 Because most native people had to pay tribute, the
last factor in fact became one of the most important social signs of being
a pure Indian. Even though its definition privileged bloodlines, then, the

..,.eg'''Y of "indio puro" was frequently determined through a combinaof genealogical, sociocultural, economic, and physical characteris. It was thus as much a historical and social construct as "Spaniard,"
,hl.cI,-" and "mestizo."
The social meanings of the category of indio did not prevent the elabof a discourse of native purity, premised on lineage and on the
that being a pure Indian meant having certain rights (as well as duwithin indigenous communities. The project to create two republics
~~:~:~~:~ produced dual citizenship and dual purity regimes. It also
~
the already strong concerns with blood among segments of
native population. These concerns did not remain the same, howhad been in pre-Hispanic times. By introducing new ways
detetmiming nobility, succession, and blood purity, Spanish colonialalso led to significant changes in understandings and uses of lineage
central Mexican indigenous elites.

SPANISH COLONIALISM AND THE RECONSTITUTION

OF PRE-HISPANIC DYNASTIES

Spanish government initially relied on pre-Hispanic settlement patand hereditary rulers for the administration and control of indigpopulations. Although central Mexico's larger units of organizathe altepetl, or "ethnic states," were divided into their constituent
the early colonial arrangement of indigenous communities into
,::~::.:,s ("head" towns), su;etos ("subject" or dependent towns), and
,.
(outlying hamlets of principal towns, consisting mainly of tenof the nobility) at first omformed to traditional political and spa-

':if~:~e~t::~:i~,;~~: And although the pre-Hispanic political leadership

at the highest levels, a good number of hereditary rulers

allowed to keep their statuses because Spanish colonial authoriat this point relatively small in number, were strongly dependent on
not just for control of the native population but for the collection
tribute. Generically called caciques (a term of Caribbean origins) by
Spaniards, these hereditary leaders were in some cases even able to
expand the areas and number of people under their jurisdictions.
The reconstitution of local power began during the years of Mexico
second audiencia {1530-35).46 This institution was vested with the
".,,,hotitv to recognize the titles of males with legitimate claims to the
tlatoani. In the early 153os, the heirs to Tenochtitlan's main
d}'n,,,tiie,, the tlatoque (plural form of "datoani"), recuperated
politi" I power and, together with the descendants of rulers and nobles
tl

Religion, Genealogy, and Caste

Nobility and Purity in the 'Republica de Indios'

of lesser rank, gained access to public offices, particularly in the city's

native cabildo. In Tlaxcala, all four of the altered composing the larger
confederation of the same name were granted to theif respective royal
lineages, which were then able to perpetuate themselves in power for at
least another hundred yearsY In Michoacan, where Charles V confirmed
the status of the pre-Hispanic royal dynasty after the Tarascan king submitted to the Spanish crown, the rulcrship of the province was transmitted through the same noble bloodlines for about a half cel1tury.4~ The
pattern of continuity was repeated in Teotihuacan and other parts of
central Mexico as well as in southern regions. In Oaxaca, local caciques
who had helped the Spaniards conquer the region fared exceptionally
well. They were allowed the creation of great seiiorios, regional-political
jurisdictions with large populations of dependent tenants. Between 1520
and 1540, Oaxaca's native rulers also seized the opportunity to acquire
large landed estates, thereby establishing a solid base for their rulerships, which lasted until the final years of Spanish domination.4~
Other pre-Hispanic ruling groups fared less well, including those of
Cholula and Tacuba. 50 In various parts of central Mexico, traditional
rulers and nobles~groups which overlapped and were affected by royal
polices in similar ways~began to lose political power in the middle of
the sixteenth century, when many of the conditions that had favored
the reconstitution of the preconquest ruling dynasties began to change.
Several factors contributed to the downward trend, but the central ones
were the establishment of Spanish-style municipal government (which
allowed for reconfigurations of political power), the decline of the indigenous population (which eroded the caciques' social base of support),
and Philip II's reforms to the tribute and labor regimes. Implemented in
the 1560s and 1570s, these reforms sought to make tributary payments
universal and to have them paid more in cash than in kind; they also
aimed to acderate the transition from encomienda to repartimiento, a
system of cor vee labor organized by royal officials, the corregidores. II
Changes to the tributary and labor regimes had a leveling effect on native communities, particularly those in the N:ihua zone, but this process
was gradual and by no means absolute. Despite an overarching pattern of
decreasing internal differentiation within indigenous towns, important
social divisions, namely, among nobles, commoners, and tenants, managed to persist in numerous places during and beyond the sixteenth century,H As late as the 1700s, descendants of la nobleza mexicana, whose
blood was admittedly dilute.1 through generations of illtermarriage with
Spaniards or natives of lesser status, continued to request recognition of
their status and privileges on the basis of both their nobility and "purity"
of blood. 53 The lingering importance of genealogy among them was due

the deep roots that this notion and tool had in Mesoamerican culture
to the adaptation of rulers and nobles to colonial conditions. But it
also a function of royal policies, which paradoxically provided legal
"PI,do,.,oi,m, for perpetuating pre-Hispanic dynasties at the very same
that governmental reforms were undermining their economic and
. "",litie,1 power.
In the course of the sixteenth century, Spanish colonial legislation con"c",ted three principles that would continue to be upheld throughout
next two hundred years: the hierarchical nature of political orga'.i;,,';o'o within indigenous communities, the equality of native rulers
nobles with hidalgos, and the "pure" blood of the indigenous popuas a whole. These principles, which crystallized after the Valla. debate between Las Casas and Sepulveda (1550-51), were linked
ways in which the subjection of the native population to Spanish
and Christianity was construed as a voluntary and contractual re1a"ioo,l,ip of vassalage with the crown. In I.U7, for example, a royal
,nnooco the property rights and privileges of indigenous clites on
.the ground that they had accepted the Castilian king and the Catholic
54 Colonial officials were ordered to recognize two noble ranks:
i~::l;~~. and principales. In central Mexico, the former category was
to the legitimate successors of pre-Hispanic rulers (the tlatoque)
the latter to descendants of the nobility (the pipiltin and teteuetin).
Spaoi,h authorities at first equated caciques with the Castilian titles of
marquise, and count, and principales with hidalgos and caballethat is, with the gentry or nontitled nobility. Both categories were
:~~:~,; of noble rank, but the first was of higher status and initially
to those with hereditary rights to rulerships.55 As to their ecoprivileges, caciques and principales were entitled to receive tribute, and most were exempt from paying it themselves. Both categories
were also permitted to have tenants and indios de servicio (retainers),
at least until the 1570s, and were in theory not to provide any personal
services themselves. Those in public office enjoyed the additional benefit
, of being able to complement their tribute earnings with salaries from
the community treasury. Finally, in the 1590S, the right to request royal
, lands (mercedes de tierra) was extended to native elites and communi;. ties, which among the former promoted private property ownership. 56
Attached to the titles of cacique and principal were a set of honor
priVileges, or privilegios de honra. These included the right to carry
,', arms, to wear Spanish clothes, to ride horses, and to use the formal des:" ignation of don. 57 Noble status and honor privileges were not exclusive
to men. The Spanish government not only created special houses for the
female descendants of pre-Hispanic dynasties in order to indoctrinate

w6

w8

Nobility and Purity in the 'Republica de Indius'

Religion, Genealogy, and Caste

them in Catholic and Spanish cultural values, but recognized their nobility and allowed them to use the honorific dona. Social status for
indigenous men and women was also marked by naming practices.
Whereas commoners generally gave theif children two first names (such
as "Domingo Francisco") when they were baptized, elites generally combined a Spanish ("Christian") name with pre-Hispanic surnames. Some
caciques and principales adopted native and Hispanic surnames or did
away with the former altogether, but the more common practice was to
retain the name of a key ancestor in order to preserve the memory of
precolonial noble lineages. For example, in lB.'!' a royal decree allowed
Quctzalmamalitzin Huetzin, son of the ruler of Teotihuacan at the time
of the conquest, to assume the ritle of cacique. By then he had become
don Francisco Verdugo Quetzalmamalitzin Huetzin.
Dynastic surnames survived in part because of the cacicazgo. the key
political-economic institution established for the descendants of preHispanic rulers. This institution referred to "the ensemble of rights
and holdings surrounding the [cacique's] rulership," including having
access to the tribute extracted from his jurisdiction and to communal
and patrimonial lands.'~ The cacicazgo, which established the legal
framework for the entailment of indigenous estates and thus also for the
perpetuation of native wealth, property, and status, fused pre-Hispanic
and Castilian traditions. In preconquest central Mexico, the institution
that most resembled it was the tlatocayotl. a seigniorial estate or ruler
ship that provided the political and economic structure for administering production, land tenure, and tribute collection within a territorial
jurisdiction and whose main function was to reproduce the dominant
classes, particularly, the tiac()que. 59 Kinship and marriage ties were central to this institution and system of governance because they helped
forge internal cohesion as well as relations between different tlatocayotl.
Rulerships were frequently transmitted from father to the firstborn son
of the ruler's most important wife. If inheritance through primogeniture
was not possible, the rlatocayod was usually passed down to the oldest
daughter, contingent on her marrying a person of equal social status
(usually a paternal uncle), and then to her oldest son. Rulerships were
also sometimes bequeathed to a daughter or a niece when the tlatoani's
sons did not live in his community.6U According to Guillermo Fermindez
de Recas, the tlatocayotl resembled Castilian traditions of noble succession and inheritance as embodied in the sen aria (seigniorial estate) and
the mayorazgo.~j In its most basic form, the latter institution referred
to a civil entailment that enabled the generational transmission of an
estate-which could include titles, properties, rents, pensions, jewelry,

of art, and even certain public offices-through established rules

;~;'~~J~;~:~;.~~' and ownership. The most conventional type of mayorazgo

the oldest son (hija mayur), who would typically be required

continue using the last name of the founders (mayores) of the entail.62
Parallels between the mayorazgo and the tlatocayotlled Spaniards to
immediately equate the two. Ignoring that forms of succession and in'beritance had actually varied considerably in preconquest times and that

~~~~:'i:~;descent was important on various social and politicallevcJs/ 1

laws gradually made indigenous rulerships subject to the same

as Castilian ones, most notably by consecrating the princiof primogeniture. The adoption of this principle included the patropractice of conserving the last name of the male founder of a
Unealle. The t1atocayotl was thus transformed into the mayorazgo, or

~~i~!,~a~:Cicazgo (a neologism). The principalazg() was an analogous

for native nobles, but was less subject to rules that made
properties indivisible and inalienable. Older Mesoamerican
did not enrirely disappear, however. Native traditions were
rooted and resilient. Furthermore, Spanish colonial policies were
in;t;"lIy flexible and under certain circumstances permitted indigenous
women to inherit cacicazgos. Thus, during the sixteenth century,
:~~:~ in different regions were recognized as legitimate cacicas and
a series of rights with the title, mainly economic. 64 Their nuand social significance subsequently tended to decline, among
reasons because Spanish law (which did not recognize native kinsystems) favored the transmission of titles and estates through pri.tt>,g"n;,tme and legitimate birth.
mid-sixteenth century formalization of procedures for accessing
transmitting cacicazgos and principalazgos led to a flurry of petitions for titles. Some petitions were fraudulent, made by individuals of
'COmmoner origins, and in some instances their recognition led to the re, placement of traditional local aristocracies.!'-' Colonial authorities were
of the problem and implemented measures til ensure that indil'iduals of genuine noble ancestry were distinguished from those whose
',: high social status had been acquired through means other than birth-', right. Pursuant to a T5541aw that specified that the title of cacique could
, he issued only to those who merited it because of their lineage, colonial
i officials attempted to more carefully investigate and record whether indigenous authorities were principales de linaje y sangre or principales
de gobierno-noble by virtue of blood or by virtue of office holding. To
" make the distinction, they turned to their own procedures and traditions
for determining noble ancestry, and more concretely to the Castilian

no

Religion, Genealogy, and Caste

prueba de hidafguia (proof of nobility).66 The juridical process for vali_

dating native titles thus came to involve presenting, among other things,
extensive genealogical information, testimonies by important mem_
bers of the community, and increasingly as of the seventeenth century,
baptismal and marriage records. Acceptable proof also included copies
of prior royal decrees recognizing the person's noble status, tribute exemptions, andlor right to carry arms.
The process of acquiring the title of cacique began with the candidate's
submitting the body of evidence (the genealogical informacion and related proof) to the district magistrate or corregidor, and then to the audiencia, which in 1558 was granted sole power to determine the validity of
petitions for cacicazgos. 67 Once the judges examined the petition, they
summoned and questioned the interested parties, as well as the gobernadar (the governor or appointed head-normally a native person-of an
indigenous municipality), cabildo members, and principal($ of the petitioner's community. When considering cacicazgo cases, the audiencia
was foremost concerned with verifying that the petitioner did indeed descend from the ancient lord~' of the land. For this purpose, the teHimonies of other caciques and principales were central (as well as baptismal
records, when they began to exist). A second priority was to determine
whether the lands being requested as part of the cacicazgo had in fact
belonged to the petitioner'S ancestors since "time immemorial."6~ If exact jurisdiction of a rulership could not be established through available
documentation, colonial officials leaned heavily on "tradition," that is,
on the information provided by witnesses deemed knowledgeable and
reliable-usually the community's male elders. Pictographic documents
with information about towns and their lands were sometimes accepted,
but Spanish officials discouraged the practice because they suspected
that many were being forged.
Once the audiencia felt that the evidence and depositions sufficiently
established the petitioner's royal ancestry and holdings of the cacicazgo,
the case was given to the viceroy for final approval. Similar procedures
were followed for people seeking noble privileges, such as tribute exemptions, and here as well a main concern was establishing lineage. Because
the privileges and statuses of new generations had to be confirmed (and
were sometimes ..:ontested), documentation submitted by members of a
lineage tended to expand over time. By the eighteenth century, it was
not unusual for petitioners to present copies of prior recognitions given
to several of her or his ancestors, sometimes as far back as the 1500s.
Petitions for cacicazgos and noble status hence contained genealogical
information as well as records of royal grants and of the lineage's services to the crown. As su..:h, they were testaments to the periodic affir-

Nobility and Purity in the 'Republica de Indios'

'"

of the contractual relationship between native communities and

king, and reminders of the monarch's ability to dispense privileges,
and grace to his loyal vassals.
Among the main beneficiaries of the crown's policies toward native
were the descendants of the Mexica's last supreme ruler (hueytlaMotecuhzoma II Xocoyotzin ("Moctezuma"}, many of whom
~:~;~ Spaniards and moved to the Iberian Peninsula. Throughout the
period and as late as the twentieth century, members of this royal
in Spain received the titles of count, viscount, duke, and maralong with rights to wear royal insignia, bear arms, hold ceremonial
proper to their rank, collect annual pensions, enjoy tax exemptions,
so forth/'~ Two of the Mcxica ruler's male heirs, don Pedro Desifor
Moctezuma, Viscount of Tula (who became a member of the Spanish
and don Diego Cano de Moctezuma, were admitted into the Order
'1.;'~~::~t:;; which along with the two other main Castilian military or'd
both purity and nobility statutes. Another descendant, don Diego
de Moctezuma (son of Pedro Tlacahuepantzi and grandson of the
ltu.eydato<m;), was sent to Spain, where he married dona Francisca de la
The couple's son, don Pedro, was the first Count of Moctezuma, a
~es",",I,,"of whom returned to New Spain as viceroy at the beginning of
eighteenth century. As various Spanish colonial writers were to point
"::,~~~;~:f'~~~::, to Enlightenmenr thinkers' dismissal of the cultural and
11
achievements of native people, Mexica {and Inca} royal blood
merged with, and even ennobled, some of the most prominent linein Spain and other parts of Europe. Such claims would have carried
weight had Spanish law not recognized the nobility of pre-Hispanic
dyn..,';", and nourished certain codes regarding native blood.
The Moctezumas who remained in New Spain were also honored. For
;"?,~npl".Hernan Cortes granted dona Isabel de Moctezuma, daughter
he had just defeated, the cacicazgo of Tacuba. 701 It included
right to receive tribute from several towns. Another Moctezuma who
: was generously rewarded was don Gonzalo, one of the tlatoani's many
After helping Cortes conquer provinces near Oaxaca and
: other parts of the Mixteca, he received a cacicazgo in Tepeji de la Seda,
a town belonging to the jurisdiction of Puebla. Two hundred years later,
dona Ursula Garcia Cortes y Moctezuma, a vecina (citizen) of the city of
Puebla de los Angeles, would petition the Castilian crown for confirma" tion of the privileges, honors, and annual rent that she and her children
Were entitled to receive by virtue of their ancestral ties to the distinguished
don Gonzalo de Moctezuma. Naturally, not all descendants of the pre" Hispanic ruling elite were as fortunate as the Moctezumas, but other
Mesoamerican dynasties received economic and symbolic recognitions.

Religion, Genealogy, and Caste

Nobility and Purity in the 'Republica de Indios'

For example, in the 15905, don Constantino Huitzimcngari, grandson of

the Tarascan ruler at the time of the conquest, asked the crown for a gram
of 4,000 annual pesos and the right to bequeath it to his descendants in
perpetuity, but he was issued a considerably more modest sum of money.
Nonetheless, he was not in a precariolls economic position. An illegiti_
mate descendant of the Tarascan king, he inherited the main cacicazgo
of the province of Michoacan in IS7? when the only legitimate successor
was a woman of mixed ancestry. That the woman did not inherit the title
was apparently due less to her gender than to her dual (Spanish-Indian)
descent, for by the last third of the sixteenth century only "pure Indians"
were allowed to inherit cacicazgosJ' When don Constantino requested
an increase in his annual pension, he was also building a case to have
his royal lineage officially certified, along with the corresponding grants,
privileges, and honors.
The crown's recognition of pre-Hispanic dynasties and legal mechanisms it implemented to reproduce them effectively co-opted the upper
echelons of central Mexico's indigenous society. It is true that not all
caciques and principales were seduced by the trappings of Spanish culture and legitimation, and many struggled to protect their communities'
lands and traditions. But in general, native rulers and nobles came to
have a stake in a colonial system that allowcd them to retain a degree
of political and economic power. Another, less perceptible consequence
of the crown's policies toward the descendants of royal and aristocratic
lineages was the transformation, through the legal formulas accompanying the transmission of the cacicazgo and proof of nobility, of native
notions of genealogy and the past. On onc hand, the colonial government's system for recognizing titles and promotion of pre-Hispanic dynastic histories shaped formulations of communal origins and rights; on
the other, its policies of making office and landholding in the republica
de indios exclusive to "pure Indians" influenced elite constructions of
"blood mixture" and "race."

on the nuclear family and married couple as social and moral

at the expense of the multi household complex typical of the pred~pan';', period. n Funhermore, Mexica women generally lost aurhorindependence because under the colonial legal system they were
longer considered "jural adults," capable of taking social and legal
i<spons;b;J;ry for themsclves. 73 The law considered them legal minors
a greater degree than indigenous men, who as explained earlier had
obtain permission from viceregal officials to sell their properties and
juridically were also considered "miserables." Accompanying these
Iram,";, changes in the areas of dynastic succession, inheritance, and
were transformations in historical narratives, the elaboration of
was encouraged by the system of cacicazgos and principalazgos.
The Spanish government began encouraging the construction of preH;SP,an;: dynastic histories almost immediately after the conquest. New
first viceroys even demanded proof of noble status in the form
historical texts. Viceroy Mendoza, for example, requested a history
governing families of the province of Chako-Amaquemecan. The
..."Irw,,, an account written by the rulers and elders of the community
later became the basis of Chimalpahin's magisterial text, written in
..,,,,,,..1Nahuatl, on his hometown of Chalco. 74 In I5.'i7 and subsequent
Philip II ordered all towns in the viceroyalties of New Spain and
(as well as in Castile) to provide inform<1tion about their populageography, lands, traditions, and histories. New Spain produced
than four hundred of these accounts, or relaciones geogra{icas. 75
not only provided the government with a great deal of knowledge
the pre-Hispanic past~at least as it was understood by a small
of relatively privileged and Christianized native males in the postperiod~but many would also later serve (indeed some still
the reconstruction of communal histories and defense of village

'"

HISTORY, GENEALOGY, AND THE NEW

SYMBOLICS ot-' BLOOD

The Spanish legal system not only homogenized native forms of succession but ushered in profound changes in the everyday life of the Mexica,
and specifically in their notions of propeny, inheritance, gender, family,
and kin. By the seventeenth century, those changes included a simplification of native genealogies, the replacement of varied forms of transmitting inheritance and property with more of a patrilineal model, and a

i:onqu""

Dynastic histories produced by colonial native historians, includChimalpahin and Tezozbmoc, for the most part did not reflect the
of succession that operated during pre-Hispanic times~which
could involve the transmission of titles from the tlatoani to a son from
One of his wives, to one of his brothers, and even to a daughter or
niece~bllt instead tended to adopt Castilian ones and their emphasis

."~~r:~~~,~:~~::~r~ marriage,

76

legitimate birth, and primogeniture. The

:,'
of Spanish values of nobility and traditions of inheritance
thus resulted in a recasting of the native past, in indigenous histories
> and genealogies increasingly framed in European and Christian terms.
, Indeed, in their historical accounts and in correspondence with the
crown, Nahua chroniclers often compared the teccalli (noble houses) of

Religion, Genealogy, and Caste

their a/tepe!t (kingdoms) with the mayorazgos of Castile. For example,

Chimalpahin-who was born Domingo Francisco but later in life changed
his name to don Dommgo Francisco San Anton Munon Chimalpahin
Quauhtlehuanitzin-equated the distinguished lineages of the Kingdom
of Chalco with the noble houses of Europe.?? The dynastic histories that
he and other native elites produced were in large part products of colonialism and the way it introduced and routinized certain principles of
political legitimation and certain understandings of the past.
If the influence of Christianity and Spanish culture is discernable in
the historical works of Chimalpahin and Tezozomoc, it is much more
apparent in those of Diego Munoz Camargo, Juan Bautista Pomar, and
Fernando de Alva IxtlilxochitU~ Their rexts are permeated with European terms, values, and temporal concepts. 7Y A late-sixteenth-century
description of Tlaxcala, probably written by MuflOZ Camargo, even referred to the conquest as ordained by divine providence and as having
freed the native people from the "enemy of humankind," presumably the
devil.~G Ixtlilxochit! {J578-1648), a descendant of rulers from Texcoco,
emphasized his ancestors' supposed collaboration with the conquerors
in his Historia de fa uaci6n chichimeca, a historical account of that altepet! and its dynasties. HI The works of these three historians reveal not
only just how rapidly the discourse of vassalage-of subjection to the
Crown of Castile and the Catholic faith-had insinuated itself into local
histories, but also the importance that pre-Hispanic ancestry had for accessing colonial offices, posts, and privileges. All three had Spanish fathers but had received a number of social and economic benefits thanks
to their maternal noble native bloodlines and their cooperation with colonial authorities.
The works of Munoz Camargo, Bautista Pomar, and Ixtlilxochitl
functioned as appeals to a higher authority in which claims were based
not just on services to crown and faith but on the worthiness of bloodlines originating in the pre-Hispanic past and conquest period. These
legitimating claims were characteristic of the broader body of colonial
historiography. Perhaps nowhere are they as prominent as in the writings of Peru's EI Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, whose mother was a noble
Incan and father a Spanish conqueror. He authored Comentarios reales
de los lucas, about the Inca and their achievements, and complemented
it with Historia General del Peru, about the conquest and early colonial
period. Both works amounted to petitions to gain legitimation: the first
on the basis of the author's mother's noble indigenous past, the second
on the basis of his father's military services, which had helped pave the
way for Christianity in Peru.~2 Colonial Spanish American literature thus
shared rhetorical formulas with proba07.as, petitions (e.g., for cacicazgo

Nobility and Purity in the 'Republica de Indios'

"5

accounts (re/aciones) submitted to the Spanish king. Law,

and literature converged and helped to produce certain (geneanarratives of the past. The descendants of pre-Hispanic dynas
and Spanish conquerors were particularly invested in the COilstrucof those narratives because it gave them a double claim to political
economic privileges.
New Spain's Ixrlilx6chitl, for example, did not inherit his mother'S
because it was passed down to his older brother, but he was
governor and judge of various regions, including Texcoco,
and the province of Chalco. He also served as interpreter
de Indio~. At the time that Ixtlilx6chitl was writing his
he was also helping his mother put together a dosfamily'S direct descent from the pre-Hispanic rulers
Teotihuacan and Texcoco. The family had in fact already received
number of royal recognitions, including the title to a cacicazgo, but
~~':~~b:~~;'~~;; presumably more definitive, probanza because its lands
were constantly being threatened by relatives and other peoThese recognitions began in 1533, when a royal decree granted
Francisco Verdugo Quetzalmamalitzin Huetzin the cacicazgo of
,.,' , ..... Teotihuacan, an alteped that had belonged to Texcoco's jurisduring the time of the Triple Alliance. Don Quetzalmamalitzin
~:'l~;:~~:"~',::'::rried the daughter of the king of Texcoco, dona Ana CorteS
~,
a union that greatly enhanced his lands and tribute. Not
a male successor when he died, he left his cacicazgo to his wife
daughter. The latter, Francisca Verdugo Ixtlilxochitl, wed the SpanJuan Grande (an interpreter in Mexico's audiencia) in 1561 but kept
title of cacica because by this time Spaniards were not allowed to
app"'p.,iate the title of cacique {though they sometimes did anyway).
couple also did not produce a male successor. Thus, when dona
.~:~~;::~~ Verdugo Ixtlilx6chitl died, her daughter, dona Ana Cortes.
.,
her. Dona Ana Cortes also married a Spaniard, don Juan Perez
Peraleda, another interpreter in the royal audiencia. The pair gave
: birth first to don Francisco de Nava Huetzin and then to don fernando
Ixtlilx6chitl, the author of Historia de fa uaci6n chichimeca.
. Having three Spanish grandparents did not preveJlt Ixtlilx6chitl from
'. reclaiming his pre-Hispanic royal blood and from attempting to pre, serve the history of his native ancestors' altepet!. He as well as Munoz
Camargo and Bautista Pomar were all engaged in the creation of inregional histories and vindication of their maternal blood:through which they had status, honor, and privileges. Despite the
'- Spanish government's stress on paternal descent, then, their histories
'; and genealogies preserved an important matrilineal dimension. Not by

,,6

Religion, Genealogy, and Caste

coincidence, the construction of these histories and appropriation of the

native past by the three writers occurred at a time when the crown was
attempting to disenfranchise mestizos, the descendants of Spanish and
Indian unions. During the early decades of colonial rule in which the
government did not have or did not enforce purity requirements, SOme
ru[erships and offices in native cabildos were transferred to Spaniards
and people of mixed ancestry,~4 but in the second half of the sixteenth
century, fOyallegislation tried to slow down this process. In 1576, for
example, the crown decreed that individuals could not become caciques
by marrying cacicas and that only pure Indians could inherit cacicazgos.~_\ Those mestizos who had acquired the title were to be removed
from the post, even if they were of legitimate birth.
Eligibility for cacicazgos thus became contingent not only on preHispanic noble ancestry but also on native purity. Not just rulerships
but all municipal offices in the Indian republic as well as governorships
were in theory limited to individuals of pure ancestry. Various laws to
that effect were passed in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. That they continually had to be reissued reflects their ineffectiveness as well as the inconsistent nature of royal policies with regard to
the descendants of Spanish-Indian unions. g6 Religious officials in central Mexico often complained that laws designed to protect the native
population were not being implemented, and in 1647, Juan de Palafox
y Mendoza, the bishop of Puebla and interim viceroy, passed an ordinance stressing the need to uphold the principle of purity because mestizos, mulattos, and others of mixed ancestry ("de nacion mezclada") were
taking over indigenous government. He argued that only "true Indians"
by both father and mother ("meramente i'ldios de padre y madre") should
be allowed to hold offices in native cabildos, or great harm would come
to that population. A short time later, the crown made Palafox's ordinance a general law for New Spain, thereby reiterating and expanding
the requirement of "purity" for positions in native governmentP
Palafox's defense of the rights of the Indian republic, which he roo
based on their eager reception of the Christian faith and remarkable loyalty to His Majesty, ~~ was made urgent by the threatened condition of
many native communities. Sociodemographic shifts, including the rapid
growth of the population of mixed ancestry and the beginning of a steady
rise in indigenous numbers, coupled with the expansion of the latifundium, placed enormous pressure on patrimonial and communal properties and led to numerous conflicts between Spaniards and caciques.
These conflicts compelled the crown to establish a legal process called
composici6n de tierras, rhrough which caciques applied to the audiencia
for titles to rheir lands or those of their communities, that is, when they
did not already have them or when the ones they had were not considered

Nobility and Purity in the 'Republica de Indios'

..i'tin."'" Often local leaders based [heir claims on Sixteenth-century
granted to their ancestors and on the historical accounts provided
their communities to Philip II. The composiciones, the first phase
which lasted from 1643 to 1647, thus provided a stimulus for the
;"duction of more histories and specifically for a genre of documents
came to be known (probably as of the nineteenth century) as titulos
~,,,ord,'al,,, (primordial titles).
The drulos primordiales, some of which historians are still discovin local communities and archives, appeared throughout central

:~:~:~t!.h::C~M~~i~x~tcc and

Zapotec regions, and the southern Maya zone.

in indigenous languages, they were somewhat like land
were mainly produced by and for communities and thus not all
presented to Spanish authorities. The titulos served three central
on,,,ion,,; They preserved the town's memory of its foundation, territoboundaries, and traditional land and water rights; they strengththe sense of corporate identity and entitlements; and, especially as
late seventeenth century, they helped defend communal lands and
of the native aristocracy from encroachment by external forces. ~~
they also sought to establish the noble and pre-Hispanic ori~:~;:~h:; local ruling group, they often included genealogical informaby the eighteenth century, the genre had sprouted indigenous
....eallogi",., experts in the production nor just of lineages but also of
of communal autonomy) and land titles .
of arms
"00 '0/ these
were tried for falsification of documents. 9o RemI

~;:~;~~~:,.~r~a~~'~ linajudos, they mined earlier royal decrees, relaciones

and other historical records and mastered Spanish geneaand juridical formulas for the recognition of landholdings and
indigenous corporate rights. These formulas generally privileged
bloodlines that were pure, which helps to explain the rising conwith lineage in the late colonial period as well as attempts by some
~:iqu" and principales to reclaim Nahuatl surnames that their families
not used for generations and to disavow those that exposed their
bloodlines. 91
As a whole, the titulos primordiales vividly illustrate the importance
genealogy had for the late colonial native nobility'S imagination
the extent to which the written word was complementing, and in
cases supplanting, oral and pictographic traditions of maintainCommunal memory. They also reflect the degree [() which the pre. past had either receded into the background of that memory
become fully intertwined with events of the posrconquest period. If
that were produced in central Mexico are any indication, by the
seventeenth century, the conquest had become the main reference
. point for indigenous reconstructions of their past and their acceptance
,

,,8

Religion, Genealogy, and Caste

of [he Catholic faith, the principal source of colonial legitimation.~2

Clearly, indigenous corporate rights and history were shaped by colonial
legal discourses and in parricular the Spanish patrimonial state's con_
tractual relationship with the "Indian republic." This relationship was
confirmed by late-seventccnth-century royal legislation and especially
by a 1697 real cedula (royal decree). Issued by Charles II, the decree
upheld the privileged status of the descendants of pre-Hispanic nobles
and rulers and the principle that the native population as a whole had
"dean" blood because they descended from "uninfected gentiles" who
had accepted the Catholic faith.93 Significantly, it stipulated that all th~
privileges and rights that were reserved for indigenous people also applied to mestizos ("indios mestizos"). The real cedula thus expressed
one of the apparem paradoxes of Spanish colonial ideology: its ability to reconcile concepts of purity and mixture, especially if the "mix"
involved Spanish and noble native blood. If indigenous purity was in
theory necessary for accessing public offices in native governmem, its
definition turned out to be relatively flexible. Two examples, one from
the region of Oaxaca, the other from central Mexico, will serve to demonstrate how notions of purity and mixture operated in parts of New
Spain during the eighteenth century.
In 1722, the caciques don Diego Gonzalez de Chavez and dona Josefa
Marfa de Zarate, a husband and wife from a town in the Valley of Etla
(in Oaxaca) founded a chaplaincy naming one of their sons, don Joseph
Amonio Gonzalez de Zarate, as chaplain. 94 Wanting the chaplaincy to
be transmitted as a mayorazgo (or cacicazgo), they requested a probama
from the district's alcalde mayor and presemed him with proof of the
value of their estate, of their legitimate birth as well as that of their son
Joseph Antonio, and of the family's pure Indian blood, unblemished by
any bad "race" (raza) or any other stains. The proof included the testimo"
nics of six Spanish-speaking caciques and nobles from the region, all of
whom attested, among other things, to the couple's nobility, legitimacy,
purity, and solvency as well to the absence of any stains of idolatry in
their bloodlines. Once the testimonies were recorded and approved, the
hmband and wife also left instructions that after their son don Joseph
Antonio died, the chaplaincy was to continue to be passed to their direct
descendants or, in their absence, to other relatives who met the requirements of purity, legitimacy, and nobility, with preference given to those
who were virtuous, studious, and poor. When no descendams were left,
the chaplaincy was tu be granted to other caciques from the region who
met those qualities.
The chaplaincy was transmitted to the direct descendants of don Diego
Gonzalez de Chavez and dona Josefa Marfa de Zarate for a couple of gen-

Nobility and Purity in the 'Republica de Indios'

"9

~::~~.~but in 1772, there were apparently no eligible ones left, and itwas

by three different parties. One of the parties, don Lazaro Lopez

argued that the chaplaincy should be granted to his son because
other candidate, Joseph c. Carrasco, had a grandmother who was reto be a mulata, a woman of partial African blood, which automatimade him ineligible because "such a quality is inherited (comunicaand is passed down to all of the descendants of the trunk."9s Don
Pacheco also claimed that the third contender was neither pure
descendant of caciques. The other parties fought back with accusa~ ....,f ,h";'own and, even though at least one (Carrasco) acknowledged
some Spanish ancestry, submitted documents to defend their puand nobility. These documents included various probanzas that had
granted to their ancestors (one a sixteenth-century cacique who had
p",,,,,,edto Christianity and allied with Cortes) as well as copies of the
decree upholding the rights of Indians and "indios mestizos." Like
late-seventeenth- and eighteenth-century native conflicts over
office holding, or estates, this case illustrates that in "indigenous"
communities, concepts of lineage and purity could be quite strong
elite sectors; that although undiluted Indian ancestry was clearly
":;:~~.~~... mcstizoS could also be construed as pure; and that notions of
:n
and "race" were frequently linked to African ancestry. As the
example reveals, these aspects of the colonial Mexican discourses of
were also marked in the more hispanicized urban contexts.
dona Ursula Garda Cortes y Moctezuma asked her husband,
don Manuel del Torn y Santa Cruz, to petition Mexico City's aufor confirmation of her noble privileges. The request was accomby a two-hundred-folio probanza containing, among other things,
declarations regarding her lineage and social status, copies of
decrees that two centuries earlier had granted her family the right
arms (Uef privilegio de Armas"), and information from her baprecords verifying her genealogical ties (and those of her children)
don Gonzalo de Moctezuma, the sixteenth-century cacique of Tepeji
la Seda. The judge who t:xamined the documentation noted that all
the testimonies submitted by her fellow vecinos (citizens) in Puebla
los Angeles had alluded to the petitioner's "caUdad de mestiza," her
and indigenous ancestry. But he added that they had also
that all of dona Ursula's ancestors had rt:mained "pure": "sin
infecta" ("withuut the mixture of contaminated blood").
The judge's own assessment was that the body of evidence effectively

",,'''')U,

om"",u,

~~~~~;:;';' that dona

Ursula's progenitors consisted of, on one hand,

and principales, and on the other, conquerors, noble "Old
He tht:refore recommended that the petitioner and her

no

Religion, Genealogy, and Caste

children be granted all of the privileges, exemptions, honors, and liber_

ties to which their distinguished lineage entitled them. The judge sent the
case, along with his recommendation, to Viceroy Revilla Gijedo, who in
turn approved the petition on May 12, 17ST. Dona Ursula's probanza,
as well as the judge's assessment of the case, stressed her family's descent
from conquerors and from don Gonzalo de Moctezuma, a direer blood
descendant of the emperor Moctezuma ("como descenJientes de tales

conquistadores, y de don Conzaio de Moctezuma inmediato en sangre

at emperador Moctezuma"). They both also alluded to the moment in
which don Gonzalo and his family converted to Catholicism. This, in
fact, turned out to be the key moment of legitimation. Notwithstanding
eighteenth-century discourses about the degenerating effects of "blood
mixture" (a topic to be elaborated in subsequent chapters), acceptance
of the faith, loyalty to the crown, noble blood, and the passing of generations had earned the descendants of the caciques and principales of
Tepeji de la Seda the status of "pure" and noble "Old Christians."

CONCLUSION

Scholarship on colonial Spanish America often describes the "tworepublic" model of social organization as a failure, mainly because segregation policies were constantly violated.~7 This characterization has
some validity. Creating an apartheid like order never entirely worked,
especially not in areas of significant Spanish populations, because Spaniards depended on native labor and because for a number of other reasons individuals frequently defied residenriallaws. The project to create
dual republics was not simply a spatial one, however. It also encompassed the establishment of separate civil and ecclesiastical institutions
and a distinct theological-legal status for the native population, as well
as the recognition of their r.,;ht to live in semiautonomous communities
with their own rulers and lands. Initially part of a utopian missionary
project, the idea of an Indian republic was supported by the crown for
political, economic, and religious reasons. The existence and reproduction of native towns not only facilitated the siphoning of tribute to royal
coffers but enabled placing their population under the tutelage of the
crown and the church, thereby strengthening the relationship between
the Spanish state and indigenous communities. This relationship, which
was cast as voluntary and contractual and was constantly invoked in legal procedures for validating indigenous political and economic claims,
strongly shaped central Mexican communal histories and notions of
blood among native elites.

Nobility and Purity in the 'Republica de Indios'

Although central Mexico's native rulers and nobles experienced a gendecline during the second half of the sixteenth century, and royal
~i;'~'::~~a:,;;o~o;;':~tr,ued them along with the entire indigenous population
;I
the Spanish crown recognized pre-Hispanic lineages
[0 ensure that their blood would continue to have a priviwithin the colonial order of symbols. Fashioned after the
proof of nuhility, the process for recognizing titles enhanced
concern with genealogy among caciques and principales and made
rinnOI!",it,",e increa~ingly important in their succession and inheritpractices. It also altered their constructions of the native past. By
late seventeenth century, central Mexican historical narratives had
and large come to center on sixteenth-century rulers and the moin which they and their communities accepted Christianity and
rule. Pre-Hispanic forms of thinking about the past survived,
p,o,idiog inspiration for alternative historical imaginings and
"i,:010nia1 rebellions (although less in central Mexico than in Peru).
Christianity and the discourse of vassalage that accompanied recogof the native republic and its traditional leaders led to profound
an,I,,,o.. ';o,,,: in native historical narratives, succession and inheritpractices, and understandings of corporate rights. These transformay not have been as conspicuous as the more material changes
colonialism wrought-namely, the systems of labor and tribute, the
"::~:~~:'a~:: decline, and the nucleation programs-but they were just
both in terms of their role in legitimating Spanish political
Ii
r:!~~:,:;;and ill reconf1guring indigenous memory, social relations, and
At least at the dite level, Spanish legal procedures influenced native
;'t,,,i,,a11 and genealogical narratives as well as notions of purity, mixand race. As will be discussed in later chapters, these notions were
all linked, as in the Iberian Peninsula, to religious discourses but
to be deployed mainly against people tlf African ancestry. Spanish
c-...... -. ideology deemed blacks capable of becoming good Christians
never accorded them the same spiritual status as the indigenous peoThe official recognition of Indian purity, its transformation into a
ron,di,ti,ooforcertain privileges and corporate rights, had deep implicafor colonial Mexico's constructions of "race" and "caste." Together
the recognition of native nobility, it made blood maner, especially
caciques and principales; and it discouraged mixture, particuwith "black blood." Although the creation of dual citizenship and
regimes implied that the descendants of Spanish-Indian unions
disenfranchised and sometimes considered "impure," some were
Oone'theie" able to access honors, tides, and other privileges reserved

Religion, Genealogy, and Caste

for the native population. This occurred because succession and inherit_
ance laws were sometimes simply ignored, because royal policies were
especially ambiguous about the status of mestizos (and frequently upheld the rights of those with aristocratic bloodlines), and because the
belief in the right of blood was strong in both indigenous and Spanish
cultures. Furthermore, as the 1697 cedula confirmed, within Spanish
colonial ideology, notions of purity and mixture were not necessarily
opposed.
Like native rulers and nobles, the descendants of Spanish-Indian
unions produced histories and petitions that stressed their linkages to
pre-Hispanic dynasties and that centered on their ancestors' unbro_
ken loyalty, starting in the sixteenth century, to the Catholic faith and
Spanish king. The Castilian crown's recognition of an Indian republic,
its establishment of legal processes and formulas for validating the titles
of caciques and principales, and its extension of the concept of purity to
the native population thus left a deep imprint on indigenous and mestizo
notions of political legitimation, hisrory, and blood. Those processes,
however, also had consequences for the Spanish population. Spaniards
too were transformed by the organizing principles, laws, institutions,
and material conditions of colonial rule, indeed "creolized." Aspiring to
become a colonial aristocracy, they too produced genealogical histories,
colonial fictions that in due time would merge with those of the descendants of central Mexico's native rulers and nobles, in the process-shaping
discourses of political legitimation as well as of race.

CHAPTER FIVE

Nobility and Purity

In

the Republica de Espafioles

Spaniards were not unique in their transplantation of metropolitan

with lineage and blood purity to the Americas, but they were
by the extent to which they relied on categories of blood
colonial society. Chapter 4 examined how the crown's recof pre-Hispanic dynasties and nati~e purity promoted a preocwith genealogy and purity within central Mexico's indigenous
. Chapter 5 analyzes how royal policies contributed to simconcerns among the Spanish population. It argues that there were
connections between the reproductive strategies used by Spanish
particularly in the clergy and administration, and those used in
republica de indios and more generally between the perpetuation
hierarchies in both republics and the rise of a social order based on
"b,i""d." This chapter first describes the importance of the institution
encomienda to creole class formation and the establishment of a sysof probanzas de meritos y servicios through which the descendants
of conquerors and first colonists claimed economic rewards and status
:on the basis of the worthiness of their bloodlines. It then discusses the
. early significance of the concept of purity of blood in New Spain and
:' its appearance as a requirement for travel from Spain to the Americas
. and for certain public and religious offices. Together, the probanzas de
meritos y servicios and probanzas de limpieza de sangre promoted archival practices that helped generate a creole historical consciousness with
a strong genealogical component. Finally, the chapter discusses some of
the tensions that arose toward the end of the sixteenth century between
Spaniards born in the colonies and those born in Spain, especially as
the former started to defend their right to have preferential access to the
secular and religious administrations on the basis of both their bloodlines and ties to the land.

Nobility and Purity in the 'Republica de Espafioles'

Religion, Genealogy, and Caste

DESCENT AND TERRITORIALITY:
THE PROBANZA DE MERITOS Y SERVICIOS

One of the most well-documented dramas of sixteenth-century Spanish

America was the struggle between the crown and the conquerors over
the encomienda. Having recently managed to suppress the rebellion of
the comuneros in Spain and to limit the power of the Castilian nobility,' the monarchy immediately perceived the permanent distribution of
native workers to individual Spamards in the colonies to be a threat to
its interests. The encomienda was not technically a feudal institution,
first, because it did not involve land grants and, second, because it did
not imply civil and criminal jurisdiction over the tributary population.
Recipients were given the right to extract tribute and labor from their
assigned native subjects and in return were expected to care for their
spiritual and temporal well-being, but all indigenous converts were first
and foremost vassals of the Crown of Castile. 2 Nonetheless, the virtually
unlimited control over labor and tribute that encomenderos first enjoyed
promised to transform them into a powerful regional aristocracy, and
that was something that the Spanish monarchy, an ocean away, could
not afford. Therefore, as early as 1532, the Council of the Indies ordered
Mexico City's audiencia to attempt to stop distributing encomiendas.
Depriving the conquerors of grants of native workers proved to be a
difficult task because, having risked their own properties, not to mention their lives, they expected rewards worthy of their sacrifices and
achievements. As the principal source of weahh in Mexico during the
first three decades of colonial rule, J the encomienda was at the heart of
a feeling of entitlement that sprang from the conquerors' implicitly contractual relationship with the crown. This relationship was reflected in
the tenor of petitions for encomiendas, which uniformly cast the grants
being sought not as gifts, but as payments for services rendered, indeed,
as the "wages of conquest."4 Abolishing the institution would dearly
have meant alienating the conqueror-encomenderos, which the crown
could not do without jeopardizing colonial rule. Because Spain did not
have a standing army in the Americas until relatively late, it initially had
to rely on them to maintain control over conquered regions. The encomendcros kept horses, men, and arms ready at all times to defend the
territory, and they generally settled around their town's central square
or plaza de armas, where they would periodically perform military drills
and rituals. But the encomenderos did not limit themselves to military
roles. They gradually (Ook over some of the offices in the town councils
of main colonial cities, among them Mexico City and Puebla. Together

primeros pob/adores (first colonists), they would not only consticentral Mexico's own group of benemeritos de la tierra (meritorisons of the land) but would become the core of its aristocratic elite.
The growing economic and political power of the conqucror n.com"ncl"o,only strengthened the crown's resolve to limit their power.
1542, it issued the New Laws, which mandated the extinction of the
.ncorr.i".da after all the holders had died and which sought to substithe institution with the repartimiento, the system of rotating labor
shifted control over the distribution of workers to royal officials.
elsewhere in Spanish America, Mexico's encomenderos vehemently
and forced the crown to compromise;' The Spanish monarch
the institution to continue for "two lives"-to be passed down
a direct line of descent and with preference given to the oldest
son-as it had previously been doing and promised to cona repartimiento general, a general distribution of native tributarto all the Spaniards who through their services had earned, but not
received, encomiendas. The crown also established mechanisms to
the descendants of conquerors and first colonists with pensions,
and religious offices, and lands."
The infrastructure for receiving petitions for royal grants began to be
ltabli"hcd relatively soon after the conquest. Viceroy Antonio de Menasked all the conquerors and first colonists to formally record their

-::~~i';~';'~;,~t,h~,u~.,;:s:etting the stage for the vast number of in(ormes

~

and
de miritos y servicios (proofs of merits and
that were produced during the rest of the colonial period. 7 In
middle of the sixteenth century, as it became increasingly difficult to
the meritorious sons of the land (also called hi;os patrimoniales
tierra, or "patrimonial sons of the land"), the government stepped
p .ffom to create an archival infrastructure for preserving their historiand genealogical information and to regularize the process by which
petitioned grants. ~ This increasing systematization of the reports ocprecisely around the time that the government formalized chanfor recognizing the descendants of pre-Hispanic rulers and nobles.
criteria and mechanisms for reproducing the elite sectors of both
ref,ut,Ii,," thus surfaced in the same period, each system contributing to
construction of a colonial social and symbolic order strongly based
'lcl",,,,,, and territoriality. In the reporrs of merits and services, contdto maintaining Spanish rule in a given region and the worthiness
J ~::;1~~n:,~became virtual mantras, the typical reasons provided when
"
honors, rewards, and public or religious offices.
reports of merits and services consisted of sworn statements prebefore the audiencia by the interested party and various witnesses.

Religion, Genealogy, and Caste

Nobility and Purity in the 'Republica de Espaitoles'

Individuals who submitted them underscored military and/or coloniza_

tion services, such as participation in exploration or conquest expedi_
tions, in the founding of towns or in local government. Maintaining a
"populated house" with many servants and slaves as well as keeping
arms ready at all times in case of a rebellion were also considered contri_
butions and therefore usually mentioned. In addition, the reports tended
to indude details about the petitioner's regional origins, lineage, social
status, and properties. Over time, the informes tended to become more
extensive because new generations had to submit not only their own
reports bur also those of theif ancestors. Thus, the documents became
family histories of a sort: chronological and genealogical reconstruc_
tions that reinforced the aristocratic mind set of New Spain's creole elites
and that shared as their main refetence point participation in the conquest and colonization of the land. The archive produced by the descendants of Juan de Cervantes Casaus and his descendants is a case in
point. Cervantes Casaus, a conqueror who became capitan general of
the province of Panuco in 1)29, produced numerous reports of merits
and services with remarkable historical depth. Indeed, some of these reports linked the conquest of Mexico with the Reconquista; they stressed
the military services provided by members of the lineage not only in New
Spain but in Spain, in struggles against Muslims going as far back as the
eighth century.9 Cervantes Casaus's documentation became part of the
informes de meritos y servicios submitted by his descendants, thus constituting the basis of a particular historical and genealogical consciousness that would conrinue to be strong into the eighteenth century and
beyond.
The reports of metits and services were not colonial innovations but,
rather, were part of the Spanish system of nobility. They derived from
the legal tradition of granting noble status, normally "nobility of privi
lege" or "nobility of office," to men who had performed heroic military deeds on behalf of the crown or who had rendered other services
that were considered beneficial to the republic. If the status was granted
in perpetuity, it became "nobility of blood" (hidalguia) on the fourth
generation, that is, after it was established juridically on three separate
instances. lO In Spanish America, however, the crown did not intend to
use the reports of merits and services to dispense noble titles. Breaking
with the Reconquista tradition of granting the status of caballero or
hidalgo to those who made significant contributions to the colonizing
and christianizing mission, it issued only a handful of noble titles during
the sixteenth century {thirteen to members of Pizarro's first expedition
in Peru). Most explorers, conquerors, and first colonists had to settle
fOf hidalguia americana, a mostly de facto noble status marked by tax

.~::::~:;nl:~' coats of arms, and preferential treatment with regard to

p
land, cabildo offices, and the post of corregidor. l1 But of <til

<26

that the crown initially handed out to its soldiers and colonizing
in New Spain, it was the encomienda that became most strongly
with noble status, and for this reason encomenderos insisted
beyond the stipulated "two lives." Indeed, by the late
century, some enco01ienda holders began to attempt to turn
grants into mayorazgos, to entail them and make them transmitgeneration after generation through a "straight male line" (linea
the varrJn).12 The Council of the Indies, however, generally did not
them.
One of the most notable petitions rhe Council of the Indies received
a 1.~64 letter from New Spain's conquerors and first colonists statthat they were all anxiously waiting for the prize of perpetuity. Jl
years later, Mexico City'S cabildo asked that the encomenderos be
the right to entail their encomiendas and consolidate theif estates,
would enable them to petition for titles of nobility. This and simirequests must have had an effect, because in 1575, Philip II ordered
Martin Enriquez to discreetly extend the encomiendas to a third
But the question of perpetuity was nor settled. At the end of the
",'Ieen,h century, the Council of the Indies was still studying the isand only about three encomiendas had been given the title of mayo,14 The rest were mainly in their second or third generation and
",ref"re targeted for repossession by the crown. The failure of royal
to definitively resolve the fate of the encomiendas only fed the
of families of the conquerors and first colonists, whose lafor what seemed to be an inexplicably tragic fate were accompaby a defiant vindication of the privileges, honors, and sources of
that they considered theirs by virtue of their ancestors' contributo winning the land.lI
For example, at the end of the sixteenth century, GonzaJo Gomez de
son of the conqueror Juan de Cervantes Casaus, completed
memorial (historical account) describing New Spain'S social and eco. conditions. His account had tWO main goals: to persuade the
to finally fulfill its promise of making a distribution of rributarto all the benemeritos who had not yet received any and to make
new and existing encomiendas perpetually transmittable. (;6mez de
';;,,,van,,, considered the distribution and perpetuation of grants of natribute necessary to protect the families of conquerors and first colwhose status was being threatened by the rapid upward mobility
of more recent immigrants from the Iberian Peninsula, i11,d;',;d.,l, who had contributed little to the conquest but were amassing

,..,ntm"n,

C"",m'",

<28

Religion, Genealogy, and Caste

Nobility and Purity in the 'Republica de Espanoles'

fortunes, whether thanks to royal favors or their mining and commer_

cial emerprises. 16 His memorial, the arguments of which were echoed
by other American-born Spaniards, signaled the rise of "creolism" (cri_
ollisnlO) or what Bernard Lavalle has called the creole "spirit of possession," a sense of entitlement that grew as the crown began to favor
European-born Spaniards for high public and religious offices and cer_
tain royal granrsY Representing a rupture with the Castilian practice
of granting the natives of a jurisdiction a monopoly on access to office
holding and ecclesiastical benefices, the policy was one of the factors
that prompted the rise of a creole discourse of "nativeness." This discourse developed alongside, and in constant tension with, that of purity
of blood, which privileged (Spanish) bloodlines as the basis for making
political and economic claims and which set in motion its own set of
social, archival, and genealogical practices.

did not even tolerate the presence of New Christians. It is true

Catholic Kings at one point considered the possibility of allowconverted Jews to migrate to the Americas, for a price, but fears that
,,;:,. would become a source of "contamination" led them to change their
As the Mexican inquisitor Alonso de Peralta was later to exHis Majesty did not allow New Christians in the Indies because
concerns that the indigenous people would unite with them or follow
' . .M,v,.21 The colonial discourse of purity of blood was therefore inipropelled by the Christianization project and by Spanish distrust
religious loyalties of Jewish converts-by religious utopias and
I."icoov"",o sentiment.
Excepting a few categories, emigrants to the Americas were required
present certificates of purity of blood, along with royal licenses to
at Seville's Casa de Contrataci6n (Royal House of Trade). These
",,jfica'" were normally obtained from local judges. Some of the emipurity documents date back to the early 1530S, which suggests
people departing for the Americas submitted some of the first in-

BLOODI,INES AND RELIGION:

THE PROBANZA DE LIMPIEZA DE SANGRE

Given the importance that the issue of limpieza de sangre enjoyed III
early modern Spain, it is not surprising that it acquired significance in
the Americas and that purity requirements would be implemented there
too. But the use of the concept in the conquered lands was immediately
linked to the cultural politics of Spanish colonialism. The tight relationship between the Spanish state and the church and the prevalence of
Castilian providential notions of history at the time of the conquest produced a vision of the "Indies" as a privileged space of purity, a region
where Old Christians would make their faith flourish and the seeds of
heresy would never sprout. This religious utopia led the crown to bar
untrustworthy converts from going to its new territories, thereby making the concept of limpieza de sangre important there before statutes of
purity of blood and the Inquisition were formally established. In New
Spain, a first edict forbidding the arrival of people who were "stained"
was issued in I523.1~ Various other decrees targeting Jews, Muslims,
conversos, moriscos, Gypsies, heretics, and the descendants of those categories were to fo[]ow,19 Together these laws amounted to a de facto
purity-of-blood statute for going to the Americas. 211
If corporate society and local fueros (laws) prevented the passage of
a general blood decree in the metropolitan context, the incorporation
of Spanish America into the Crown of Castile and the imporram:e of
the project to convert the native population prompted Spain's monarchs
to pursue a more aggressive limpieza policy in the colonies, one that in

::~::':~~'~, de

limpieza de sangre produced in Spain. Not all travelers

the required limpieza certification from local judges in their
however, and the bureaucratic mechanisms set up in Seville,
I the early decades, were not efficient enough to presome New Christians from traversing the Atlantic. l2 News of their
oo,.jn;gpresence in New Spain led to legislation such as the 1S35 royal
ordering Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza to make sure that peobarred from practicing medicine and obtaining university degrees
Spain were also not allowed to do so in MexicoY Occasionally the
excused the limpieza certification requirement for travelers to the
,m"d',"', Philip II did so, for example, in 1574 with Santiago del Riego,
named ojdor (judge) of the Audiencia of Nueva Galicia. Del Riego
the illegitimate son of a nun whose ancestry could for obvious reanot be investigated without damaging her honor and that of her
In general, however, purity requirements for passengers bestricter during the reign of Philip II and in particular after the apof the Cathedral of Toledo's statute, which sent an unmistakable
",'sa'l' about the importance that limpieza de sangre was acquiring in
secular and religious administrative hierarchies. In New Spain, it
p""j"ly in these tWO spheres that the issue of purity of blood first
promInence.
But exactly which government and ecclesiastical offices required proof
purity? In Spain, the lack of a blanket limpieza policy had created
striking inconsistencies. Proof of purity was required in a large
"'ml,,, of institutions and for certain royal posts, but not for regidores

Religion, Genealogy, and Caste

Nobiltty and Purity in the 'Republica de Espanoles'

and corregidores nor for judges, priests, coums, and dukes. I I In the colonial context, the situation was slightly different because only Old
Christians were allowed to migrate there. However, whether religious
and public officials had to submit a probanza depended on the office and
insdtution with which they were associated. Proof of purity was neces_
sary for a number of imperial posts, including councilors in the Council
of the Indies, audiencia judges, and royal secretaries (eseribanos reales),
At the municipalleve!, practices varied more because government institutions like the cabildo largely functioned as independent bodies and
their membership requirements could change. The most important town
coundls, those of the capital and Puebla, had mechanisms to monitor
the purity of their members, but it is unclear whether they had a formal statute. Proof of Old Christian lineage was thus required of some
corregidores, regidores, and alcaldes~officials that apparently were not
obliged to prove their Iimpieza in Spain. Because the religious orders and
cathedral chapters ,also enjoyed some autonomy, probanza requirements
for the clergy varied as well.
During the early colonial period, the limpieza certification process for
public and religious officials normally involved audiencias and cabildos,
bodies that were authorized by the crown to handle those cases. 26 These
institutions received petitions and genealogical information and determined whether or not to submit the case to the Council of the Indies
for examination and possible further investigations. For example, not
long after Puebla's town council was founded, it was accepting petitions such as that of Francisco Gutierrez de Leon, a priest whose parents
were among the city's earliest settlers. In the late 153os, he submitted
his genealogical information before the cabildo's at~alde ordinario in
order to have it sent to the Council of the IndiesY He also presented
five witnesses, all of whom attested to his unblemished Catholic lineage,
admirable religious practices, and virtuous conduct, as well as to his
overall eligibility for a royal grant. Dune well before the Inquisition had
regularized purity investigations, the probanza included the main questions (regarding legitimacy, limpieza, place of birth, moral conduct, and
reputation) later contained in Holy Office questionnaires.
Another probanza initiated in Puebla's town council was that of
Alonso Perez, who in the middle of the sixteenth century presented his
genealogical mformation to Antonio de Almaguer, the city's alcalde
ordinario. A priest and canon in Puebla's cathedral who hoped to be
named precentor (chantre), Perez also submitted a purity certification
from the Villa de la Puebla de Sancho Perez that his father had secured
for him from the alcaldes of that Spanish town in IH8. 2~ That probanza
included the testimonies of eight witnesses, all of whom confirmed thar

Perez was legitimate and pure of blood and that the public
and fame held him as such. The father was given copies of the
:e",ifi,catioo", which he promptly sent to his son in New Spain. In J552,
Perez presented one of those copies [0 Almaguer and requested
probanza to establish his qualifications to be precentor. The enI
the genealogical information, the probanza done
Spain about his blood purity, and the one completed in New Spain
his qualifications and character~was sent to the Council of the
which approved his petition.
The probanza of Pedro Garcia Martinez, another priest, followed the
bureaucratic trajectory. In 1569, he requested a canonry in Puebla's

'3 0

13 1

:~~;~::,;~and presented the cabildo with an informacion attesting to his

as a priest and his "dean lineage and caste."29 After interseven witnesses, the alcalde approved the probanza and sent it
the Council of the Indies. Not long thereafter, Garcia Martinez was
three legal copies of his purity certification. In those same years,
.
Garda Rodriguez Pardo initiated a similar process with the
:&hildo "j Michoacan. Wanting a canonry in the city's cathedral, he prethe local judge with a probanza made in the town of Guayangareo
M;;ch?adn) that attested to his qualifications as a priest. He also suba certificate of purity of blood that he had received from an alSpain in 1548, just before migrating to the Americas ..l ll In 1549,
Garcia, a priest in Mexico City, began to submit paperwork to
!reca,bi'ldo in order to prove that he was an Old Christian. 31
An example of a probanza that was petitioned not at a town council
at Mexico City's aucliencia is that of Juan Cabrera, a priest in the
and son of one of its "ancient settlers." In 1565, he requested a
investigation from the tribunal, which he said he needed because
Ie 'wi"h"d to be considered for a post and prebend in the cathedral chapof Mexico City, Puebla, or Michoacan.:l2 To that end, he submitted
of his purity of blood as well as documentation of the services
he and his father had provided for the crown. Cabrera's certificaprocess thus combined the probanza de limpieza de sangre with the
pr"b"mra de meriros y servicios. After Cabrera presented his genealogiinformation and four witnesses to support it, one of the judges con'~'~"'Q an interrogation and a royal secretary recorded the testimonies.
interrogation consisted of five questions, the first of which focused
I
' lineage, legitimate birth, purity of blood, and nobility.
who had been educated at the recently founded University of
and who described himself as a "patrimonial son" of the capital
claimed hidalguia for his father and himself on the basis of their
to the crown. Other questions tried to verify that the candidate

'''"vi""

Religion, Genealogy, and Caste

was a priest, lived a peaceful and prudent life, and set good examples for
others, as well as that he could communicate in native languages. The
following year, Cabrera presented another informacion and four witnesses at the audiencia, this time to prove that he had received the Holy
Orders. Both probanzas were sent to the Council of the Indies.
In addition to receiving petitions for probanzas de Iimpieza de sangre
from religious officials, Mexico City's audiencia also handled requests
from candidates for royal posts. For example, in 1601, Antonio Rueda
applied for the post of escribano real and presented his genealogical information to the corregidor, who in turn relayed it to the tribunaL])
The probanza, which involved interrogations and the typical questions
of legitimacy, ancestry, and purity, was approved by an audiencia judge
and sent to the Council of the Indies. Also sent was a copy of a limpieza
certification that Rueda had obtained in 1)48 from the corregidor of
Alba de Tormes (near the Spanish city of Salamanca) and which he presented at the Casa de Contratacion before embarking for the Americas.
Another applicant for the post of royal secretary in 160l was Pedro
de Salmeron, a native of Castile. 34 Six witnesses, most from Salmeron's
hometown of Villanueva de la Fuente, declared before Mexican audiencia officials that he was of pure and Old Christian ancestry. The second
witness, from a neighboring village, testified that he knew that the applicant was clean because the elders from his town and from Villanueva
de la Fuente had known his parents and grandparents and would often
refer to the purity of their lineage. When all the testimonies were recorded, the informacion was sent to Spain, where a second probanza
was made in Salmeron's native town. There the alcalde ordinaria interrogated four people who had known him and his family and who attested ta their purity of blood.
That government officials (including corregidores, oidores, and alcaldes ordinarios) on both sides of the Atlantic intervened in the purity
certification of religious officials is partially explained by the Real Patronata, which gave Castilian monarchs the right to regulate the movement of clergy to Spanish America and to nominate candidates for all
religious appointments, from archbishops down to priests. Popes could
reject appointees bur they rarely did, and when it came to the lower
clergy, their approval usually was not even requested. Petitions for ecclesiastical benefices were normally sent to the Council of the Indies, at
least until the passage of the Ordenanza del Patronazgo in 1574. This
important piece of legislation sought to curb the influence and parochial
duties of the regular orders in favor of the secular (Episcopal) clergy and
to consolidate the king's control over the colonial church. H It therefore
reiterated that the crown was in charge of all ecclesiastical benefices,

Nobility and Purity in the 'Republica de EspaiioJes'

:""";;,;on,,,

3.3

~::~,~~,~a,~thedral chapter appointments. The official responsible for

the Ordenanza del Patconazgo's reforms was Pedro Moya

the viceroyalty's first formal inquisitor and one of its arch(1573-89). Besides introducing a system of competitive exams,
for new rural benefices, he convened a tribunal to select
priests and to examine candidates for the Holy Orders and for
job of ecclesiastical notary. Participants in the competition (which
was supervised mostly by bishops rather than by a tribunal) were
render informaciones de limpieza de sangre and "relaciones [or infor,cio,""i de oflcio y parte."36
Moya de Contreras's reforms sought both to ascertain that priests
pure and to encourage the appointment of the descendants of the
and first settlers to new postS and benefices. Because the king
Council of the Indies could not consider all petitions alone, they
the responsibility to the viceroy. As of I.PS, then, most recipibenefices received them from the highest colonial sccuwho was in charge of ensuring that they met all of the prafesgenealogical requirements. Although the Spanish church as a
did not have a purity statute (cathedral chapters were a different
and bishops and pastors were not technically required to submit
of their purity of blood, in New Spain, members of the secular
were generally expected to be Old Christians. Thus, in the early
ev,,",,,,,uh century, a scandal broke out because the archbishop was ruro have stained ancestors. He was not removed from his post, but
Holy Offlce reported that his religious order had tried to expel him
it received news of his tainted lineage and that one of his nephews
not been admitted into the Order of Santiago for the same reason. 37
to the regular clergy, by the start of the seventeenth century, at least
religious orders-the Franciscans and the Jesuits-required that ap~ic,n" in New Spain submit proof of purity of blood.l~
During the last third of the sixteenth century, the number of probande limpieza de sangre requested in Mexico sharply increased. As in
":,~;~t;~~,~~t~~ context, the rise was related to the religious-political
Ii
the Counter-Reformation. Catholicism was clearly on the deat this time and nowhere was this truer than in Spain, which en'~ion,d itself as the divinely chosen guardian of the faith. Its efforts ta
a post-Tridentine Catholic orthodoxy within Hispanic society
large inspired more aggressive policies to prevent both the spread of
and the revival of idolatry in Spanish America. These concerns
~ith,'ns",ing that the Indies remained "uninfected" and that the native
did not relapse into thcir pagan practices helped justify entrustcolonial governance, both civil and spiritual, only to Old Christian

"",qO""D"

I.34

Religion, Genealogy, and Caste

Spaniards. Another factor influencing the numerical rise in probanzas de

limpieza de sangre in Mexico was the union of the crowns of Portugal
and Castile (1580-1640), which accentuated fears among colonial officials about Portuguese conversos (cristaos novas) making their way to
the Americas. The migration of a significant number of cristaos novos
to Spain (from which their ancestors tended to derive in the first place)
led Castilians to equate the term portugues with that of judio and to
look upon their growing presence, and that of Portuguese people in general, in both the metropole and colonies with great suspicion.3~ It soon
became clear to some colonial officials that they needed better mechanisms to ensure the purity of passengers to the Americas. Inquisitor
Peralta intimated as much in 1604 when he warned that many New
Christians had been evading limpieza requirements and arriving III New
Spain. He referred specifically to members of the Carvajal family, many
of whom were burned for practicing Judaism in one of the first autos de
fe "celebrated" in Mexico. With the arrival of more Portuguese conversos to New Spain and ensuing increase in the number of Inquisitorial
prosecutions, Mexico City's cathedral ran out of room for sanbenitos
and instead of hanging them had to put the names of the sanbenitados
on small strips of doth. 411
Finally, the probanzas de limpieza de sangre became more commonplace because of the formal establishment of the Tribunal of the Holy
Office of the Inquisition, which transferred its concerns with policing religious and genealogical purity to New Spain's landscape. Indeed, almost
as soon as it was founded, the Mexican Inquisition began to produce
these certifications and to receive and disseminate instructions on how
commissioners should proceed. 41 Following royal orders, it sought to ascertain that its officials and familiars provided proof of blood purity for
themselves and, if married, for their wives.42 New Spain's Holy Office
even conducted genealogical investigations for deceased spouses, but the
Suprema ordered an end to the practice in 1612. 43 The Inquisition's mandate to scrutinize i.lInily genealogies at first did not seem to dissuade
many individuals from trying to join its ranks. The title of familiar was
especially coveted because, though unsalaried, it gave the holder automatic local influence by transforming him into an official informant of
one of the most important institutions in central New Spain. Applicants
for the title therefore often consisted of recent immigrants who hoped to
infiltrate established circles of power. But the Holy Office did not simply conduct genealogical investigations for candidates to its ministerial
posts and familiaturas (familiar titles). Although town councils, cathedral chapters, and religious orders with purity requirements had thcir
own certification procedures, members of the political and ecclesiastical

Nobility and Purity in the 'Republica de Espaiioles'

'35

Iet,.rchi'" sometimes requested probanzas from the Inquisition because

procedures were considered more rigorous. Aristocrats who simply
to obtain proof of their unsullied lineages and persons dissatiswith the results of investigations done by other bodies also at times
to the Holy Office. 44 The establishment of the Inquisition thus
to the spread of probanzas and facilitated the transfer of the obseswith purity of blood to New Spain. By the end of the sixteenth centhis obsession was particularly marked among creoles who aspired
secure their place within the religious or secular administration but
limpieza de sangre and fitness for office were starting to be quesby the Spanish born. It was a period that witnessed the rise of
OW regi,,",.1 identities, sociocultural tensions, and political claims.

CRI:OLES AND THE STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS

AND PUBLIC OFFICES

from the Iberian Peninsula migrated to the Americas and

..:~:~~':, permanent domicile there, they not only were exposed to
n,
climates, flora and fauna, and foods different from those
World but became integrated into new social relations that
to lessen differences among themselves. It was, after all, thanks
pan"i'n policies on immigration and trade' with the Americas that the
of "natives of the kingdoms of Spain" emerged at the end of the
"",.nth cemury.45 This category had little meaning in the homeland
where several kingdoms and therefore several communities of nacontinued to coexist for at least another hundred years. But if the
of "Spanish natives" first operated in Spanish America, peninregional identities were by no means automatically transce~ded
the colonial context. Furthermore, new cleavages among Spalllards
in'''g.,d, one of the earliest being between those who were born or raised
----, ... - crio//os (creoles), and peninsulares (peninsulars), or those who
in the metropole.
In Mexico, the word criollo first appeared in Puebla de los Angeles,
it initially referred to native-born slaves and livestock but was
46
q"iddy displaced ontO Spaniards who had been born there. AIthe exact origins of the word are disputed, scholars generally
that it came from the verb criar, to raise (as in to be raiscd in), and
it was first applied to black slaves who were born and raised ~utside
Africa, so as to distinguish them from those who were born III that
'~;:,~~:~::,;'~;::~~. their part were called buzafes. The term referred to the
I
one was born or raised, and more generally to the process by

'3 6

Religion, Genealogy, and Caste

Nubility and Purity in the 'Republica de Espanoles'

which transplanted individuals became immersed in new social relations

and acquired new habits, beliefs, and local interests. As scholars have
remarked about the same phenomenon in the Andes, the displacement
of the term onto the colonists was by no means an innocent linguistic
exerciseY By the latter half of the sixteenth century, Spaniards equated
blacks with slavery and thus deemed them to be at the bottom of the
social hierarchy. Containing connotations of inferiority, the word creole
or criollo marked the growing tension between Spaniards born or raised
in the Americas and more recent migrants from the Iberian Peninsula.
This tension surfaced in the context of the growing competition over
public and religious offices and relative socioeconomic decline of the
families of the conquerors and first colonists. Notwithstanding earlier
promises made to them by the crown, the tenure of Viceroy Luis de Ve
lasco marked a shift in policy in favor of more recent arrivals to New
Spain. Royal officials and other nonconquerors with ties to the coun
and Castilian nobility seemed to fare especially well.4~ These Spaniards
received considerable viceregal patronage, and much to the dismay of
the first generation of colonists, some were even issued encomiend<'ls.
The son of Viceroy Luis de Velasco, who also became viceroy, W<'lS one
such recipient. The policy of favoring newer arrivals was precipitated
by the discovery of a conspiracy against the viceregal government by
Martin Cortes (the conqueror's son) and of his plans to declare himself
king. After an investigation that resulted in the execution of some of
the conspirators and Cortes's forced exile in Spain, the loyalty of the
meritorious sons of the land was put into question, and this suspicion,
in turn, was used to justify denying them access to the highest politi
cal and ecclesiastical offices. But creoles had their advocates, including
Diego Romano, the bishop of Tlaxcala. In a 1579 letter to Philip II, he
argued against allowing Spaniards who had been born in Spain to make
their religious posts perpetual, a policy he feared would damage the native people because those officials were not prepared to teach them in
their languages. He admitted that criollos who were not entirely qualified had been ordained, but many of them spoke indigenous tongues and
had demonstrated they were virtuous and with the capacity to excel in
lettersY
The shift in political climate in favor of more recent arrivals was most
noticeable in Mexico City, where the membership profiles of the audicncia and the cabildo underwent a gradual but nonetheless important
transformation. By the second decade of the seventeenth century, the
capital's {Own council was characterized by an almost complete absence
of members of New Spain's "traditional" colonial families. 5u The role
of these families and of creoles in general also declined in the religious

.dln"lni",atl,lo", "hlch among the regular clergy created intense frictions.

1606, a report submitted to the crown described all of the orders in
as being divided into two camps: criollos and castellanos
(;,~:,t:~:~~),51 Spanish friars accused creoles of excessive ambition, of
-;
to control not just the religious orders but the cathedral chaptown councils, and of claiming the "kingdom of New Spain"
their own. The latter responded by accusing Castilians in the orders
of "m,lu"ti"g secret investigations (informaciones) to prove that the 10were not sufficiently qualified for positions of authority and by at:~~~::;:,~;.c ~~,o:,produce their own proofs of their abilities, intellectual and

137

Creole struggles within the religious orders continued into at least

16205, eventually resulting in various orders establishing the alter, a system in which access to the novitiate, offices, and benefices
given on a rotating basis to Spaniards, creoles, and in some cases to
" third category: those who had been born in Spain but had taken the
in Mexico.-13 For creoles, the system was not ideal, but they were
""nelth"I"" able to play an important role in the religious orders and,
lodl",J, in both the public and religious hierarchies, which in the course
the seventeenth century became increasingly creolized. Even though
were not normally named to the top public and church posts, royal
pollie;" continued to support granting the descendants of the conquerfirst colonists preferential access to certain posts (particularly in
of justice in native communities), 14 in part to appease
and in part to limit the possibility that they would unite with other
I

,II

In any case, the first wave of rivalries between creoles and peninsuover religious and public offices coincided with the beginnings of
ll<arop,an theories of colonial degeneration, the terms of which reveal
of the cultural tensions that arose in the Americas and significance
the concept and certification of purity of blood would acquire in
.cel",al New Spain. These theories were primarily based on the idea that
American climate, environment, and skies made people lazy, unstasuperstitious, and prone to a series of vices, including lasciviousness
lust. ,6 The climate of the Indies, proposed the cosmographer Juan
L6pez de Velasco at the end of the sixteenth century, made native bod.
thin, fragile, and lazy and had similar effects on the children
:' of Spaniards, whose temperament, habits, and corporal qualities would
eventually mutate. 17 Decades later, the friar Gregorio Garcia discussed
.
men's lack of facial hair and wondered if this would hap; pen to Spaniards as well as if their skin color would change. I~ Would
. geography and climate make them effeminate and dark like the Indians?

,,8

Religion, Genealogy, and Caste

Nobility and Purity in the 'RepublKa de Espaiioles'

Various other writers speculated whether climate explained the exter_

nal and internal characteristics of the native people and, if so, whether
life in the colonies would eventually transform the descendants of Europeans. S9 According to some of theif works, the warm and humid climate
of the Americas changed the physiological makeup of Spaniards, their
bodily humors, and from these changes followed others in their temperament, intellect, complexion, and even rhetorical wit. The environment
shaped physiology, and physiology in turn determined everything else.
The logical conclusion of this environmental and physical determinism was that, whether they "mixed" with the indigenous people or not,
Spaniards would with time become more and more like them, a process that could only be slowed down by the constant infusion of more
Europeans into the colonies.
Theories that posited that the children of Europeans in the colonies
underwent a physiological and moral decline sometimes attributed the
process not just to the effects of the American physical environment and
skies but also to the use of native or black wet nurses by creole families. 60 Spaniards degenerated in the Indies, argued the theologian Jose de
Acosta, because of the constellations and because they had been nourished by the breasts of Indian women. Just as in early modern Spain
breast milk figured prominently in notions of social contamination-as
a metaphor for exposure to certain cultural and religious practices and
for the biological transmission of all sorts of qualities (0 the child-so
too in Spanish America. And just as in the metropolitan context women's bodies came to mark cultural and biological boundaries, so too in
the colonies, as anxieties over converso and morisco wet nurses were
displaced onto the African and indigenous women in charge of raising Spanish children. As in other imperial contexts, degeneration was
a mobile concept-applied first to certain metropolitan groups and then
colonial populations or vice versa-and served (0 establish citizenship
status (or at least its prerogatives) as well as to assign gender to race,
among other things. hI
Another and related dimension of the emerging discourse of creole
degeneration revolved around charges of biological "mixture," which at
first were made primarily against the children of conquerors and first
colonists (a good number of whom were the products of unions, mostly
informal, between Spaniards and indigenous women). Already by the
I570s, religious and secular authorities started to express concerns that
some people who claimed to be Spaniards had traces of native, or in
some cases black, ancestry and were therefore inferior in quality to persons who were born in the Peninsula and ineligible for public and reli
gious offices. For example, in 1571, the bishop of Antequera wrote to the

~:~;~ ~~,1~~~;;';~.:'h~a:':C~rist6bal Gil should not have the post of treasurer

'39

~ the cathedral

he was a mestizo and not "pure Spaniard" and

for that same reason the chapter's constitution made him inelifor benefices. 6z About a decade later, Madrid ordered New Spain's
to make sure that certain audiencia offices (particularly that of
be sold only to the sons of conquerors and first colonists, but
ascertain that they were not mestizos or mulatos. 63
Whether they stressed the effects of dimate, wet nurses, or biological
f~j~::r,~:'~:~n with colonial populations, Spanish charges that life in the
had a degenerating effect did not go unchallenged. for example,
at the end of the sixteenth century Juan de Cardenas wrote his

be,",'"

",,,pro,:

t,

~:~~~!~~y secretos maravillusus de las Indias in order to familiarize a

audience with some of the many "marvels" of the New World,

a defense of the colonial Spanish population. A medical dochorn in Spain, Cardenas was educated and for the most part
in Mexico and thus qualified as a creole. Influenced by classical
medieval sources (including Aristotle, the Greek physician Galen,
the Arab scholar Ibn Rushd), he argued that the Indies' environnamely, the heat, sun, and humidity, altered aspects of Spaniards'
(my,iol"gic> and generally made human bodies honer, softer, and more
disease. But Cardenas refuted the notion that colonists would
~v'n'IU,.lly become like the native population. On the contrary, he in.,,',,' It.. , their fundamental "nature" (naturaleza) remained the same. 64
C.irdenas argued for the basic unity of creoles and peninsulars as
question of who should have access to political and ecclesiastical
started to be raised was not a coincidence. Myths of nature have
lIi,no,l<"llly been deployed to legitimate the social order and help to natuIn Spanish America, these myths arose at a time when
hierarchies were emerging and their ideological basis was being
in the minds, policies, and writings of colonial and peninsuSpaniards.
For creoles, particularly those who descended from the first colonists,
: the main religious and public institutions of the viceroyalty belonged to
. them because of the efforts of their forefathers and, increasingly, their
rights and qualifications as natives of the jurisdiction. At the end of the
, sixteenth century, they began to conceive of the territory of New Spain
as a kingdom-a kingdom under the Spanish crown but independent of
Castile-and to stress both their ties to the land and knowledge of indigenous languages; they also began to construe Spaniards as "foreigners,"
that is, as people who were not integrated into the local community and
- Who were therefore not entitled to the fights of either vecindad or natUtaleza."" Thus, the creole spirit of possession was gradually extended

Religion, Genealogy, and Caste

Nobility and Purity in the 'Republica de Espanoles'

from the cncomienda to public and religious offices, to the prerogatives

of "nativeness." The stage was apparently set for the rise of a distinct
creole identity and protonational consciousness. But this growing sense
of "nativeness" and separateness from Castile did not ultimately erode
theif sense of being part of a broader community of Spaniards.
Indeed, objections to the use of the word criollo (made as writings associating American-born Europeans with the native people proliferated)
usually stressed the idea that it created a damaging separation, one that
made no sense given that creoles were Spaniards. o7 The crown and Spanish jurists for the most part agreed. Juan de Solorzano Pereira, for example, rejected theories that the sky and climate of the Indies and the breast
milk they drank from native women made Spaniards who lived there lose
the good qualities that they received from their Spanish blood. Pointing
out that those theories had been elaborated mainly by theologians who
wanted to exclude creoles from the rights enjoyed by Spaniards, and in
particular to deny them access to the prelacy (body of prelates) and honorific posts, he affirmed the former's essential "Spanishness."6~
The prohanzas de limpieza de sangre played a critical role in this construction of a broader sense of Spanishness as well as in the creoles'
struggle to secure their place in the religious and political hierarchies.
Along with the informes de meritos y servicios and relaciones de oficio
y parte, they were used to prove educational preparation, services to
crown and faith, and purity of bloodlines. Especially as questions about
the "nature" of Europeans who lived in the Americas and their suitability for certain offices began to surface, the probanza de limpieza de
sangre acquired new meanings. As elaborated on in the last three chapters of this book, it allowed creoles to vindicate their religiosity, Old
Christian ancestry, and Spanish bloodlines and thus to claim to be part
of a broader community of "pure Spaniards."

SP"n;",I, born on the Iberian Peninsula. Nonetheless, the crown canto recognize, albeit less than in the past, the contributions of the
~,dto<i"m" sons of the land and established bureaucratic mechanisms
ensured that they had access to certain religious and puhlic offices.
mechani~m~ mainly consisted of the probanza de meritos y serviwhich granted a de facto nobility status, and which was frequently
iu~,mi"cd with the probanza de limpieza de sangre.
Transplanted from Spain, the concept of purity of blood did not operin the same way as it did in Iberia and came to occupy a particularly
role in creole power struggles and discourses. It first gained
as part of efforts by the Castilian crown and the church to
that the project to establish the Catholic faith in the Americas
not be undermined by "suspect" Christians. The colonial disof limpieza de sangre thus differed from the metropolitan one
that it was inextricably linked to the Christianizing mission, which
Spanish kings to make the status of purity of blood a precondition
going to its newly acquired territories and a requirement for cercolonial officials. By the end of the sixteenth century, the state,

'4 0

CONCLUSION

By the second half of the sixteenth century, New Spain had a regional
elite composed of conquerors, first colonists, and their descendants.
Members of this group felt entitled not just to the perpetuity of their
encomiendas but to the viceroyalty's public offices and ecclesiastical
benefices and more generally to aristocratic privileges. Not only did they
have to face the specter of losing their grants of native laborers and tributaries, however, but they also encountered growing competition from
more recent arrivals for jobs in the government and church, as well as
accusations that life in the colonies had somehow made them inferior to

.."mW"

m'''''''''''

~,c~~.~~:i:.::~~~n; and some religious orders were routinizing genealogical

~

I
that helped to transfer the metropolitan obsession with
to Spanish America and in particular to enhance the colonial
concern with bloodlines. fueled by the role that lineage played
gaining access to various religious and public offices, this concern
illo,w"dcrcoles to identify as part of a broader community of Spaniards
in general, to forge the myth of Spanish unity.
creole use of the concept of purity of blood and its unifying
un.ction developed in constant tensions with the emcrging colonial disof nativeness, which began to construct Spaniards born in the
Peninsula as foreigners and which was tied to a deep sense of

~~~~:~;~~:.~~i~ this
attachment to the land. Originating with the conqucrorscnse of territoriality and local patriotism would in
century start to produce a literature that exalted the clitopography, and wealth of the viceroyalty. But creoles would conto maintain a strong sense of their purity of blood-a concept that
deployed not just to reclaim their Old Christian Spanish identity
to draw boundarics between themselves and the growing population

Initial Stages of the 'Sistema de Castas'

CHAPTER SIX

The Initial Stages and Socioreligious

Roots of the Sistema de Castas

Testimonies to the Spanish colonial project to create a dichotomous

model of social organization, the first Mexican parish books containing baptismal, marriage, and death registers were divided into {ibros de
espa.ilO/es (books of Spaniards) and {ibros de indios (books of Indians).
Dunng the first half of the seventeenth century, however, parishes in diffe~ent parts of New Spain started to keep separate records for people of
mixed ancestry, the "castas," who previously had tended to be included
~Il the books o.f Spaniards. Scholarship on colonial Mexico has generally
mcerpreted Ius change as a sign that the sistema de castas had crystallized. 1 The system began to unfold in the second half of the sixteenth
century, a period that witnessed the growth of a "mixed" population as
well as a nomenclature referring primarily to descent. By the end of the
century, main colonial categories of difference, including mestizo and
mu/ato, started to appear in administrative records on a regular basis.
Spanish colonial categories of "mixture" partly drew on metropolitan ~raditions. Beginning with the Council of Elvira {circa 314 C.E.}, sexual Intercourse between people of different religions was the subject of
continual ecclesiastical prohibitions, and eventually marriages between
~~hristi~n.s, Jews, and Muslims were not permitted. The persistence of
mterrehgJOus sexual unions during the medieval period gave way to new
terms for their "hybrid offspring" (hibridos), including that of mozarabe
(mixed Arab), which initially referred to the children of a Christian and
a ~~~Iim. 2 This classificatory impulse intensified when the Spanish InqUlSltHlIl began its genealogical investigations and efforts to determine
people's degrees of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim blood. Given early
modern Spain's acute concerns with lineage, purity, and categorization,
the emergence of the colonial sistema de castas was perhaps to be expected. But the rise and form of that system can be explained only by

and religious developments in Spanish America and the

i interaction of local and transatlantic processes, among them
set in motion by the African slave trade.
This chapter charts the origins of the sistema de castas in central New
It first discusses main classificatory trends in sixteenth-century
records, particularly the shift from a somewhat fluid system of
~,eg,"i,a'ion in which paternal ancestry was privileged, but not alto a more rigid model based on both bloodlines. Focusing mainly
mestizos, this section attributes the shift at the end of the sixteenth
nm,:yto processes of economic and political exclusion as well as to the
~,.bli,hn"''' of the Inquisition and accentuation of Spanish anxieties
the religious proclivities and genealogical origins of the native pop~I'''io'n':. The chapter then examines the role of slavery in determining
juridical-theological status of blacks vis-ii-vis that of the native peoand more generally the place that African descent occupied within
",1!oo,i,.1 society and its gendered order of blood symbols. The final secanalyzes the Spanish colonial language of "race," particularly the
:ooeel'" of raza and casta, and the influence that religious notions of
purity had on the system of classification's principal categories.

CATEGORIES AND ARCHIVES:

BOOKS OF SPANIARDS, INDIANS, AND CASTAS

AI,tho,ugh insufficient in and of themselves as a source of information

origins and functioning of the sistema de castas, sixteenth~~:~~;,:parish records provide important clues about early colonial c1as'i
trends. One of their limitations, besides their incomplete nathey generally list more information for men than for women
children. Marriage records, for example, often qualify grooms with
: terms such as espanol or indio, but don't provide the background of the
. bride. Similarly, baptismal records include more information about the
(and godfather) than about the mother and child. This gendered
"yrr'meuy in parish registers was the result of the Castilian tradition
. determining the sociopolitical status of family members according to
that of the head of the household, normally the father. A patrilineal logic
reigned, that is, not just in the discourse of nohility {which established
. noble status through the paternal bloodline} but in processes of estab.lishing vecindad {"citizenship" or membership in the local community}
~nd naturaleza ("nativeness" or membership in the kingdom). J In SpanIsh America, this logic tended to operate in accordance with the dual
tnodel of social organization, for at least initially, belonging in one or

'44

Initial Stages of the 'Sistema de Castas'

Religion, Genealogy, and Caste

the other "republic" was largely, though by no means exclusively, deter_

mined on the basis of the status of the father.
Patrilineal classificatory patterns are evident in birth records from
sixteenth-century central Mexican cities. For example, the baptismal
registers of Puchla's Sagrario Metropolitano (Cathedral Parish), which
had /ibros de bautismos de espaftules as early as J544, tend only to SPec_
ify the Spanish status of the father, as such suggesting that the mother
and child were Spaniards roo. Yet other colonial sources, inciudlllg a
ISH report scnt by the city to the Council of the Indies, confirm that
some of the children being registered had indigenous mothers. The report stated that out of eighty-one male heads of households, twenty_
se~en were married to native w~men.4 As far as can be determined, the
children produced by these unions were registered in libros de bautismas de espaiioles, without any indication that they were not Spanish.s
In the early period, what seems to have mattered most were the status
of the father and the legitimacy or illegitimacy of the child. Although
the cate~ory of mestizo does appear in one register from the 154os, its
use contmued to be rare through most of the sixteenth century.6 That
the term was scarcely utilized was not due to a lack of a population of
mixed ancestry. A demographic count sent to the Suprema at the end of
the sixteenth century estimated the total nonnative population of Puebla
to be 20,100, including 14,400 Spaniards; 3,000 "mestizos, mulattoes,
and free blacks" working in the obrajes, or textile mills (silk, cotton, and
wool); 200 religious; and 2,500 black and mulatto slaves. 7 The absence
of the category of mestizo in parish records also did not mean that it was
not used, for it did quickly appear in a number of municipal ordinances,
town council records, and colonial repons. In the r540s and 15)OS, for
example, various mestizos were granted lots of land in Puebla's traza
(colonial urban grid plan) as well as in some native barrios. 8
As to the use of the categories of negro and mulato in the Sagrario
Metropolitano's baptismal records, they starred to appear with some
frequency in the 1;60s.
few of these entries include last names , but
.
they tend lO apply the qualifiers negro and mulato to both men and
women. Y Thus, on July 9,1560, Juan, son of "Lucrecia negra y de Diego
de Ojeda," was baptized. His godparents were Luis Hidalgo and "una
mulata Mendora."10 That the patrilineal trend determining the classification of the children of Spanish males and native women did not
operate in unions involvinr women of African ancestry was pardy a
function of the institution of slavery and the Spanish legal principle of
the "free womb" (vientre libre), which in order to protect the property
rights of masters made the status of newborns follow that of their (enslaved) mothers. ll It was also an early sign of Spanish colonial society'S

du"",""e

to fully incorporate blacks and their descendants as vecinos

naturales, to include them in the principal categories of sociopolitibelonging.
i By contrast, early policies toward the offspring of Spanish-Indian
encouraged their integration into Spanish society. In the 1550S,
example, the crown mandated that New Spain's officials take meswho were living in native towns and link them with their fathers,
were to raise them as good Christians, cultivate their love for Spain
all things Spanish, and distance them from the "vices" and rituals
indigenous population. 12 Royal decrees also ordered the establishof institutions aimed at integrating the children of Spanish-native
into the republica de espaiioles. Though not always carried out,
projects to found orphanages, boarding schools, monasteries,
dowry foundations for those who were destitute surfaced in Mexico
Puebla, and other Spanish colonial towns.l.l The crown promoted
incorporation of mestizos into the Spanish community in order to
demographic imbalances as well as to cultivate their loyalty to
But its early orders to transfer them to Spanish cities and parents
mainly aimed at those who were orphaned and nor at those who
already being raised by families in native towns, whose dassificavaried.
Indeed, the offspring of colonists and native women could be considSpaniards, mestizos, or Indians depending on sLlch factors as their
status (legitimacy), paternal recognition, and level of Hispani~~~;~~~a~s;swell as on the community in which they were raised. Self1M
also played a role. Some individuals, especially those who
noble pre-Hispanic blood, identified more with their Indian ancesIxtlilxochitl, for example, was a mestizo (actually a castizo) acIOrdi',g to the emerging Spanish system of classification, but he for the
part considered himself part of the indigenous nobility and was
oecogoi"d as such. He recast native history largely in Spanish terms and
certain extent distanced himself from the indigenous world of both
:~; ~,:;~:a'i:n:;d present, bur he nonetheless claimed noble Indian status and
~
privileges that it implied.
A more telling example of how children of Spanish and native parcould be classified is provided by some of the descendants of the
>~quew' Diego Munoz, who was married to a Castilian but fathered
least two children with an indigenous wOl;nan. When he settled down
live in Mexico City, he apparently helped raise his illegitimate off'P'''o,., one of whom was Diego Munoz Camargo (ca. 1528-99), the fuhi,,,o,ii,n of Tlaxcala. H In the 1580s, the historian accompanied
group of Tlaxcalan officials to Madrid and met with Philip II, who

'4 6

Religion, Genealugy, and Caste

recognized him as the son of a cOnqueror. Munoz Camargo married

Leonor Vazquez, a native noblewoman of Ococciulco, and had two legitimate children with her, Isabel and Diego. The historian became the
teniente (deputy) of the Tlaxcalan municipal magistrate in 158} and,
being fluent in Castilian and Nahuatl, often acted as official interpreter
for colonial administrators. Though he worked for Spanish authorities,
Munoz Camargo identified with native interests. As the son of a Spaniard,
however, he could not hold a post in Tlaxcala's indigenous government.
Munoz Camargo's son, on the other hand, was able to take over the post
of "Indian governor" of Tlaxcala after he married the highest-ranking
native woman in the province. 15 At least some of the descendants of
the union between Diego Munoz the conquistador and an indigenous
woman were thus absorbed into the category of indio. As this and other
examples demonstrate, Spanish patrilineal principles, while dominant,
did not always prevail. Official recognition of New Spain's native nobility and the establishment of a dual system of rights and privileges based
on blood made a return to the "pure Indian" pole not only possible but,
under certain circumstances, desirable.
In sixteenth-century central Mexican cities, then, the classification of
the descendants of Spaniards and native people was not determined by
descent alone (as it seldom was to be), or for that matter by gender, but
by a variety of factors. Despite an overarching patrilineal trend, legitimacy, parental recognition, social rank, the initial demographic imbalances, strategies 00 the parts of both Spaniards and Indians, and level of
acculturation could all playa role. At the end of the sixteenth century,
however, patterns of classifications began to be based more squarely on
aocestry. The term mestizo, for example, started to be applied to the
children of Spanish and native unions on a more regular basis, regardless of legitimate birth and other factors. The shift from a patrilineal but
relatively fluid model of classification to one that was based on both paternal and maternal bloodlines was manifested in the parish archives of
various cities, which began to keep separate books for people of mixed
ancestry: /ibros de castas. Mexico City's Sagrario Metropolitano started
to keep separate baptismal records for the castas in 1603. Puebla's sagrario began to do so in 1607, and by 1661, it had also started to keep
different marriage books for that population. 16
Was the shift to a dual-descent model of classification related to developments in Spain, where maternal descent had become increasingly
important due to the merger of requirements of nobility and purity
of blood and the Inquisition's activities? Possibly, but more important
were a series of sociodemographic, political, and religious trends in central Mexico that lessened the overall status of mestizos. These trends

initial Stages of the 'Sistema de Castas'

'47

j~;~:;~d; the growth of a Spanish population through natural repro-

.d

and migration, which reduced the need to absorb the children of

unions into the Spanish group. Furthermore, marriages between
$p,nii,h males and noble indigenous women, never common in the first
became even less common as pre~Hispanic lineages declined,
meant that the mestizo population was not only increasingly ilie!:~;:':;l~bu~t also more distanced from noble bloodY Another socio:(1
factor influencing the status of mestizos was the emergence
a population of poor Spaniards. The problem was already considered
in the mid-sixteenth century, and in 1553 led Viceroy Luis de
to order Puebla's officials to attach all the Spaniards who did
have professions, properties, or employers ("o(icios, haciendas, 0
) to masters.1S
Nonetheless, the number of poor Spaniards continued to increase.
J'b' g;row,h of this population may not have been perceived as a problem
it not been for the presence of persons of mixed descent who were
advantage of available economic opportunities or creating their
historian Munoz Camargo had several large properties as well
attl, ranches and commercial enterprises, and Andres Rodriguez, deby a contemporary source as an "Africano," was a merchant who
eg,darly made trips to and from Tlaxcala and Zacatecas.l~ These two
have been exceptional, but it is well documented that per- .,r ._.""., descent acquired a strong presence in craft guilds and that
engaged in petty commerce. 211 In Puebla, free blacks and mulatquickly discovered that they could buy maize, wheat, chickens, salt,
and various other products from the native population and then sell
to Spaniards for a decent profit. The cabildo tried to put an end to
practice in 1555 and subsequently made several attempts to prevent
of African ancestry from selling anything in the city.21 As has
,u,m,,,,d for Mexico City, the increase in poor Spaniards during
which a small but significant portion of the population of
""'~'l anc.""ywas showing signs of economic advancement might have
ancestry increasingly important for the maintenance of colonial
.,'m''''''''' . State policies, for one, reflect a desire to make that populainto a free wage-labor force.
It would be misleading and reductionist, however, to attribute the
of the sistema de castas simply to socioeconomic tensions and profor there were other important dynamics at work. Politically,
government started to consider mestizos a liability, especially after
attempted rebellion of Martio Cortes, and to limit their rights and
".:~~~::::c:;. The crown deemed the descendants of conquerors and noble
I
an especially dangerous group because they had a double claim
~---,'-

Religion, Genealogy, and Caste

Initial Stages of the 'Sistema de Castas'

to the land. Seeking ro curb their power but not alienate them, it issued
policies that sometimes affirmed their special status and at others under_
mined it. Although the process had started earlier, in the last third of the
sixteenth century, a series of legal restrictions diminished the rights of
mestizos and started to make them into "second-class citizens."23 In the
157os, for example, royal decrees prohibited them from carrying arms;
from becoming public notaries, caciques, and municipal magistrates;
and from holding the title of Protector of Indians.l 4 Furthermore, in
1582, Philip II ordered New Spain's viceroy to sell certain offices in the
audiencia (particularly that of receptor) only to the sons of conquerors
and to ascertain that they were not "mestizos () mulatos. "2S Persons of
mixed ancestry were also gradually not permitted to enter the most prestigious trades and guilds and particularly were barred from becoming
masters in them.
Fears that mestizos would turn into a political threat combined with
suspicions about their religious loyalties. Usually described simply as a
system of social control that served to divide and rule colonial populations,26 the sistema de castas emerged during the formal establishment
of the Inquisition and was inseparable from rising concerns (and mendicant pessimism) over the persistence of pre-Hispanic religious practices and beliefs. Although the Holy Office did not receive permission to
prosecute native people, the discourse of indigenous idolatry-to which
both the formal inquisitorial tribunal and the provisorato de indios
contributed-that surfaced after the mid-sixteenth century fed the Spanish interest in determining the origins of the Indians and in studying
theories about the pre-Columbian inhabitants descending from one of
the lost tribes of Israel. 27 Many of these theories linked the two groups
by arguing that both had a predisposition to idol worshipping and that
they had similar traditions of ritual sacrifice and cannibalism. Some
Spanish writers made much of the fact that the words ;udio and indio,
as written in sixteenth-century Spanish, were virtually indistinguishable. For the Carmelite friar Antonio Vazquez de Espinosa, for example,
the orthographical similarity was not exactly evidence that the Indians
derived from Jews, but it was certainly consistent with the theory.28 The
friar, who returned to Spain around 1622 after spending time in Peru
and New Spain, also claimed that passages in the Bible indicated that
the native population descended from one of the lost tribes of Israel, the
one, incidentally, that had been condemned, "like mules," to perpetual
servitude. H
The Spanish colonial discourse of idolatry, which drew heavily frorn
anti-Semitic thought and tropes, had implications not only for the native people but for mestizos and other casta categories, some of which

revealed in a 1576 letter written by Mexican inquisitors to the

,gp'''''' The letter, which made a case for depriving people of parindigenous descent from inquisitorial offices and posts, stated that
lPani,,,d, in New Spain avoided the company of "indios mestizos or
.i,,"" because they generally considered them "vile and despicable"
incorrigible liars. For that same reason, the authors continued, these
.",gc"i,,, of people were not admitted into monasteries nor allowed to
the habit, but some were able to do both because of their white skin
which allowed them to conceal their "true descent." And if their
".,.Ii'" characteristics were not enough to deny them access [0 posts in
Holy Office, there was also the matter of their ancestry, which some
had speculated had its origins with the Palestinians (the term
in the letter). The issue was not resolved, the inquisitors noted,
there was "persuasive evidence" linking the two populations, such
similarities between Hebrew words and indigenous ones, and their
liken'''' in habits, rituals, sacrifices, dress, hlankets landJlong hair":
because many things that happened to these [Indians] were announced for
by the Prophets; and also because thty [the people that speculate about
hi,i'''''jsee the name Indio, and presume that it has been altered, and that the
joined at the bottom so that it says Judio. These rumors and general
and assumptions, together with the vileness and baseness and depraved
the descendants of these Irndian~l, seem sufficient reason not admit
into the offices of the Inquisition nor to any other ministerial post, and
was done it would come a~ a great surprise and shock. 3!!

.",on,,,,'
Ith"on",,'Y

The Mexican inquisitors' letter, which oozes anxieties over the posSemitic origins of the Indians, was written as the notion of purity
blood was starting to be adapted to the colonial context and anceswas becoming an exclusionary tool. The issue of idolatry played a
. I role in this exclusionary process because, at least in the minds
religious officials, it associated the native people not only with the
Hebrews bur also with the conversos. Technically, the veneraof idols was considered a different type of religious transgression
u::: ';':~:;i~','I~he persistent rejection of the church doctrine by those who
~I
and taught the main principles of the faith. 31 But because
indigenous people had been "cleansed" by holy water and in theory
i '
some colonial authorities argued that their lingering alleto their old deities, by breaking with Christianity's monotheistic
::PI""'PI that latria (adoration) is owed exclusively to God, constituted
only apostasy bur heresy. Frustrated by the removal of the mass of
people from their jurisdiction, inquisitors in particular insisted
'thatth, Holy Office should be allowed to try idolaters as heretics.

Initial Stages of the 'Sistema de Castas'

Religion, Genealogy, and Caste

Indeed, in a J619 leHer to the Suprema, Mexican inquisitors claimed
that some "Iadino Indians" were returning to their idolatry, supersti_
tions, and sorcery and spreading their ideas not only among native peo_
ple but also among Spaniards. n These and other wrongdoings, the au_
thors lamented, were common in New Spain but could not be dealt with
properly because the Holy Office could not tty Indians. The officials
pointed out that if in Europe the Inquisition had been given authority to
deal even with "infidel Jews and Moors, when rhey carry out their ritu_
als and ceremonies in Christian lands, [thereby) providing bad examples
[for Christians)," with more reason should it be able to try a population
that had been baptized. Their requests were not heeded, bur various
Spanish priests and writers continued to link the idolatrous traditions of
the Indians to those of the anCient Jews, and their refusal to completely
relinquish their old gods and beliefs to the "heresy" of the conversos,
thus pulling the native people and their descendants into the discourse
of purity of blood.
Initially the connection between pre-Hispanic native religious practices and impurity was not explicit. But by placing the indigenous people and their descendants on a lower spiritual plane than Old Christian
Spaniards, the supposedly recurring problem of idolatry prompted religious authorities to question native qualifications not only to work for
the Inquisition but also to be ordained as priests and have access to ecclesiastical offices and benefices. By the 1570s, some cathedral chapters
had constitutions that made mestizo priests ineligible for ecclesiastical
posts and benefices. Thus, when in 1571 the bishop of Antequera wrote
to the crown proposing that Cristobal Gil should not have the post of
treasurer in the cathedral because he was not a "pure Spaniard," his
letter included a list of other priests who had "ra\a de mestizos" and
were therefore disqualified from accessing benefices. H The descendants
of Spanish-Indian unions were allowed to enter the priesthood in the
1580S, bur only if they were exceptionally qualified. Because there was
a shortage of priests who spoke native languages, this acceptance wa~
understood to be a matter of necessity and strongly contingent on candidates' submitting proof of their qualifications in the form of "informes
de cafidad y meri[Os," which included birth and genealogical information. Not yet addressed directly in relation to colonial populations, the
issue of limpieza de sangre nonetheless loomed in the background.
The Mexican historian Francisco Morales believes that the first Spaniard to explicitly link the indigenous people to borh the ancient Jews and
the issue of purity of blood was the Franciscan Geronimo de Mendieta.J~
In his Historia Eclesicistica Indiana, finished in 1604, rhe friar stated that
just as those who had converted from Judaism were prevented from join-

'5'

religious orders because they were "new" Christians, so too should

Indians, for they also were new to the faith.]j He pointed out that
though the primitive church had allowed recently converted genand Jews as priests and bishops, experiences with New Christians
"':,~~::~~. the con versos) had led the papacy to bar the descendants of
fiJ
' within the fourth degree from professing in the religious orders
the Franciscans [0 codify this exclusion in their statutes. According
Mendieta, a few Indians had been given the habit in the early phases

~,:::~.~~,~;.:~";~;'; bur during their novitiate year they had proven to be

~lJ

for the order. Therefore, the Franciscans-the same order

had helped lead the campaign to create the Spanish Inquisition and
by I52.'i had installed purity requirements-had established a
::~:;,~::;:::taccePting them altogether. Arguments about insufficient
of the Catholic faith and unproven loyalty to it were also
against mestizos. Although both groups had already been barred
the Franciscan Order in central Mexico, their exclusion became
of the order's purity statute in 1614.
Spanish concerns with the issue of native idolatry, which increased
the 1560s onward, were accompanied not only by the extension of
notions of impurity to colonial populations but also by the contru,e,;on of indigenous women's bodies as vehicles of contamination.
ability of the discourse of limpieza de sangre to turn women into
of impurity had already manifested itself in Spain. In Mexico,
proh;b;;,;,;n of indigenous religions ("idolatry"), which like Chrisand Judaism were not confined to a series of beliefs but encomvarious levels of social life and were inscribed in everyday rituals
practices, J6 enhanced the importance of spirituality in the house. That is, the colonial church's efforts to annihilate pre-Hispanic
priests, and public rituals lessened the role that native men played
p.erpe"u<u;ng indigenous forms of understanding and experiencing the
<~~;;:h~R;;c;:ligiOus officials were not as effective at policing the indigenous
,0
in which women tended to be more crucial in the transmisof knowledge about the natural and supernatural.
In the more private domain of the home, traditional practices related
the keeping of sacred household objects, celebrating rites of passage
marriage, dealing with sickness, and so forth tended to survive.
''Women were prominent in these activities and in particular in rituals to
. ward off sickness, to prevent the dangers of childbirth, to protect chil,deen from malignant supernatural forces, and to heal. Their critical role
in the process of "acculturation and coumer-acculturation"]7 enabled the
projection of Spanish colonial anxieties over the failure of the conversion
: project, and indeed, over impurity, onto their bodies. Like conversas and

Religion, Genealogy, and Caste

Initial Stages of the 'Sistema de Castas'

moriscas, native women became strongly associated with the transmis_

sion of their ancestors' cultural-religious forms. And just as Old Christian
concerns with safeguarding purity of blood were expressed in terms of
anxieties about the fluids of impure women in the metropole, so too in
the colonial context, where the metaphor of contaminating breast milk
also became common. This metaphor served to refer to the transmission
of all sorts of practices from native (and later black) wet nurses to children, and in particular to mark mestizos and creoles as impure.
At the start of the seventeenth century, the category of mestizo, like
that of Indian, was deeply embedded in discourses of religious conversion and being linked, more often than not implicitly, to the concept of
limpieza de sangre. This development, along with the socioeconomic
and political trends that were sketched out above, explains the declining
status of people of Spanish-Indian ancestry and the increasing preoccupation with ancestry at the end of the 1500s. But it does not entirely
clarify the emergence of the sistema de castas and more specifically the
form that it took. Explaining the nature of the system requires a deeper
understanding of the impact of the formal recognition of native purity
on patterns of categorization and of the consequences of the institution
of slavery on the classification of blacks and their descendants.

~:~;.~~:~i'dolatry and heresy, the crown and key jurists and theologians
p
to uphold the notion that native people were pure and thus
allow for their possible access, and that of their descendants, to the
'~:'~~~;,o~f~i~O::I:d Christians and, indeed, to that of Spaniard. Thus, when
;h
friar Gregorio Garda discussed the theory that the napeople descended from ancient Hebrews in his early seventeenth;",,,u,,,treatise, titled Origen de los indios del Nuevo Mundo, he made
to stress that even if it turned out to be true, their blood was nonepure. He reasoned that if the Indians did indeed have Jewish
.ne'''''''', it was possible that they had arrived in the New World before
death of Christ. The implication was that the indigenous populadid not descend from deicides-an aspersion commonly cast on
in Christian Europe-and thus that their genealogies were not
",n""'. This affirmation of Indian purity enabled Garda not only to
the right that mestizos had to access offices in the government
the church (prerogatives of natives of a jurisdiction) but to include
in the "Spanish nation" (nacion);

CASTE, SLAVERY, AND COLONIAL MEXICO'S

GENDERED SYMBOLICS OF BLOOD

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

1Vb,"un""'g,h,,, ,m' of ,f" Indians that such Spaniards have with the Spanish
, said part
whatever negative association it had, and gains much
one that now accompanies it, from which, since it is better, and more
io"o,",bl", the said descendants take the surname and name Spaniard, even if
are mestizos and have the same percentage of Indian and Spanish parts,
as [Spaniards] they are <ldmitted in the Repuhlic's honorable posts and gov""m,,,,, and to other places and things of honor and Religion, and are not
because of having Indian parts ... [which they ordinarily derive] from
maternalline. 411
In the early modern period, the term nacion (from the verb nacer, "to
born") had different connotations, one of its most common referring
a group with the same origin, sharing birthplace and lineage as well
I",g,,.!~, and culture. Thus, Old Christians sometimes described conJews as members of the "Hebrew nation," as in "los de nacion hedescendientes de Judios" ("those of the Hebrew nation descending
Jews").41 In Spanish America, the concept of naci6n also usually
an ethnolinguistic group, and it was in this sense that Gregorio
used it when he asserted that mestizos were eligible for honors
'n,j ",ffi,,, in the republic because of their "Spanish parts." Colonial arprovide ample examples of Spaniards who disagreed, and as preI discussed, certain institutions and royal policies did limit their
Nonetheless, the friar's construction of mestizos as Spaniards was
'."'i"ul,,,,,oin different colonial laws and texts and reflected the adaptaof the generational and genealogical formulas of the Castilian conof limpieza de sangre to the colonial context. Thanks to the belief

'54

Religion, Genealogy, and Caste

that blood was a vehicle for the transmission of all sorts of qualities, the
descendants of Indians could become Old Christians by demonstrating,
for several generations, their devotion to the faith, and by reproducing
with "pure" Spaniards.
This construction of the Spanish-Indian "mixture" was gendered be_
cause it coded Spanish blood as stronger and masculine. Its logic was
that Indian blood could be completely absorbed into Spanish blood not
only because it was unsullied but because it was "weak." Garda thus alluded to the mestizo's purported physiological weakness and "feminine"
characteristics {such as the inability to grow a beard), which the friar argued derived from his "Indian pans." Drawing from Galenic theories of
humors, he claimed that the climate of the region had made native bodies
humid, like those of women, and thus not conducive to the growth of facial hair, as well as intellectuaUy and physically weak, and in general "effeminate and pusillanimous" {"afeminados. i pusiianimes")Y Garcia's
characterization of Spanish-Indian unions was thus built on certain binaries that were coded female and male and that implied an imbalance
of strength and power between the two groups. Spanish colonial society's dominant "symbolics of blood" thus echoed the sociopolitical relationship between the two republics as compatible but hierarchical and
paternalistic. It simultaneously reflected the gendering effects of power
and the powerful effects of gender, instrumental not only for conceptualizing but for constructing and reproducing colonial hierarchies. 4l
The colonial discourse of native weakness was prominent in Spanish
colonial society. It originated in the sixteenth century at the time that
the indigenous population began to decline. To deal with the resulting
shortages of labor for Spanish mining, ranching, and sugar enterprises,
the crown allowed the importation of black slaves into its American
territories. A single black, some Spaniards claimed, was three or four
times stronger than an Indian-a claim that helped them to rationalize
both the system of enslavement and the demographic drop among the
indigenous population. Thus, Viceroy Martin EnrIquez described with
awe the strength of mulattos (here referring to children of black men
and indigenous women) when compared to mestizos. Thanks to the "nature" of his black father, he claimed, a mulatto was to a mestizo like "a
man to a doll."44 The viceroy'S depiction of the two castas-his use of a
gendered Simile to mark a relationship of power-was not unique, but
rather reflected larger discourses that feminized native people and masculinized blacks and that were linked to Spanish political, economic,
and religious projects.
Whereas Spanish colonial ideology generally construed sexual reproduction between Spaniards and the indigenous population as a redemptive process-one in which Indian blood could be completely absorbed

Initial Stages of the 'Sistema de Castas'

Old Christian lineages-it seldom allowed blacks the possibility
"redemption" and their full im:orporation into the "Spanish naThe lower status of African ancestry within colonial Mexico's
symbolism owed much to slavery, which in the sixteenth century
still understood, as in the late medieval period, as an economic and
ei;!io,u, institution. According to the Siete Partidas, the thirteenthlegal code that constituted the juridical basis of the Spanish
~~'~~;h!:!f:,,~:edom
was the natural human condition, and only three

could be deprived of it: enemies of Christianity who were

wars," children of slave women, and individuals who
themselves under certain circumstances. The prevailing notion that
o-religicmi,,, should not be enslaved, which the late medieval Christian
borrowed from Muslims, rhetorically framed slavery as a reliinstitution and connected slaves to infidelity, paganism, and sinY
By the time of Spanish expansion to the Americas, Iberians already
a long history of enslaving Africans and of developing negative attoward people with dark skin. In the second half of the fifteenth
~'~:~,a~;i~~:"~, imagery intensified on the peninsula due to the estabII
of the Portuguese African slave trade, which began in 1441
was stimulated by the 1453 capture of Constantinople by Ottoman
The fall of the city cut Christian Europe's access to slaves from
.. IBi"ck Sea and Balkan regions and led to a clear shift to sub-Saharan
as the main source of forced labor for western Europeans. AISpanish cities such as Seville and Valem:ia (main recipients of
slaves) had populations of free blacks, the shift reinforced preCastilians associations of slavery and "blackness."46 These ashowever, need not have determined the nature of slavery in
Mn"i'.'. During and after the conquest, not all slaves were
.""oa not all blacks were slavesY Persons of African descent particiin Spanish expeditions and conquests, and after the foundation of
including Havana, Mexico City, and Puebla, some were allowed
o,b",io titles of vecindad (especially if they had Spanish fathers). 4~ But
status generally declined after the mid-sixteenth century, when the
Laws helped make the condition of inheritable slavery exclusive to

Deiia'im",

The momentous decision to ban the enslavement of native people was

pro,ml,,,d by numerous factors, among them the fear that th~ pr~cti.ce
lead to their extinction, the role of the church in defendmg mdlgrights, and the crown's desire to prevent the encomenderos from
~,oo'iog a feudal nobility. That Spaniards did not prohibit the use of
slaves on the other hand, was partly due to the growing Euro~~~,f;~~:~':~:;", of Africa as a land of infidels and barbarians, Iberia's
e
and familiarity with black slaves, the prior establishment of

Initial Stages of the 'Sistema de Castas'

Religion, Genealogy, and Caste

trading networks in West Africa by the Portuguese, and the cooperation

of African slave traders.4~ Also of crucial importance were the political
resp~msibilities that Spain had in the Americas. As the jurist Solorzano y
Pereira later declared, because conversion could take place only through
gentle ~eans a~d pe~s~asion, the .cro~n'~ responsibility for delivering
the Indians to Catholicism, on whICh Its tides to lands in the Americas
depended, could be achieved only by respecting their natural and ancient li.ber.ty.I(1 The very application of the concept of naturales (natives)
to the lIldlgenous population drew from the Scholastic tradition and im_
plied recognition of their right, as a people who were in their lands and
had submitted to Christianity, to live in their own polities, with their
own political leaders, institutions, and hierarchies . .!l Although in some
regions the enslavement of Indians continued even after the passage of
the New Laws, the principle of their freedom became a crucial compo_
nent of Spanish colonial ideology, central to Spain's justification of its
continued presence in the Americas.
Perhaps because Spanish sovereignty in the Americas did not rest
on the idea of respecting the freedom of Africans, who after all were
not in their own lands, relatively little thought was given to the legitimacy of the transatlantic slave trade. Bartolome de Las Casas, one of
the main advocates of the liberation of the native people, was apparently not as troubled by the brutal treatment of Africans and owned
some himself. Although he modified his views toward the end of his
life, he along with other colonial officials proposed that labor shortages
be resolved through the importation of black slavesY To be sure, a few
theologians did voice strong opposition to the enslavement of blacks including Archbishop Alonso de MontMae. In IS60, he wrote to Philip II
asking how a Christian king could allow for the enslavement of blacks
when there appeared to be no JUSt cause for it. Noting that His Majesty
and his predecessors (Charles V and the Catholic Kings) had acted in a
n?ble and just manner when they freed the baptized Indians, the archbishop wanted to know why the merchandising of slaves from Guinea
and other areas "conquered" by the Portuguese was being permitted.
In a remarkable statement for its time, Archbishop MontMar challenged the principal arguments that Spaniards used to justify slavery. He
pointed our that the claim that blacks could be enslaved because they
were enemies of Christianity did not have much validity because those
who were introduced to it seemed to be accepting it in good faith and
were not waging war against Christians. Responding to writers who excused the practice on the basis that it was controlled by Africans themselves, MontMar added that if enslavement was common in Africa it
was because it had been stirr 'llated by the large profits that resulted fr~JI1

, 57

,ari,I:,i"g European demand. ''IN]or does it seem to be sufficient cause,"

continued, "that said blacks receive spiritual and corporal benefits
their captivity under the Christians, in particular because in such
;ap.eiv;ey they arc often times or routinely subject to harms that arc amitbe"C'"to their salvation."s3 Mont Mar could nor reconcile the enslaveof peoples who had accepted baptism with Christian principles_
last potentially liberating because they posed freedom as the natural
,,,,,d;e;,," of humanity-and urged the crown to condemn the instituIf saving the souls of blacks was the goal, the archbishop wrote at
end of his letter, instead of "rescuing" them through slavery in order
convert them, the Holy Gospel should be preached to them in their
where both their bodies and souls were free and thus more open
receiving the message of God.
During the following decades and early seventeenth century, a few
'~;;,,~I:~;~"~t voices were raised against the transatlantic slave trade.
~
strong critiques of slavery were written by Bartolome AIin the 1570S and by the Jesuit Alonso de Sandoval in 1627.54
lando"J, who described in great detail the horrific conditions under
Africans were captured and transported to the Americas, dethe intellectual capacities of blacks. If they did not have mental
i1c"it;", he argued, no one would be bothering to try to convert them.
notwithstanding the arresting image of bodies and souls in captivity
of the slave trade sometimes painted, the system was allowed
continue, in part because the sale of licenses to the Portuguese for
~~~~~;,,~ blacks into the Americas had by the late sixteenth century
an important source of revenue for the Castilian crown ..I.1 But
the obvious economic interests behind the transatlantic slave
Spaniards continued to justify their enslavement partly in reliterms and, more concretely, to mark slaves as Muslim infidels.
some bills of sales of Africans contained the inscription "captured
:, in just war, subject to servitude." The linkage with Islam was not en. tirely fictitious, for most of the slaves that the Portuguese shipped to
Spanish America during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were from
. the Upper Guinea region (now Senegambia), which had a significant pop'. ulation of Muslims. \~ Although Spanish laws stipulated that all slaves
had to be baptized and taught the basic principles of the faith, the perSistent presumption that they retained their "infidel" ways led to various
efforts to try limit their contact with native peopleY Their efforts were
on the whole not successful, in part because the principle of the free
womb encouraged unions between black men and indigenous women
and quickly led to the rise of a free population of mixed African and native ancestries (labeled "mulatto" at first) .1

du,,,,,;,,;,,

Religion, Genealogy, and Caste

The association of blackness with infidelity also facilitated the ex_

tension of Castilian concepts of limpieza de sangre to persons of African
descent. As the transatlantic slave trade was consolidated, various Span_
ish writers on both sides of the Atlantic, including Juan de Torquemada
started to identify dark skin color as a marker of divine punishment and'
more specifically, to attribute the enslavement of blacks to the curse of
Ham. \g Some also began to refer to blacks in terms of "race" and "impurity." Early records of passengers from Spain to Spanish America reveal that blacks and mulattos were sometimes listed in Seville's Casa de
Contrataci6n's registers as Spaniards (as well as negros and mulatos)
and that some were even classified as cristianos viejos, particularly when
their fathers were Old ChristiansY Thus, although people of African
descent were already being marked by their skin color, they were not
yet uniformly considered genealogically impure. This situation began
to change in the late sixteenth century. In his chronicle of the life of
Charles Y, for example, Fray Prudencio de Sandoval compared the supposed inability of the descendants of converted Jews to rid themselves
of their "Jewish race" with that of the descendants of blacks to separate
themselves (even with "thousands" of white ancestors) from the "accident of their negritude."6u Who would deny, wrote the friar and bishop
of Pamplona, "that in the descendants of Jews remains and lasts the bad
inclination of their ancient ingratitude and failed beliefs, like in blacks
the inseparable accident of their negritude? For if one thousand times
they are with white women their children are born with the dark skin of
their parents."61 Tellingly, Sandoval's comments not only construe Jewish
and black ancestries as ineffaceable stains, and hence threatening to Old
Christian lineages, bur betray a particular anxiety about sexual relations
between black males and white women.
In the colonial context, just as in the metropolitan one, anxieties over
genealogical contamination were largely displaced onto the field of women's sexuality, the privileged si[C for the containment of race/caste ambiguities. Within the emerging sistema de castas, in which classification
based on both bloodlines and the status of purity implied having access
to economic resources and political rights and offices, control of female
reproductive capacities was crucial for perpetuating the hierarchical and
racialized social order. Unions between black men and Spanish warnell
were the most threatening to that order because they undermined onc
of its main psychological premises, the inaccessibility of the latter to all
but Spanish men. They were also problematic because if they became
commonplace, they would compromise the dominant group's limpieza
de sangre. Black blood was more threatening to Spanish lineages than
that of native people because Spanish men who reproduced with indige
nous women could, over the course of a few generations, reproduce their

Initial Stages of the 'Sistema de Castas'

'59

status. What they could not do was to completely "redeem" or

their children with black women-the "seeds" of blacks were,
of Jews and Muslims, apparently too potent to be completely
;'imila'c<d.
That women of African descent could not produce "pure Spaniards"
a legacy of the institution of slavery and the way it tried to ensure
children of female slaves remained the property of masters, that is,
making their status follow that of their mothers. It was also a prodof efforts to deny the descendants of blacks the political and ecoprivileges that the status of purity implied and in general any ge.,.lo1:iCi,lclaims. As property, slaves were not able to make many claims
on birth and their masters and government officials normally tried
prevent them from creating a communal identity. Through a process
Orlando Patterson calls "natal alienation," they were to relinquish
heritage as well as the possibility of bequeathing it to their descendThis denial didn't mean that slaves did not forge ties to the past
od ..nong themselves, just that Spanish society seldom recognized them
legitimate or binding. The absence of slave surnames in many parrecords in a sense reflected an ideology that sought to obstruct or
black communal identities and memory of the African pastY
>iricand'''''KI,d people were strongly discouraged from congregating,
their own associations, and in general from engaging in activithat would allow them to nurture a collective identity.(,4 Several coMexican cities allowed blacks to form cofradias (religious brotherfor the sake of fomenting their Christian religiosity, and some of
confraternities thrived, becoming important and ongoing sites of
ieligil)m and cultural expression for blacks and their descendants. 6 ) But
~;SK:~'~.~ population's persistent fears that such institutions would enand enslaved people of African ancestry to unite and plan rebelperiodically led government officials to. attempt to outlaw them and
various occasions led to their temporary suspension.
Freedom did not necessarily make it easier for blacks to either exas communities or make genealogical claims. Because their progeniwere
assumed to have arrived as slaves, they were not
~~~~~~i';'~I as a community that had willingly accepted Christianity and
~:
rule and that was in a contractual relationship with [he Castilian
C">wn. Lacking the status of a "republic" and marked as descendants
~~c~~~.:~: of distant, infidel lands who had lost their freedom, African
:J
were denied access to full vecindad rights and to the category
..
Christian. Thus, the issuing of vecino titles to blacks and their descendants, which although on a limited basis had taken place before, be
increasingly rare in the late sixteenth century. They were also nor tnally not allowed to serve as witnesses in civil or ecclesiastical tribunals
~ ."Fv"

,60

Religion, Genealogy, and Caste

Initial Stages of the 'Sistema de Castas'

because, civil and religious authorities argued, theif Old Christian sta_
tus could not be confirmed. Spanish laws and institutions tended not to
validate claims that the descendants of slaves had been Christians since
"time immemorial." As late as the eighteenth century, people of partial
African ancestry were described by some colonial officials, and some_
times presented themselves, as deriving from slaves and having infidel
origins. 66
Spanish colonial discourses regarding persons of African ancestry,
which rendered theif polirical ties and religious loyalties as suspect, were
immersed in contradictions. Parts of Africa (mainly in the Kongo and
Angola) had accepted Christianity, for example, and some blacks in Spain
and the Americas had proven, and were acknowledged, to be sincere
Christians. Spanish secular authorities constantly worried that Africandescended people would use confraternities to plan rebellions, but some
black sodalities became known for their piety. Furthermore, although
colonial reports tended to consttue blacks as disloyal and subversive
elements,l,7 a significant number served in colonial militias, which were
avenues to honor and social advancement. In central New Spain, people
of African descent provided military services as early as the sixteenth
century and in subsequent centuries played a critical role in the Spanish
defense of the Circum-Caribbean. M Moreover, even though Spaniards
associated persons of African descent with slavery and tried to relegate
them to the lowest socioeconomic levels, their place in Mexican society
was at no point monolithic. At the end of the sixteenth century, they not
only participated in a number of crucial rural and urban economic activities69 but also had a significant presence in Spanish households and were
highly prized by their masters not just as a source of labor. According to
various viceregal reports, even Spaniards of modest backgrounds made
it a priority to purchase posts in local government for no other reason
than to acquire black retinues and the symbolic capital that they emhouied. 7U Indeed, in Mexico, where no separate planter class emerged, many
colonial officials had slaves, thus turning them into a part of the theater
of domination, into public symbols of the economic, social, and military
might of their masters.
By the early seventeenth century, both Mexico City and Puebla had
rising numbers of free and enslaved Africans who were relatively integrated into Spanish colonial society. Many lived in close proximity
to Spanish residents and tended to be relatively acculturated, especiaily
those who had been raised in the Americas and worked in Spanish
households. Spaniards referred to these blacks and mulattos as either
crio/los (creoles) or ladinos, the latter term having been used in Spain to
refer to Muslims and Jews who mastered the Castilian language or were

~i~;~;~~::~;; to the point that they could not be distinguished from

'a
Spaniards."71 No matter how "creolized" or "Latinized" perof African ancestry in central Mexico were, their strong presence in
dominant culture's intimate, familial sphere made Spanish men anxDUS and distrustful, constantly on guard that at any moment their male
and servants would try to kill them, usurp power, and take their
.wi"w,''''''n. In 1612, Spanish fantasies of racial and sexual violence in
City played a prominent role in the circulation of rumors about
"black conspiracy" that led the audiencia to conduct an investigation,
thirty-five blacks and mulattos, and order their executions.72
~cal'" cofradfa leaders were implicated in the alleged plot, the tribunal
ordered the temporary dismantling of all black sodalities.
Spanish fantasies, or tather nightmares, of racial violence and dis""",,i,on surfaced periodically in Mexico. Tending to take a similar
they reflected the existence of an arena of competing patriarchies
which power was symbolized by the phallus and enacted upon on the
of women, particularly their wombs. 7l These fantasy-nightmares
up a world in which it was no longer the labor, sexual,
power of women of African descent that was being apand transferred to the dominant group, but that of Spanish
. in which it was not blackness but whiteness that was marked as
and targeted (through reproductive and classificatory patterns)
extinction; and in which black men were not stateless but had their
kingdom and, with it, privileged access to all women. The phantas":ift~:~~~ of a black republic was dearly a product of a racialized socioorder that denied the patriarchal rights of black men and transK
the bodies, children, and labor of black women into the property
Sp.,m'sh men. It betrayed the particularly deep connections that slavhad crcated between racial, gender, and economic subordination as
as Spamsh colonial society's chronic anxieties over "black blood."
anxieties were reflected in the very categories of the sistema de
which mainly marked as impure people of African descent.

RAZA, CASTA, AND L1MPIEZA DE SANGRE;

THE SPANISH COLONIAL LANGUAGE OF RACE

and casta, terms central to early modern Spain's lexicon of blood,

referred to breed, species, and lineage, and could thus be used interch<ang"lblyto describe groupings of animals, plants, or humans. 74 Their
and connotations were not identical, however. Whereas the first
be.:aln, strongly identified with descent from Jews and Muslims and

Religion, Genealogy, and Caste

Initial Stages of the 'Sistema de Castas'

acquired negative connotations, the second remained more neutral and

was hence more frequently applied to Old ChristiaIls. 75 But casta also
had multiple meanings. If as a noun it was usually linked to lineage,
as an adjective it could allude to chastity, nobility ("good breeding"),
and legitimacy, and more generally to an uncorrupted sexual and genea_
logical history. Casta was thereby able to give way to the term castizo,
which referred to notable ancestry.76 By implication, the mother of a
castizo would have been casta, a woman who had remained faithful
to her husband. When applied to humans, then, the sixteenth-century
Spanish word casta and its varIous connotations were alluding to a system of social order centered around procreation and biological parenthood, one in which reproducing the pure and noble "caste" was mainly
predicated on maintaining the chastity of its women. Whether in Spain
or Spanish America, notions of genealogical purity and their privileging
of endogamic marriage and legitimate birth were never divorced from
discourses of gender and female sexuality, from a sexual economy constituted by gendered notions of familial honor.
In the colonial context, Spaniards came up with even more uses for
the word casta, for by the mid-sixteenth century it was functionmg, in
the plural, as an umbrella term for the children of "mixed" unions.?7 In
Mexico, this application of the term began around the mid-sixteenth
century, almost simultaneous with the rise of a nomenclature distinguishing people of different lineages, its first and most enduring terms
being mestizo and mulato. Hence, when later in the sixteenth century
Diego de Simancas, a man of Spanish and native parentage, was tried
by the Mexican Inquisition for allegedly believing that Jesus was not
the true son of God, he was asked to declare not his "race," but his
"caste."7~ The dominant colonial usage of the term casta simultaneously
signaled the importance of reproduction and sexuality to the colonial
order and the increasing anxieties about being able to control them. The
Augustinian friar Nicolas de Witte expressed these anxieties in I552,
when he wrote about the difficulty of maintaining peace in Mexico. The
land, he noted,

characterized hy a unity of substance that was maintained through

..,Io" ..ny hut could be hroken through sexual intercourse outside the
As other naturalizing discourses, the sistema de castas held sex as
productive act that could pollute or dilute blood, which in turn could
~n,,,a" sick and degenerate beings, or at the very least pose classifiproblems within the hierarchy of allegedly natural categories. so
the system allowed for a virtually infinite number of castes to
.. ,,,odu,,,!.. Did the premises of the sistema de castas and in particular
belief in discreet human groups challenge the theory of monogenNot according to Gregorio Garda. Realizing the dangerous theoimplications of applying the concepts of purity and mixture to
he pointed out that mestizo animals could come from distinct
.,,,,'um but be part of the same species. Likewise, individuals could beta different "nations" or "lineages" but be part of the same Adamhuman species. S ] Garda seemed to be echoing Fray Juan de
"n"d,,', discussion, in his Dia[ogos familiares de fa agricultura cristiana
<5:,8--'580), of marriages between Old Christians and New Christians
in particular his comparison of horse breeding with human reproto argue that even though all people derived from the foundbiblical couple, some lineages were better than others and therefore
avoid mixing with lesser ones. The influence of understandings
reproduction in the natural world on Spanish thinking about human
Iepro,duc,lun proved to be even stronger in the colonial context, as eviIen,ceo', for example, by the numerous casta categories created from zooterms.
the term casta was applied to people of mixed ancestry, it beto acquire negative connotations, but it remained distinct from the
<O'"CI'P' of raza and its religious undertones. Hence, mestizos, mulatand in a general sense also Spaniards and Indians were considered
~:~~:;I:;:;.:g;'~~bU[ not necessarily races. Or rather, not all of these cat01
thought to have "race." Anthropologist Laura Lewis is thus
correct when she asserts that early modern Spain elaborated an
,",ch"I',n"y discourse on race within its peninsular borders at the same
that it created a more inclusive system of caste in the Americas,
that allowed the different castas to claim to be connected through
~'n'.. ,>g"m' or symbolic kinship ties. u Such a rigid distinction between
two systems of differentiation cannot be drawn, however. Not only
caste in the colonies become racialized over rime, an increasingly
'.,,,u,,II,lngdiscourse, but as stressed earlier, by the late sixteenth century, Iberian notions of race and impurity had started to be used against
persons of African ancestry. This use was captured in the probanzas de
limpieza de sangre. In I599, for example, Cristobal Ruiz de Quiroz submitted his genealogical information to the Franciscan Order in Puebla

is engendering and is being populated by a mixture of evil people. For it is dear

that this land is full of mestizos, who are [born] so badly indincd. It is full
of black men and women who derive from slaves. It is fuJi of bla(.:k men who
marry Indian women, from which derive mulattos. And it is full of mestiws
who marry Indian women, from which derive a diverse caste [(.:astal of infinite
number, and from all of these mixtures derive other diverse and not very good
mixtures. 79
The emerging system of classification relied on the idea that each of
the three main colonial categories-Spaniards, Indians, and blacks-

,64

Religion, Genealogy, and Caste

Initial Stages of the 'Sistema de Castas'

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

for some Spaniards connoted ugliness, was inextricably linked to

and reproductive relations promoted by the institution of slavery
incipient Western notions of beauty and race.
Spanish views about reproduction with blacks versus native people
be<,on" even more evident in the next two casta categories that surfaced
central Mexico: castizo and morisco. These for the most part did
appear in early parish registers but were used in some colonial adI\u,nisr;,"i,'" and Inquisition documents. Castizu, which emerged in the
third of the sixteenth century, referred to the child of a Spaniard
a mestizo, that is, to someone who was three-quarters Spanish and

blacks and mulattoes."~4

The extension of Castilian notions of race and impurity to persons
of African ancestry was also reflected in casta nomenclature. For example, the term mestizo, which surfaced in the 1530S and by the next
decade had become almost synonymous with illegitimacy, simply meant
"mixed" and had been used in Spain mainly to refer [0 the mixture of
different animal species. &_1 The category of mula to, which in the Spanish
colonies appeared on a regular basis only as of 1549, referred to the
children of Spaniards and blacks and in general to anyone with partial
African ancestry. In both Mexico and Peru, it was initially applied [Q
persons of either black-Spanish or black-native parentage, bur in the
seventeenth century, a separate, though sporadically used, category for
the latter was created, that of zambahigo (zambo in Peru). ~6 According
to Solorzano Pereira, the term mulato was used to describe the offspring
of Spaniards and blacks because they were considered an uglier and more
unique mixture than mestizos and because the word conveyed the idea
that their nature was akin to that of mulesY Although both mestizo
and mulato derived from a zoological vocabulary and implied crossbreeding, their use marked an important difference in Spanish attitudes
toward reproduction with blacks and indigenous people.
Covarrubias, who also linked the word mulato to that of mule,
pointed out that mules were bastdfd animals, a "third species" that was
produced by the crossing of horses with donkeys and that could reprOduce only under extraordinary circumstances. ~8 As such, the term was
reminiscent of a/boraieo (or a/boraique), a pejorative name for conversos. Originally the word referred to the Prophet Muhammad's fabled
animal, which was neither horse nor mule, but in fifteenth-century
Spain, it was used to convey that the New Christians were neither Jews
nor Christians but a kind of unnatural or third species, one that presumably had difficulties reproducing. In the case of the term mu/ato,
its trope of infertility perhaps served the same function in the Spanish
colonial world that it had in the French colonies: simultaneously easing
white anxieties about the uncontrolled growth of populations descending from slaves and sanctioning the continued sexual exploitation of enslaved women by their masters. 89 What is clear is that the word mulato,

~~;~:::r;. Indian.90 Morisco was at first

more ambiguous, for it was
91

with Islam, blacks, or both. In New Spain, it continued to

to Muslim converts to Christianity. Thus, in the early 1600s,
Ruiz, a morisca residing in Mexico City and native of Granada,
was tried for being a follower of the "sect of Muhammad."n
subsequent decades, the word morisco increasingly referred to the

~~:\~:~~O~f Spaniards and mulattos. ror example, in 1631, the Mexican

tried Agustin, a "morisco or mulatto," for idolatry; in 1658,

the case of Beatriz de Padilla, "an unmarried morisca, daughof a Spaniard and a free mulata"; and in 1693, it tried Francisca de
:bi'qu"",n,a "mulatto of the morisco race" ("mulata de raza morisca")
sorcery/.l
Needless to say, the terms castizo and morisco carried significantly
lifl""nrcultucal baggage. In Spain, the first had been used to describe
of good lineage and caste and the second to designate exM,,,I,ims, thus carrying connotations of religious infidelity. It is true
when Mexican Inquisition officials first explained the meaning of
in their 1576 lcttcr to the Suprema, they did not associate the
~I,eg,ory with any redeeming qualities. Nevertheless, the displacement
a word that in Castile mainly had positive connotations onto the chilof mestizos and Spaniards was no linguistic accident. It not only
aclk",o~'I"Jg"d the aristocratic bloodlines of some castizos, descendants
Spanish conquerors and noble native women, but also signaled the
:~,:::.~c:;;:~ of a specific type of discourse of "mixture," one that recthe purity, or potential purity, of native lineages (especially if
were noble).
m,"",d, in the last decades of the sixteenth century, royal policies beta privilege castizos over other castas, namely, by making them eligifor the priesthood and (like mestizos) exempt from paying tribute.~4
. Furthermore, the Holy Office started to consider them eligible for the
- status of purity of blood. Thus, in 1.')90, the canon Santiago was com., Illissioned by the Mexican Inquisition to investigate the purity of blood

,66

Initial Stages of the 'Sistema de Castas'

Religion, Genealogy, and Caste

of Juan de Reina and his wife in order to determine if he was eligible to

work fOf the Holy Office. After some inquiries, Santiago wrote to the
Suprema requesting instructions because he had discovered that Reina's
wife was not a "castiza hija de mestiza," but a "mestiza hija de India."
She was not the product of a union between a Spaniard and a mestiza
as he had assumed, but rather of a union between a Spaniard and a~
Indian woman. 9.1 Santiago's letter dearly implied that the category of
castizo was compatible with the status of purity of blood. In the early
seventeenth century, the Suprema received a number of similar letters
which led it to instruct colonial Inquisition officials to grant purity certi~
fication to those candidates for offices or familiaturas who had no more
[han one-fourth Indian blood (cuarto de indio). Other colonial estab_
lishments, including the Franciscan Order, instituted the same polky.%
Although [he sistema de castas lent itself to the production of a great
number of classifications, only a handful appeared in a consistent fashion in Mexican colonial records such as parish registers, tax lists, and
censuses. Besides Spaniard, Indian, and black, these categories mainly
consisted of mestizo, mulato, castizo, morisco, and zambahigo (or zambaigo), and in the eighteenth century, also lobo, coyote, pardo, moreno,
and occasionally chino. ~7 That a relatively small number of terms figure
in legal records does not mean, however, that others were not in everyday
use. As numerous documents containing legal petitions or witness testimonies indicate, categories such as "mestiza coyota," "mulato lobo,"
and "coyote mestizo" circulated among the population, and composite
zoological names became increasingly common in the second half of the
colonial period.9~ But the appearance and relevance of certain terms varied by region and period. The system of classification was even less rigId
in the northern Mexican frontier, for example, than it was in central
New Spain.~~ Even within the same region, their use was often inconsistent and influenced by a number of subjective and situational factors. wl1
The process of recording caste classifications in parish archives was itself
fraught with complications. Ancestral information provided at the time
of a birth or marriage was not always trustworthy, for example, and parish priests were sometimes less than rigorous in their use of categories.
If in practice the use of classifications tended to be anything but systematic, the sistema de castas was nonetheless a system, an ideological
complex constituted by a set of underlying principles about generation,
regeneration, and degeneration. These principles linked main casta categories with specific proportions of Spanish, Indian, and black blood;
made certain mix[Ures compatible with purity; and distinguished between people who descended from Spaniards and Indians and those who
had African ancestry. Although they did not go unchallenged, the orga-

assumptions behind the sistema continued to operate throughout

coio",i,iperiod, intluencing colonial power relations, individual and
identities, and Mexican definitions of purity, tace, and nation.

CONCLUSION

V,hough, genealogical investigations and concerns with "blood mixsurfaced in both Spain and its colonies, a system of classification
on caste differences did not blossom in the metropole, at least not
enduring one. Perhaps the difference was due to the relatively small
o~~~::~::~:of conversos and moriscos, especially vis-a.-vis the numerical
of people of African and native descent in the Americas_
g
the
-:-,,-, absence of discernible physical differences between New
Christians made it difficult for such a system to operate other
on paper. And perhaps the bureaucratic and archival revolution
began to experience near the middle of the sixteenth century
a role in the reproduction of the sistema de castas in the
m,,,i,'"" For all their flaws, parish archives, which separated Indians
Spaniards and eventually castas, became increasingly systematized
the following two hundred years. Although similar efforts to create
organize parish records took place on the Iberian Peninsula, coloarchives became a main source of creating and reproducing knowlabout caste, so much so that by the late seventeenth century most
00103"'" de limpieza produced in New Spain offered a cettified copy
candidate's baptismal record or an affidavit from a priest attesting
birth information.
The rise of the sistema de castas in Mexico and other parts of Spanish
",,"'ica was ultimately related to colonial developments and the interof local and transatlantic processes. The increasing salience of the
categories, in parish records and elsewhere, was part of the larger
P::~~'~:lof disenfranchising people of mixed ancestry, of limiting their
,.
and economic claims and making the prerogatives associated
vecindad and naturaleza exclusive to Spaniards and, to a lesser exnative people. The emergence of the sistema de castas and growing
of the
. were also related [0 the extension of Iberian reliimpurity to colonial populations, particularly those that
,
African roots. At the end of the sixteenth century, European theories
about the origins of the Indians proliferated, and Spanish thinkers con'aidered the possibility that not JUSt blacks but native people descended
: from stained biblical genealogies. Some attributed the darker skin color
, and servile condition of colonial populations to their descent from Ham's

""'pam

Religion, Genealogy, and Caste

Initial Stages of the 'Sistema de Castas'

cursed son Canaan, while others blamed it on their being one of the lost
tribes of Israel. Insofar as they linked black and Indian blood to anCes_
tral sin and condemned lineages, these theories contributed to the recast_
ing of early modern Castilian concepts of purity and race.
The colonial notion
of limpieza de sangre was not clearly defined ,
.
however, and remalOed vague throughout most of the seventeenth cen_
tury, especially with regard to the native people and their children with
Spaniards. Some institutions included Indians and their mixed descen_
dants in the categories of impurity, and Spaniards occasionally deployed
the word raza against them (as jn rafa de mestizos). But the extension of
the concepts of limpieza de sangre and race to the indigenous population
did not prevail or at least had to contend with its official status as pure.
That native people and blacks occupied different places within New
Spain's "symbolics of blood"wl-evidenced III probanzas de limpieza de
sangre and in numerous colonial texts, reports, and legislation-was
partly due to the ideological importance of conversion for the Spanish
colonial project and in particular to the Amerindians' status as free
Christian vassals of the Crown of Castile. It was also determined by the
transatlantic slave system, and its role and legacy in perpetuating ideas
about the so-called religious infidelity and supposed debased origins
of African-descended people. Colonial racial ideology was influenced,
furthermore, by the survival of a small bur important number of preHispanic lineages and by the strong kinship and social ties established
between native elites and Spaniards in the early colonial period. Finally,
the importance of the two-republic model of social organization also
cannot be underestimated. It provided the legal and political framework
for constructing a "contractual" relationship between the crown and indigenous communities and for extending notions of purity and citizenship, albeit on a limited basis, to the native population and their mestizo
descendants, thereby strongly influencing the form and categories of the
sistema de castas.
The early history of these categories reveals several important aspects
of Mexico's sistema de castas. First, Spaniards had begun to use some
of the classifications and to place them in hierarchies by the late sixteenth century. By that time, they had also started to articulate some of
the sistema's main ordering principles-including that reproduction between different castas produced new castas; that black blood was more
damaging to Spanish lineages than native blood; and that the de~cen
dants of Spanish-Indian unions could, jf they continued to reproduce
with Spaniards, claim limpieza de sangre. From its inception, the dualdescent system of classifiLation promoted a sexual economy in which

of the sexuality of Spanish women (and to a certain extent also of

noblewomen) was necessary for the reproduction of the hierarchisocial order. It also produced a gendered symbolics of blood. These
f::~~::~:,~construed native blood as unsullied but weak and tended to
p:
black blood. The colonial discourse of limpieza de sangre
thus connected to gender not only through sexuality and reproducbut through its coding of different colonial groups as masculine or
""iini,"" which served to construe certain unions and castes as compatand redeemable and not others.
Second, when the metropolitan discourse of limpieza de sangre started
be extended to colonial categories, it was during a period of increasinquisirorial activities and growing Spanish pessimism (especially
~"n. the friars) regarding the conversion of the native population. The
rol,l"mof purity was therefore initially framed, as in Spain, in religious
generational terms. Thus, when Geronimo de Mendieta argued
the Indians could be excluded from institutions that had limpieza
eq"in,ment' because, like the conversos, they were not yet secure in
faith, he implied that at some point they would be eligible for Old
:hIisrian status. Thanks to the early modern belief that blood was a vefor the transmission not just of physical but of moral and spiritual
~~~;:i "mixture" with Spaniards could accelerate that process. These
t1
and biological formulations could have been applied to blacks
well because they too were relatively recent converts (especially if
arrived directly from Africa), but their associations with slavery
infidelity generally prevented their descendants from making legally
.
genealogical claims, a crucial part of the process of certifyi of blood. At the end of the seventeenth century, persons of
ancestry would nonetheless begin to try, using the religious and
~nenui,'n;,1 formulas of the concept of limpieza de sangre, to approprithe category of cristiano viejo.
Finally, the early history of casta classifications in central Mexico inhow rapidly the discourse of limpieza de sangre and its genealogpractices and procedures were adapted to the colonial sit~ati?n .. The
In'lui,iti"", which since the 1560s had established guidelines m Spam to
the purity of blood of its officials and familiars, exemplified a.nd
this discursive adaptation. Not long after the Mexican Holy Office
"ibu,"al was formally established and began to conduct investigations
certify Old Christian ancestry, its commissioners resorted to genealogical formulas for graming or denying the status of limpieza to people
of mixed ancestry. These formulas were necessary because, as the Holy
'Office's early disparaging remarks about castizOs indicated, ongoing

Religion, Genealogy, and Caste

reproduction between Spaniards and castas had quickly turned skin

color (and phenotype in general) into an unreliable index of descent.
As discussed in Chapter 7, the purity requirements of the Inquisition
together with those of other institutions served to routinize exclusion_
ary practices based on notions of religious and genealogical purity, to
transform lineage into a central component of colonial identities, and
ultimately to turn limpieza de sangre into a transatlantic discourse.

PART THREE

Purity, Race, and Creolism in Seventeenthand

Eighteenth~Century

New Spain

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Probanza de Limpieza de Sangre

in Colonial and Transatlantic Space

1594, Pedro Hernandez de Asperilla, a native of a town near the Spancity of Toledo and resident of Puebla de los Angeles, appeared before
Spain's inquisitors to request a familiatura, a tirle of familiar. As
by then standard practice, he submitted his genealogical informaand that of his wife, daughter of dona Marla Gomez de Vasconcelos
Diego de Carmona, the latter an alderman who was also in the pro",oL.o"llv,;,,gfor a familiatura. To bolster his case, Asperilla submitted
royal license that he had obtained in 1579 to travel to the Americas
which certified that he had established his purity of blood before a
from the jurisdiction in which his family lived, along with a note
the master of the ship in which he crossed the Atlantic asserting
he had provided all the information required to make the trip. He
presented in formaciones from Puebla and Mexico City containing
~t;m'm;" from other natives of his [own regarding his ancestry and
of blood. The entire case was forwarded to the Toledo Inquisition,
sent officials to various towns to comb through archives and ques!o~, ~'>mml~~;'t) elders for information about the petitioner's bloodlines
those of
wife.
In many ways typical of early colonial petitions for purity certification
New Spain, Asperilla's case exposes several important dimensions of
colonial procedures for proving limpieza de sangre. First, ir illusthe transatlantic nature of the process, the back-and-forth circuof knowledge about lineages between the Iberian Peninsula and
~~I,an;,hAmerica and the practices, archival and otherwise, that the sysof investigations promoted on both sides of the Atlantic. Second, the
reveals how colonial administrative and institutional requirements

'74

Purity, Race, and Creolism

made it necessary for those who wanted to have access to certain spheres
of power and honor to keep proving their limpieza statu;,. Certificates
obtained in Spain before migrating were usually not enough. And third
Aspcrilla's petition and that of his father-in-law hint at the integral par;
that purity documents were starting to play in the life of leading Cre_
ole families, most of which were interrelated and would come to have a
strong presence in the (Own councils and religious orders. This chapter
explores these and other dimensions of the system of probanzas de lirnpieza de sangre in central New Spain prior to the eighteenth century.
Concretely, it elaborates on the procedures for certifying purity of
blood in the colonial context, patterns in their implementation during
the seventeenth century, and their implications for part of the creole
population. In the first section, the chapter discusses the Inquisition's
transatlantic system of probanzas, obstacles to the certification process
in New Spain, and the requirement that genealogical investigations be
made in the petitioners' Spanish towns of origin. The next part explains
how these investigations functioned and how the Holy Office proceeded
when it found evidence of impure blood. It stresses that the system of
probanzas not only had implications for the discourse of Iimpieza de
sangre in Spain but made the status of purity fundamentally unstable,
subject to change depending on such factors as whether witnesses defined Old Christians through descent or (perceived) behavior and more
generally on how communal memory was reconstructed. Finally, the
chapter describes some of the difficulties that creoles faced, especially
if their families had been in the Americas for several generations, when
they tried to fulfill the requirement that their genealogical information
be investigated in Spain. It argues that the Castilian crown's creation
of a transatlantic empire premised on the fiction of purity and dependent on Old Christian Spaniards for the political and spiritual projects
not only ensured that concerns with blood remained strong in both the
metropole and the colony but enabled the rise of a particular creole historical consciousness. Rooted in Christian providentialism and a strong
sense of belonging to a Spanish community of blood, this consciousness
grew at the same time that some crioUos claimed kingdom status for the
land of thcir birth and developed a notion of nativeness distinct from
that of Castile.

The 'Probanza de Limpieza de Sangre'

, 75

MEXICAN INQUISITION AND THE TRANSATLANTIC

\:ERTIFICATION OF PURITY

"",_pean notions of blood purity and race operated in imperial contexts,

from metropole to colony and back; they "were never contained
.E,.wpealone."l This statement is especially true for the Spanish embecause members of the secular and religious hierarchies had to
proof of their Iimpieza de sangre, and the process normally rethat investigations be made in their. native towns. The adminisprocedures crisscrossed the Atlantic and implicated officials and
onm,.. ;[;"in both colony and metropolc. The probanzas de limpieza
.so..g;", which in Mexico began to appear within a decade after the
and which often included investigations in Spain (either for
traveling to the Americas or who were already there), thus vivillustrate some of the bureaucratic mechanisms that made geneainformation circulate between metropole and colony. They also
~;~d::;::eJthe provisional or "probational" nature of limpieza status.
III
for certain royal posts and public and religious offices norhad to establish their purity of blood more than once, which inthe possibility that stains would be found in their genealogies.
,pendent on information derived from archives and on reconstructions
histories by the "public voice and fame" of local communities,
status of purity was a precious but precarious commodity. finally,
probanzas reveal the involvement of royal and government offiand institutions in the certification process and thus in promoting
purity concerns. Cotregidores, oidores, and alcaldes ordinarios
both sides of the Atlantic were implicated as was the Council of the
and their participation points to the public narure of the limpieza
',nil" discourse.
More than any other institution, the Inquisition established transat. informational networks that helped bridge metropolitan and codiscourses of limpieza de sangre. Its methods for certifying purity
blood in Mexico essentially followed those that had been established
n Sp,;n. In both places, the probanzas were characterized by the irregunature of legal proceedings, a focus on negative proof, the imporof the public voice and fame, a formulaic interrogation process,
high costs. But colonial societies presenred new challenges for the
~[tifi,"[;o_n process, includmg the shortage and newness of archives. 2
the Inquisition was founded, local genealogy books did not yet
and most paflshes were barely building their birth, marriage, and

Purity. Race. and Crealism

death records. The Suprema ordered the three Spanish American tribu.
nals (in Mexico City, Lima, and Cartagena de Indias) to keep registers
of all the people they processed and of all the lineages they investigated J
but until a solid infrastructure for tracing ancestries was created, the
genealogical evidence gathered in the colonies had mainly to consist of
oral testimonies. Yet finding an adequate number of witnesses was also
nOt easy. As the Peruvian inquisitors pointed out in 1603, in the Indies ,
everyone was a newcomer except the Indians, which meant that identi_
fying enough people from the same Spanish town as the petitioner who
could testify about his lineage was sometimes a formidable challenge."
The distance between Mexico and Spain, the size of the Spanish American territories, and the migration process presented a series of other
problems. For one, these factors facilitated the falsification of names and
fabrication of new identities, indeed, the multiplication of genealogical
fictions. According to some inquisitors, upon arriving in the pore of San
Juan de Villa, many commoners added a don to their names, and just as
many conversos and other prohibited categories altered their surnames
in order to erase all traces of their past. The Holy Office sent inspectors
to monitor the people and cargo arriving in Spanish ships, but it was
not easy to detect false genealogies and in particular ro identify probanzas that had been secured through the purchase of favorable testimonies. I Tacitly acknowledging the inefficiency of immigration controls,
Veracruz's alcalde mayor remarked in J601 that the title of familiar was
not valid proof of Iimpieza de sangre because it was especially sought by
conversos in order to claim that they descended from Old Christians. b
A related problem was that the distance involved in transatlantic genealogical investigations increased not only the costs of probanzas but also
the possibilities of corruption and foul play. Inquisition officials on both
sides of the ocean sometimes did not hesitate to use their power to punish enemies, accept bribes, or fil] their pockets with money that petitioners had deposited for their investigations. Even relatives in the Iberian
Peninsula could nor be trusted, for as the Spanish inquisitor who was
sent to conduct a mid-seventeenth-century visita in Mexico reported,
"There is not a person in Spain who does not consider it a virtue to take
as much as possible from the indianos [a pejorative term for Spaniards
who went to the Indies]."7
Moreover, the constant movement of people within the Iberian Peninsula (a process that accelerated in the early modern period) and between Spain and the Americas made the verification of genealogies increasingly problematic. Investigations were supposed to be undertaken
in all the places of origin and long-term residence of each petitioner'S

The 'Probanza de Limpieza de Sangre'

and grandparents, which meant that a single probanza could eninquiries in various towns, oftentimes by different tribunals. 8 Thus,
Juan Esteban applied ro be a familiar in the late 1630S, his genehad to be certified in the Spanish towns of Logrono, Valladolid,
"Jlw,.de la Frontera and in Mexico itselU If the petitioner was marthe investigations could easily multiply, making the process of cereven longer and more expensive than in Spain. Because the
was never the secretive affair the Inquisition touted it ro be, a
delay tended to produce suspicions and rumors within communideep anxieties in the petitioner. Desperation drove Martin de
rbie",. Roldan to write to members of the Suprema in J595. Having
for four years for his limpieza certification, he feared that he
be removed from his Inquisition post or simply be kept in the
indefinitely. Urging the Suprema to make a decision on his case,
rb,,,,:a Roldan explained that norhing less than his personal and fambonor were at stake, for the whole "Kingdom of New Spain" knew
he was awaiting confirmation of his title. His sense of urgency was
"1>mm,I,u by the upcoming wedding of one of his daughters, which
would be jeopardized if news of a stain in the family surfaced. III
in Castile, the probanzas were part of the public domain and deeply
..,,,hed in a cuhure of honor that placed a high premium on reputain the establishment of marriage and kinship ties.
,Del.,y, in the certification process were often related ro the Inquirequirement that genealogical information be verified in /ugares
naturafeza. a term that is loosely translated as "native towns" but
conflated geographical origins (birthplace), caste (lineage), and "na(character). The word naturafeza was interchangeable with natura.
Covarrubias, and could refer ro a person's condition or being (as
"of strong nature") as well as "to caste and to birthplace or
("/nJaturaleza se toma por fa casta y por la patria a nacion"').l1
to describe someone as "a native of Toledo" (natural de Toledo)
to imply that she or he had been born and had kinfolk in that city
that the person's "nature" originated or was somehow loca.ted ~here.
the probanza system, the strong emphasis on conductmg mve~
;gatio,", in native towns rested on the assumption that the most rehsource of information about a lineage's limpieza de sangre was the
of origins. It was in that community that commissione~s
to find elders who could ~peak with aurhority about the famlbehavior, kinship ties, and public reputation beyond a few
. and that was also the most likely to have written and visual
for reconstructing its history, such as baptismal and marriage

Purity, Race, and Creolism

records, genealogical books, and sanbenitos. In shorr, the native or "nat_
ural" community-its ciders and archives-was the privileged repository
of genealogical memory.
The testimony of eighty-year-old Maria de Inestrosa Cobarruvias_
unusual not only because witnesses were almost always men but be_
cause it was taken at her home while she was bedridden and dying and
because there was a higher degree of spontaneous dialogue than in simi_
lar interrogations-further clarifies the relationship between nativeness
and purity. Declaring in the proban.l3 of Francisco de Cobarruvias, who
in 1586 solicited a familiatuca and who was from her Spanish place of
origin, the town (villa) of Cobarruvias, she said she remembered that
his father and family had been pure and reputable people. Asked how
she knew, she responded that their hometown consisted of no more than
eighty vecinos, did not have a single converso or Moor, and had never
had anyone tried for heresy. Pressed on how she could be certain that
the petitioner was pure given that she did not know his grandparents,
Marfa de Inestrosa Cobarruvias stated that she had heard that they were
all villa nos and Old Christians, that the public voice and fame held them
as such, and that there was no rumor or knowledge to the contrary.
Furthermore, the town of Cobarruvias was small enough that everyone
knew each other and easily identified those who had "raza. "lZ
Numerous other probanzas included references regarding the ability
of the community, because of its elders and size, to know when someone
was not pure, including that of Pedro de Vega. A procurador (procurator) in Mexico City's auJiencia who in 1585 applied for a familiatura, he
was a native of the town of Martimuiioz de las Posadas in Castile. The
witnesses for the case, from his hometown, stressed that everyone knew
each other there and that the place had only three vecinos who were
con versos (cunfesos), all of them held in contempt. Implying that impurity and foreignness went hand in hand, they added that all three New
Christians were advenedizos-that they had arrived from elsewhere.13
Suffering a much different fate than the probanza of Pedro de Vega was
the informacion of Fray Alonso de Gironda, a Dominican friar who in
1621 applied to be a calificador (censor) in the Mexican Inquisition. Born
in Tchuantepec, Mexico, to parents from the Spanish city of Trujillo, his
genealogies were sent to Spain and investigated by the Llerena tribunaL
Twelve witnesses testified, all of them alluding to the New Christian
ancestry of both bloodlines and to the converso association of the paternal and maternal last names, respectively, Camargo and Gironda. They
also mentioned that the town's elders often repeated that no one front
the Girondos had held a post that had limpieza requirements, which in
and of itself was suspicious. One witness alluded to a failed probanza

The 'Probanza de Limp;eza de Sangre'

'79

the petitioners's uncle had attempted to obtain, and another to an

refrain and verse that was often repeated in the streets of Truijlllo:
fU,;e.' q";,;",,mnpm'iudfos de los buenos y excelentes, comience POT
Camargos y
por los Vicentes" ("whoever wants to purchase a

:u~~~~~S:\h::O~U:~ld begin with the Camargos and end with the Vicentes").14

denied Fray Alonso de Gironda's probanza and declared

for inquisitorial posts. The public voice and fame in his
de naturaleza held him to be impure.
, The strong connection between purity and nativeness made it difficult
not entirely impossible for non-Spanish Europeans [0 be recognized
,",,,ull;,,d Old Christians. If they derived from Catholic families, their
could be proven by sending commissioners to their places of birth
those of their parents) and conducting archival and oral investigathere. Such an investigation was really feasible, however, only if
petitioner derived from a Catholic part of Europe and that region
Spanish inquisitors to enter and undertake their inquiries. The
Inquisition could operate, for example, in parts of the Crown of
"Mediterranean empire," which included Sicily, Sardinia, and
. in southern ItalyY Even in those places, however,
.. was probably a logistical nightmare. Therefore, when the
I had to verify the purity of blood of a naturalized foreigner or
Spaniard of foreign parentage, it tended to base its decision on tes.."ni,,, gathered from members of the Spanish communities in which
petitioner had spent significant periods of time. These cases were
common in Spanish America, among other reasons because foreignwere not allowed to live there, but a few did occur. For example, in
Juan de la Rocca, canon in Lima's cathedral chapter, applied to be
mi,ni,,,,, in the Holy Office. The Peruvian Inquisition admitted that
limpieza status could not be determined "with certainty" because
father was Genoese but nonetheless sem his genealogy to Spain so
his mother's ancestry could be investigated. As to Rocca's paternal
Oodlioe, the Holy Office accepted testimonies from people who had
the petitioner for some time and who therefore could share in"!,,.,,ioo about his behavior, public reputation, and possibly about his
amecedents. 16
Cases in which the Inquisition investigated and certified the limpieza
sangre of persons of foreign descent underscore the importance that
reputation had in the probanza system. In the Juan de la Rocca
",nple and similar probanzas, witnesses usually stressed that they bethe petitioner to be an Old Christian because he acted like one
there were no rumors to the contrary. Testimonies gained credibility
they came from persons who had emigrated from the same town as

The 'Probanza de Lirnpieza de Sangre'

Purity, Race, and ereo/ism

the integrated foreigner, but the latter could he classified as pure sim_
ply if the vecinos in his adopted community could attest to his "Old
Christian" ways. Indeed, in many of the probanzas that were approved
witnesses tended to highlight not only that they had information abo u;
pditioner's ancestors but that he and his relatives had good habits (b ue nas costumbres), were practicing and honorable Christians, and Were
fearful of God. They also frequently stressed that members of the lineage
had earned a positive local status, for example, because they had served
in the government or church. Thus, if in theory limpieza de sangre was
primarily determined by descent, in practice it could just as t!quaUy be
determined by behavior and standing within the community.
Inquisitors and authors of treatises on limpieza de sangre occasionally
reflected on which was more important: what one "really" was according to birth and ancestry or what one was believed to be according to
the community. More often than not, they opined that the public voice
and fame was the last word on the matter. That the status of limpieza
largely hinged on public reputation meant that it could hardly be (:Ow
sidered a permanent condition. It also implied that it had a performative
dimension. Whether in probanzas done in Spain or the Americas, the
holding of public or religious offices normally worked in the petitioner'S
favor. In these cases, testimonies referred to the official's participation in
political and religious rituals and in such events as public processions. In
shorr, partaking in certain activities could be read as signs of limpieza
de sangre. The extent to which certain public practices and "common"
opinion (comun opinion) played a role in the construction of limpieza
de sangre thus cannot be overestimated,17 and neither can their part ill
making the status of purity of blood highly unstable.

NATIVENl:::SS, COMMUNAL MEMORY, AND TilE

INSTABlLlTY OF L1MPIEZA DE SANGRE

Despite its occasional flexibility with regard to integrated foreigners or

Spaniards of foreign parentage, the Inquisition clearly preferred that genealogical investigations of persons living in Spanish America be made
in their lugares de naturaleza, and in fact many were. The numerouS
probanzas that were sent to Spain to be completed kept breathing life
into the memory and discourse of limpieza de sangre in Iberian towns,
while the investigations that they resulted in, sometimes in various places,
contributed to the instability of the status of limpieza de sangre. An eXample of a probanza that was done in Spain was that of Dr. Santiago de

,8,

who in I~82 applied to be an advisor for the Mexican Holy Office.

native of Madrid, he was a judge in Mexico City's audiencia, and
his probanza was being made, he was named president, governor,
general capitan of the audiencia that was just being established in
Philippines. Ir is not clear whether Vera had already submitted his
,,,,lo,gi,,,linformation in order to be appointed as alcalde de corte or
had to show proof of purity to assume the presidency of the
tribunal. tS In any event, he did have to establish his limpieza to work
the Holy Office, and that process involved investigations in different
towns, including Seville (for his paternal bloodline) and Madrid
the maternal one).t9 To strengthen his case, Vera submitted a stack
documents with a number of probanzas that had been made for his
and grandparents as well for the ancestors of his wife, dona
Rodriguez. Specifically, he presented a purity certification that
had been made in Seville by an alcalde ordinario for his father,
Santiago, and his paternal grandparents, Diego Hernandez and
de Cazalla. He also submitted one for his mother and maternal
that had been made in Madrid in ISS.; and approved in the
by the teniente de corregidor Icorregidor's deputy). Vera also
two probanzas for his wife, both of which had been made by
audiencia and attested to the purity of her parents and four
Notwithstanding the arsenal of genealogical documents that Vera
when he applied to be consultor, the Inquisition ordered new
for him and his wife in Spain. As it was, the commischarge of the inquiry in Seville quickly declared his paternal
oo,dl,ine to be unclean. According to some of the witnesses and the
Office's local archives, Diego Hernandez (a royal secretary) was
son of Juan de Sevilla and Violante Ruiz, who had both been tried
crypto-Judaism and reconciled with the church. The family's history
the Inquisition did not end there. Juan de Sevilla's parents had puralso been reconciled, and those of Violante Ruiz had been confor heresy. The witnesses made similar claims about the parents
Vera's paternal grandmother, Isabel de Cazalla. Since the Inquisition'S
Ire. i,'" confirmed their statements, there was no need to wait for the
of the investigation of the maternal bloodline in Madrid. Vera
a "confeso, descendant of people condemned and reconciled for folthe law of Moses" and therefore clearly not eligible for purity.'-iblo'od status. 10 The investigation of the alcalde de corte's mother and
"::i:;~:: ancestors in Madrid (made by the Toledo tribunal) had more
P.
results, but that did not matter because his paternal bloodline
-

Purity, Race, and Creo/ism

had been declared impure. That his "stain" derived from his paternal
great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents was apparently irrel_
evant. But even if Vera's probanza had been approved, he still would
not have qualified as a consultor, for the Inquisition determined that his
wife, a native of Valladolid, was impure. The witnesses who testified in
her probanza (one of whom was an alderman and familiar) declared that
dona Isabel Rodriguez, her parents, and her grandparents descended on
all lines from can versos and that all of this was public and notorious
knowledge. Apparently no one in her lineage had been directly associ_
ated with heresy, but in order to be considered impure, all that sufficed
was to descend, or be known to descend, from Jews. l1 Descending from
impure categories, however, did not necessarily prevent individuals from
playing a role in the colonial administration, for Vera and a number of
his relatives continued to do so even after his failed attempt to secure a
probanza from the Inquisition.
Another case that sheds light on how the link between purity and nativeness and the privileging of communal memory operated within the
Inquisition's probanza system is that of Lucas de Madrigal, who in the
early seventeenth century was residing in Puebla de los Angeles. Zl The Inquisition ordered an inquiry in Madrid, where the petitioner claimed to
have been born, and instructed the commissioner, don Diego de GULman,
to make sure to determine the exact "naturalezas" of Madrigal's ancestors. He first interrogated six people. None gave any indication that
Lucas or any of his relatives were impure, but their testimonies were
insufficient to complete the probanza. The fourth witness, Luis Sam:hez
Garda (a notary for the Holy Office), declared that he had known the
petitioner's brother because he lived in Madrid, and that he had a good
reputation. But he was reluctant to remark about Madrigal's purity of
blood because he did not know the origins of his parents ("como no
sabe su naturaleza no puede dedr con certeza acerca de su limpieza").
The next witness, a priest, said he had not seen the petitioner for fortyeight years but knew his brother and parents and that his father had for
a time served as a shoemaker to the empress in Vienna and Germany.
He added that he thought of all of them as Old Christians because that
was their reputation in Germany and in Madrid, but that he did not really know where they originated. Lucas's brother, Juan de Madrigal, was
also interrogated, but even he could not help establish the family's real
origins_ He testified that his parents had been born in Madrid, but they
had died when he was still young and did not tell him much about theif
naturalezas_
Because none of the witnesses could establish Madrid as the native
town of Lucas de Madrigal's parents and were therefore reluctant to speak

Page from the purity of blood investigation of Dr. Santiago de Vera,

1582 applied to be an advi~()r for the Mexican Holy Office. SOURCE:
!'!un"in.,,,," Library, MS .,514.)- This item is reproduced by permission of
Huntington I.ibrary, San Marino, Cahfornia.

The 'Probanw de Limpiew de Sangre'

with conviction about their limpieza, commissioner Guzman continued

to investigate. As he pursued leads about the family's residences and
burial sites, he discovered that Lucas had acquired a purity certification
before he left for New Spain in 1602 and, furthermore, that when his
. parents had returned to Spain from Germany, the emperor had rewarded
them with noble status (nobleza de privilegio). The commissioner also
confirmed that some of the family members had lived in Madrid and had
been buried in its cemeteries. Lucas's sister, furthermore, was a nun in the
convent of San lldefonso de Talavera and had had to submit a probanza
de Iimpicza de sangre. Still, Guzman was not satisfied because doubts
about the family's geographical origins remained. The investigation
,
coarinued. Guzman interrogated at least ten additional people
the area in which the parents of Lucas de Madrigal were said to
lived, but none was able to remember them, let alone establish their
The commissioner was also unable to find records for Lucas and
in the house where as children they would have had their
instruction (d()ctrina). He therefore concluded that the family
foreign to Madrid (forasteros) and that Lucas de Madrigal's purity
had to remain unresolved, at least for the time being.
Meanwhile, the Seville tribunal was studying the bloodlines of Mawife, Maria Davila. Inquiries were conducted in Cadiz for her
ancestors and in Medina Sidonia for her paternal ones. In the
town, the commissioner was informed that Maria Davila's matergrandparents, Pedro de Sierra (a priest) and Maria de Paredes, had
.",i;"d from elsewhere and had not been married. Furthermore, of the
potential witnesses that the commissioner identified, only two
willing to testify. The other ten said that because Marfa de Paredes
a reputation for being "loose" ("no de las mas recogidas"), they
not be certain that the father of her child was really the prie'>t
de Sierra. At least from her maternal bloodline, Maria Davila's
li,np>i".a could not be established, bur neither had it been directly challenged. In Medina Sidonia, the story was different. Twelve witnesses
were interrogated, all of whom declared that Maria's father, Alonso
Jimenez Davila, and all of her other paternal ancestors were neither pure
nor Old Christians. The first witness (who like three others was a familiar) said that he had heard from many community elders that both
of Alonso Jimenez Davila's parents derived from converso;; and that for
as long as he could remember he had been hearing just that. He thus
took the family to be New Christians. The same wimess added that
he had never known of anyone in the family being penanced or condemned by the Holy Office or of having any other infamy. He did recall,

Im,',,,n,]

Cover page of Dr. Santiago de Vera's purity of blood investigation,

1583 SOURClO: Huntington Library, MS 35145. This item is reproduced by
permission of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

FIG. 2.

Purity, Race, and Creolism

The 'Probanza de Limpieza de Sangre'

however, that the town's viejos and others used to say that Catali
Rodriguez (Alons? Jimenez Davila's mother) descended from a "fulan::
(So-~n.d-so) Mantilla who had been forced to wear a sanbenito that the
I~q~lsJtors ~ater ~anged on the walls of the church. Other witnesses gave
slmli~: testlmomes "and mentioned hearing about the ancestor who had
~een . sanben.ltad~ (f~rced to wear a sanbenito). When the interroga_
tions In Medina Sidoma were over, the comisario wrote in his repo
' D' 'I
t h. at M ar.la aVI a was not pure of blood because her father's commu_
nity considered him to be a descendant of New Christians. The case w
sent t? Seville and from there to Mexico, where presumably Lucas ~;
Madrigal was not issued a certificate of limpieza de sangre.23
Like that of Dr. Santiago de Vera, Lucas de Madrigal's investigation
not only reveals the tight connection between Iimpieza de sangre and
naturaleza, but provides a sense of how it led commissioners to tap local
~e~ory in Spain, revivi~g or reinforcing a community's knowledge of
ItS lineages and reproduclllg genealogical mentalities. The two cases also
point to some of the bureaucratic processes by which information about
families traveled from the old world to the new, creating transatlantic
flows of knowledge that sometimes jeopardized a person's chances of
securing a certification of purity of blood or simply damaged his or her
social standing (even if just for a brief time). But information did not
~ow in. just one direction, and the Holy Office's genealogical investigations did not necessarily end in Spain. After all, limpieza de sangre was
not a permanent status or condition. Even if a family was recognized as
notoflously Old Christian in its native town, its members could move
to. ne:-v places and marry the wrong person, decide to reject the main
prl.nclples o~ th~ church, or for a variety of other reasons acquire a rcput~tlOn of bemg Impure. It was mainly for that reason that applicants for
rules and offices were asked to provide the names of all the towns in
which they and their immediate ancestors had been natives residents
or cit~zens and that probanzas often entailed investigations 'in Spanish
Amencan and Spanish towns.
For example, to determine the purity of blood of dona Juana de
Orellana (wife of a candidate for a Holy Office post at the turn of the six~eenth century), the Inquisition ordered investigations in Spain as well as
I~ Havana and Mexico. The investigation in Cuba, where she had lived,
y.,elded two testimonies in which witnesses said that from her paternal
Side she was known to descend from moriscos and thus held as an im.
pure "morisca berberisca" (Berber morisca). Furthermore, III her mater~al bloodlinr:. she had Jewish ancestors. As a result, the Mexican Inquisi.
tIOn sent dona Juana de Orellana's genealogical information to Seville
with instructions that officials there conduct an in-depth investigation

c,

to who her parents and grandparents were, when and where they
married, where they had been vecinos, when they had moved to
and so forth. 24 Knowledge about limpieza de sangre traveled
the Atlantic, and the Holy Office did its part to disseminate it not
through its inquiries but through its efforts to spread information
"tainted" lineages to different regions when it convicted a New
"~~::il:'~ for heresy or backsliding. Thus, when in 1582 it found Juan
~
and his wife guilty of "Judaizing" in Spain and burned him
effigy (he had died while in one of the Holy Office's prisons), it sent
p,mna,io.n about his fate to Mexico where he had descendants. 2I That
who were deemed pure might suddenly have their reputations
~:;~~:~:~ by events thousands of miles away must only have reinforced
~I
about the fragility of the status of Old Christian.
Stains mattered regardless of whether they were discovered in Spain
Spanish America and independent of how remote they were. Few cases
R~~~:~~' these two points better than that of don Bernardino Vazquez
i.:.
i and his wife, dona Antonia de Rivadeneira, a novohispanic (coMexican) couple with tics to important conqueror families. In the
decade of the seventeenth century, Vazquez de Tapia requested a
'mili,uuca, The Inquisition did not uncover negative information about
background, but his wife was a different story. The Holy Office beaware of a potential problem when it discovered that her maternal
Francisco de Rivadeneira, had had difficulties becoming a familIt is not clear from available documentation what the problem was,
three inquisitors from the Valladolid tribunal who reviewed the
could not agree on whether to issue the certification. The Suprema
.""Y,n"d,an unusual move, and ruled that the decision should be based
the majority opinion, which was to grant francisco de Rivadeneira
In New Spain, inquisitors conducted their own investigation of
Antonia de Rivadencira's genealogy and reported that she:
her paternal grandmother dofia Catalina de Salazar, daughter of Gonzalo

Ie

:"1,,,,, ... who is said to have married dofia Catalina de la Cadena, daugh-

of Pedro de Maluenda IMacuenda?l, resident of the town of Covarrubias.

inquiring about the lineage of the said Pedro de Maluenda most of the
'''','n,,,,,,; held to be true and to be a matter of public voice and fame that he is
direct descendant of dofia Maria de Cartagena, sister of the bishop don Pablo
d, $,n" Maria y Cartagena, a Jewish conversa. 26
Based on the information provided by the Mexican inquisitors and thewit. nesses, some of the "branches" connecting dona Antonia de Rivadeneira
to the converso don Pablo de Santa Maria y Cartagena would look simi. lar to those shown in the accompanying genealogical chart.

,88

Purity, Race, and Creo/ism

The 'Probanza de Limpieza de Sangre'

Pedro de Maluenda/Macuenda
(Antonia de Rivadenelra's paternal great-grear-grandfather
said to descend from dona Maria de Cartagena, sj~ter '
of don Pablo de Santa Maria y Cartagena)

Gonzalo de Salazar
(Antonia's paternal
great -grand faTher)

~~~C"'~~

Catalina de 1,1 Cadena

(Antonia's paTernal
grea tgra ndmotherJ

Antonia's ~~~~~~ Catalina de Salazar

IAntonia's paternal grandmother)
paternal grandfath~r

Antonia's ~~~~~~ Antonia's

mother
fath~r

Antonia de Rivaden~ira ~~~~~~ Bernardino Vazquez de Tapia

Don Pablo de Santa Marfa y Cartagena was the famous fifteenthcentury rabbi, Solomon ha-Levi, who converted to Christianity, changed
his name, and became bishop of Burgos. His son, Alonso de Cartagena,
also devoted himself to the church and succeeded him in the post. In
1604, Philip III granted all the direct descendants of don Pablo de Santa
Maria a rehabilitation allowing them to participate in activities and professions reserved for Old Christians and nobles, that is, to enter institutions that had purity and nobility requirements. But the public voice
and fame had not forgotten dona Antonia de Rivadeneria's distant Jew
ish ancestry-not even in the remote region of New Spain. Anticipating
problems, don Bernardino Vazquez de Tapia submitted copies of the
royal decrees and papal briefs that had rehabilitated don Pablo de Santa
Maria's descendants. Although dona Antonia de Rivadeneira was nor
a direct descendant of the bishop but of his sister, the decrees might
help explain why the Mexican Inquisition requested permission to do
another investigation in its district. The tribunal's fiscal (prosecutor)
was inclined to reject the certification-the testimonies made it dear
that she was not known as an Old Christian-but the three inquisitors
felt that the extremely high regard in which the Vazquez de Tapia and
Rivadeneira families were held in New Spain warranted another investigation, one that presumably would help to confirm their religiosity and
good standing in the community. It is not dear from the records whether
other investigations were done or not, but the couple's descendants
went on to enjoy importdnt religious and public posts and to compose

of the aristocratic circles of Puebla and Mexico City. Perhaps eventhe public voice and fame forgot about their connection to the
~een'hcen"",y converso and allowed them to claim that they were
Christians.
\ Needless to say, the genealogical investigations conducted by the MexHoly Office normally did not go as far back as the ooe for dona
de Rivadeneira. Most people who applied for purity-af-blood
"tiificatiion were not linked to lineages as famous as that of don Pablo de
Marla y Cartagena. Furthermore, the newness of town, archives,

~.f:;;;:;~':~~'~: as well as other colonial realities made it impossible for

~

tribunals in the Americas to conduct probanzas according to

of the regulations. Indeed, they often adopted pragmatic responses to
ro~:,~:"a:;,:;,:;o;ciated with doing genedlogical investigations. Sometimes
~
were flexible on the number of witnesses and, following
Suprema's early instructions, simply gathered as much information
they could about the person's reputation and purity-of-blood status
their new communities. 27 At others, the Inquisition issued titles beinformaciones were completed, a decision they regretted more than
For example, in the early years of the seventeenth century, Gaspar
Rojas Victoria, Diego Jimenez de Ayala, and the brothers Diego and
de Monroy became familiars (the first two in Puehla, the third in
City, and the fourth in Zacatecas) after their genealogies were

~::~t,;~~~t~,dt;i,:n'dMexico. They received their titles, but the Holy Office

when rumors continued to circulate about theif lack of

. The genealogical information of each of the four familiars was
""efce sent to the appropriate Spanish tribunals, which upon coninvestigations declared that all were found to be "f~o.torj()s co~
The probanza of the wife of Juan Perez de ~paflclo, ~ fan:lllin the city of Veracruz, was also approved in MexIco, but Imgermg
about her ancestry led inquisitors to request an investigation of
genealogy from the Valladolid tribunal in Spain.29
The Holy Office sometimes also exercised flexibility wi.th reg~rd to
requirement of the wives of its familiars. Te.chOlcally, It ,:"as
to ascertain that such women had unblemished ancestfles,
sometimes resulted in probes about the kind of lives they ha.d
and specifically about whether they had "good habits."30 But this
(rulew,,, not set in stone. For example, in 1632, Cristobal Hernandez de
,C,ldOeto applied for a familiatura in the city of Puebla and submitted
genealogies, one for himself and the other for his wife. Bot~ w.ere
ct',,,i,,, of Spanish towns. Hernandez de Cokhero's case went to. ~e.vIII,a
.
was approved in 1634. That of his wife was sent to the InqUlsltlon s
tribunals in Llerena and Toledo. After the commi!>sioner in the second

Purity, Race, and Creolism

to",,:n discovered co.nverted Jews i,n her maternal bloodline, the HOly
Office declared her Impure but, as It was prone to do, did not reveal the
results to the petitioner. The year 1640 therefore arrived and Hernandez
de Colchero still had not received word of his case. Having grown ex_
tremely anxious that his public reputation and honor were being Com_
promised, he appealed to the Mexican Inquisition, which because his
wife had died allowed him to obtain a dispensation from the inquisitor
general to receive a familiatura. Hernandez de Colchero's petition Was
approved contingent on his agreeing to pay additional fees and promis_
ing nO[ to remarry without first submitting proof of the limpieza of his
betrothed. 31
Another area in which the Holy Office could be flexible was in the
requirement that all genealogies be investigated in Spain. Technically incomplete, those that were done only in Mexico were most common in
probanzas made for creoles. Because in Spain certifications of limpieza
de sangre were nor done on a regular basis until after the middle of
the sixteenth century, including for emigrants, many of the first colonists and settlers did not have any genealogical documentation. Their
descendants therefore often had difficulties accounting for their origins.
Obviously, the longer a family had been in Spanish America, the harder
tracing its ancestry in Spain tended to be. The Mexican Inquisition was
alerted to this creole predicament a year after it was founded. In 157 2 ,
the commissioner conducting the genealogical investigation of Damian
Sedeiio, a consultor in the Holy Office, found it difficult to verify the
candidate's ancestry in his parents' native towns because so much time
had elapsed since they had lived there.12 The problem of investigating
genealogies in the metropole became more serious in the early seventeenth century, when the number of creoles who solicited offices and
titles started to increase. The Holy Office sometimes opted to approve
probanzas in which only some of the grandparents had been studied in
proper form or which had been done only in Mexico. This flexibility allowed creoles to monopolize familiaturas and certain inquisitorial posts
and to start to locate their nativeness, purity, and history in the colonial
context.

CREOLE NATIVENESS, PURITY, AND HISTORY

IN THE "KINGDOM OF NEW SPAIN"

By the beginning of the seventeenth century, central Mexico's "traditional" aristocracy was intermarrying with Spanish immigrants who were
members of merchant, mining, and manufacturing groupS.)3 This pattern of intermarriage between members of the conqueror-encomendero

The 'Probanza de Limpieza de Sangre'

and the emerging bourgeoisie emerged in Mexico City, Puebla,

Morelia, and the families of these dties together comprised New
ruling class.,4 The novohispanic aristocracy, which itself was but
nunu" percentage of the overall Spanish population was highly endogAs opposed to the early years of colonization, when some of the
j,o"q,,,,-on married noble indigenous women {to acquire lands and cacib"_~~~~,by the seventeenth century, there was little intermarriage at the
r
of colonial society. These aristocratic lineages, for which honor
noble status were of primary importance, effectively reproduced
estates and last names through at least the eighteenth century. Fur~::;;'~~~' throughout the colonial period, they provided daughters for
i[(
and sons for the church and local government, effectively crevarious colonial institutions. In the Inquisition, this process ac~I'''"'ted in the first decades of the seventeenth century, when tensions
how nativeness was defined started to surface.
Juan de Altamirano was a creole who in 1606 requested a probanza
the Mexican Inquisition in order to be confirmed as its a/guaci/
(chief constable). His father, also born in New Spain, had been
in Texcoco and a familiar; his mother, .luana Altamirano
~;~~:~~,w~as Hernan Cortes's first cousin. Altamirano's connections to
II:
local figures did not end there. His wife (and blood relative)
doiia Mariana de lrcio y de Velasco, daughter of Viceroy Velasco
son}. Neither his kinship ties to the top colonial official nor his
habit from the Order of Santiago exempted Altamirano from
to submit proof of limpieza for himself and his wife. When the
informaciones were sent to Spain, however, Inquisition officials
unable to find people who could testify about doiia Mariana de
y de Velasco's ancestry. Anxious llecause his title did not arrive,
1\.I"',n;-,-an", wrote to the Suprema in 1608 explaining that he had been
in New Spain, as had his parents, and that his grandparents had
a good number of years there. His wife was in a similar predicaMore than seventy years had passed since her grandparents had
'an,;v"d in Mexico, which is why no one in Spain could remember them.)'
Altalm;",,, therefore requested that his wife's probanza be completed in
"'kingdom," where her parents and most of her relatives had been
. The members of the Suprema agreed, and the inquisitor general
even wrote a letter to Viceroy Velasco requesting that he and his wife
provide their genealogical antecedents so that their daughter's limpieza
Could be investigated. J';
Other creoles petitioned to have their investigations completed in
MeXico, but the Suprema did not always indulge them. The question ~as
; delicate because it implied bending one of the principal rules regardmg
, probanzas: that they be done in the petitioner's lugares de naturalcza.

,-,'",-eg;d,,,

PUiH""y

Purity, Race, and ereo/ism

B~t how exa.ctly was a creole's. "native~ess" defined? Was it defined by

birthplace, lmeage, or both? Framed differently, where was creole na.
tiveness located? Was it in rhe place of birth and integration or in the
ancestral community? Spanish expansionism and establishment of colo_
nial communities raised rhese and other questions about how nativeness
was constituted. Some Spanish jurists contended that creoles were natives of Spain because of their lineage and therefore entitled to the pre_
rogatives of naturaleza. Solorzano Pereira, for example, affirmed that
the Indies were considered equal to other parts of Spain and that the
Spaniards who lived there were equal to those that lived in the peninsula, eligible for the same rights, honors, and privileges. Even though
they lived far from Spain, creoles had their beginnings there, and their
status was determined not by their domicile but by the "natural origin
of their parents." 37
The crown, however, never clarified either the status of Spanish
America or that of criollos. The incorporation of the Indies into the
Crown of Castile in 1523 precluded the possibility that Spanish America might enjoy a legal identity analogous to that of Aragbn, Navarre,
Napies, or Milan, H and the uncertainty of the territory's political standing extended to creoles. Castilian tradition dictated that natives of the
jurisdiction had a monopoly on public and ecclesiastical offices, but
some royal policies had been sending signals that peninsulars were favored for the top ones. And since creoles could not hold civil office in
Spain, they did not enjoy the full prerogatives of nativeness on either
side of the Atlantic. Underlying their predicament was the problem that
if by lineage they were "natives of the kingdoms of Spain," by birthplace
(or integration) they were natives of the jurisdiction. But what were the
boundaries of that Jurisdiction? Was the relevant unit the "Indies"
, the
viceroyalty, or the audiencia? Only in the eighteenth century would creoles themselves start to define those boundaries and even then not with
much precision. In the meantime, the dual and fundamentally vague
character of Castilian naturaleza-which like the concept of naci6n
could refer to both birthplace and bloodlines-produced constant tensions among American-born Spaniards and heightened their rivalries
with peninsulars.-w
These rivalries, which in the early seventeenth century were especially
strong within the religious orders, managed to reach the Inquisition.
Indeed, at the vety moment when Altamirano received permission [0
complete his wife's probanza in New Spain, the Holy Office was becoming the site of struggles between peninsulars and creoles to control it.
The Inquisition's role as the guardian of the faith and the influence of irs
officials and familiars in all sorts of local matters dragged high-rankillg

The 'Probanza de Limpieza de Sangre'

,Iil~io.u,authorities

'93

into the controversy. Thus, in 16I2, the archbishop

Mexico sent an unsigned letter to the Suprema urging it to conduct
.n.eaIDgiGd investigations for creoles in both the Iberian Peninsula and
Spain.4 {1 The archbishop, who disliked American-born Spaniards
wanted to exclude them from establishments that had purity statargued that inquiries had to be made locally because it was there
!>a."I" "infamies" of their birth were beuer known. His efforts to precreoles from becoming members of the Holy Office failed, howTheir access to familiaturas increased, especially after 1620, and
I640, they were probably in possession of the majority of the titles. 41
also gained a foothold in inquisitorial posts. Hence, in 16J6,
Suprema received another anonymous letter from New Spain, this
complaining that ,riollos were becoming officials, not just famil. The letter alleged that their presence in the Holy Office threatened
honor and prestige of the institution because "by nature" they were
and not as rigorous in their endeavors as the Spanish born. Clearly
by the theories that were circulating about the long-term deeffects of the Spanish American physical environment on the
, moral, and psychological characteristics of Europeans, the
that the Inquisition should follow the example of MexCity's audiencia, which did not have any creoles serving as judges,
!rocu,al:or" or alcaldesY
Despite Spanish diatribes against creoles and theories about their dein the Indies, the crown's policy of reserving some offices
honors for the descendants of the conquerors and first colonists towith the probanza system's initial flexibility facilitated the cre~il,.',io" of the Inquisition. Petitions by criollos were given a special
when the Suprema gave Spanish American tribunals permission
accept probanzas that were done according to the guidelines for all
one of the "four quarters." This early seventeenth-century decision
based on "the difficulties that those of rhe Indies have in knowing
origins of all their grandparents."4\ One of the probanzas that was
even though the required information had been obtained for
three of the grandparents was that of the creole Francisco de Bazan
In 1609, he was waiting for certification of his purity in order
to become an inquisitorial official. The commissioner assigned to his
in Spain could not certify the purity of his paternal grandmother,
F,'and,;ca Verdugo, because he could find no one who had known or
even heard of her in the town where she supposedly was born. Having
to settle for an investigation of the name Verdugo, he did uncover that
it Was one of five local hidalgo lineages, all of which were reputed to be
pure of blood. Since the other three bloodlines had been investigated

,Alb,,,",,,,

'94

Purity, Race, and Creolism

in proper legal form and found [() be clean, the Inquisition tribunal in
Valladolid was of the opinion that the case was complete and sent it
as such to the Suprema. The probanza must have been approveJ be_
cause Bazan Albornoz became an inquisitor, who on several occasions
expressed his opinion regarding the creole-peninsular struggle in the
religious orders and his own bias against peninsular Spaniards, whom
he called gachupines. 44
The Suprema's willingness to he flexible with regard to some creole
probanzas waned in the mid-seventeenth century when due to a change
in political climate in Spain it tried to reinstate rigor to the whole system of genealogical investigations. New Spain felt the change in policy
soon after the arrival of the inquisitor Pedro Medina Rico, who Was
sent to conduct a visita. This official had just spent years investigating
complaints of abuses by inquisitors in Cartagena de Indias and had concluded that they were guilty of corruption and of accepting bribes from
Portuguese merchants. When the scrupulous visitador inspected the
Mexican Holy Office's archives in the latter half of the 1650S, he also
claimed to have found many abuses. According to his numerous reports
to the Suprema, local officials had been pocketing the money that was
supposed to be sent to the various places where the investigations had
to be conducted. A number of probanzas that were requested were thus
never made, dissuading other eligible candidates for familiaruras from
applying. Not only did they face losing money, but they risked bringing
on to themselves all the pubhc shame that petitioning for limpieza certification and not having it confirmed implied.45
Medina Rico also reponed that of about one hundred and fifty Iimpieza files that he had had a chance to review, only seven or eight were
technically complete. Consequently, he spearheaded efforts to make the
investigations conform to the original guidelines. Medina Rico wanted
to enforce early provisions that had stressed that limpieza investigations
were to precede, not follow, the granting of any Inquisition title, that
they were supposed to be done not just in Mexico but in the peninsula,
and that the bloodlines of all four grandparents had to be studied in
their native towns. Because many probanzas fell short of some of these
requirements, the visitador asked familiars and officers to return their
titles and to refrain from using them until their investigations were in
fact complete. The orders affected members of New Spain's aristocratic
families and hence immediately erupted into a public scanda1.46 Even
the reputations of familiars whose probanzas were complete ended up
tarnished, and they did not hesitate to express their outrage. Juan de
Aguirre, for example, sent an angry letter to the Suprema contending that
he had rendered many services on behalf of the crown and the faith, and
that his family was of "notorious purity" and Old Christian ancestryY

The 'Probanza de Limpiew de Sangre'

'95

his mother, Aguirre was a creole, bUl all of his grandparents were
Spaniards. That not all of his family's roots in New Spain
very deep made him somewhat unique among those singled out
Medina Rico. Indeed, what upset the visitador the most was that the
ionealo!,'e, of officials and familiars whose families had been in Mexico
several generations had not been investigated thoroughly. According
Medina Rico, many of their probanzas were incomplete because the
i~:~~::,,;~~o~f~,~o:ne or more of the grandparents had remained unknown.
~
had simply gathered testimonies where said grandparhad lived, not in their naturalezas.4~
The archbishop of Mexico did not approve of Medina Rico's actions
accused him of abusing his power and of manipulating the issue
Iimpieza to enrich himself. The visitador in turn accused the archof wanting to undermine the Holy Office's aurhorityY The three
_.<j,,," inquisitors were also oUlraged by Medina Rico's interventions.
to his visit, they had already expressed their disagreement with the
increasingly rigid guidelines and had warned that the majority
people whose "grandparents and great grandparents had shed their
conquering the lands" in the service of God, the Catholic faith,
the crown were now unable to account for their Spanish origins.
individuals were not able to prove their purity of blood according
guidelines, which meant they would not qualify for anything:

Op,,.",,',

have to report to Your Highness is that there are families in these

"::::~::' of New Spain that are so ancient that they almost arrived with the
01
... The sons of those that first populated these Kingdoms cannot give
grandparents' exm:t origins [lIaturalezaJ in Spain because they came more

one hundred years ago to these parts, where their purity status has been
oaj""i"cd in the highest opinion. III
Mexican inquisitors' letter then discussed the detrimental effects
having to prove the purity of their bloodlines in Spain would have
the descendants of the conquerors and first settlers, many of whom,
!hev ,,,"iimcd. were experiencing an economic decline. In the process, they
~:~~~;~da system of inquisitorial posts and familiaturas that ~ad been
~
by the same creole families that tended to monopolize to:wn
I and religiolls posts in central Mexico. Indeed, in the precedmg
d"d", titles had frequently been passed down in patrimonial fashion.11
inquisitors also described a colonial gentry whose histo~ical and geI .
memory was no longer principally linked to Spam but to the
.
of New Spain" and that claimed nativeness in the land. .
Bernabe Alvarez de Hita, a public official from Puebla who applied
familiatura in the 1660s, embodied this emerging creole consci~us
ness. For more than two decades he waited for his purity certification.

Purity. Race, and ereolism

The' Probanza de Limpieza de Sangre'

Aware that the main obstacle in his probanza had been the commis_
sioner's failure to find any information about his wife's paternal grand_
mother (Violante Lopez) in her native town of Trujillo, he wrote to the
Suprema in 168 4 explaining that more than one hundred and fifty years
had passed since she and her husband, the Capitan Juan de Vargas, had
left Spain to become first colonists of New Spain. Because the memory
of men was incapable of remembering that far back, Alvarez de Hita
continued, no one in Trujillo could testify regarding Lopez's purity. But
evidence of her unsullied and noble ancestry could be found, he claimed
in an informacion that had been made for her and her husband in 1594:
at the request of the couple's son-in-law. Alvarez de Hita asked the Suprema to review that informacion and to order that new probanzas be
made in New Spain, where the couple had lived and died. He closed by
listing the services he had rendered as a public official, by stressing his
children's descent from the first nobility of the land, and by reminding
members of the council that many of the viceroyalty's most important
lineages, those founded by conquerors and first colonists, were now in
their fifth or sixth generation. How was their purity to be proven? To
honor those noble families, Alvarez de Hita suggested, the Inquisition
and the religious orders should conduct their genealogical investigations
in the kingdom . .12
Alvarez de Hita's remarks were one manifestation of an emerging creole historical and genealogical consciousness and more generally of the
patriotic discourse that had begun to surface at the start of the seventeenth century, in both New Spain and Peru, among the descendants of
the first conquerors and settlers. 53 By the middle of the century, Mexico's
patrimonial sons of the land began to demand that they be granted a
monopoly on office holding and thus to more aggressively attempt to
construe a nativeness separate from Castile. The increasing militancy
of their claims was reflected in their more frequent deployment of the
term kingdom (sometimes ki1lgdoms) for their territory. Although the
term had already surfaced in some creole writings of the late sixteenth
century, it appeared more regularly around the 1650S and became increasingly specific widl regard to the cultural and territorial boundaries.
A century later it would start to appear in the form of "Kingdom of
Mexico," along with the phrase "Mexican nation."H
Creole attempts to constitute a nativeness separate from Castile and
to claim kingship status were accompanied hy the construction of historical narratives that centered not on the conquest hut on the imperial
pre-Cartesian past. This past was the subject of Juan de Torquemada's
M01larquia India1la (16r5), for example, and would only increase in importance in the writings of other creole authors, among them those of
the polymath Carlos de Sigiienza y Gongora (1645-1700). A professor

athematics at the University of Mexico who came into possession

~rlilx6chitl's manuscripts when he was helpil~g hi.s descendants .re-

properties, Sigiienza y Gongora helped to give ht~rary expressl~n

the growing cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe-a major watershed 10
criollo sacralization of the soil and indigenous inhabitants of New
.
was also a key contributor to the creation of a mythic Aztec
This mythification of the Mexica had few, if any, real parallels.
from other Spanish American regions also relied on the figure
Indian to create historical narratives, but not in the same way and
to the same degree as those of New Spain. As the historian Anthony
has observed, "Indians, both ancient and modern, were perhaps
most important single clement in the criollo interpretation of the
of 'New Spain' and thus in the creation of their own national
identity."56 By the late seventeenth century, the Mexica past and in
.~:~,~:!:; the figure of the heroic Aztec warrior had helped creoles forge
:.,c
I antiquity for their kingdom.
The transformation of the pre-Hispanic past into New Spain's c1assiantiquity enabled creoles to create deeper roots in Spanish Americ~n
than those that the conquest afforded them and thereby to beglO
':;:~:~;' their history from that of Spain. 17 Those roots were not just
is
but genealogical. As of the late seventeenth century, central
Spain began to produce memorials, some of them anonymous, that
.
the political and kinship alliances that the conquerors a~d
colonists had forged with caciques and principales and to rev.lve
early colonial idea that noble indigenous blood had an ennobl.lOg
on Spanish lineages. It also began to generate probanzas de hmde sangre in which ancestry from elite Amerin~ians ,,:,as not an
~:~':~~;;~ to certification. I~ Mexican creoles, and 10 particular, the
of the conquerors and first sett.Jers, thus started to develop
narrative in which they figured as the "natural" rulers of t~e
as heirs to the imperial Mexica past by virtue not just of their
and Christianization services but of their birthplace and
In essence, they tried to advance their rights as natives. of
simultaneously appropriating Indian history and India?
grounding their claims to naturaleza in both the. so.d
"blood" of the land. Religion was central to the creoles' ~a~rlo~lC
.
not only because they claimed to be the bearers of C.hnstlaOlty
their cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe served to fld the land
any lingering connotations of idolatry and by extension to "purify"
indigenous people.
. .
But in spite of the gesture to redeem the "blood" of the llldlgenous
and the related move to appropriate their historical and g~nea
,'o,,"al claims, creoles who acknowledged having native ancestry dId so

b,,,,,,,

Purity, Race, and Creolism

with caution. They usually made sure to emphasize not only that th .
d
I'
elr
m Igenous re atlves were remote and noble but that they had little'
.
Can

nectlon to contemporary Indians, whom they generally perceived

.
hd
Im~overJs
e an dImper f ect versions of their pre-Hispanic progenitor"
This effon to establish links with the imperial indigenous past while s~~
multaneously underscoring the distance between the Indians of the paSt
and those of ~he .present gave rise to "criollo antiquarianism," which
began to flouCish 10 the second half of the seventeenth century as part of
t?C creole patriotic project.'~ It also led to an affirmation of the genera.
tlOnal formulas of the discourse of purity of blood, which allowed for
c?nvens t~ b~come Old Christians after three generations, and the prin.
clplc that IOdlgenous blood could be completely absorbed into Spanish
lineages. In the eighteenth century, those formulas and that principle
would start to appear in political tracts and probanzas de limpieza de
sangre and come to be visually represented in the casta paintings.

CONCLUSION

The nocion that only Old Christians could migrate to the Indies and that
they alone could become colonial officials was clearly a fiction, and not
only in the sense chat the category of cristiano viejo was a social and not
a "natural" construct. It was also a fiction in that the crown occasionally granted conversos (especially merchants) special licenses to go to
the Americas; in that purity requirements were sometimes overlooked
or not firmly monitored; and in that many genealogies were fabricated,
the products of falsifications, bribes, or plain ingenuity. Nonetheless,
enough probanzas were made and investigated through transatlantic information networks to feed the idea of Spanish purity and concomitant
fiction of Spanish Amcrica's lack of Jewish and Muslim antecedents.
The rhetorical, not historical, force of the claim is what mattered.
The Holy Office played a crucial part in both transferring the metropolitan blood concerns to the colonies and reinforcing them in the
Iberian Peninsula because of its insistence, throughout the colonial period, [hat probanzas had to be done in all of the lugares de naturaleza
of the petitioner and his ancestors. The hundreds, perhaps thousand~,
of investigations that it ordered for its officials and familiars involved
inquiries in towns all over Spain that examined, ignited, and reproduced
communal memories about conversos and moriscos long after the tWO
groups were considered serious threats to the Catholic faith. Histoncal
genealogies of European racial concepts and racism that present the
problem as entirely internal-its origins tending to be attributed to tbe

The 'Probanza de Limpieza de Sangre'

'99

ist"'''acy's concerns with blood-clearly do not work well for Spain.

to the multiple agents, practices, and institutions that were part
the transatlantic system of probanzas, the metropolitan and colonial
isc"U!~:s of Iimpieza de sangre strongly shaped and reinforced each
These discourses allowed the crown to continue to present itas the unrivaled guardian of the Catholic faith, and it permitted
e.,i..,ds in the colonial context to construct themselves as unsullied
Christians, as such exceptionally qualified to guide the indigenous
in spiritual and secular matters.
yet, the relationship of creoles to the concept of purity of blood
a tortured one. Their limpieza was sometimes questioned, and beof the nature of the certification system, the status was fundamenunstable, indeed, probational. Perhaps for this reason the ideology
purity of blood had an especially potent, and in some ways unexeffect on part of the creole population. The ubiquity of purity
!'Iu.iremr,.t;, their centrality to the crown's creation of secular and rehierarchies, and the archival practices that they set in motion
",dlu"d a particularly strong preoccupation with bloodlines among
descendants of Spaniards, which in turn made their patriotic and
discourses profoundly ambivalent with regard to issues of
Indeed, the emergence of these discourses accentuated colonial conwith limpieza de sangre. The concept was woven so tightly into
fabric of colonial relations that criollo elites apparently could not
themselves to question its primacy. As discussed in the following
their incapacity to imagine their kingdom without recourse to
of lineage and purity and reluctance to do away with colonial hierled to an increase in probanzas in the second half of the colonial
to a gradual secularization of the notion of limpieza de sangre,
to the formal extension of the concept of impurity to the castas.

.at,;vo.",,:'

"I''''',

Religion, Law, and Race

CIIAPTER EIGHT

Religion, Law, and Race

The Question of Purity in
Seventeenth-Century Mexico

!he interdependence of,Spain and Spanish America took place not only
th.e r~alm of economICs and culture but in that of the mind. The humanist mterest that sixteenth-century Spanish writers expressed in th
lands an~ people of the Americas was in part sparked by the philosophi~
cal ques.tlO~s that Western expansionism had posed for Europeans. Were
the terruones a part of the known world? Were its inhabitants of the
same nature .as .Europeans? Had the church fathers known about them?
These and similar questions led early chroniclers to write extensively
about the pe<:>ple, ~lora, and fauna of the Americas and to try to incorporate. them mto European thought. I The Spanish desire to assimilate
to se: 10 t~e "new" world the old, and the impulse to possess were mad;
maOl!est 10 ~h: names assigned to various towns, islands, and regions:
.Esp~~ola, Menda, Puebla, Valladolid, Guadalajara, Nueva Espana, Nueva
Galicia, Nueva ~ranad~, and so forth. By the early seventeenth century,
many of ~he philosophICal questions that the Americas had raised had
been partially resolved. The Indies were not radically different from other
lands, a.nd their inhabitants were not of a separate nature than other hu"
man b.el?~s-inferior, perhaps, but not fundamentally distinCl.
As IOltlal philosophical questions were answered and humanist concerns receded, the interest in studying contemporary Amerindians was
"placed . by ~ntlquanaOlsm,
.
'.
. Iar Iy popular among creoles. NonepartlCu
thel~ss, ~palllsh thinking ~bout the "nature" and rights of the native people lon~lIlued, only now III more obscure writings. Not only jurists and
t,he(~loglans.but also inquisitors and physicians, many of them based in
Spam, proVided their opinions about the place of the indigenous people
10

other colonial populations within the sociopolitical and religious orwhich sometimes led them to tackle the question of purity of blood.
fact, a number of memorials and other writings on the
directly addressed the problem of whether people of native and
descent could claim limpieza de sangre. Although previous Casmonarchs had already issued pronouncements with respect to the
of the original inhabitants of American lands, the growing presciof questions of purity of blood in Spanish America at the end of the
century compelled the crown and the Suprema to reassess
clarify the matter. Thus, just as the preoccupation with limpieza de
was declining in Spain, colonialism helped keep it alive in the
Atlantic world, long aftcr the original motives for the statutes
dissipated.
This chapter continues the discllssion of the transplantation of the
of purity of blood to the colonial context of Mexico and the
in which it was immersed. It first focuses on official interof the limpieza status of colonial populations, particularly the
expressed by the Suprema at the end of the seventeenth century
the relationship that the question had to Spanish political imperaThe chapter then analyzes the gap between official definitions of
of blood and those that tended to operate in the colonial context,
)nt",d;,[;,m, that were exacerbated by the ambiguous religious standof Indians and blacks and uses of the category of Old Christian. It
that these contradictions did not make the sistema de castas any
potent, that hegemonic discourses are seldom cohesive and tend to
constituted by overlapping and conflicting ideas. Finally, the chapter
that even though the status of people of African descent within
discourse of limpieza de sangre was ill defined, the Spanish associaof "blackness" and "impurity," which had started to surface in the
sixteenth century, had only grown stronger a hundred years later.

ji,;'e-k"o'wn

;,e.n",,",[h

THE OFFICIAl. LINE: THE INQUISITION AND THE CROWN

ON TilE ISSUE OF LlMPIEZA DE SANGRE

Som,,,;,metoward the end of the seventeenth century, the Supreme Counof the Inquisition convened to assess whether mestizos and mulat'~s~;:~'~~~~;::America should be allowed into institutions with purityC
statutes. l The starting point of the discussion was a typology
" the different types of people or "nations" that lived in the colonies.
Referring to Solorzano Pereira's classifications in P()litica /ndimta,3 the

202

Purity, Race, and ereo/ism

Inquisition identified four categories: "criollos," or people who were

born in the Indies and "whose father, mother, and entire ancestry were
Spanish"; "mestizos," the children of Indians and Spaniards; "mulatos,"
those who were "engendered by Spanish males and black females, or the
other way around"; and "zambahigos," or the descendants of unions be_
tween native people and blacks." The problem entailed assessing the Sta.
tus of Indians and blacks vis-a.-vis Spaniards, but the primary aim was to
determine the nature of intermediate groups, whose numbers had been
increasing throughout the century_ With regard to creoles, the Suprema
stated, there was no doubt that they should be admitted into institutions
that had the statute, because by virtue of their bloodlines they met the
dual requirement of being pure and Old Christians. Some Spaniards had
wanted to exclude them from noble status, the priesthood, and religious
orders by arguing that the constellations of the Indies had made them
acquire the "natural ailments," "deceitfulness," and "sensuality" of the
Indians:
But His Majesty has issued various orders so that they be ordained by bishops and admitted into honorific posts, and the friars have come to agreements
whereby [they alternate between admitting creoles and Spaniards], because the
Indies are incorporated into the kingdoms of Castile and Leon and the Spamards
born in Spain and in the Indies enjoy the same [rights and privileges].'

As to mestizos, mulattos, and zambahigos, the Suprema admitted, the

issue was much less clear, for as descendants of blacks and Indians, they
had "gentile blood" in their veins. The main task, therefore, was to determine which of these colonial categories were pure under Spanish law~,
and of those that were not, which were eligible for royal dispensations.
What ensued was a revealing discussion of legal and popular definitions
of the concepts of limpieza de sangre and cristiano viejo, the original
reasons for the establishment of the purity statutes in Spain, and the official status of communities that had convened to Christianity in both
the metropole and its Spanish American territories.
The Suprema's exposition of the problem, which drew from the writings of various theologians and jurists, began with a clarification of
official policies regarding the ability of converts to serve in the church.
Under Spanish common law, noted the council, neophytes, whether originating from gentiles, Muslims ("Moors"), or Jews, could not be admitted into religious orders or the priesthood, nor granted ecclesiastical
benefices, if they were not well instructed and firm in the faith. The eligibility of a candidate was normally determined by individual bishops,
but as a general rule, only those that were ar least two generations removed from the conversion could be considered, that is, those whose

Religion. Law, and Race

20 3

p,,""t> and

grandparents had been Catholic all their lives .. However,

the Suprema observed, the statutes of limpieza g~nerally did ~ot .01common law on this matter but called for punty of blood In Inti. exclusive Christian lineage. To enter institutions that had purity
r;';qu;"ml,nl'. individuals therefore had to be considered Old Christians,
in Spain amounted to proving that they did not have any Jewor Muslim ancestors. This definition had come about, the document
because Jews and Muslims had historically demonstrated a
~~~::'):'~',:ad~~;n~ess to return to the practices and beliefs of their ancestors,
it.
that various authorities attributed to their "infected"
(la infecci6n de fa sangre). Because :'experie~ce" had sho~n that
iu,I.;,m and Islam were transmittable stains, JeWish and Mushm canto Christianity were by definition all potential heretics, a thr~~t to
faith and therefore ineligible for Old Christians status and pOSitiOns
Having reviewed the original motive for the ~tat~te.s, the Supreme

,0Im,"'1 of the Inquisition noted that some SpaOlsh Jurists .had

argue~

the descendants of Indians and blacks-the latter sometimes genencalled "Ethiopians"-could also be excluded from institutions that
h,nptl;'" requirements because they too were not Old Christians. In
Suprema added, the term cristianos viejos ,:,as com.monly un.""o.od to refer to the descendants of gentiles who 10 the distant past
converted upon hearing the Gospel, or as one source had p~t. it, to
for whom there is no mention and no memory of the onglOs of
conversion."6 This was the definition employed by Alfonso Perez
Lara in his early seventeenth-century treatise on purity of blood to
that individuals descending from Indians and blacks could not
accepted into places that had the statute because of the impossibi~
of verifying that they were Old Christians.7 He observed that ~hls
of thinking was already quite common in Spain ~n9 for some time
been prompting various institutions to deny admiSSion to people of
.
and indigenous ancestry.
Perez de Lara's views regarding native people and blacks were subsequ.entlly rejected by a number of important Spanish jurists and theoloincluding Solorzano Pereira and Juan Escobar del Carro. The la~

~:'b:'~:~~'~~~~~ anti-Semitic had served as inquisitor at the Holy Office s

t:

in Llerena.~ In his ~wn treatise on limpieza de sangre, Esco?ar

Carro stressed that laws intended for certain groups could not slmbe extended to others, especially if the original motivation for the
was not applicable to them. According to the inquisitor, the
had arisen out of a need to deal with converted Jews, Moo~s,
and "other groups like them," presumably with the propensity

Purity, Race, and Creolism

t~ slide ~a~k to their old religious beliefs and practices. The Indians
did not fit Into th.is ~ategory, argued Esc.obar del Carro, because they
ha~ from the beglnnmg embraced the faith and remained firmly loyal
to It. They were fundamemally differem from Muslims and Jews, he
concluded, and should be recognized as such by Spanish laws. 9 Concur_
ring with Escobar del Carro, the Suprema asserted that native people
Imght be recent converts, but were nothing like the New Christians of
the Iberian Peninsula. Like Old Christian Spaniards, they descended
from gentiles or people who had lived only under natural laws and not
under a religion and were therefore able to embrace Christianity.
The Suprema essentially argued that gentiles remained Catholics once
they converted because they had no religion to which to return; unlike
Jews and Muslims, they were a tabula rasa. To be sure, some Spaniards
did not like the idea of comparing the pre-Christian condition of the
native people to that of their own ancient ancestors and argued that
idolaters were just as difficult to convert to Christianity as Semitic peo.
pies. BU[ the Supreme Council of the Inquisition did not see it that way,
at least not at the end of the seventeenth century. At most, noted the
councilors, there might be one Indian who relapsed into the beliefs of
his ancestors, but the rest had not, and for that they should be rewarded,
not punished: "Experience has shown that [the Indians] have retained
the Catholic faith that they received and remain firmly committed to
her. And there has hardly been one that has returned to heathenism."
Following Escobar del Carro's strict interpretation of the limpieza de
sangre statutes, the Suprema thus concluded that purity requirements
could be used only as originally intended, that is, against converted Jews
and Muslims and other "potential heretics."
As to the more technical matter of whether indigenous people and
blacks could claim to be Old Christians, rhe Suprema stressed that the
statutes should follow ius commune and ascertain only that a person's
~are~ts and grandparents had been Catholic all their lives. The purity "in
wfinltum" requirement, if it was going to be applied, could only serve to
cast the descendants of Jews and Muslims as perpetual New Christians.
Although the document containing the Suprema's deliberations on the
matter appears to be missing pages (or these were misplaced), it is prob.
able, given the points that it hdd already made, that its final thoughts
on who was allowed to use the concept of cristiano viejo were similar
to those of Solorzano Pereira. The jurist, whose opinions the Supreme
Council repeatedly cited and clearly respected, had argued that because
most Indians descended from people who had converted in the sixteenth
century, they were no longer "neophytes" as many people still claimed,

Religion, Law, and Race

in fact already "ancient" Christians. lO They were, in other words,

"limpios de sangre" and "cristianos viejos." And if by now native
had both the qualities of purity of blood and Old Christian anthen the mestizos who descended from them and (Old Christian)
p",u;"d, had them even more SO.l1 It is unclear whether the councilors
the same logic to blacks because they gradually drop out of their
iSc,",,;on and toward the end are hardly mentioned at all.
The Supreme Council of the Inquisition's deliberations about the ap~;c"b.hty of the limpieza de sangre statutes to colonial populations
a number of important issues, among them that of timing. Why
need to define who was pure or not in Spanish America at that parmoment? The topic had on occasion already been raised by some
and colonial religious officials, but it clearly took on more imiorta.ocr toward the end of [he second century of Spanish colonialism.
at roughly the same time that the Suprema deliberated on the
Charles II issued the decree that affirmed the purity status of
people and their descendants and the legal equality of caciques
principales with Spanish hidalgos (1697). Given the timing of this
it is entirely feasible that the king had solicited the Suprema's
on the problem of limpieza in Spanish America and that the
were the deliberations discussed above. As to why the crown felt
to address the problem at that particular moment, the reasons are
""d;ffiwit to surmise.
One reason was that after about a century of allowing Spanish Amerrelative autonomy, Castilian monarchs were starting to take a greater
in colonial affairs, in large part because they wanted to make
. overseas territories more lucrative for Spain. The second half of
seventeenth century had witnessed the aggressive expansion of large
estates in parts of New Spain, mainly to the detriment of native
lO,un."";t,;,,. To ensure the steady flow of tribute, the crown had to
to offer them some protection, which it did in part by confirming
rights and privileges through several pronouncements, including
decree. Another development compelling clarification of the
. I purity question was the growth, throughout the seventeenth
of the population of mixed ancestry and restrictions on their
in certain professions and institutions. 11 The proliferation
targeting people of native and African ancestry by virtue
"stained" blood, to which metropolitan authorities were n.ot
01,1;";0"', obliged the crown to intervene and clarify the status of Its
colonial subjects. That it prioritized affirming the limpieza de sangre
of the indigenous people and their descendants and made no reference

206

Purity, Race, and Creolism

to blacks was consistent with its previous pronouncements and a func_

tion of the close linkage of politics and religion in the Spanish colonial
enterprise.
Spain's debates about its political obligations in the Americas by no
means ended with the discussions of Bartolome de Las Casas and Juan
Gines de Sepulveda. Its struggle to establish solid legal and ideological
grounds on which to defend its titles continued, and kept reviving the
topic of the indigenous people's rights and privileges under the Crown
of Castile. This str,uggle in fact intensified in the seventeenth century,
when the construction of the Black Legend by other European COuntries
forced Spain to explain why it continued to occupy Spanish American
territories and govern their populations. Protestant powers in particular accused Castile of basically committing genocide, of not curbing the
greed of its conquerors, of not protecting its overseas subjects, of using
evangelization as a pretext to further its own financial interests, and of
illegitimately claiming dominium in the Indies on the basis of papal donations and the Requerimiento. 13 The growing challenge to Spain's New
World titles was one of the factors that led Juan de Sol6rLano y Pereira
to start compiling all the laws that Castilian monarchs had passed for
their overseas possessions. Bmh his De Indiarum lure (a two-part work
published, respectively, in 1628 and 1639) and his Pu/itica Indiana (r648)
were political works ultimately concerned with legitimizing the conquest
and Spain's right to govern Spanish American territories. 14 As a defender
of the crown, the jurist aimed to argue that Castile had respected the
natural rights of native people, allowing them to live in their own polities, and that the principal goal of conquest and colonization was evangelization. His insistence on the purity status of the indigenous population and their mestizo descendants followed the official line and had
clear political mmivations.
That is to say, given the ideological centrality of religion to Spanish
colonialism-its importance in justifying expansion, conquest, and
colonization-the native people had to be recognized as pure. Both the
crown and the church had to support the idea that they had the quality
of limpieza de sangre and were in a different category than Jews and
Muslims. After all, if the indigenous people were lumped with conversOS
and moriscos-communities generally regarded as reluctant and backsliding converts-what was Spain doing in the Americas? Why should
the church attempt to convert populations that could not be convened?
In 1576, the Jesuit Antonio Possevino (I53.3-16II) had hinted at these
tensions in a memorial in which he insinuated that the society's adoPtion of a purity statute would jeopardize its missionary agenda." For
Spain, the broader implication of the continued division of Christians

Religion, Law, and Race

20 7

two categories was that it would not be able to make a convincing

for its conversion campaigns. Especially if the concept became part
its imperial policies pertaining to indigenous populations, the ideobasis of colonial rule would be completely undermined. The tight
of politics and religion in Hispanic expansionism thus could nor
make native purity into a part of the official Spanish discourse, rec1I!"iz<,d by the state, the church, and the Inquisition.
Of course, formal pronouncements about purity of blood were one
how they were applied was quite another. Limpieza de sangre was
only a mobile discourse that could be transferred to the Americas
also a flexible one in which new groups could be incorporated and
as impure, even if it meant contradicting the official line. By
Suprema's own admission, despite the legal definition of limpieza
sangre, various establishments, in both Spain and the colonies, had
a time been using the concept to exclude people who did not have
ties to either Judaism or Islam (and for that matter to any heretimovements). As an example, the councilors pointed out that Seville's
Mayor had been denying entrance to blacks, mulattos, gypsies,
guanches (the native people of the Canary Islands) on the basis of
. lack of blood purity. The colonial discourse of purity of blood was
with contradictions, many of which emanated from the ambigureligious status of colonial groups and the elusive category of Old

IDOLATRY, HERESY, AND TIlE AMBIGUITIES 01' THE

COLONIAL DISCOURSE OF NATIVE PURITY

Suprema's discussion of the different opinions of jurists on the purity

and the category of Old Christian stressed two main issues. The
the fundamental distinction that Spanish authorities tended to
between Jewish and Muslim conversions to Christianity and those
distinction that, as already emphasized, Spain needed in
framing its presence in the Americas (and elsewhere) as a
Un,d,m"n,,,lly religious enterprise. The second was the temporal dimenassociated with being a cristiano viejo. Old Christians, the counhad noted, were generally understood to be people who did not
les"",d from Jews and Muslims but instead derived from gentiles who
previous generations had accepted the faith, ideally so far back in time
no one remembered their conversions. Needless to say, this definileft substantial room for ambiguity. Although the Suprema favored

.,,,n,c>,--,

208

Purity, Race, and Crwlism

all~wi?g people ~hose parents and grandparents had been Catholic all
their lives to cl~lm the category, the more popular definition made it
much les~ a.ccesSlbJe, dependent on whether there remained memory of a
non-Chnstlan past. As far as the colonial population was concerned th
status of Old Christian thus mainly hinged on one question: was loy' I '
. .
db
.~
to Ch f1suanlty measure y whether a person was part of a lineage th
had adhered to Catholicism for at least three generations or by wheth::
he or she belonged to a community-a caste-whose conversion no one
remembered? The absence of a clear answer to this question made th
category of Old Christian both accessible and slippery and generate~
deep fissures within the discourse of purity of blood.
Complicating the issue of who could claim Old Christian status was
the la.ck ?f c~nsensus about the results of the church's Christianizing efforts I." S.rallish America: By the second half of the seventeenth century,
some Jurists and theologians argued that the native people were eligihle
for the status of cristianos vicjos because most derived from families
that had converted to Catholicism soon after the conquest and because
most remained loyal to the faith, but other Spaniards were far more
skeptical. The indigenous population's status as converts was in faC( still
very much contested and provoked strikingly different and passionate
responses. For example, in the 1670S, the Mexican Inquisition was still
referring to the native people as being "tender in the faith," as "new
Christians" in need of the "milk of the Holy Gospel."J6 Furthermore, if
some pri.ests. were convinced of their devotion to Christianity, others not
only mamtamed that idolatry was still rampant, but continued to link it
to her~sy. Indeed, at the very moment that members of the Suprema were
assertmg that one would he hard-pressed to find a native who had relapsed into his ancestors' "gentile" practices-which in their eyes made
them fundamentally different to the conversos and moriscos-church
officials in Mexico were expressing a heightened concern over the persistence of pre-Hispanic religious rituals and beliefs and resuscitating theories that linked the indigenous people to the Jews.
One su.ch official was dor Isidro de Sarifiana y Cuenca, a seventeenthcentury bishop of Oaxaca who gained notoriety for his harsh policies toward native "dogmatizers" in his jurisdiction, and who contended that
idola~ry was deeply rooted in the hearts of the indigenous people; that
even If they appeared to be good Catholics, they continued to adore their
idols; and that they were like "idolatrous" Jews who concealed the true
objects of their devotion. His writings and in particular his warnings to
priests regarding the untrustworthy nature of indigenous religiosity influenced Diego Jaymes Ricardo de Villavicencio. A priest who served the
church and the Inquisition in the archbishopric of Puebla, Villavicencio was

Religion, Law, and Race

20 9

comisario (commissioner judge) in Santa Cruz Tlatlaccotepetl,

he was in charge of supervising native people on religious and
matters. In 1692, he published a treatise titled Tratado de avipuntas importantes de La abominable seta {sectaJ de .La ido~atria,
was to help priests identify and uproot pre-Columbian religiOUS
through the development of better confession methods, based on
rather than on information gathered from books. 17 In this
text, Villavicencio lamented that after a century and a half of
efforts in indigenous communities, "the abominable sect
had still not been eradicated. On the contrary, the priest
the problem had only worsened, and not only in his bishopric but
whole of the viceroyalty. Though the native population partook in
rituals of Catholicism and on the outside manifested the signs of the
inside they continued to keep alive the "superstitions" and beliefs
. gentile past.
Permeated with imagery that predictably links light and visibility to
and the dark and blindness to the devil, Villavicencio's book proa list of techniques for how to detect idolatry. In addition to helppriests recognize the signs of heathenism, the new methods were
to improve confessional strategies. The goal was to probe the
moral world of native people and to instill notions of sin and
that would prompt those who had deviated from the faith to conBut beyond what it reveals about the slippage between religious
cultural practices-in the sense, for example, that the name given
a child was to be interpreted as a sign of religious orientation-and

~,~~.:::::i:~':~: of a morc efficacious

"moral science" at the end of the

the manual is remarkable for an additional rea: the author's relentless efforts to link the indigenous population to
Jews. Basing his discussion on passages from the Bible and writings
the church fathers, Villavicencio dedicated not just one but several
,",pt"" of his treatise to discussing the pagan cults and sacrificial pracof the ancient people of Israel, their refusal to relinquish their idols
they were called upon to do so, and Ithe punishments that God
upon them for their sins. '9
The depiction of the ancient Hebrews as idolaters who regularly enin all sorts of carnal excesses is followed by a similar one of Mexpre-Columbian peoples. Villavicencio's text renders the Aztec capden of vices, sin, and abominations, a veritable meat market where
t!~:;~~~~I;rulers the worst being Moctezuma, constantly indulged their
ii
appe~itcs for women and human flesh. Through this descripof unbridled depravity, the author sought to convey the message
that punishment was not only imminent but also well deserved. Just as
~

century,l~

EO

Purity, Race, and ereo/ism

the ancient Israelites had to pay for their errors, so too had the Indians.
Thus, when Cortes, like a New World Moses, arrived to liberate that
blind "Indian Egypt" (indiana egipto) that was Tenochtitlan, the Mexica
rulers were killed and their people forced to endure plagues, hunger
and finally, defeat. Clearly attempting to interpret the Spanish conques~
through the Holy Scriptures, Villavicencio went so far as to cOntend
that biblical prophecies regarding the ancient Jews had prefigured the

destruction of the idols in the TcmpJo Mayor and the punishments of the
Indians. He was suggesting that the fall of the Mexica, as well as their
subjection to the Spaniards, had been divinely ordained. This rcadlO g
of the conquest of Mexico allowed the priest to interpret the tribute imposed on the native people as both a marker of their sin and as a symbol
of their spiritual debts to the Iberians for leading them out of satanic
darkness and into the light of salvation.
But according to Villavicencio, indigenous people were still paying
for their mistakes not so much because their ancestors had practiced
idolatry, but because they continued to do so. Far from being loyal newcomers to the faith, he argued, the Indians were false Christians, people
"in whose veins still runs and moves, and lives, the blood of their ancestors, who in their gentility gave themselves so blindly to Idolatry."211
Villavicencio claimed to have received numerous reports about native
people in the bishoprics of Puebla and Mexico who frequently escaped
to the mountains in order to sacrifice animals and even humans in secret
caves. He also wrote that he had news that a priest in charge of evangelizing Indians in the jurisdiction of the town of Adixco (near Puebla)
had found out that some of his parishioners were regularly going to a
spring to commit idolatries. The said priest claimed to have gone to the
scene of the crime incognito and to have seen some native people pour
water from the spring in a ceramic container and place it in on a can
that they covered with branches and flowers. They then burned copal
incense around the container and moved the cart in a festive procession.
As the people rejoiced, the priest and his assistants supposedly removed
their disguises and took the group of idolaters to jail. They were all publicly punished, and the leaders were sold as temporary slaves in Puebla's
textile mills.
For Villavicencio, idolaters were like beasts and they should be treated
as such. He even blamed the persistence of gentile practices for the high
price of wheat, the epidemics of measles, and the overall instability that
had been plaguing the viceroyalty and which in 1692 resulted in a riot
in Mexico CityY Furthermore, the priest attributed the repression and
the militarization of the viceregal capital that followed the riot to the
Indians' deviation from Catholicism. But Villavicencio did not blame

Religion, Law, and Race

2H

entire native population for the recent chain of disasters, especially

its nobility. The problem of idolatry, he stressed, was limited to the
and predominantly rural, sectors, which he claimed were more
. and ignorant and therefore more susceptible to superstitions and
devil. This vulnerability was enhanced, Villavicencio observed, by
drinking of pulque, an alcoholic beverage from pre-Columbian times
at that moment was being linked to all sorts of social disordersY
, - Villavicencio saved his strongest indictment for native religious spewhom he called "rabbis" (indios rabies) and accused of spreading
.."ooic and subversive thoughts. The priest believed that it was necto identify and remove these "dogmatizers" from their commubut he admitted that the task was not going to be easy because
"wore rosaries" and exhibited other exterior signs that made them
~O"'Kc "',"0 Christians. After warning other church officials not to be
by the "artifice" of "wolves pretending to be sheep," he advised
working among native populations to learn from past experiences
the Jews, who he claimed had pretended to convert to Christianity
secretly kept alive their old beliefs and practices. Through the notions
I",utifi.,," and "dissimulation," the priest thus made discursive connecbetween the Indians and the conversos. His discussion of the relilives of indigenous people relied not only on the trope of the backJewish convert but on that of the carnal Jew. In Villavicencio's
indigenous population shared with the ancient Hebrews
innate inclination to practice idolatry and with Spain's New
an ability to conceal, under the veneer of Catholicism, the
objects of their devotion. From his use of the term rabbi to refer
native religious specialists, to his equation of Jewish and indigenous
1d"lat'.y,,: to his comparison of the can versos' allegedly recalcitrant na. Indians' adherence to their ancestors' beliefs, the priest's un;;';,;;;;;d;~~ of religious problems in New Spain were strongly shaped by
anti-Semitic thought.
Bishop Sariiiana y Cuenca and Villavicencio were certainly not the first
try to establish connections between the Jews and t.he Indian~, nor
they the first to use biblical passages about the ancient Israehte~ as
~",bl" of what could happen to "incorrigible sinners." Indeed, durlllg
in which theories about the pre-Columbian inhabitants de-

':~:~:::~.roff~m~~m::f~o:~o~',;o~f:~the lost tribes of Israel began to proliferate, some

~

concerted efforts to transfer their contempt of the

to the native people. As Inquisitor Peralta revealed in a J604 lett~r
.. ,.h,ich he discussed the clandestine arrival of conversos to New Spam
their alleged crypro-Judaism, autos de fe served as good exa~ples
local population, especially for the Indians, who were lea riling to

Purity, Race, and ereo/ism

hate Jews and others who were publicly humiliated and punished by the
Inquisition. v The clergy in both Mexico and Peru also made the topic of
Jewish idolatry a prominent theme in their sermons. Together with the
dramatic autos de fe in which people convicted of crypto-Judaism Were
punished, the colonial priesthood's anti-Semitic invectives ultimately
served as examples or "teaching devices" through whi.:h native people
and other groups were to learn of the penalties that awaited those who
committed idolatry (embodied by the ancient Jews) and heresy (embod_
ied by the conversos).l4 Villavicencio's manual even advised priests to
begin the first of several talks that they were to have with those who
confessed to religious deviations by discussing the prevalence of idolatry
among the Hebrews and stressing that those who had not converted
with Saint Paul (which had been most) were burning in hell.
The clergy's ongoing obsession with the topic of Jewish idolatry reveals not only its efforts to frighten the native population into relinquishing their old rituals, but its gradual and often subtle adaptation
of notions of impurity to the colonial context. As argued in Chapter 6,
some religious officials did not make a distinction between heresy and
idolatry, thereby helping to produce a de facto discourse of native "impurity." The exclusion of the indigenous people from the jurisdiction of
the Inquisition thus did not prevent members of the clergy-especially
those not satisfied with the results of the conversion project-from drawing cultural, historical, and even genealogical linkages between the Indians and Jews. Periods during which New Spain's religious officials
turned their attention to the problem of idolatry tended to be times in
which speculation about the native population's possible Hebrew origins
increased and in which Spanish writers and institutions raised questions
about its purity status. Although various seventeenth-century Spanish
thinkers rejected the theory of the Indians' Jewish descent, it nonetheless
remained popular. According to both Solorzano Pereira and the friar
Gregorio Garda, it was particularly appealing to common Spaniards,
especially those living in the Americas, as well as to some jurists. In the
last third of the seventeenth century, the theory once again became the
subject of a number of different texts, which suggests it was experiencing a kind of revival. Even the document containing the Suprema's discussion of the purity of blood of colonial populations hints at a continued fixation with the topic, for it has the words judio and indio scribbled
next to each other on the bottom of a page, probably not by the original
authors because it is upside down and more legible.
The continued popularity of the Indian Jewish-descent theory made
manifest some of the contradictions inherent in the Spanish colonial discourse of purity of blood. The native people were officially considered

ur"i

,I-'r;;

3. Page from a Spanish Inquisition document containing deliberations

Whether mestiws and mulattos in Spanish America should be allowed
;~:~,;,;~t~~~~;;: with punty of blood statutes. Undated. SOURCE: Archivo
II
Nacional, Inquisici6n, [ibro I266.

PUrity, Race, and ereo/ism

unblemish~d and perf~ct candidates for Christianity, but in the writings
of. the?loglans and J?nests, they often figured as fragile converts who if
misgUided could easily regress to idolatry. The two images complemented
each orher and together served a crucial political need, because if in the
seventeenth century Spain no longer defended its tides on the basis f
the ~apal donations .a~~ evangelization mission, it nonetheless illSist~
that It had a responsibility to ensure that rhe indigenous population did
not revert to pre~Columbian rituals. According to this line of reasunin
which. Solord.no y Pereira used in De Indiarum lure, abandoning t~~
Ameflcas would be tantamount to a sin because it would enable nativ
religious specialists to take control of the government and spearhead e
return to idolatry. The argument that Spain had a moral and political ob~
ligation to continue its rule in Spanish America in order to fulfill its n~li.
gious mission meant .that the crown and its supporters had continuously
to construct the Indians at once as ideal material for Chrisrianization
and as fragile converts, always susceptible to sliding back to their ancestral beliefs and practices. Ambiguities in the purity status of native people thus emanated from the very contradictions of Spanish colonialism
from, a political ideology that on one hand announced that they wer~
untamted because they lacked Jewish, Muslim, and heretical anteced~nts and had willingly accepted the faith, and on the other constantly
Iterated that they would revert to idolatry if left to their own devices and
in the hands of misguided leaders.
Religion thus continued to be central to the discourse of limpieza de
sangre at the end of the seventeenth century, but in deeply inconsistent
ways. While the native people were depicted by some religious officials
and metropolitan thinkers as ideal Christians and declared pure, their
real or presumed linkage to idolatry in the colonial world made their access to purity status provisional, problematic, conditional and at times
highly contradictory. Which is not to say that the official discourse of
limpieza de sangre did not have important social and political consequences. Quite the contrary. Native political and economic elites used it
in their communities, where a discourse of purity parallel to that which
was in place in the republic of Spaniards and which also relied on religious ideas survived into the eighteenth century and beyond. Echoing
the. formal definition of Iimpieza de sangre, caciques and principales proclaimed their purity in probanzas, genealogies, and dtulos primordiales
on the basis of their abandonment of idolatry and oftentimes also their
lack of black blood. Furthermore, within Spanish colonial cities, people
of parrial native ancestry were sometimes able to claim both purity of
blood and Old Christian ancestry. A few examples from the admission
records of the franciscan Order can illustrate the point.

Religion, Law, and Race

After it established its limpieza statute in Spain in 1525, the Franciscan
theoretically did not accept anyone who descended from Jews
. four generations on either the father's or the mother's side. The
requirement continued to be the source of controversy until 1583,
the order held a general chapter in Toledo and incorporated it into
legislation, where it was to remain unchanged for more than two
.nlo,';'"ln central Mexico, the franciscan chapter, called the Province
Holy Gospel, initially created two novitiates, one in Mexico City,
heod,,, in Puebla. Later a third one was established in the Convent of
also in the capital. In Puebla, the Convent of San francisco
novices by 1569. Most of its admission records, the ear~
in the Province of the Holy Gospel, have survived and
allow for a dose analysis of the process and language involved
the certification of purity of blood and to chart changes over time.l.l
after the Franciscan Order's constitution containing the purity
~'n": .,",published in Mexico in 1585, candidates for the novitiate beto submit informaciones de limpieza, vida y costumhres (informapurity, lifestyle, and habits).l6 These informaciones were the first
the probanza or purity certification process.
. The Franciscan Order's purity certification process closely resembled
,. of the Inquisition, bur there were some differences. A purity in~~;;;::;'~n conducted by the religious order began when the candidate
p
'his genealogical information to the friar in charge of receivnovitiates. By then, the candidate had already informed the head
the province of his desire to profess and passed an examination on
~~:~::i~:,~matters. The friar receiving the candidate's information (who
~
also served the Holy Office as a calificador) first reviewed
papal bulls that had confirmed the purity statute of the order and
the criteria that were necessary for membership in the order. Among
.eligilbl, categories were illegitimates; the children of clergymen, fri~
and nuns; people with substantial debts; and murderers. Naturally,

;~:~~:;]candidates were also disqualified. Technically the purity statute

two main types of people: descendants of "Moors, Jews, or rhe

converted" within the fourth degree, and persons who had been
by the Inquisition (or other religious tribunals) and their rela. Those who professed were warned that they would be expelled if
it was discovered that they fell under any of the prohibited

the genealogical information was presented, a commissioner and

notary were assigned to the case and, as with the Inquisition, twO in ~:::~~:~~'';: were conducted. The first, or informacidn secreta, involved
~"
public and parish records in order to verify genealogies and to

Purity, Race, and ereo/ism

identify those who were automatically disqualified, for example, because
they were married or had criminal records. Illegitimate birth was some_
times excused if the candidate was otherwise deemed a strong candidate.
The second, or informacion ;uridica, focused on the issue of purity of
blood and hence involved the interrogation of witnesses, usually three Or
four, occasionally more. The questioning normally took place at one of
the Franciscans' convents. The interrogations differed from those of the
Inquisition mainly in two regards. First, they were initially shorter than
those of the Holy Office, although by the mid-seventeenth century they
too consisted of eleven questions. And second, the Franciscan Order explicitly inquired into more aspects of the candidate's life (e.g., criminal
record, marital status, and infectious diseases) in order to determine his
suitability for monastic life and missionary work. With regard to the
issue of purity of blood itself, the order in theory limited genealogical
investigating to the great-grandparents, but as had occurred with the
Inquisition's probanzas, when the interrogations took place, witnesses
were normally asked to declare whether they had information about the
person having any Jewish, Muslim, or heretic ancestors. Once the interrogations were finished, the case was submitted to the prosecutor (promotor fiscal) of the order, who examined the documentation and determined whether anything else was needed. The last step was a review of
the case and decision by a committee of friars.
After 1614, the year that the Province of the Holy Gospel's purity
statute was amended to read that "no Indian or mestizo may be received
into this Province or anyone who is not pure Spanish reverting to the
fourth generation,"27 commissioners regularly asked witnesses whether
the candidate for the novitiate was a mestizo or cuarteron (quadroon) or
had any other "Indian part." Often they framed the question indirectly,
by inquiring whether the petitioner derived from "newly converted gentiles within the fourth degree." Categories referring to proportions of
different bloods used by the Franciscans as well as other colonial in
stitutions evoke those that the Spanish Inquisition had started to use
in Spain ("half New Christians," "quarter New Christians," "one sixteenth of a New Christian," and so forth) to refer to the children of Old
and New Christians. The similarity reflects the strong influence rhat
Iberian notions of lineage and purity had not only on Mexico's sistema
de castas but on colonial genealogical and archival practices. Suspicions
that a candidate for the Franciscan Order had "native parts" were likely
to lead to lengthy investigations to determine his exact ancestry that
mirrored those that were done to detect Jewish and Muslim descent.
For example, in r672, the purity of blood of Francisco de Lara, a
novice in Puebla's Convent of San Francisco who had already had his
probanza approved, came into question.l~ The witnesses had all declared

Religion, Law, and Race

he was purt.' and that his ancestors were Spanish. The case, furthercontained an affidavit from a priest certifying that the candidate
entered in Toluca's baptismal records for espanoles. During Lara's
year in the novitiate, however, "trustworthy pe?ple" infor~ed t~e
on',.",', authorities that he was not a pure Spamard. The fflars In
therefore undertook a second investigation. A commissioner was
the city of Toluca, Lara's place of birth, to do the interrogations.
questioned three witnesses, all of whom indicated that Francisco's
.
had been challenged because his mother's ancestors were un:tK'W'" '.00 were rumored to have "some mixture from the land," albeit
much. In the end, the seven friars who assessed the case accepted
into the order because whatever native ancestry he had appeared to
and not "within the fourth degree."
n
OtB'''u, "w'"hat exactly did the stipulation that candidates could not have
.t;ve an
to the fourth generation mean? It might have simply imthat that no one with an Indian ancestor to the fourth generation
as a great-grandparent could be accepted into the order, that is~ no
with more than "one-eighth native blood." However, the Province
the Holy Gospel was vague on the matter and seems to have folthe Holy Office's example of using the exclusion mainly against
who had more than one-fourth of indigenous ancestry ("cuarto
mestizo"). Adding to the confusion was the appearance of the phrase
converted gentiles within the fourth degree" in some genealogiinvestigations, which implied that limpieza de sangre could b~ deaccording either to degrees of mixture ("no more than one-eighth
1<I\,n'"\ or to timing of conversion ("no idolaters within four generaAccording to the first definition, the descendants of native and
unions could, after several generations, he eligible for purity
according to the second, "pure Indians" could, too, providing
they and their parents, grandparents, and great-grandp.are.nt.s had
good Catholics. The lack of clarity created spaces for IndIVIduals
indigenous ancestry to enter the Franciscan Order, which they bedo in the last third of the seventeenth century.
One such individual was Miguel Osorio Moctezuma, who submitted
genealogy to the friars in Puebla's Franciscan convent in 1679. He
a descendant of the Mexica ruler defeated by Cortes, and his parents
Nicolas Osorio Moctezuma and dona Ana de Morales, identified
the witnesses as "good and noble people of Tlaxcala." AcC{~rding.to
testimonies, the community considered the candidate and hiS family
be faithful Catholics without Muslim, Jewish, and infidel ancestors
without any "vulgar infamies." One witness said that he had not
know'nthe candidate's paternal grandparents, but that he had heard that
were Old Christians and that they were all notable gentlemen who

,,,,,,,

Purity, Race, and Creolism

had played a role in the government and administration of justice. The

other witnesses also emphasized the candidate's ancestors' adherence to
the faith, their Old Christian credentials, and their participation in local
politics. Miguel Osorio Moctezuma was thus held to be a loyal Catholi
~nd p~re of bl.ood. His b.aptism was recorded in Tlaxcala's Spanish reg~
Isters to the list of bautlsmos de espaiioles, suggesting that his indig_
enous ancestors were remote and that he was known as a Spaniard. l9
Once the investigation of his genealogy was complete, he was accepted
into the novitiate and eventually became a Franciscan friar.
A few other Moctezumas from Puebla's surrounding regions were
admitted into the city's Franciscan convent, including Diego Valdes
Moctezuma, who had his genealogical investigation done in the 1690S. JO
The witnesses in his informacion testified that he descended from
"Catholic Christians" and that he had no ancestors who were Jews, Mohammedans, or heretics, and also none who were "modern Gentiles"
within degrees that would disqualify him from entering the order. They
also stressed that he did not have any "stains of vulgar infamies," such as
slavery, and that he had not held any "vile" trades or professions. JI The
commissioner also inspected Valdes Moctezuma's baptismal record in
the convent of San Matheo de Hueychiapan. Like that of Miguel Osorio
Moctezuma, it too was included in the libros de espaiioles. Both informaciones suggest that the two Moctezumas were considered Spaniards and
that they were accepted into the order because whatever native ancestry
they had, it was noble and remote. Equally important, they were known
in their respective communities as honorable Old Christians. Ancestry,
religious behavior, and participation in government and public rituals
could all playa role in the determination of limpieza de sangre.
Another candidate who claimed to have noble native ancestry and
was accepted into the Franciscan Order was Manuel de SalaLar, who
described himself as a descendant of Citlalpopoca, lord of Quiahuixtlan
(one of the four divisions, or cabeceras, of Tlaxcala). 3l When he submitted his genealogical information in r67,S, he stated that his parents, don
Bernabe de Salazar y de los Santos and dona Fclipa Isabel, were princi.
pales in the city of Tlaxcala. The commissioner conducted the secret investigation and, not having found any impediments, such as illegitimate
birth, proceeded with the interrogation of the witnesses (which according to the order's rules had to be Spaniards). Three people, all native to
Tlaxcala, testified that Salazar's parents and grandparents were among
the most noble of the city, had held offices in its government, and did
not have any vulgar or infamous stains. The witnesses also stated that
the candidate's parents were "faithful Catholics and did nO[ descend
from Jews, Mohammedans, or heretics in any degree whatsoever, nor
from modern Gentiles within the fourth degree." The third and firul

Religion, Law, and Race

leell.",", added that Salazar's parents had not been tried for idolatry or
any other crime that would have been punished by the Inquisition.

b"orh" the testimonies thus established that Salazar's parents, grandand great grandparents had been Catholic; that they were not

io.,m,o,,,,,; and that they did not have any other stains in their bloodsuch as slave or illegitimate antecedents. In this case, the claim
the candidate did not descend from "modern Gentiles within any
that would impede his candidacy" implied that he did not defrom unconverted Indians within four generations because, at least
his marernalline, his ancestors were all said ro derive directly from
of the "Kings of the Indies."
Like the previous two cases, that of Salazar demonstrates that within
Franciscan Order, indigenous descent-depending on how far reit was and on the social status and Christian reputation of the
~nlb,,, of the lineage-did not necessarily hinder the recognition of pu. Salazar's acceptance into the novitiate suggests that the Franciscans
sometimes even willing to receive individuals who had native rela"within the fourth degree" if they were otherwise deemed to be
candidates. Although there is no reason to believe that persons
p.n,., indigenous ancestry were entering the religious order in signifnumbers, the fact that some were did not sit well with creoles who
come to believe that they should have exclusive access to that instias well as to the viceroyalty's public offices and ecclesiastical be. In 1702, for example, the friar Agustin de Vetancour (also spelled
Ien'"""'l, a writer and theology teacher in Puebla's Franciscan convent,
that people of Spanish-Indian parentage should not be admitted
the Franciscan Order because they were not Old Christians. 33
Vetancour, who for a while had been in charge of receiving the ge",.log:i',"I information presented by candidates for the novitiate, had
born in Ayotzingo and was one of New Spain's principal creole pa. In a letter addressed to another friar, he stressed that mestizos
from "new converts" on their indigenous line and were thereneophytes who should not be accepted into the order. It ~id not
"""""th,n their Indian ancestors had been Catholics for generatIOns, he
because the ordinaria (the Provisorato, or "Native Inquisition")
of their crimes and of how deeply ingrained in their blood were the
and ceremonies of their gentile past. Allowing mestizos into the
!~'~~:7~';~:~ Order would therefore "stain the creole nation" (a fa nacion
~(
se mancha). Some people argued that accepting a few would not
a difference, noted Vetancour. Hut for him, a single mestizo was
,"ough to tarnish the reputation of his order, which he claimed was cOl.nexclusively of religious individuals who descended from Old Chnsand nobles. of those who differed, the friar asked, "If a mulatto

",,,,,d,'d

220

Purity, Race, and Creo/ism

Religion, Law, and Race

tha~ w~s. born in Spa i.", being a neophyte descendant of new converts,
was re(;clved, would It not be an affront to the Spanish nation?" F
Vetancour, being an Old Christian was not a matter of years or g'n 0,
"fd
era_
tlons; It was un amcntallya matter of religion and lineage.
. As Verancour.'s views sug.ges~, faith and bloodlines continued to be
Integral to the discourse of iJmplcza de sangre, and theif growing'
dOd
Cose
"
0,f .pa~rlotlsm I "?t prevent some cre~les from harboring a profound

suspicions abom the disloyalty of blacks to crown and faith,

thus also to justify depriving them of the rights that were supposed
, be granted to all Christians, among them that of freedom. 37
',In 1640, Mexico had the largest population of free blacks in the
and second-largest of enslaved ones. H However, as of the midcentury, the number of slaves declined, in large part because
of rhe crowns of Castile and Portugal (r640) led Spain to
the purchase of Africans from the Portuguese. But New Spain's
black population continued to increase and to be one of the groups
by the Inquisition. That Africans and their descendants were
1c1"d"d in the jurisdiction of the Holy Office did not mean that they
somehow considered long-standing Christians or more trustconverts than the native people. As Spain's conversos and moris",mew fully well, being subjected ro rhe Inquisition did not translate
being accepted as faithful or "old" Christians but just the opposite.
crown's decision to allow the Holy Office ro try blacks and nor
jdi,ge<,m" people was in consonance with its project to create a dual
of social organization and the concomitant establishmem of spesecular and religious institutions for the latter.
: Because they were associated with slavery and not recognized as a re,h"e ,,"he,', own, blacks and their descendants had less dearly defined
than the native population, whose status as free Christian vassals
Crown of Castile was in practice nor always upheld bur nonetheconstantly invoked in colonial policies and legislation. As far as can
determined, Spanish kings did nor issue a decree or formal statement
~,d;;ng the rights of African-descended individuals as vecinos or conpurity-of-blood status, and if they did, the proclamation
not become a prominent part of colonial legislation. It was therefore
for colonial insrirmions to include black blood as a source of imwhich rhey began to do as of the late sixteenth century.
For example, in what was perhaps the first genealogical investigation
by Puebla's Convent of San Francisco, dated 1594, the commissought to determine wherher Bartolome de Mancillas's progeni'>ell wm of a lineage thar was "stained by Jews, Moors, slaves, heretics";
been reconciled or burned by the Holy Office; or had any other
~::'::~~~~' By the turn of the sixteenth century, blacks and mulattos were
..
as impure with no apparenr limit on how far back the "stain"
be traced. Thus, in 1599, the Franciscan Order made a probanza
Cristobal Ruiz de Quiroz in Tepeaca in which the witnesses were
whether he was of "a clean caste and generation, witham the race
mixture of Moors, mulattoes, blacks, Jews and the newly converted
Holy Catholic Faith and with no ties to persons punished by the
Office."40 In some probanzas, the phrase "docs not descend from

dlsdam for the native people and mestiZOS and from using lineag

"0

' pnvi
. 'Ieges ..I" t heir versio.n of the argument that Spain could
secure t h elf
not abandon the Amcflcas because It had to ensure that there was
retreat from Christianity, it was they, the "natives" of the kingdom a~~
descendants of the conquerors and first colonists, who were to be in con_
trol of the government ~nd ch~rch. ~n the mid-eighteenth cemury, they
would produce a mural III MeXICO City depicting Cortes as an American
~oses: thereby turning the conquest and Christianization project into a
visual Image of their parriotic history.3.1 Creole patriotism generally did
n~t chall~nge the ideology of limpieza de sangre but rather sought to
remforce It by redeploying the late medieval argument that blood was a
vehicle through which all sorts of "natural" qualities were transmitted
~nd by inserting the descendants of native people and especially blacks
mto the same category of impurity as conversos and moriscos.

BLACKS, CASTAS, AND TilE EXPANSION

OF THE CATEGORY OF IMPURITY

Although c.ol~nial Spaniards generally regarded blacks as recently converted C.hnstlans or not yet fully instructed in the faith, the Spanish
c.ro",,:n ~Id ~ot re~ove them from the jurisdiction of the Holy Office
hke It did With native people. Extending its reach to Africans and their
descendants, the Inquisition tended to prosecute them for moral and
~eligious tra~sgressions.such as bigamy and blasphemy and for practiv
mg I.'agan ntuals. It tried them especially for renouncing God or the
Vlrgm or making other blasphemous remarks that the clergy viewed
as an expression of ingraritude toward the divine. \6 Blasphemy cases
usually resulted in rhe accused being paraded through the streets of the
viceregal cities, subjected to some kind of public humiliation or torture,
and forced to confess their transgressions against the faith. The punishments for those whom colonial officials accused of plotting rebellions
",,:ere much more severe, sometimes resulting in executions. The periodic
Violence that the state perpetrated on black bodies-usually in the viceregal plaza and in front of the palace and church-served co reinforce

22 ,

222

Purity, Race, and ereo/ism

mulattoes wit~in the fourth degree" appears, but more often than not, it
was llsed by witnesses and candidates rather than by the commissioners
'
which would suggest that there was no limitation on the exclusion.
Despite the early construction of slave and black antecedents as im_
pure in colonial genealogical investigations, neither the state nor the in_
quisition issued a formal statement regarding the practice, at least nOt
until the second half of the eighteenth century. The results of this con_
ceptual vagueness were discursive spaces and fissures that allowed people
of African ancestry on hoth sides of the Atlantic to attempt to claim the
category of Old Christian by defining it according to its original religious
and genealogical terms. For example, on 30 March 1606, Catalina Reyes
requested a probanza before a judge in Seville in order to establish that
she was the daughter of a "free and Old Christian white male" (hombre
blanco fibre y cristiano vieju) and an "Old Christian woman of dark
skin" (morena ate(ada y cristiana vieja) who had been a slave. Reyes
wanted to accompany her employer Isabel Cervantes to New Spain, but
because she was a "morena" (of partial black ancestry), she first needed
to obtain a special travel license, which meant that she had to prove that
she was both free and pure of blood. To that effect, she claimed that
her mother had been liberated before giving birth to her, which thanks
to the principle of the free womb meant she too was free. As to her purity status, Reyes declared, "I and my son and my parents are and were
Old Christians of clean caste and generation, without any stains or races
from Moors or Jews nor from the newly converted to our holy Catholic
faith," and presented two witnesses to support her statement.41 Relymg
on the original meanings of the notions of limpieza de sangre and cristiano viejo, Catalina Reyes did not see her mother's slave (and presumably also African) past as an impediment to claiming purity of blood.
Although the possibility that African-descended people would be able
to obtain purity of blood and Old Christian status became more remote as the seventeenth century unfolded and the plantation revolution
shaped racial ideologies across the Atlantic world, some nonetheless
continued to try. At the end of the century, for example, Nicolas Cortes,
whom the Inquisition tried for bigamy and described as a "free white
mulatto," claimed that he was born in Jalapa to a Spanish father and a
wuman of the "mulatto nation" and that he was of a "caste and generation of Old Christians," unblemished and (until then) untouched by rhe
Inquisition. When he gave his genealogy to the Holy Office, he added
that he had been baptized and was a good Christian who regularly went
to mass, confessed, and took communion. 4l Diego Velasquez de Tasada,
a mulatto slave working in the mines of Guadalajara who was tried for
blasphemy roughly at the same time as Cortes's prosecution, made simi-

Religion. Law, and Race

223

claims. He stated that his father was a Spaniard and his mother a
from Guadalajara and that all of his ancestors and collaterals
been Old Christians. He too asserted he was a good Chrisrian. 43
and similar cases make evident that there were competing defiand understandings of the category of Old Christian, some of
stressed religion and genealogy and challenged the association of
blood with impurity.
Although the above examples seem to suggest otherwise, having a
father was not necessary for people of black ancestry to see
on,,,lv,,, as pure Old Christians. For example, the informacion of
Joseph Rodriguez Vargas, a candidate for the novitiate in the Conof San Francisco, contains a copy of a certification of purity of
that his mother, Petrona Vaquero, requested on his behalf from
alcalde mayor in the 1690S.44 When Vaquero submitted her
genealogy, she stated that she was a Spaniard but that her husband,
de Covos, was of "color pardo" (a category increasingly used for
of partial African ancestry)Y As if attempting to compensate for
origins, she added that Covos was an honest man, a good Christian,
a person who was "clean of all bad race." Vaquero also stressed that
husband was free and had been a battalion captain in Puebla's comde pardos. Some of the witnesses for Rodriguez Vargas's probanza
that his mother was a parda herself. Others, however, regarded
of his parents as Old Christians, and a priest certified that he was
in Puebla's cathedral parish in the book of Spanish baptisms.
what "bad race" meant and who could claim purity and Old
ancestry were highly contested issues in colonial Mexico. In
I
both categories, African-descended people challenged some
principles of colonial racial ideology as well as the social hierarthey were meant to reproduce and rejected the idea that they could
make lineage claims. That they did so by using concepts of limpieza
sangre speaks not only to their participation in the construction of a
<om,non discursive field. 46 It also points to how African diasporic idenwere "by definition creole, but also simultaneously tortured and
and their struggles almost always interstitial, "found in spaces
cracks within ostensibly hegemonic structures."47 In the end, howclaiming the category of purity of blood and having it recognized
Were two separate matters. As the eighteenth century began, the assumption that black ancestry was incompatible with the status of limpieza de
sangre was firmly in place and operating in a host of institutions across
Central Mexico.
For example, in 1702, the authorities of a Franciscan convent in Queretaro began to investigate the antecedents of two brothers, fray Nicolas

e",.,i',,,"

224

Purity, Race, and Creolism

Religion, Law, and Race

de Velasco and Fray Miguel de Velasco, who were suspected of havin
"the bad race of mulattoes." The investigation started with interrog ~
tions of community elders, many of whom reported that they knew ~r
su~pccted that the ~rorhers were not pure because of the skin color and
half texture of thelf mother and some of theif grandparents. After
three-year investigation, which involved examining many juridical in~
struments (copies of marriage and birth certificates) presented by the
father and several waves of interrogations of different witnesses, the
Velasco brothers were allowed to remain in the order and declared "pure
and legitimate Spaniards of good social status and blood" (limpios y
legitim.os es~aii~/es de bue~a ca/idad y limpieza). The friars in charge
of the investigations determmed that the Velascos were being confused
with two other brothers, whose last name was Velazquez and who had
been expelled from their religious order because of the "defect" of theif
lineage. They also declared that some of the rumors about their ancestry
were motivated by malice.4~
The Velasco case includes a detailed discussion by rheologians regarding rhe Franciscan Order's prohibition of blacks and the proper
course of action when a "mulatto pretending to be a Spaniard" had been
accepted. The theologians concluded that when acceptance into the order occurred under false pretenses, the culprit could be deprived of the
habit and expelled. They also determined that if the said friar had black
blood, he could not be granted dispensation because it would contradict
the statute against accepting mulattoes that had been approved by the
pope. The convent's authorities could not ignore what higher authorities
had mandated. By the time this discussion took place, few institutions,
religious or otherwise, questioned the association of black blood with
impurity, and black skin color had become a marker of impure ancestry. As the testimonies of witnesses in the Velasco case suggest, colonial
Spaniards had come to link limpieza de sangre to physical appearance.
In the course of the seventeenth century, the concept had gone from being mainly associated with having Old Christian ancestry to being connected to whiteness. This link would become stronger in the eighteenth
century.

CONCLUSION

In seventeenth-century New Spain, purity of blood was still officially

defined as a religious and genealogical concept that referred to wherher
individuals had ties to Judaism, Islam, or heresy. This enduring legal

225

,,;;~::~~~:~,led prominent Spanish jurists and theologians to argue that

~

people and in some cases also blacks were technically "unNonetheless, as the archival practices, interrogative proceand genealogical formulas associated with purity i~ves~igations
to be adapted to the co[onial context, the concept of [Impleza was
'~!:~o~~!:,~;g.~ainst people of African and native ancestry ~n the basis of
:i:
. origins." Furthermore, references to candIdates not de-

~:::~:;~n:f;m~:m;,;b;ll,a::':-;ks, mulattos, and mestizos

became commonplace in
genealogical investigations, as did the claim that
did not derive from anyone associated with the "stain of vulgar
inf"mi',". such as slavery or the exercise of any base trade within the fe,';" ""' As Spaniards in the Americas mapped the notion of impurity
certain colonial populations, they came to relate it to phenotype
social status.
Nonetheless, the meaning of the concept of limpicza de sangre conto be vague and inconsistent. Its main inconsistency stemmed
the official status of the native people, which despite claims about
alleged continued association with idolatry allowed some of the
",:end,n" of pre-Hispanic lineages to claim both purity of ~Iood and
Christian ancestry. At the end of the seventeenth century, It was not
for them to make the case for having Catholic ancestors beyond
grandparents, and the crown confirmed their limpieza status. The
of blacks was less inconsistent, in large part because the state
declared their blood to be unsullied, but some African-descended
nonetheless attempted to use religious and genealogical formuro proclaim their purity of blood and Old Christian ancestry.
de sangre was to a certain extent in the eye of the beholder, and
.
intrinsic vagueness-its equivocating references to d~scent
generational formulas and also to religious practices and behcfsencouraged appropriations.
But if the concept was at times employed in unexpected ways, re-

i~:~~~~~~.rbY archives,
persons generally marked as impure, the P?wer to. create
and classifications ultimately reSided With the

and a host of other colonial institutions linked to the state

the church. To a considerable degree, these institutions and t.he
; practices they routinized established the parameters of the catcgones
that were possible and legitimate. They not only h~d the power to d~
fine, classify, and order but to exclude on the baSIS of those catcgoClzations. Over time, colonial institutions came to increase the role t~at
baptismal records played in establishing limpieza ~(atus.- Some ~unty
informaciones done in the sixteenth century contam wntten caples of

226

Purity, Race, and ereo/ism

~hc candidate's baptismal information (with affidavits from priests) b

III the latter half of the colonial period, which began in the 1670s, 'th~

?ecame a standard feature. As the seventeenth century dosed these

Ish recor
. d s were mcreasmg
.
. Iy using the formula "people of reason"
'
par"
"b "
f5
. d
' as In
aptls~s 0 pamar s and other castes of people of reason" (bautismos
~e e~pano/es y demas castas de, pe~sonas 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 eighteenthto attract the attention of students of
The
which modern scholars have labeled "casta paintand was developed in the viceroyalty of New Spain. '
a growing metropolitan curiosity over the nature and inNew 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 illustrate 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 sixteen 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 display objects from different pans of the world, including Castile's overseas territories. Together with minerals, fossils, rocks, flora, and other

rP''''",V Spanish America began

u8

Purity, Race, and Creolism

products from the Americas, various paintings were shipped across th

~da?tic a?d consumed by a Spanish public. Yet some sets stayed in Me}(~
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 ,.'.n
?bsc.rvmg, recording, an~ cl~~sifying, .".'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 ethnographic 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 paintings 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 sangre. This chapter focuses on these issues. It stresses that casta paintings,
which emerged during a period of deepening anxieties about the shifting social order, construct a narrative of mestizaje informed by the discourse 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, others 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: CA~TA 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 eightcentury, 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 westand 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 afthe middle of the eighteenth century. By then, Mexico had already
undergoing important socioeconomic and cultural changes. Demoral,h.ealily the region wem from having a population of about 1.5 milin 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 an7 The demographic upsurge together with shifts in the economy,
.cludin! a rise in silver production that stimulated economic activities
northern Mexico,~ 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
"",""ding market and productive capacity that Mexico enjoyed in the
of the eighteenth century, not to mention the economic init 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 particular, 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

Changing Contuurs

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
~:":~~::~,the "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 diinto 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 conompdon 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.
among these traits was a concern with depicting how reprobetween 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 fcaa man, a woman, and their child. ll Some indude two children,
the standard family unit of casta paintings was a trinity. Series were
:~i,~~~n;;umbered in order to facilitate the ordering of the images.
each vignette included an inscription providing the nofor 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 period 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.

"",most

fIG. 4 M~anuel 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 Mu~eum.

2) ,

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
,di~n, won",,,, "generally humble, tranquil and straightforward." The
and last vignette in the unit explains that the Spanish boy, born of
Spani~h man and a castiza, "takes entirely after his father." He apparinherited 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
~;~7~,~:~~,'~n that describes him as having "bearing, temperament and

r,

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.

"

Another idea present in casta paintings is that while mixture is a poinfinite process, it is not irreversible; returning to one of the
purity is possible. In particular, they allow for the possibilthat 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 Spancan 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 matThe last generational unit of a typical series, which is characterized
the total or ncar-total absence of Spaniards and by ongoing reproducbetween people of African and indigenous descent, normally links
D~:::::~i' to incomprehensibility (as conveyed by terms such as "hold
r<
in mid-air," "return backwards," "lobo return backwards,"
'm~la[[o 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 dean the strong interdependence of race and gender. The first seIqu"",,, 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 conStruct a gendered image of New Spain's three main populations. Sexual
subordination essentiatty functions as a metaphor for colonial domination. However, casta paintings gender indigenous and black people differently. Whereas the genre links the former to biological "weakness"

Changing Contours

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.

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 genroles 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 consiswith its overall privileging of the Spanish~Indian 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 mynot only in that the family images are obviously a product of
t'J;'ini"'ia~ 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
~ti"ian 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 canto 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 {1695-1768).I~ It features a Spanish male [0 the
. woman [0 the right, and their daughter in the middle. 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

Changing Contours

FIG. 7. Miguel C~brera [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.

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
~;:r~::::':n~li::n::es 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 backand the pineapple on the lower right corner of the frame}. These
,m,ii"" paradoxically position not the woman and child, which are bedisplayed, 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
~"anlg"n"" 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 indigewoman, Cabrera's painting hints at the process of creole class for"::~~::~KThe 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, ecoexploitation, and racial dispossession-a signifier of multiple and
overlapping structures of domination. Through the iconography of productive 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

C~br,era, born in .Antequ~ra (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 seventeenth~
C~ntu~y 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 physica~ contact ~et,,:een the figures, a stronger reliance on clothing
to mark socioeconomIC dtfferences, and a greater stress on order and hierarchy.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 excommunication.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 su.rpo.rte~ for most of
seventeenth century), families had no legal or Illstuutlonal mechato 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 mercapitalism. Mobility went in both directions, however, and ecotrends were by no means uniform. Improvements in mining and
ogrind"",,d production and greater integration into the Atlantic econgave 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 probrelatively early. In 1724, a number of Puebla's residents
regarding the city's downturn and the flight of many of its afvecinos, 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 popuhad 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 itsindustries, 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.. Z7
ures and an epidemic that hit the central region created a l 00d 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 regul~t
ing a good portion of the working population and thus played a p~rt 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 ed
to be structured according to racial lines. 2S Even if master artisans w.
no longer all. Spaniards and creoles, and even if workers were by ~~
means exclusIvely people of indigenous and black ancestry, the mo~t
.
"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_
~ema de castas was alive and well. For example, the textile worksho s
III the Puebla-Tlaxcala basin, the Bajfo, and the Mexico City area we~e
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
sl~ves. 29 Th~ 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 became especially evident as the colonial period dtew to a close.
The instability of the sistema de castas was parodied in a 1754 manuscript 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 Spanishnes~
("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 officials and clerics, and large-scale retailers; nor did it apply to the bottom
social levels, which mainly consisted of unskilled indigenous manual laborers. Fluidity primarily characterized colonial society'S growing middle 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 advis~rs was
to promote "free trade"; another was to make Spain's political and economic domination over its colomes more efficient. The relative autonomy 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
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 dethe 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 esof 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 deof the Industrial Revolution. But by far the most imporNew 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 twoof the crown's income in the Americas. Silver remittances from
Spain and G.alvez's revenue-raising policies led to a significant im~~:::::,n: in Spain's fiscal yields. In the 1730S, the Royal Treasury of
f~
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 expansion created more wealth for some but did not lead to noticeable
structural and institutional changes, the modernization of manufacturing 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 eighteenth century, New Spain's population paid 70 percent more in taxes
(han that of Spain. \6 Because approximately 40 percent of tax revenues

Pto'g".m

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 worsened.3~ Indeed'
the little upward mobility there was tended to favor peninsulars (mai '
~eneficiaries of the ~rown's expansion of the bureaucracy), while surg~
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. Bu~
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 decreased in the eighteenth century, when they did not even have a monopoly 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 nostalgia 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 paintings made them worse.
By the 1740s, some creoles began to express conCern that casta paintings 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 cathedral chapter. In 1746, he sent a manuscript entitled "Noticias de los
escritores de la Nueva Espana" to Juan Jose de Eguiara y Eguren, professor 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 production in the Arnericas.~o In a letter that accompanied the manuscript,

Changing Contours

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 everyin the colonies was the product of mestizaje. Referring explicitly
some casta sets, the theologian regretted that they reflected only the
~unc'ci",oal" (utiles) and not "noble" minds of New Spain, and that they
not include the best pairing of all, that between Spaniards and creH casta paintings were initially a manifestation of pride in the 10by 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 cxamletters 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 geneof 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 illegitior 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,"
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 ~ot
entirely clear. Although Mexico's population of slaves had bee~ dedlOing since the middle of the seventeenth century, people of Afncan descent (free and enslaved) continued to have a strong presence in Mexico
throughout the end of the colonial period, particularly in Mexico. City.43
This presence, however, does not in and of itself explain the ehte preoccupation with black blood. Perhaps the preoccupation was linked to
increases in marriages between creoles and castas, or perhaps Simply to
o

243

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 0the Mexican Holy Office's correspondence suggests, some penins~las
Spaniards were linking creoles with illegitimacy and mixture, singli~r
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 d~
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 considered 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 distinction 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 attempt 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.

Changing Contours

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 ~e?ealogy
also fueled by the crown's social and admllllsrrauve polines, and
!;~~::~l;,~ its passage of the 1776 Royal Pragmatic on Marriages (or
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 courts.~X
law was extended to the Americas in 1778 along with other dethat ordered royal officials (especially those in the armed forces)
.~':::,~7,:t~0 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 limpiez~ for stuadmitted into its mining seminar. By the end of the eighteenth
"'''"<v,purity requirements had become so pervasive that some parents
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 particular to people of African descent~an innovation tha.t the .Inq~isi~ion
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 (alguacil mayor) in the Mexican town of Salamanca who had applied to be

't

''''""ed

CREOLE FICTIONS: PURITY, THE VIRGIN,

AND TilE RISE OI' A CATHOLIC MESTIZO PAT RIA

The exclusivist trend in colonial institutions was manifested in the proliferation 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 occupations." 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

24'

Purity, Race, and Creo/ism

Changing Contours

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, particularly 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 interrogations continued to adhere to the traditional categories of limpieza.
In most cases, what they had opted to do was add a handwritten question 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 approved their rejection of candidates who had black blood as well as on
popular opinion regarding the effects of reproducing with blacks. These

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 afpeople who descended from gentiles unless their gentility was rewithin the cuatro costados (their parents and grandparents), but
even then mainly on the basis of illegitimacy. Because Vargas Machuca's
~~~:~~;f:~:l "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 growing 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 acceptance of individual achievement and other principles of enlightened rationalism 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 Iimpieza 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 witnesses 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

247

Purity, Race, and Creo/ism

Changing Contours

example, don Jose Tembra (or Tenebral a cleric from the diocese ofTI
'
ax-

within four degrees of the "stain," the defect had disappeared

b:~~:~:'d,o~nlY 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 repbut 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, literin 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
'~'hi,"nin",." And just as the discourse of limpieza de sangre seldom althe 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
S~~~~:'~lldoes 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

c~ Ia, argued that in order to ensure the "public good," (he state should

discourage uneljual marriages, that is, unions between honorable men

and w~mel.l who were ?ot of the right condici6n because they lacked the
thr~e 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
~lergy, 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
gen~alogical investigations are a good indication, the meaning of bloo~
punty moved farther and farther away from religious practices and became 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. I~ In Mexico, these theories reinforced the concept of purity
of blood's links to "Spanishness" and "whiteness," which had begun to
app~ar ~ith r~gu~arity in the second half of the previous century. Purity
certifications mdlcate that witnesses increasingly used the category of
"p~re 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 Franciscan 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 maternal 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

~:!~~:~:'Utnderwent, 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 population 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 established 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 candidates 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 canva~,
164 x 91 cm. SOUItCE; Courtesy of Museo de America, Madrid.

FIG. 9. Jose de Ibarra, De castizo y espaiio/a, eS(Jaii()/ (hom Ca~ti:w

and Spaniard, Spaniard), ca. 1725. Oil on ..:anvas, 164 x ~H em. SOURCE:
Courtesy of Mu~eo 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 pronouncement. 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 painters, 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 although her image protected both groups, it especially cared for the latter, "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.

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.
12.

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 patron, 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 vignette, 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 contrast, the next sequence, which deals with the Spanish-black union, results in an "Albino tornatras" ("albino return backwards"). The painting 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 anxieties 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 symbolics 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 social inequality referred primarily to racial or "caste" disparity, prompted
prominent creoles and Spaniards (mostly members of the clergy) to defend unions with the indigenous population. Reviving the early missionary 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 romanticlLing the achievements of the pre-Columbian ALtecs and portraying

PIG. 13.

Luis de Mena, (.:a~ta painting, (.:a.

SOURCE:

Courtesy of Museo de America, Madrid.

1750.

Oil on Canvas,

120)( 104

(.:m.

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 Othe~ religiou.s and
lay figures expressed similar vindications of Spanish-Indian mamages,
among them Archbishop Lorenzana and the enlightened creol~ polyma~h
Jose Antonio de Alzate y Ramirez (1737-99). Clearly favonng certam

25 8

Purity, Race, and ereo/ism

Changing Contours

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 government's social policies. Indeed, even though the Pragmatic Sanction's provision 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, marriages 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 pertaining to the legal instrument:.. called gracias al sacar. These instruments
were part of a Spanish tradition in which monarchical authority superceded laws about legitimacy and various other matters related to birth
status and ancestry. They allowed, for example, those who were illegitimate, 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

issued a list of prices for purchasing them. 71 That the list focused
dispensing the status of pardo (dark skinned) and of quinter6n (oneblack) 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
~I:~:':;!~:~~ 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,
.~~:::~,;',Jews, and Moors" as impure categories but not "indios" or
~J
. " As Archbishop Lorenzana and Alzate y Ramirez had insinuwhen they argued that native people should avoid marrying blacks,
:heeonti,nuing stigma of black blood was clearly related to the purity-ofrequirements 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
~a,,:d 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 staof caciques and principales led to a rise in the production of inJiggenealogical 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 created 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

259

260

Purity, Race, and Creolism

hierarchy make dear, the emerging vision of a Catholic mestizo patr'

dd
"
I. not eI
Iffilfiate t he strong ambivalence that novohispanic political
elites tended to have toward mestizaje. 76 This ambivalence is palpable'

1
on
t he MeX1CO city counu 's 1771 Representacion, Of address to the crow
which complained about the exclusion of American Spaniards (the wo~
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 author 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 1808,''7~
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 generation 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 creole 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

:~i::;;;!t 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
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

A.too,;o

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

"",,,,too,

held honorific posts in Mexico City and Puebla. Don

'!~:':~:;;:;~::yhad
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 Spain.~.l The history 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 century 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 administration. Beyond recording the elite preoccupation with lineage at a time of

Purity, Race, and Creo/ism

Changing Contours

social change, his probanzas and other genealogical histories from th

period suggest that the hidalgo-cristiano viejo cultural paradigm-fir e
~romoted ce?turies ~arlier ?y the s~ate and church-was alive and we~~
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

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

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 socioeconomic 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 issuing 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 anxieries 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-

~:::~,~;n:,~~,~,:;:~:~~o;~ them becoming increasingly linked to "Span~1

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 enthe continued extension of the concept to the Christianized native
p~:,~,::;;:::: shaped central Mexico's patriotic defense of Spanish-Indian
~
and allowed criolln clerics, intellectuals, and painters to e1aba 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 imof 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 prinof the limpieza de sangre discourse, which granted the indigenous
pOI~ulauon a favored spiritual and genealogical status, especially vis-aThe directionality of influences in eighteenth-century Mexican thinkabout 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
';~.~~~;~~~~,tthe way some of them thought about lineage and biological
i~
. As the creole vision of Catholic mestizo patria was emergthe 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 imagined not only Hispanicizing and Christianizing the indigenous population 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 subordination and a fantasy of sexual domination and biological dispossession. This fantasy became more elaborate as mercantile capitalism

Purity, Race, and Creo/ism

expand~d, ~ade p~pu~ation. 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
t~rntory Wit t elr IdentlficaCion as a community on the basis of blood_
hnes. The form that late colonial Mexican patriotic and racial' g
inings took owed much to institutional policies power struggle .Ima d
- 1 -I .
. . .
.'
s, an
socia re at~ons that by routlOlZlOg certam archival practices made a set
of ~ssumptlons about blood and lineage purity-a series of genealogical
fictions-seem natural, taken for granted, and thus the consequ,o
f
deOie
- d as such.
ce 0
h Istory

Conclusion

book has analyzed the concept of limpieza de sangre from its oriamid the complex sociopolitical climate of early modern Spain
its deployment in colonial Mexico, where it served as the ideologifoundation 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 investigato 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 midof 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 limpieza de sangre, at first by targeting converted communities (thereby helping 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

266

Conclusion

wi~h. purity, ~ut promoted a certain understanding of it, one in which

rehglOn and lmeage were strongly linked. The extent to which the two
were collapsed in early modern Spain was manifested in the commonl
held assumption that religious beliefs, values, and practices were rran:
mitted from parents to children, in pare through indoctrination within
the family, in part through physiological processes. Blood thus cam
to function as a metaphor for both biological and cultural inheritane:
and along with breast milk figured prominendy in early modern Spain's
imagery of (Old Christian) purity and (heretical) contamination. The female body was at the center of this imagery because of women's roles in
biological and cultural reproduction, which took on more importance
as the Inquisition disproportionately prosecuted conversas and moriscas
for religious transgressions.
Spain's requirements of limpieza de sangre promoted an obsession
with lineage that led to the rise of iinajudos, a market in false genealo_
gies, and investigations into family histories that only called attention to
Spain's Jewish and Muslim past. Paradoxically, the statutes helped to iovent the Christian foundations of Spanish towns. As some of the jurists
and theologians who commented on them observed, whether someone
had Jewish or Muslim ancestry mattered less than whether anyone remembered they did. Experts on the statutes did not actually agree on
whether genealogical investigations should place more weight on oral
testimonies or written records, but by placing a high premium on reputation, the requirements became implicated not just in controlling access
to certain institutions and corporations but also in constructing local
and historical memory. As the seventeenth-century Spaniard Gonzales
Monjarces realized when he left his title of familiar at a confraternity
for his descendants to use as well as a list of archives and papers they
should consult if they were ever accused of being related to the alleged
converso Diego de Castro, probanzas de limpieza de sangre and other
purity documents could he used to create unsullied family histories and
thereby to shape understandings of the past. Thus, although at first the
statutes produced a frenzy of genealogical investigations that led [() the
discovery of countless "stains," over the course of the early modern period, the pressure to conceal Jewish and Muslim antecedents shaped individual and collective memories and helped to generate the myth of a
pure Christian Spain. Not until the writings of Americo Castro in rhe
middle of the twentieth century did this myth start to be dismantled. I
The concept of limpieza also shaped historical myths in Mexico, where
it too functioned, at least initially, as a religious mode of discourse. Indeed, the first colonial purity requirements, those that demanded that
emigrants to the Americas provide proof of their Old Christian statuS,

Conclusion

ostensibly part of the Christianization project. Although they

exceptions, Spanish monarchs claimed that they wanted to pre"',,, ,;0.",'",0, and moriscos from going to their new territories because
might try to undermine the church's overseas conversion efforts.
Cl""I" V and especially Philip II leaned on the same justification when
issued decrees making purity of blood a requirement for certain
in the colonial religious and secular administrations. Their policies
.cilir,,,,d the transfer of peninsular concerns with blood and genealogy
the colonial context, as did the Inquisition's establishment of procefor certifying the Old Christian status of its officials and familiars
the Americas. The emergence of a colonial system of probanzas de
de sangre, which often required genealogical investigations in
Iber;," towns and archives, in turn reinforced the metropolitan obseswith blood purity. Spanish policies on emigration to the Americas,
i bureaucratic requirements, and the Inquisition's investigative
i
all contributed to the spread and reproduction of the disof limpieza de sangre in the Hispanic Atlantic wo~ld .as a whole.
Although this discourse enjoyed a certain unity and continUIty throughthe early modern period, the meanings of limpieza de sangre were
i.~~;::;;~l;to local and historical circumstances. For the more than three
!c
that it was in use in Mexico, for example, the concept retained
stress on bloodlines uncontaminated by Jews, Muslims, or heretics.
in the last decades of the sixteenth century, some probanzas began
to list blacks, mulattos, and occasionally mestizos and indios within the
of impurity. This intersection of limpieza de sangre and the
.
de castas~of the discourses of raza and casta-occurred because of a series of transatlantic and local developments that enabled the
. displacement of Spanish anxieties about religious conversion onto people
of African and indigenous descent. Particularly imponant among these
, developments was the importation of black slaves to Spanish America,
which as evidenced in the growing popularity of the myth of the curse of
Ham to explain enslavement practices, strengthened Iberian associations
of slavery with black skin color and ancestral sin. More important from
a long-term perspective, slavery made it difficult for blacks to ~ake genealogical claims, which in turn affected their descendants' .ability to ~uc
cessfully claim that they were Old Christians. The extension of ?~tlons
of limpieza de sangre to people of indigenous ancestry was preClp~t~ted
by different socioreligious developments, including the cler~y's d~s'llu
sionment with the conversion project, the decline of the pre-HlspaOlc nobility, and the arrival of more European women to the ~mericas. These
factors made marriages between Spanish men and native women even
rarer than they had been in the decades after the conquest and lessened

,68

Conclusion

Conclusion

~he ~t~tus of mcst~zos, w.ho in a.ddition to being marked by the stain of

illegJt~macy ~~re .mcreasmgly distanced from pre-Hispanic noble blood
and, like their tndlgenous parents, perceived by church officials as tra iJ
Christians.
g e
Because of their (re~1 or alleged) pagan practices and beliefs, because

Christianization project after the religious orders lost power to the

clergy, the reconstitution of indigenous communities within the
"',:~~~:;of an emerging capitalist global economy, the rise of significant
~1
of free African-descended people and their relations with and
on other colonial populations, the effects of shifts in the political
;C~~~~~~';h,oi';n women's socioeconomic roles and gender in general, and the
:e
of science and religion. Future studies of these topics will
put to rest the view in the historiography of the seventeenth century
a rdatively static period and raise new ways of thinking about how
and social practices functioned in a local and transatlantic context
about the reproduction of Spanish colonial rule.
As the probanzas de limpieza de sangre hint at, social change in cenMexico accelerated as of the middle of the seventeenth century.
only did the concept of purity of blood become associated with
iP~::;:~'~~ and whiteness, but it came to work together with socio~
, categories. Especially in the second half of the colonial peadded not just black and slave ancestries imo the
but al.~o descent from people who engaged in "vile
" Appearing in Spain as well, this trend was reto the expansion of mercantile capitalism, which by increasing the
~~~~~:i~~~~~of social mobility prompted numerous religious, secular, and
~
institutions to attempt to become more exclusive by estabnarrower admission requirements. In central Mexico, the growexclusivity was also due to changes in demographic and marriage
'~::~:,;;:' which along with economic ones made the lower border of
;~
society more permeable and the sistema de castas more tluid.
proliferation of purity requirements and of genealogical stains in the
com;'xt of socioeconomic reconfigurations both manifested and exacerthe existing tension between, on one hand, an incipient structure
-, -,-_. stratification and, on the other, a system of determining access
public and religious offices and institutions based primarily on
'bloo,dli~''', in other words, a system that could be abstracted to caste.
The instability of the sistema de castas grew in the latter half of the
. colonial period, but it was actually built into it because of the multiple
ambiguities of the concept of limpieza de sangre, which made different
forms of classification and incorporation into the category of Spaniard
possible. For one, widespread use of the concept never resolved, in Spain
or Spanish America, whether purity was a natural condition, that is,
carried in the blood and therefore established by genealogical records,
or a social one and thus determined more by oral testimonies. 2 In colonial probanzas, this lack of clarity meant that Spanish and casta categories were sometimes defined more by birth (by lineage and legitimacy),

they could .not yet claim that they were Old Christians, or simply beca.use Spamards saw them as unstable converts, blacks and people of
ml~ed ancestry were gradually included in the category of impurity b
variOUS ~olonial institutio~s. This inclusion, which occurred in spite ~
the offiCIal and more restncted definition of iimpieza, accelerated in the
seventeenth ~entury and was accompanied by the production of more
casta categories and concomitant (if irregular) creation of separate ba _
~ismal, marriage, and death records for Spaniards, Indians, and cast~s
I~ parishes throughout New Spain. The transfer and adaptation of the
discourse to the American context also resulted in the association of
purity with Spanishness and white skin color. A colonial innovation
this association emerged almost surreptitiously and was recorded in th;
declarations of witnes~'es in probanzas de limpieza de ~angre. Their testimonies suggest that, at least in the Spanish mind-set, skin color came
to function as an index of behavIoral, religious, and biological characteristics and that phenotype in general came to play an informal role in
~ow.pure blo?dl.in~s were measured. Witnesses to the gradual crystallization of a Chnstlan, Spanish, and white identity in Spanish America
the probanzas point to the interrelated nature of the histories of anti~
Semitism and colonial racism as well as to the centrality of colonialism
to modern definitions of race and nation.
It .wa~ t~e colonial situation that in the seventeenth century forced
SpallJ~h Junsts, theologians, and inquisitors to reflect on the rationale,
meanmgs, and applicability of the statutes of purity of blood, and it was
pressure from Mexico's Holy Office that led the Suprema to formally
!nclude African-descended people in the category of impurity. The traJectory of the concept of limpieza de sangre in New Spain thus serves
as a reminder that just as histories of colonialism that don't take inw
consideration how metropolitan markings of peasants, Jews, and other
marginalized groups were mapped onto colonized populations are insufficient, histories of race that don't consider how fundamental colonial
rule was to the rise of modern racial (and national) ideologies are equally
problematic. That the transformation of the concept began in earnest in
the 16005 also calls attention to the need to reconsider the importance
of the seventeenth century in various areas of social and intellectual
life. S?me historians of Latin America have begun this reevaluation, but
there IS much more to do in terms of studying, for example, the fate of

Conclusion

Conclusion

at others more by religious behavior, reputation, social status, pheno_

type, and so forth. Furthermore, neither religious nor secular author_
ities produced hard rules about how far back to look for stains, nOr
about whether the category of gentile, which could encompass black
and native people, could be treated as impure. Questions about whether
to rely more heavily on public reputation than on genealogical records
about how many generations back investigations could probe, and abo u:
whether the descendants of gentiles could be excluded from the status
of purity and for how long tended to be raised in instiwtional COntexts
because it was there that admission requirements were sometimes put to
the test. These questions were never definitively resolved, and perhaps
could not have been, given that the existence of a juridical model for determining purity status did not prevent each institution or corporation
from coming up with its own rules and procedures.
Thus, in the second half of the colonial period, multiple, overlapping,
and even competing discourses of blood purity operated in Mexico. Some
stressed Christian bloodlines, some Spanish ancestry, and some skin
color. The multivalence of the concept of limpieza de sangre stemmed
from its definitional ambiguities as well as from the chameleonic and
parasitic nature of race, from its capacity to adapt to new circumstances
and attach itself to new social phenomena while retaining shades of
its past incarnation. No racial discourse is ever entirely new; as social
and historical conditions change, race builds on old beliefs, tropes, and
stereotypes. In Mexico and the rest of the Iberian Atlantic world, the
expansion of mercantile capitalism and advent of new understandings
of the body and biological reproduction within the natural sciences began to secularize the concept of limpieza de sangre. Its association with
Spanishness and whiteness and its interaction with class enabled the exclusion of people who were not officially considered impure and who
could claim Christian ancestry for several generations from institutions
with statutes and from some religious and public offices. But as has been
stressed repeatedly in this book, the inconsistency between royal definitions of purity of blood and exclusionary practices did not mean that the
original and more religious meanings of the concept did not have major
ramifications in colonial Mexican society. Not only did these meanings
continue to shape understandings of Spanish purity, but throughout the
colonial period, they informed the legal-theological status of the native
population. The principle of Indian limpieza was periodically expressed
in royal legislation, but more important, it operated in native communities, where local caciques and principales were granted a set of privileges
and rights on the basis of their pre-Hispanic noble bloodlines and aCceptance of the Catholic faith.

Spanish colonialism's production of parallel discourses of purity was

consonance with the two-republic model of sociopolitical organizaThis model led to the creation of separate religious and secular
tribun,j" town councils, fiscal obligations, and parish records for native
peap''', and insofar as it granted them the right to hold office and to
vecindad in their communities, it resulted in two citizenship reThe establishment of two systems of local government and corre"pandi,"gdual requirements of blood purity also Jed to the introduction
legal formulas of Spanish probanzas into the process of confirm-

I;~~:~!~;;: and principales and into Indian limpieza cases, the latter

arising because of jurisdictional disputes or struggles over the

of land tides, political offices, and cacicazgos. Native nobiland purity cases both came to involve genealogical investigations to
second or third generation, declarations by community elders, and
regarding unwavering loyalty to the Catholic faith. Lineage~the
to prove descent from certain families, the need to prove purity
bloodlines-thus became a central strategy of social reproduction in
indigenous towns just as it did in Spanish colonial society, where
was used to access the clergy and administration. There were strong
. between the mechanisms used by Spanish and native elites
and economic privileges and more generally between
of hierarchies in the two republics and a social order
on blood.
Instead of affirming lack of Jewish and Muslim blood and the abof any heretical antecedents, however, indigenous rulers and nowho had to prove their purity would normally declare that they did
have ancestors or relatives who had practiced idolatry, presumably
the sixteenth-century conversions had taken place. They also rouemphasized their lack of black and mulatto blood. In a society
shaped by a political ideology that construed Spaniards as Old
and native people as a spiritually unsullied {albeit religiously
and that established similar mechanisms of social rei elites, black blood became the main source of impu, rity almost by default. Not that Spaniards never recognized individuals
. of African descent as good Christians, only that unlike the indigenous
: population, blacks did not have a collective legal status as free Christia.n
vassals of the Crown of Castile, which shaped cultural codes about their
place in the spiritual and sociopolitical order. Moreover, their alleged
slave origins made it virtually impossible for them to claim purity of
blood. The condition of slavery's curtailment of genealogical claims
meant that it was inherently antithetical to the concepts of cristiano viejo
and hidalgo, contrary to the spirit of purity and nobility, because both

Conclusion
notions were constituted by a set of ideas regarding legitimate birth, lin_
eage, ~nd. te~por~lity. For these reasons, certain religious orders and
other mstltunons mclud:d ~e.scent from ~Ia~es as an impure category,
one that made a person mellglble for admissIOn. The status of impurity
could have real social consequences.
Colonial documents, and in particular, the probanzas de limpieza de
sangre produced by the Inquisition and other Spanish institutions, do
not re:eal much about how blacks viewed or challenged the ideology
of puCJty of blood. But some sources do suggest that African-descended
people had alternative definitio~s of purity and rejected the idea that they
were unable to make genealogical claims and become Old Christians.
T.hough not numerous, .these sources provide clues as to how relatively
dlsempowered people tried to carve social and spiritual spaces for them_
selves in a society that generally marked them as impure. At certain
times, persons of African descent demonstrated a strong sense of lineage
and tried to appropriate and redeploy the very concepts and definitions
of the discourse of purity of blood to capitalize on its ambiguities about
the importance of religious faith versus bloodlines and about the ability
of the Christianized descendants of gentiles to be accepted as cristianos
viejos. But mainly because of their restricted access to institutional and
political power, their efforts as a whole did not prevail, and they were
systematically included in the category of impurity. This inclusion had
profound implications for the place of blacks and their descendants in
novohispanic society and in Mexico's historical narratives.
Power is constitutive of history, among other reasons because different groups have unequal access to the means of historical production,
and this inequality plays a part at every step of the construction of the
past. Specifically, it is invoh ~d in the making, assemblage, and retrieval
of sources and in the forging of their contents into narratives.} In New
Spain, the restricted ability that African-descended people had to produce, organize, and reproduce categories; to create sources and structure
archives and therefore influence the recovery of facts; and to leave written traces of feelings, thoughts, and practices generated deep silences
about their significance in Mexican history. These silences were made
all the more powerful by the ideology of Iimpieza de sangre. Just as
the purity statutes both exposed and denied Spain's Jewish and Muslim
past, colonial forms of marking blackness through classifications, genealogical investigations, and institutional exclusions had paradoxical
consequences. These forms of marking aimed to make black ancestry
visible while simultaneously encouraging its erasure from the historical
record, thus laying the groundwork for modern Mexico's myth of its

Conclusion

'73

':~p~f.~;,~th, and Indian foundations. Although the works of the an-

tt

Gonzalo Aguirre-Beltran in the 1940S and 1950S and more

studies by scholars in the United States and Mexico have begun
recover the history of New Spain's black populations by examining,
example, slavery, Inquisition, town council, military, church, and
;"'"I"",,,,;t) records, the myth continues to sh~pe the country's nationthought, Its teleologICal and genealogical fictions.
In part because of thelf recogilltion as a republic under the Crown of
I
the Spanish one but entitled to thelt own governand hierarchies-indigenous communities, or rather their political
economic elites, contributed to the construction of those fictions.
concept of purity was deployed by caciques and principa.les ~ho had
submit
but it was also used in communal histOries that
the moment of the group's acceptance of Christianity and
of the Spanish king. These histories framed indigenous enhtii,",,",tto
and political autonomy in terms of a contract between
Castilian crown and the Mesoamerican ruling and noble dynasties
had converted to the Catholic faith, thus revealing how the issue of
pu,;ty--a< one of loyalty to the faith across generations-was important
for individuals but for the group. In time, the incorporation of
:Span;sh notions of political and religious fidelity into native petitions for
and titles and into town histories influenced New Spain's broader
!h;]"''';'',1 narratives. Tlaxcala's indigenous political leaders, for example, integrated Christian concepts of baptism, co~version, and vassal.age
into their textual and visual histories, and the Imagery and narratives
they produced colored creole representations of the conquest and its political and religious consequences. 4
The construction of New Spain's discours'e of native purity had many
agents-members of the religious and secular administrations as well
, as caciques and principales, indigenous artists, and other. members of
the "Indian republic"-and was achieved through ~ var~cty of lega.l,
visual and social mechanisms. A more comprehenSive history of this
const:uction awaits more detailed studies of local religiolls and political
, developments, the role and language of lineage c1ai~s ~n nati~e p~titions
for land and public office, and the creole appropnatJon of Illdlg~nous
religious and genealogical iconography. It is clear, how~ver, that t~IS a~
propriation intensified in the eighteenth century and 1~ld ~are the Implications of the religious dimension of the concept of hmpleza de sangre
for Mexico's racial ideology. As the sistema de castas became unstable, as the elite obsession with safeguarding its purity of blood reached
new heights, and as the government passed laws attempting to control

'74

Conclusion

Conclusion

intermarriage, religious and secular officials and creole patriots

X
pressed deep concerns about unions between Spaniards and blacks tended to articulate a strong defense of marriages between the fo Ut
nner
peap 1c.
an d native
As ?ad o~cur~ed ~wo centuries earlier in the Iberian Peninsula, the
obsession with h~pleza. de sangre and the concept's stress on purit
from both bloodlmes displaced Spanish anxieties over impurity 0 y
N
onto b lack women in particular. It is difficul
"to
women;
I~
ewSpam,
to determme whether these anxieties were a result of actual marria t
and reproductive patterns between white men and African-descend g~
women or simply of fears of such unions. Whatever the case, the poli;ical and cultural establishment left evidence of its urgent concern with
pr.eventing Spanish .men fr~m corrup.ting their ~'seeds" by reproducing
with bla~k .wome~ III a ~anety of wntten and Visual sources, including
casta paintings. Conv~y.lng.systematicness to categories that no longer
had much, the mascu!JOIzatJon of blackness, and in general the intersec_
tion of race, class, and gender within the logic of the sistema de castas
the p~intings reveal the creole elite's ordering and classificatory impuls;
at a time of flux. By privileging the Spanish-Indian union and implying
that black blood could not be fully assimilated into Spanish lineages,
they also attest to the ongoing importance of the ideology of limpieza
d.e sangr~ and its extension of the status of purity to the native populatIOn. ,!,hls status, which had been reinforced by royal legislation, the
founding of convents for indigenous noblewomen (a recognition of their
privileged place within the spiritual and genealogical economy), and the
spread of the cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe, enabled the emergence of
a vision of a Catholic mestizo parria, the main contours of which appear
in some probanzas; in the works of clerics, government officials, and
writers; and in Luis de Mena's mid-eighteenth-century casta painting.
Despite its potency, the patriotic vision of a Catholic and mestizo New
Spain did not undermine the creole sense of being part of a Spanish community of blood. Creole patriots appropriated pre-Hispanic history and
some even claimed to have remote noble Indian ancestors to strengthen
their arguments for their right to access upper levels of the government
and ecclesiastical administrations. But for all their identification with
the land and the Mexica empire, novohispanic elites generally continued
to strongly identify as Spamards, an identification that throughout rhe
colonial period was fed by the probanzas de limpieza de sangre and the
set of archival practices they promoted. facilitating access to main political and religious offices, educational institutions, familiaturas, religious orders, craft guilds, military academies, and so forth, these probanzas generated family and group narratives thar in their privileging of

'75

bloodlines were in tension with the discourse of native purity.

the ayuntamiento's 1771 address to the crown suggests, Mexican
dealt with the contradictions inherent in wanting to make historiand genealogical claims that bolstered their "nativeness" (and thus
argument for having full naturaleza rights) and to reject the view
they were "mixed" by rendering mestizaje a phenomenon of the
colonial period, by stressing that it had mainly involved Spanish
with indigenous noblewomen, and by suggesting that mixture
purity were compatible.
This compatibility was by no means a product of their imagination. As
colonial legislation and various religious and secular institutions
been recognizing for about two centuries, the descendants of Spanishunions could return to the Spanish pole. The juridico-theological
of the indigenous people, the survival of pre-Columbian royal and
lineages, the legacy of the religious utopias of the early missionarthe social relations that Spaniards established with caciques and printhe adaptation of Castilian legal and genealogical formulas to the
context, and the appropriation of Catholic concepts and imagery
indigenous communities were among the factors that had made that
. These colonial developments, a vivid example of how
processes and ideological constructs-especially if backed by
force of religion and law-influence a society's understandings of
,io101:;,<,al reproduction and race, enabled the emergence of a Mexican
of a Catholic mestizo patria, one that simultaneously recognized
favored place of the native people within New Spain's spiritual econand betrayed the creole elite's privileging of Spanish bloodlines and
wh.itcne" . That vision and all of its ambivalences toward native and espeblack ancestries would survive independence and continue to haunt
~,:~,:~:,~ political imaginaries throughout [he nineteenth and twentieth
c
and beyond.

Appendix
Questionnaire Used by the Spanish Inquisition

following questionnaIre was used TO interrogate witnesse~ in purity of

investigations in the first half of the seventeenth century. It i~ in AHN,
"",i,;ociim,iibro 1056, fols. 439-439V. Author's transcription.

han de interrogar a [os testigoo ell im!cstigaciones de !impieza

Primcramente, si conocen al di<.:ho de cuya informaci6n Sf trata. Declaren
es cI conocimiento, y tiempo y la edad que tiene.
1) Si conocen al padre y madre del dicho. Y si sahen de dande son naturales,
vivido, y sido vecino~, de Luanto tiempo y como es d CO[Jocimiento,
3} Si conocen al padre. y madre del di(ho, abuelos por parte del dicha y si
noticia de los demas ascendientes por parte de padre del dicha declaren
es eI conocimiento. Y de que ttempo, y de donde SOil naturales, y han sido
y tenido domicilio.
Si conocen al padre, y madre de la dicha, abuelos de partes de madre del
y de donde son naturales, y han sido vecinos, y tenid!) domicilio, dedaren
es el conocimiento, y de que tiempo.
s) Sean preguntados los testigos poc las preguntas generales.
6) Si saben que el di(ho de cuya informacion se trata es hijo de los dichos y
tal su hijo legitimo es habido, y tenido, y comunmente reputado. Digan y
los testigos como 10 saben, y Ja filiaci6n.
Si saben que el dicho su padre y los dichos sus abuelos par partes de
y los demas sus ascendientes por partes de padre, todos, y cada unos
han sido, y son Cristianos viejos, de limpia sangre, ~in raza, macula,
~;~:;':,~~:'~;'~~ de Judios, Moros, ni Conversos, ni de !)tra secta nuevamente
IX
y por tales han sido, habidos y tenidos, y comunmente reputados,
de 10 colltrario no ha habido farna, ni rumor, que si 10 hubiera, los testigos
supieran, 0 hubieran oido decir, segun el conocimiento y noticia que de los
OQ,odid,m.,y cada uno de ellos han tenido y tienen.
8) 5i saben que eI dicho y eI dicho su padre y abuelos de partes de padre,
:O""oi,]o"
pregunta antes de csta, ni ninguno de los dema~ sus ascendientes,
sido penitenciados, ni condenados par cl Santo Oficio de la Inyuisiei6n, ni
",lo en otra infamia, que Ie prohiba tener ofieio publico y de honor: digan
1)

",I,

U"'..

Appendix
los testigos 10 que acerca de esto saben, }' han oido, y 10 que saben de las buenas
costumbres, curdura, y opinion dd dil"hu.
9) Si sa ben que la dicha madre del dicho y los dichos sus abuelos por partes de
madre, y los demas ascendientes por partes de la madre del dicho todo s y cad a
uno de ellos, han sido, y son Cristianos vlejm" limpios de Iimpla sangre, sin
raza, maculJ, ni descendem.:ia de Moros, Judios, ni Conversos, ni de Otra seera
nueva mente convertida, }' que por tales son habidos y tenidos, y comunmerue
reputado~, y ral loS la publica VOl y fama, y com un opinion, y de 10 comrario, no
ha habido fama, ni rumor, que 5i la hubiera, los tesrigos 10 supieran 0 hubleran
oido dccir, y no pudiera ser menos, seglin la noticia que de los susodichos, }'
cada uno de c1los han tenido y tienen.
10) Si saben que la dicha madre del dicho y los dichos sus padres y ascen,
dientes contenidos en la pregunta antes de esta, ni ningunu de dlos ha sido
condenado, ni penitenciado por cI Santo Oficio de la inquisiClon, ni incurndo
en otra infamia que Ie prohiba al dicho tener oficio publico, y de honor.
II) Si saben que todo 10 susodicho es publica V07. y fama.
EI que hiciere la informacion ha de hacer que los testigos respondan puntua]mente a cada articulo de la pregunta, sin contentarse con responder gcnera].
mente a toda la pregunta como en dla se contiene. Y demas de las pregllotas del
interrogatorio, hara las que de las deposiciones de los restigos resultaren, nel"eSar,
ias para averiguacion de la verdad, ~in exceder a preguntas Iffipertinentes.

Glossary

A firstinstance judge who was also a member of the town council.

Also called alcalde ()rdillariu.
mayor Chid magistrate of a given town or area. Appointed by the
crown. In Spanish America, the term was frcquently used interchangeably
with correKid()r.
I mayor Chief constable in charge of executing the orders of the district
":;i:'~;'i~"~ (alcalde mayor). Also an official within the Inyui,ition.
81
Royal tribunal; acted as an appeal~ court and governing body.
A public or private act of religiOUS penitence. Over time, public
auros became elaborate specradcs involving inquisitors, royalty, and large
audiences and featuring a proce~sion to the square and stage where they were
held, a mass and sermon, and a reading of the crimes of the accused.
The main Spanish American local governing body; a municipal
corporation in charge of admini~tering an urban center and the territory
under its jurisdiction. it was composed of a coyal official or corregidor (also
called alcalde may()r or justli:ia mayor), two alcades menores, and a town
council kahildo).
t",biliido Town council. The number of aldermen (regidores) in a cabildo tended
to be six, but in the ca~e of prominent cities such as Mexico and I'uebla, it
was twelve.
A political and economic institution established by the Spanish
government for the descendants of pre-Hispanic rulers (caciques) that fused
pre-Hispanic and Castilian traditions. It referred to a ~et of rights and
holdings attached to the rlllership of a cacique, including having access to
communal and patrimonial lands and bequeathing his property and titles to
his descendants. Like the Spani~h mayorazgo. the cacicazgo provided a legal
framework for the consolidation and perpetuation of estates because they
could not be divided and wer~ ~upposed to be transmitted from patriarch to
single heir.
cacique Native dynastic ruler. Spaniards first applied the term to the legitimate
succe~son of pre-Hispanic rulers.
canas de privilegio Patents of nobility, sold by the crown to worthy comnwners. Also called prwi/eKius de J!/da/guia.

Glossary

Glossary

casta Lineage, caste.

cofradia Religious brotherhood.
comlsario C~n~mi~si.oner. Com.isarios were normally parish pricsts who worked
for the InquJSltlOn lJl major ciTies and POrtS and werc in charge of a var;
J
I'
..
.ety
a f . ~tles, suc 1 as filltng out paperwork, mformmg Holy Office tribunals of
reltglous trans.gressions in their jurisdictions, and conducting genealogical
mvesngatlO~s In Iimpieza de .angre cases. Also called comisari() mtiJrmador
comuneros CitiLens of Castilian communities who rebelled against the rule
Charle~ V and his administration from 1520 to 1522.
consultor Advisor. A jurist who aJvised inquisitor. on maners of law.
conversos Converts to Christianity, initially Jewish but eventually Muslim
ones as wei! (the latter also called moriswsj. Interchangeable with the term
New Christians.
conVlvenCla The coexistence of Christians, Jews, and Muslims in medieval
Spain.
corregidor A district governor and judge (also called alcalde may()res and
gobernadores). In Spani.h America there were two types; correg/dure> (in
charge of jurisdictions with Spanish and other populations) and wrregidures
de Indios (in charge of native j urisJictlOns and matters).
criollismo Creolism, the strong identification with the local that surfaced
among the descendants of Spaniards in Spanish America.
crioIlo Creole. A Spaniard who had been born or raised in Spanish America.
Spaniards at fir~t appli~J the term to black slaves who were born and r.li,cd
outside of Africa.
derecho indiano Spani,h laws for Spanish America.
encomienda Grant of native laborer<, awarded by the Spanish crown to individual Spaniards in return for promising to oversee their Ch ri&tianization.
familiar A lay informant working for the Inquisition who technically had to
be pure of blood.
familiatura Title of familiar.
fiscal Prosecutor.
fueros Laws. The term was used to refer to traditional community charters
in Spain, where different regions had their own code of laws. It also referred
to the distinctive legal status of a partICular group, such a, the clergy, the
military, or the native people.
gobernador Governor; in a native municipJ.lity, the highest office held byJ.Jl
indigenous person.
hacendados Owners of haciendas or large landed estates.
hidalgos The Spanish gentry or nontitled nobles.
hidalguia Nobility. Spanish nobles consisted of hidalgos, who mainly enjoyed
local prestige and exemption from certain taxe,; set/(Jres, owners of smail
territorial posses~ions (seii()ri(Js); and grandes, the titled nobility
informacion de limpieza de sangre Genealogical information provided by .I
permn seeking to prove his or her purity of blood.
ius commune Common law. A European legal science that originated in the
twelfth century and combined Roman, canon, and fcudallaw.
judcrias .!ewi,b qUJ.rters (in I'"'ediC\'al Spain).

of

In Spain, the term initially referred to Mu~lims and Jews who mastered
the Casrilian language. The word was al~o eventuJ.lly applied to the language
spoken by the Sephardim. In the colonial context, depending on the region,
it referred to Hispanicized native ptOpJc, mestizos, or blacks and others who
were fluent m 5pani,h and had adopteJ other dements of Ca,tilian culture.
de oficios Purity of oCcupatlOn or trade.
de sangre Purity of blood; the absence of Jewish, Mu>lim, and (in the
black ancestors.
Experts on lineages (li/Ia/es).
A pejorJ.tive name for cOllversos. Of uncertain etymology, the term
meant "pigs" and might have been applied to the converted Jews because
some refused (or found it Jifficu!t) to eat pork.
EntJ.iled estat~; allowed for the indivisibly and transmission of
forms of property, normally to the oldest son, or hij(J mayor.
Historial account.
A term coined m the nineteenth century that referred to the "mixing"
castes or races in colonial and postindependence Latin America.
Person of Spanish and indigenous descent.
A migratory people from tbe northern Mexican frontier who arrived
in the central valley around the early twelfth century and through military
might became the most powerful group in the region in the course of the
fifteenth century. When the Spaniards arrived, they dominated most of
central Mexico, parts of the arid north, the lowlands of Tehuantcpec, and
large stretches on both coasts. Popularly known as "Aztec~."
A person of Spanish and black ancestry. The term was sometimes
applied more loosely to anyone of partial African descent.
nacron Nation. In cady modern time~ the word had numerous meanings,
among them an ethnolingustic community.
. Nahuas The Nahuatl-speaking people of Central Mexico.
Nahuatl An Uto-Aztecan language family indigenous to Mesoamerica.
naturaleza Nativeness. In Spain, generally a status that accorded certain
exclusive privileges within the kingdom, namely eligibility for office holding
and ecclesla~tical benefices. The native monopoly on publi<: and religious
offices was called the reserva de o{iCIIJ.
nobleza de priviJcgio Nobillty of privilege. Granted by kings to commoners
who provided important military or public service or who were able to
purchase patents of nobility. If the crown a!lowed for its trammlssion from
father to son, the statu~ would become f/obleza de sangre (nobility of blood)
on the third generation.
nobleza de sangre Nobility of blood. The most valued noble status in Spanish >m:iety became it implied being part of a privileged lineagc ~ince "time
immemori.\I."
oidor Judge on an audiencia.
peninsular Peninsular; a Spaniard who w.\s born m Spain.
pipiltin N.lhu<lT1 word for nobles.
prebend A stipend or income provided by cathedrals or churches to clergymen
in their chapters.

Glossary
principales Spanish term applied to the legitimate successors of the pre_
Hispanic nohility.
probanza de Iimpieza de sangre Certification or proof of purity of blood
Normally done for per~ons trying to access instituTions or posts with PUtit;
of blood rC4uirements or trying to mIgrate from Spain TO Spanish America.
Sometimes the term was used inten.:hJngeably with ill(ormaci(jn de iimpleza
de sangre.
probanza de meritas y servicios Proof of merits and ~ervices. Provided by
Spanish conquerors, colonists, and their descendants to the Spanish Crown
to be rewarded for their military, political, or religiou~ accompli~hments in
Spani~h America.
procurador Procurator/attorney. A person in charge of representing parties
in legal proceedings or the interests of a body such as the InqUIsition, an
audiencia, or a cabildo.
provisor Chief ecclesiastical judge.
pueblos de indios Indigenous communitie~
pulque A pre-Hispanic alcoholic beverage made from the maguey pLtnr.
raza Lineage, race.
reconquista The Christian "reconquest" of Spain or effort to reclaim Iberian
land~ under the control of Muslims after 711, the year that much of the
Peninsula feil under Arab rule.
regidor Alderman.
regimiento Town council office; aldermanship.
repartimiento The Spanish colonial system of corvee labor. Called mila in the
Andes.
republica de indios Indian Republic, a term used in Spani~h colonial sources
that reflected Spain's recognition of the right of indig~nous communities to
retain their lands, political leaders, and social hierarchies.
sanbenitos Yellow penitential garments worn by people who were convicted
by the InquisitIon during and sometimes after an auto de fe. They typically
had a black Saint Andrew's cross drawn across them. From saeo bendtto
(sacred sack).
sistema de casIas The colonial system of classification that was th~oretically
bdsed on proportions of Spanish, indigenous, and African descent but that in
pract!C~ tmd~d to take social factors into account and th~rcfore to be fluid.
tlatoani Nahuatl for dynastic ruler or "king." Plural; tlatoque.
vecindad Local citil,enship. A ~tatus determined primarily by integratiun jn
the luc,ii community and implylJlg certain rights and duties.
ve6no Head of hou~ehold. Citizen.

Abbreviations

abbreviations for the most part follow those used by the archives from
the documents were derived, but for the sake of consi~tency the AGI's
.bb""i"io" of icgagu (L.) was changed to "leg."
Archivo del Ayuntamiento de Puebla (puebla), Aetas de Cabildo
Archivo Gen~ral de India, (Sevill~)
Arcbivo (;en~ral de la Naci6n (Mexico City)
Archivo Historico Nacional (Madrid)
A(ervo Hist6rico del Palacio de Mineria (M~xico City)
Biblioteca Nacional de Antropologia 10 Hi~t()ria (Mexico City),
Microfilm Collection
Biblioteca Nacional (Madrid)
Document
Expediente (file)
Folio
Folios
Huntington Library
John Carter Brown Library
John Carter Brown Library, Rare Book Collection, Libras de
lnformacioncs (novitiate records of the Franci~call Order in
colonial Pu~bla)
Libros de Bautismos de Espafioles del Sdgrario de Pu~bLt
(Consulted in the Family Archives of the Genealogical Soci~ty of
Utah)
Legajo (file; bundle of papen)
Lcgajos
Manuscript
Manuscripts
Number
Ramo (sectIOn)
Volume

Notes

<NTROC'""TWN

The term sistema de castas, frequently translated into English as the "race!
system," refers to the colonial system of das~ification theoretically based
proportions of Spanish, indigenous, and black ancestry. To draw attention to
social dimensions of race, some historians of colonial Latin America peder
use the term sOCiedad de castas. The phrase sistema de castas is preferred
because, although the system was flUld, it was comtituted by underlying
'p,in,cip,b that g.lVC colonial Mexican racial ideology a mea.ure of (oherency
continued to operate through mOST of the colonial period.
2. For example, Lyle McAlister, "Social Structure and Social Change in New
Hispalllc American HIstorical Review 43, no. 3 (1963): pp. 353-54;

. ~'~~;~:' :~;>;;:"~;

!]

Race Mixture ill the H,story of I.atm America (Boston: Littlt,

1967), pp. 54-55; Julio Caro Baroja, "Antectdtnus espai'tolt~ dt algu-

nos problemas so.:iales rclativos al mtstizajt," Revista Histririca {Lima, Peru}

(1965): pp. 197-210; and DougJa~ Cope, The Limits of Racial Dommatirm:
Plebeian Society in Colonial Mexico City, 1(,60-171. 0 (Madison: University of
Wisconsin Prtss, 1994), pp. 14-].6.
3. Stt John K. Chanct and William B. Taylor's "Estate and Clas~ in a Colonial
City: Oax;:u:a in 1792,~ Compar.ltive Studies in Society and HistrJry 19 (1977):
pp. 454-87; Rohat M<:Caa, Stuart B. Schwartz, and Arturo Grubt~sich, "Race
and Class in Coloni.ll Latin America: A Critique," ComjJarative StudieS of Societyand History 21, no. 3 (July 1979): pp. 4].1-42, esp. p. 433; with reply from
. John K. Chance and William B. Taylor, "htatt and Class: A Rtply," Comparative Studies ofSociet)' and History 21, no. 3 (July 1979): pp. 434-4 I; Patricia
Seed and Philip F. Rust, "Estate and Class in Coloni.ll O.lxac.l Rtvisited," Comparative Studies of Society and HIstory 25, no. 4 (October 1983): PP703-1O;
and Robert !vkCaa and Stuart B. S<:hwart7., "Mtasuring Marriage Patterns:
Percentages, Cohen's Kappa, and Log-Linear Models," Comparative Studies of
Society and History 25, no. 4 (October 19S3): pp. 711-20. Studies fo<:using on
different aspects of Mexico's sistema de castas in tht ~eventeenth <:entury have
Started to emnge. They include Cope, The Limits of Raoal Dominati()n; and

Notes to the Introductiun

Notes to the Introduction

Laura A. LewIs, Hall of Mirrors: Power, Witchcraft, and Caste In Colonial

MexIco (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2003).
4 See McAli5ter, "Social Structure and Social Change in New Spain
pp. 349-70, whi!.:h provided a di~cus~ion of the system of estates and corpor~_
tions in Spain and colonial Mexico that influenced a numher of subsequent
descriptions of the sistema de castas.
5 The work of Claudio Lommtz, which argues that ;\Iexican racial ideolo_
gie~ and nationalism both have their foundations in Spanish Catholi!.: cosmolo_
gies and the idea of purity of blood, is a notable exception to the rule and has
been an important refererKe point for the present study. Claudio Lomnitz-Adl er
exits from the Labyrillth: Culture alld Ideology ill the Mexican National Spac;
{Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Pre~s, I992}, pp. 261-816. Scholarship that grants race relative autonomy stresses its complex articulation wah the economic, political, ideological, and wltural domain> of
a particular "social formation." Although it generally challenges ewnomic reductionism, it by no means dismisses the importance of material relations in
how race operates. As Stuart Hall remarks, opposing "economism"-a type of
theoretical reductionism in that it treats "the economic" as the sole determining structure-does not mean denying the influence of the dominant ewnomic
relations of a society on the whole of soc]d1 life. Stuart Hall, "Gram~ci's relevance for the study of race and ethnicity," In Stuart Hall: Critical Dlaloglles
ill CIJltllral Studies, ed. David Morley and Kuan-Hsing Chen (l.ondon and New
York: Routledge, 1996), p. 417. Also see Cornel West, "Race and Social Theon':
Toward a Genealogical Materialist Analysis," The Year Left 2: All Amenc~n
Socialist Yearbook, ed. Mike Davis et aL (London: Verso, 1987), pp. 74-90;
Thomas C. Holt, "Marking: Race, Race-making, and the Writing of History,"
Americall HIstorical Review 100, no. I (Feb. I995): pp. 1-20; and Paul Gilroy,
'There Ain't No Black in the Unwn Jack': The Cultural P(Jlitics of Race and
Nati(JIt (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).
7 ror a recem dis(.:Ussion of the importance of studying the meanings and
connections of certain words, concepts, and practices within the cultural and
historical context in which they arc embedded, see Saba Mahmood, The Politics
of Piety: The islamic Revival dlld the FemilliS{ Suhject (Princeton, NJ, and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2005), esp. pp. 16-17.
8. On the role of gender in the historical constitution and signification of
power, see Joan W. S!.:on's pioneering discussion, "Gender: A Useful Category of
Historical Analysi~," Gellder and the Poiltlcs of History (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1988), pp. 28-50. Also refer to the va~t interdis6plinary literature all the intersecTion of gender with race and class, in colonial situations
and otherwise. The literature is too vast to do it justice here, but it llldudt~
Ann L. Stoler, "Rethinking Colonia! Categories: European Communities and
the Boundaries of Rule," Comparative Studies ill Society and History 31, no. I
(January 1989): pp. 134-61; Stoler, "Carnal Knowledge and Imperial l'owcr:
Gender, Race and Morality in Colonial Asia," in Gender at the Crossroad,. 0(
Kllilwledge: Femilllst Anthropology in the j'ostmodem t."ra (Berkeley: University
of California Pre~s, 1991), pp. 51-101; Anne McClintock, impenal l.eather:

Race, Gellder alld Sexuality ill the Colonial Contest (New York and London:
Routledge, 1995); Philippa Levine, ed., Gender and Emf)ire (Oxford and New
York: Oxford University Press, 2004); and Verena Martine7.-Alier [now Verena
.
Marriage, Class and Colour ill Nilleteemh-Century Cuba: A Study of
and Sexual Values in a Slave Society (Ann Arbor: University
i
Press, 1989 [1974]).
9. On the links between gender and poJiti!.:al culture in eighteenth-century
New Spain and how gender relations shaped broader forms of understanding
authority, see Steve J. Stern, The Secret History of Gellder: WOmell, Men, and
Power in Late Colonial Mexiw (Chapd Hill and London: University of North
Carolina Press, 1995).
10. Lewis, Hall of Mirrors, pp. 173-76.
I l . The term mestlzale is someTimes translated into English as "miscegena. tion," but it docs not have the same cultural baggage as the latter, which was
in the American Civil War period and referred in particular to unions

~:,~;,::,~bl!aCkS and whites. Although the Spanish word was not widely deployed

until the modern period, it is u~ed here in rdation to the process that
Spaniards described as mezclas de castas ("the mixing of caste~"). On
con!.:ept of miscegenation, see Martha Hodes, White Women, Black Mell
. Yale UniverSity Press, (997), pp. 2,9, and 144-45.
12. William Roseherry, "Hegemony and the Language of Contention," in
Everyday Forms of State Formari(m: Reuolllti(Jn and the Negotiation of Rule
in Modem Mexiw, ed. Gilbert M. Joseph and Daniel Nugem (Durham: Duke
University Press, (994), pp. 355-66.
13. A notable exception is Henry Mechoulan, tl honor de Dios, trans, from
the French by Enrique Sordo (Bar!.:elona: Editorial Argos Vergara, 1981).
14. Scholars and nonscho!ars alike have for a long time tended to contrast
Latin America and the United States on matters of race by stressing that the
former has always had more of a class problem than a racial one. The argument, which in the case of Brazil gave way to the myth of racial democracy,
was normally accompanied by the claim that the Iberian cultural heritage made
Spaniards and Portuguese more open to having sexual and concubinage relations with naTive and African women. According to ~cholars such as Frank
Tannenbaum, Gilberta Freyre, and Carl Degler, thi~ and other faoors led to
more "intermingling," tolerance, and manumission. Although almost every element of Brazil's myth of racial demucracy has been challenged sin!.:e the 19505
(by Charles R. Boxer, Florestan Fernandes, Thomas Skidmore, and many others),
the argument that dass or socioeconomic barriers are more important than race
to understanding rhe history of Brazil and tbe rest of Latin Ameri!.:a continues
to shape scholarship in the field. For a brief introduction to the topic, see John
Burdick, "The Myth of Racial Democracy," Report on the Americas (NACLA)
:1.5, no. 4 (Fehruary, (992): pp. 40-44; and Emilia Vioni da CmTa, Th(! Braziliall
Empire: Myths and Histones (Chicago: Dor~ey, 1988), pp. 234-46.
15. Benjamin Keen, "The Bld(k Legend Revisited: Assumptions and Realities," Hispanic American Histoncal Review 49, no. 4 (1969): pp. 70.,-19; Lewis
Hank~, "A Modest Proposal for a ,\loratorium on (;rand Generaliwtions:

Notes to the Introduction

Some Thoughts on the Black Legend," His/Janie American Historical Revie
51, no. 1 (197l): pp. 1I2~27; Benjamin Keen, "The White Legend RevIsited: ~
Repl.y to Profes~or Hanke's 'Modest Ptoposal,''' Hispanic American Historical
Review 51, no. 2 (1971): pp. 336-55; William S. Maltby, The Black Legend
England:.Theyevelotlment of Anti-S/lanish Sentiment, 1558-1660 (Durha~~
Duke UmversiTy Press, 1971); Charles Gibson, ed., The Black Legend: Anti_
Spanish Attitudes in the O!d Wvrld and the New (N_ew York: Knopf, 197 1 );
Henry Kamen and Joseph Perez, La Imagen de la Espana de Felipe 11: 'Leyenda
negra' 0 contlicto de intereses (Valladolid: Universidad de ValladoJid, 1980).
Sverker Arnorldsson, La conqlllsta espanola de America seglln eI juicio de I~
posterldad: Vestigios de la leyenda neg1"a (Madrid: Insula, 1960); Miguel Molina
Martinez, La Leyenda negra (Madrid: Nerea, 1991); and Ricardo Garcia Carce!
La leyenda negra: Historia y opin/(jn (Madrid: Alianza Editoria[, 1992).
'
16. See Jeremy Adelman, "Introduction: The Problem of Persi~tence in Latin
American History," in Colonial Legacies: The Problem of Persistence in Latin
American History, ed. Jeremy Adelman (New York and London: Routledge,
1999), pp. 6-8.
17 George M. tredrickson, Racism: A Short History (Princeton, NJ, and
Oxford: Princeton Univer~ity Press, 2002), pp. 17-47 (citation from pp. 12-(3).
18. See James H. Sweet, "The Iberian Roots of American Racist Thought,"
William and Mary Quarterly 54, no. 1 (January 1997): pp. 143-66; A. J. R.
Russell-Wood, "Before Columbus: Portugal's African Prelude to the Middle
Passage and Contribution to Discourse on Race and Slavery," Race, Discuurse,
and the Origins of the Amencas: A New World View, ed. Vera lawrence and
Rex Nettlcford (Wa~hington, DC, and London: Smithsonian Institution Press,
1995), pp. 134-65; and Sylvia Wymer, "1492: A New World View," Race, DIScourse, and the Origin of the Americas, pp. 5-57.
19 See, for example, Ivan Hannaford, The Idea of Race: The History of an
Idea in the West (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Pre~s and John
Hopkins University Press, 1996), esp. pp. 122-26; and Ronald Sander~, Lost
Tribes and Promised Lands: The Origins of American Racism (Bo~ton: Little,
Brown, 1978), pp. 16 and 64-71. For Fredrickson, an antiblack racial ideology
was unnecessary in late medieval and early modern Spain because religIOn and
the legal status of blacks sufficed to justify their enslavement. The same was
not true, he argues, of the Spanish Jews who converted to Christianity, because their new religious status in theory made them equal to other Chri,tians.
Fredrickson, Racism: A Short History, pp. 30-31.
20. Steve Stern, "Paradigms of Conquest; History, Historiography, and
Politics," journal of Latin American .~tudies 24 (1992): pp. 1-34, esp. p. 6.
21. The work of Gonza[o Aguirre-Belwin, pioneering in many respects, was
among the first to t.lke the issues of IimpleLa de ,angre and race in colonial
Mexico seriou~[y. See La pohlaci!)11 negra de Mexico: Estudio etnohist(Jricu
(Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 198911946]).
22. Peter Wade, Race, Nature and Culture: An Anthropological Pers/lectwe
(London and Sterlmg, VA: Pluto, 2002), pp. 14-T5.

Notes to the Introduction

Hall, "Gramscj's relevance for the study of race and ethnicit)'," P.435;
Hall, "Race, Articulation and Societies Structured in Dominance,"
Reader, Sociological Theories: Race a/ld Colonialism (Paris: Unesco,
, p. 338; Etienne Salibar, "R~cism and Nationalism," in Race, Nation,
An;higuous Identities, ed. Etienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein,
. of Etienne Balibar by Chris Turner (London and New York: Verso, 1991),
40; and West, "Race and Social Theory," pp. 74-90.
24. Thomas C. Holt, The Prohlem of Race in the 21St Century (Cambridge
london: Harvard University Press, 2000), p. 19.
25. Sec, for example, Verena Stolcke, "A New World Engendered: The Making
the Iberian Transatlantic Empires" in A Companion to Gender History, ed.
A. Meade and Merry E. Weisner-Hanks (Oxford: Blackwell, 2(03); and
B. Schwartz, "Colonia[ Identitie, and the Sociedad de Castas," Colonial
America Review 4, no. l (1995): p. 189. Also refer to Stuart B. Schwartz
Frank Salomon, "New Peoples and New Kinds of People: Adaptation,
and Ethnogenesis in South American Indigenous Societies (e-o[oThe Cambndge History of the NatIVe Peoples of the AmeTlcas III (2):
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 443-501,

'R,,,,I,u,,,",,,,,

A,n,,,,a

P444
26. Peter Wade has pointed out that studies of "generation~ (notions about

generation of life in a given culture) don't deal all that much with race and,
,vi,,, '''''", studies of race usually don't examine notions of heredity. A, a result,
question of how genealogy helps to construct racial identity has been understudied. Race, Nature and Culture, pp. 1I-12 and 39-40.
27. Ann L Stoler, Race and the Education of Desire: t'oucault's "History of
,Sexuality" and the Cohillial Order ofThillgs (Durham, NC, and London: Duke
'U"i"",i" Press, 1995), pp. 29-30; Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality,
voL I, trans. from the french by Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage, 1990),
pp. 124-25; and Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (london; Verso,
'1991), pp. 149-50. Also see Colette Guillaumin, Racism, Sexism, Power and
Ideology (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), pp. 29-60.
28. Paul Freedman, Images of the Medieval Peasant (Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, (999), pp. 133-56.
29. David B. Davis, "Constructing Race: A Reflection," William and Mary
Quarterly 54, no. 1 (1997): pp. 12-13.
30. On the episteme of resemblance and the gradual decline, starting in the
early seventeenth century, of similitude in the constitution of knowledge, see
Michell:oucault, The Order of Things: An Archae(!logy of the Hummt Sciences
(New York: Vintage, 1973), pp. 17-25 and 51-58.
31. Bahbar, "Racism and Nationalism,~ pp. 39-45
32. George Foster, Culture and Conquest; America's Spanish Hentage (New
York; Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, 196o), pp. 1-20.
Jame, Lockhart and Stuart B. Schwartz refer to the years between l580 and
1750 as the "mature colonial period" to underscore the stabilil.ation of earlier
conquest patterns, at least in the main centers and nearby regions. They stress,

Notes to the Introduction

Notes to Chapter 1

however, that the period was one of gradual transformations. lockhart and
Sl:hwartz, farly Latin America (New York: Cambridge University Pres~, I98~)
. ,
pp. 122-2 5.
B. For a recent work that makes these points, see Jeremy Adelman, SOVer_
eignty and RevolutIOn in the Ibenan At/antic (Princeton, NJ; Prinn~ton Uni_
versity rres~, 2006).
34. See Anderson, Imagined Communities, pp. 47-65. Critiques of Anderson's
treatment of Latin American creole nationalism include Claudio Lomnitz, "Nationalism as a Practical System: Benedict Ander~on\ Theory of Nationalism from
the Vantage Point of Spani~h America," in The Other Mirror: Grand Theory
Through the Lens of Latin America, ed. Miguel Angel Centeno and Fernando
Lopez-Alves (princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), pp. 339-43; and
Tamar Herzog, Definmg Nations: Immigrants mId Citizens in Early Modern
Spain and Spanish America (New Haven, CT,and London; Yale University Press,
2003), pp. IO-II. Also refer to Franyois-Xavier Guerra, "Identidades e indepen_
dencia: La excepcion americana," in Imaginar la nacirJn, ed. Frall1;ois-Xavier
Guerra and Monica Quijada (Munster and Hamburg: Lit, 1994), Pp.93-134,
esp. pp. I07-T4; and John Charles Chasteen, "Introduction: Beyond ImagIned
Communities," in Beyond Imagined Cummunities: Reading and Wming the
Nation ill the Nineteenth-Century Latm America, ed. Sara Cas(Co-Klan<;n and
John Charles Chasteen (Washington, DC, Baltimore, and London: Woodrow
Wilson rres~ and Johns Hopkins University Pres~, 2003), pp. IX-XXV.
35. frederick Cooper, Colonialism in Question: Thellry, Knowledge, History
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), p. 18.
36. As various scholars have argued, all national identities have been construed on gendered and racial terms. It is therefore imperative to ~tudy the ways
in which different nationaJi~ms presuppo~e, institutionaliLe, and reproduce
gender and race difference~. Sec, for example, Anne McClintock, "'No Longer
in a Future Heaven': Gender, Race and Nationalism," in Dangerous LWIS(IflS:
Gender, Nation and Postc%nlal Perspectives, cd. Anne McClintock, Aamir
Mufti, and Ella Shohat (Minneapolis and London: University of Minne~ota
Press, 1997), pp. 89-112; and Nancy P. Appelbaum, Anne S. Mal:pherson, and
Karin Alejandra Rosemblatt, eds., Race and Nation m Modern Latm Amenca
(Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), especially
the prologue by Thomas C. Holt (pp. vii-xiv) and the introduction by the editors (pp. I-F). And although it does not deal with the colonial question, aho
see Carole Pateman, The Sexual Contract (Stanford, CA; Stanford University
Press, 1988), which argues that the principle of patriarchal right (central to
Europe.lIl civil ~ociety) underpinned the sociall'ontract among men and defined
the individual and citizen as male.
37. Frederick Cooper and Ann L Stoler, "Tensions of Empire; Coloni:ll
Control and Visions of Rule," American Ethn%glst 16, no. 4 (1989); p. 6[7
38. Cooper and Stoler, "Tensions of Empire," pp. 6rO-II.
39. Bernard Badyn, At/antic History: Concept and Contours (Cambrjdge,
.rvlA: Harvard University Press, :W05), pp. 62-8[. ComparaTive works include
Patricia .'.eed, Ceremonies of Possession ill birO/Ie's Conquest of the NeW

World, 14Yl-/(,40 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer~ity Press, (995), which

stresses differences among the ceremonies of po~se~sjon of the British, Spanish,
French, and Dutch; and Jorge Caiii7.ares-Esguerra, Puritan C(/nquistadors: lhe'. rianizing the AtlantiC, 15'50-1700 (Stanford, CA: ~'ltanford University Press,
2.006), which emphasizes similarities between English and Spanish societies'
'concerns with demons.
40. William B. Taylor, "Between Global Process and LOl:al Knowledge: An
Inquiry into Early Latin American Social History, 1500-1900," in Reliving the
. The Worlds of Social HistrJry, cd. Oliver Zunz (Chapel Hill and London:
University of North Carolina Press, 1985), p. 120. Taylor's daim that Latin
social histones have not produccd either a /onJ,:ue duree type of history or works of bCOJd synthe~i~ and theory also continues to have considerable
validity. Taylor, pp. 119-21.
41. Thc sourccs consulted include more than 964 probanzas and informaand dozens of other documents t:ontaini ng punty information, including
._--"'. of merits and services, royal del:rees, correspondence, and so forth.
42. As Ann Twinam stresses in variou~ works, thc distinnion is reflected
the king's ability to erJse birth "defet:ts" such as illegitimacy. Public LilIes,
Secrets; Gender, Honor, Sexuality, mId //legItImacy in Colomal Spanish
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Pres~, (999); Twinam, "Pedro de
The Purchase of Whiteness," in The Human Tradition in Colonial
Latin America, cd. Kenneth J. Andrien (Wilmington, DE; Scholarly Resources,
1001), pp. 194-2IO; and Twinam, "Racial Passing; Informal and Official
,
in Colonial Spanish America," in New World Orders: Violence,
and AuthOrity til the Colo/tial Americas, ed. John Smolenski and
J. Humphrey (Philadelphia: University of Penn~ylvania Press, 2005),
pp. 249-72.
4~. The concept of discourse generally refers to knowledge, its production
and' dissemination, and the way it shapes power relations. Foucault stresses that
.' it cannot he redul:ed to language and to speech (to the use of signs to designate
things) hut rather is linked to complicated webs of relJtions and "practices that
systematically form the ohjects of which thc)' speak." DiscOllrse is thus related
both to the operations of power and the production of subjectivities. Michel
Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge. trans. A. M. Shcridan Smith (New
York: Panthcon, 1972), pp. 44-49

293

Am,,,',,,n

,Am,,,'w

I. The term wlltJil'encia (most associated with the Snanish philologist America Castro) simply means "living together," hut a number of ~cholars have interpreted it as implying peace and mutual respect among medieval Spalll's three
main religiou~ communities. The literature is too extensivc to cite here, but for
examples of works that describe the period prior to the fifteenth ccntury a~ one
in which Spani~h Jews flourished, sec Maria Rosa Menocal, The Ornament of
the World: How Muslims. Jews, and ChTlstians Created a Cultllre of Tolerance
in Mediellal Spain (Boston: Little, Brown, 2002); Norman Roth, ConllersOS,

Notes to Chapter 1

Notes to Chapter 1

Inquisitlll1l, and the Expulsion of the jews from Spain (Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press, 2002), pp. xi-xiii, xix, and 9-10; and Ce.:i1 Roth, The Spanish
InqUIsition (New York: Norton, 1964), pp. 18-21. And for studies that posit
that Spanish Jews continued to thrive well into the fifteenth century (at least in
some parts of Iberia), see E. William Monter, "The Death of Coexistence: Jews
and Mo~lems in Christian Spain, 1480-l502," in The EX/lUlsion of the jews;
1492 and After, ed. Raymond B. Waddington and Arthur H. Williamson (New
York and London: Garland, 1994), pp. 5-q; Benjamin R. Gampcl, ~Docs
Medieval Navarrese Jewry Salvage Our Notion of Convivencia?" in In Iberia
and Beyond: His/Mnie jews Between C,lIt11res, ed. Bernard Dov Cooperman
(Newark: University of Ddaware Press, 1998), PP.97-122; and Mark D.
Meyerson, A jewish Renaissance in fIfteenth-Century Spain (Prim.:eton, Nj:
Princeton University Pre%, 2004).
2. Some historians di~tinguish between medieval "anti-Judaism," based on
religious prejudice and in existence since the early days of Christianity, and
"anti-Semitism/ which they argue only arose when invidious notions of blood
purity were used against Christians of Jewish descem. Such a sharp dIstinction is difficult to sustain, however, when one considers that assumptions about
Jewi~h identity or "Jewishness" being intranable were common in medieval
Europe long before the Spanish purity statutes arose, even if individual Jews
were encouraged to convert. See Steven F. Kruger, "Conversion and Medi~val
Sexual, Religious, and Racial Categories," in Constmcting MedIeval Sexuality,
ed. Karma Lochrie, Peggy McCracken, and James A. Schultz (Minneapolis
and London: University of Minnesota l' ress, 1997), pp. 164-76; Anna Sapir
Abulafia, "The Intellectual and Spiritual Quest for Chri~t and Central Medieval
Persecution of Jews,~ in Religious Violence between Christians mId jews:
Medieval Routs, Modem Perspectives, ed. Anna Sapir Abulafia (Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hamp~hire, UK, and New York: l'algrave, 2002), pp. 61-85; and
Jo~hua Trachtenberg, The Devil alld the jews: The Medieval COllception of the
Jewalld its Relation to Modern Antisemitism (New Haven, CT: Yale UllI\'~r:;ity
Press; London: H. Milford and Oxford Univtfsity Press, 1943).
3 David Nir~nberg, Commumtlts of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in
the Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UniverSIty Press, 1996), esp. pp. 8-9;
R. 1. Moore, The Formatioll of a Persecuting Society! Power and Deviance in
Western Europe, 950-1250 (Oxford: Ba~j) Blackwell, 1990), pp. 29-45; Leon
Poliakov, The History of Anti-Semitism, vol. I, tram. from the French by
Richard Howard (New York: Schocken Books, I974), pp. 99-T54; and Michael
Alpert, CrY/Jto-Judaism and the Spanish inquisition (New York: PJlgrJve,
2001), pp. 10-1 f. Julio Caro Baroja refers to the existence of an anti-Semitic
"cosmogony" in Spain prior to the fifteenth century 1O Los judios en la E,pana
moderna y contemporallea, vol. I (Madrid: Ediciones Ari6n, 1961), pp. I04-10.
+ The vast IiterJ.ture on the I391 pogrom~ includes Emilio Mitre Fermindez,
[,os judios de Castilla en tiempo de Enrique II I: El pogrom de /3'1 j (VaIJadolid:
Secretariado de Publicaciones, UOlversidad de VaHadolid, I994); and Philippe
Wolff, "The 1391 Pogrom in Spain: Social Cri,is or Not?" Past and Present
50 (197I): pp. 4-r8. Numerous scholars have stressed the role that the anti-

Jewish sermons of the archdean Ferran Martine]. played in inciting the pogrom
in Seville. Sec, for example, Cecil Roth, The Spanish inquisition, pp. 20-22.
5. The term COlfl/erSOS, like New Christians, eventually encompassed both
Jewish and Muslim converts to Christianity. It was initially and most frequently
applied to the former, however, while the lattn were generally identified as
JIloriscos. For the sake of clarity and con~i~tency, the word conversos is used
throughout this study to designate only Jewi,h convert~ to Christianity and
their descendants. This group wa ~ also laheled marral/os. a tt'tm whose etymology and meanings remain uncertain hut which by the end of the sixteenth cenwas ~trongly associated with swine. Covarrubias speculated that it might
have been applied to the converted Jews because they had refused (or found it
difficult) tn eat pork or that it might have been borrowed from the Muslims,
who used it to refer to a one-year-old pig. Because of its dehumanizing connotations, the term marrmlOs is not used here. See S~ba~tian de Covarrubias
Orozco, Tesoro de la lengua castellana 0 eS/Jaiiola, 2nd ed., ed. Felipe C. R.
Maldonado (Madrid: Editorial Castalia, 1995 [I6IIj), pp. 738-39.
6. See Antonio Dominguez Ortiz, I,a clase social de los cOllI!ersos en Castilla
en fa edad modema (Madrid: Instituto Balmes de Soclologia, Consejo Superinr
de Investigaciones Cientificas, n.d.), p. fO; and Norman Roth, C(Jnversos, Inq";;;"""",, alld the ExpulslVn of the jews, pp. 12 and 49.
7. David Nirenberg, "Mass Conversions and Genealogical Mentalities: Jews
and Christians in Fifteenth-Century Spain," Past and Present 174 (2002):
pp.18-33
8. David Nirenberg, "El concepto de la raza en la hpana medieval," Edad
Media: Revista de Historla 3 (Spring 2000): pp. 50-54.
9. For Benzloll Netanyahu, Old Christian concerns about limiting intermarriages hetween members of th~ir community and conversos were the main cause
of the rise of "racism" (in the form of the statutes) in mid-fIfteenth-century
Spain. Netanyahu, The OriginS of the Inquisition in Fifteenth Ce1Jtury SIMin
, (New York: Random House, 199;), pp. 987-89. Also see David Nirenherg,
"Conversion, Sex, and Segregation: Jews and Christians in Medieval Spain,"
American Historical ReView T07, no. 4 (2002): pp. 1478-92.
10. See, for example, Yitzhak Baer, A History of the jews ill Christian SIMin,
trans. from the Hebrew by Louis Schoffman (PhiladelphIa: Jewish Publication
Soci~ty of America, I978), vol. 2, esp. pp. 272-74; Haim Beinart, COIlVersos on
Trial: The /nqulSltirJlJ in Ciudad Real, trans. Yael Guiladi (Jerusalem: Magnes
Press, 1981), pp ..'>.3-55; and Alpert, CrY/Ito-Judaism, pp. 12- 20.
I I. Sec, among others, Roth, Conversos, Inquisition, and the t'xpu/sion,
p. 51; Henry Kamen, The Spaflish InqUISItIOn: A Histortcal ReVlSlO1l (New
Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Pre~~, 1998), pp. 28-36; Antonio
Dominguez Ortiz, Los ;udc(}c(JIwersos ell ESPaila y America (Madrid: fdiclones
Istmo, 197I), pp. 19-28; Albert A. Sieroff, Los estatutm; de limln'eza de sangre: Collfroversias entre los sig/r!s XV}' XVII, trans. Mauro ArmIna (Madrid:
Taurus Ediciones, 19851, p. 48; and Netanyahu, The Origins of the IIlquisitirl/l,
pp. 964-70 and 975-I004. A Iso see the pioneenng article by FrJ.ncisco Marquez
Villanueva, "Convnsos y cargos consejiles en cl siglo XV," Revlsta de Archivos,

Notes to Chapter 1

Notes to Chapter 1

Bibliotecas y Muscos 63 (T957): pp. 50.1-40, which discusses the strong pres.
ence of conven.o~ in town councils and re~entment it generated among the Old
Christian masses.
n. Edward Peten., InquisitIOn (Berkeley: University of California Pres
1989), pp. 8r-8 5
13 For det~ils on the rehellion, ~ee EloyBenito Ruano, Toledo ell el siglo
XV: VIda jJolltlca (MadnJ: Conse)o Supenor de Investigaciones Cientifkas
Esmela de Estudios Medievales, 196r), pp. 33-81, and fm a copy of the decree'
~q~L

14 Although Albert A. Sinoff regarded the Sentencia-F.statuto a~ the first

statute of purity of blood, some historians contend that the "classic" statutes
(those i~sued by private or semiprivate institUTions instead of town councils) appeared later. Others have argued that the requirements first appeared in Castilian
colleges during the fourteenth century, or even earlier in the military confrater_
nities of Andalucfa (where they were mainly used against Muslims). See Sicro/f
Los estatutos de limpieza de sallgre, pp. 51-56; Antonio Dominguez Orti7:
La clase social de los conversos ell Castilla, p. 53; and Kamen, The S/Jam,h
Illquisiti{m; A Historical Revision, p. 253.
15 The term lilldo, used in the Sentencia-Estatuto, was interchangeable with
limpio ("pure" or "clean") and also connoted beaUTY. See Antonio Domfnguel
Ortiz, Los judcocollt'ersos ell Espana y America, p. 26, n. 14; and Covarrubias
Orozco, Tesoro de la lellgua castellana, p. 717.
16. See Sicroff, Los estatutos, pp. 56-85; and Roth, Conversos, Inquisition,
and the Expulsi{JII, pp. 92-IOO. One of the most important critiques of the
Sentencia-Estatuto wa~ by Alonso de Cartagena, bishop of Burgo~ and son of
the converso and forma rabbi Pablo de ~anta Maria, who had also ~aved a,
bishop in that city. Cartagena's text, titled Defellsorium Ullitatis Christiallae,
influenced converso arguments against the purity-of-blood concept for gennations to come. See Cartagena, Detl!llsorium unitatis christianae (tratado en favor de los judios conversos) (Madrid: C. Bermejo, Impresor, 1943).
17 The Sentencia-E~tatuto was probably not implemented on a conSIstent
basis because Toledo continued to try to bar conversos from all public offices.
furthermore, in 1566, the crown issued a decree ordering the town council to
adopt purity requirement~. See Ruano, T()led() en el siglo XV, p. 134; and Linda
Mdrtl:, "Implementation of Pure-Blood Statutes in Sixteenth-Century Toledo,~
in In Iberia and Beyond: Hispallic jews Between Cultures, ed. Bernard Dov
Cooperman (Newark: Univen.ity of Delaware l'ress, 1998), pp. 246-47 and 2.51.
18. Nirenberg, ~Mass COnVf'rSlUnS," pp. 2.5-27. An anti-Jewi~h polemic written sometime in thl: 'second half of the fifteenth century compared the alhora/cu,
Muhammad,> fabled animal that was neither horse nor mule, to the conversos,
who were depicted as neither Jews nor Chnstians. See Netanyahu, The Origms
of the Inqui,"ition, pp. 848-54.
19 At the end the fifteenth century, four-fifths of Spain'~ population of approximately 5,300,000 people worked the ~oil, albeit from a wide range of Well]
and economic positions. The nobility, which wa." increasingly entadmg e~tates,
u~ed land for agricultural and pastoral pursuits and for the production of bclsic
export commodities. See William D. PhiJJip~ Jr. and Cada Rahn Phdlips, "Spain

in the Fifteenth Century," in Trallsatlantic EnCOllllters: Eum/Jeans and Andealls

in the SIxteenth Celltury, cd. Kenneth J. Andrien and Rolcna Adorno (Berkeley:
University of Callfornia Press, J99J), pp. T.'i-I8.
1.0. The reforms included the u~e of curregidores. royal officials assigned ro
main Castilian towns With authority over urban councils; the creation of the
Santa Hermandad, an organized police force hired by some municipalities; the
appointment of letrados (university-educated men) to public posts and royal
councils; and the distribution of land grants, offices, and incomes to high nobles
in order to win their support. The reign of Enrique IV thus actually witnessed
an increase in the number of grandes. See William D. Phillips Jr., Enrique I V
and the Crisis of Fifteelfth-Century Castile. 1425-1480 (Cambridge, MA:
. Harvard Untversity Press, 1978), pp. 47-53 and 58-62. On debates regarding
the nobility in late medieval Spain, see Marfa Concepcion Quintanilla Ram,
"Nobleza y seiiorios en Ca~tilla durante la baja edad media: Aportaciones de la
historiograffa reciente," Alluario de Estudios Medievalcs (Barcelona) 14 (J984):
.613-39; and Quintanilla Raso, "La nobleza en la historia politica ca~tellana
en la segunda mitad del siglo XV: Bases de poder y pautas de comportamiento,"
,in Congresso llltemaciollal Bartolomell Vias e a sua ipoca: Aetas, vol. I
(0 Porto: Universidade do Porto, 1989), pp. 181-200.
21. In the mid-fifteenth century, Iberia included live independent kingdoms:
Portugal, Aragon, Granada, Navarre, and Castile. The la~t was the largest and
became even more dominant in geographic and demographic terms after it defeated Granada (I492.) and annexed Navarre (ISU). Like that of Aragon, the
Crown of Castile was divided into smaller political entities, lIIc1uding the north, ern coastal areas of (;alicia, Asturias, and Cantabria, and the Basque regions of
Vizcaya, GuipuLcoa, and Alava. It also induded Leon and Castile (Old Castile)
to the north of the central mountains, La 1-1ancha and Extremadura (New
Castile) to the south, and the kingdom~ of Andalusia and Murcia in the extreme
south and southeast. Although ~ome historians have interpreted the dynastic
linkage of the crowns of Castile and Aragon as the first step toward the creation
of the Spanish state, the union was more symbolic than reaJ. The political insti
tutions, economies, monetary systems, customs barriers, and cultural traditions
of the two crowns remained di~tinct for at least another two centuries.
22. Peters, Inqmsitioll, pp. 44-58. I'eters stresses (p. 68) that although medievallllquisitors and "inquiS!tions~ (formal inve~tigations) exiMed, the Inquisition as an institution-as a centralized office of authority-did not exist until the fifteenth century. Spain established its Inquisition in 1480; l'ortugal, in
.
1536; and Rome, after J542.
25. Kamen, The SIMllish Inquisition: A HIstorical Revisloll, pp. 5-7 For a
contrasting view of the problem of heresy in medieval Castile-I.eOn, see Norman
Roth, CO/lverso, the InquisltlOlI, and the Expulsioll, p. 223. Te6filo F. Ruiz explains the ab~ence of an Inquisition in Cast!le before the 1470S as a function
of the unsacred nature of kingship and politics in that kingdom. Because the
crown's authority came from the sword more than from religion, he argues, it
did not need to embark on religious campaigns to uproot heresy or to follow the
mandate of Rome as other medieval kingdoms did. RuiL, "The Holy Office in
Medieval frwce and in Late Medieval Ca~tile: Origins and Contrasts," in The

'.

297

Notes to Chapter 1

Notes to Chapter 1

Spamsh Inquisition and the Inquisitorial Mind, ed. Angel Alcala (Highland
Lakes, Nj: Atlantic Research and Publications, 1987), pp. 37-38.
24. See Gretchen D. Starr-LeBeau, In the Shadow of the Virgin: InqUisitors,
Friars, and Conversus III G uadafl/pe. Spain (Princeton, Nj: Princeton University
I'ress, 2.003), pp. II2.-16; and Sicroff, Los estatutus, pp. 92.-96.
2.5. See Kamen, The Spamsh Inquisition: A Historical Revislfm, pp. 43-44;
and Juan Gil, l.os conversos y fa Inqllisici6n sevil/ana, vol. 1 (Seville: Umver_
sidad de Sevilla, Fundaci6n EI Monte, 2.ooo), pp. 41-92.. Although it IS probable that the Catholic Kings' aggressive diplomatic efforts in Rome and expressed commitment to defend and expand the Christian faith influenced the
papacy's decision to allow the creation of a Spanish inquisition under royal COntrol, the factors that led to the passage of the 1478 bull that founded the Holy
Office have yet to be explained. What is known is that after receiving numerou,
complaints from conversos about the abu~es and violence of the fir~t tribunab,
Sixtus IV tried to revoke rhe bull, but the Catholic Kings ignored his petitions.
Spain'> ecclesiastical hIerarchy was also ambivalent about the founding of the
Holy Office because the institution usurped some of the bishops' authoritr on
matters of heresy and appropriated the papal principle of theological infalltbility. Some church officials regretted supporting it, including Cardinal Mendoza,
and others, such as bi~hop Talavera, never did (for which the latter was almoM
burned). It was the lower clergy that expressed more of a willingness to participare in the Inquisition's activities, at least in Seville. Francisco Marquez
ViBanueva, "Noticias de la Inquisicion sevillana" (plenary address, conference
titled "Los conversos y la historia de Espana de 12.48 a 1700,~ Saint Loul:' University (Madrid Campus), May 2.1-2.2, 2.004.
2.6. The Inquisition could try some Jews, including those who proselrtlzed
among Christians, blasphemed against Christianity, engaged in sorcerr or
usury, or received apostatizing conversos back into the Jewish fold.
27. Tribunals proliferated through most of Spain mainly from 1478 to 1495.
See Jaime Contreras and jean Pierre Dedieu, "Estructuras geograficas del Santo
Oficio en Espaiia,~ Hlstoria de la lllquisicilJn en ES{}(lna y America: Las e~truc
turas del Sal/to O(icio, ed. Joaquin Perez Villanueva and Bartolome Escande]!
Bonet, vol. 2. (Madrid; Biblioteca de Autores Cristiano., Centro de Estudio.>
Inquisitoriales, 1993), pp. 5-7.
2.11. On the establishment and operation of the Holy Office in Aragon (vigorously resisted by towns zealous of their independence and traditional rights),
sec E. William Monter, />rontlers uf Heresy: The SIMnish Inquisition from the
Basque Lands to Sicily (Cambridge; Cambridge Ulllversity Pre~s, 1990); Stephen
Haliczer, Inqui5itioll and Society in the Kl1Igdom of Valencia, 1478-1834
(Berkeley: University of California Pre~s, 1990); and Ricardo Gdfcia Cared,
Orfgenes de la mquisicirJn espatlo/a; fl Tribunal de Valellcla, 1471i-1)30
(Barcelona: Edlciones Peninsula, 1976). And on the InqUIsition in (;alicia, see
jaime Contreras, tl Santo Oticio de la InquislCilin en Galicia, 1560-/70;
Poder, sociedad y cu/tura (Madrid: Akal, 1982.).
29. See, for example, Roth, The .')/,amsl! Inquisition, pp. 72.-73; and Haliczer,
Inquisition and Society, pp. 12-17. Some scholars disagree with the character-

ization of the Inquisition as a tool of royal ab~ollltism. LopeL Vela, for example,
argues that the Holy Office mamtained some autonomy from the crown because
the inqui:.itor general, in theory under papal control, had ultimate authority
over the institution, not the Suprema, which was not fully recognized by the
Vatican. Roberto L6pe7. Vela, "lnquisici6n y monarquia; Estado de la cuestion
(I940-I990}," Hlsl,ania;, no. 176 (1990): pp. I 133-40.
30. Contreras, Jaime, Historia de la lnquisici,in ES/lanola (1478-1834)
(Madrid: Arco/l.ibros, 1997), pp. 17-26.
31. See John H. Elliot, Imperial Spain 146y-1716 (London; Edward Arnold,
1963), p. 97; and John Lynch, Spain Under the Habsburgs, vol. 1 (New York:
Oxford Universitr I'ress, I964), pp. 23-24. That the Catholic Kings had a dear
plan of religious and political unification has been challenged Oil several grounds,
including that the two processes did not exactly coincide. As Kamen and others
have pointed out, the monarchs protected the Jews up to the expulsion and allowed Muslims to remain in Castile for another ten rears and in Aragon until
152.6. Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revisioll, p. 61.
32.. Juan Gil, for example, recently argued that independent of the religious
and political motives that the Catholic Kings might have had for founding the
Inquisition, the tribunal in Sevi!le qUIckly became a weapon to deprive the COllversos of their wealth and resulted in the {figurative} decapitation of the local
economic oligarchy. Gil, Lus CI!1Jversos y la Inquisici()n sevillana, vol. I , esp.
pp. 60-70 (on the earlr confiscations of converso estates) and pp. 123-37 (on
. the economic effects of the Inquisition on the church and city). Whether the
lnquisition\ arrival followed the same pattern in other cities, however, has yet
to be proven; some scholars douht that the wealth the Holy Office acquired
through its confiscations, part of which went to the royal treasure, became a
significant source of revenue.
33. Sec Peggy Liss, Mexico under Spain, 1 J 21-1 JJIS: Snciety and the Origins
of Nati(mality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), p. 4
34. Monter, "The Death of Coexistence," pp. 8-9. Monter suggests that the
war against Granada created nscal needs that the crown partir resolved br increasing its taxes on Jews and using the Inquisition to confiscate the wealth of
conversos.
35. See Haim Beinart, "The Expulsion from Spain: Causes and Results,~ in
The Sephardi Legacy, vol. 2, ed. Haim Beinart (Jerusalem; Magnes Press, Hebrew University, 1992.), pp. 19-2.0 (and pp. 2.8-3 J for a copy of the 1492 expulsion decree); B~inart, The EX/,ulsion of the Jews from Spain, trans. Jeffrey
M. Green (Oxford and Portland, OR; Littman Library of Jewish Civilization,
. 2.002.); Kamen, The Sf/aI/ish Inquisition: A Historical Rev/su!1J, pp. 18-2.1; and
Roth, Conversos, Inquisition, and the Expulsion, pp. 271-316. Both Kamen
and Roth reject theories that attribute the ~xpulsion of the Jews to the Catholtc
Kings' religious fanaticism and suggest instead tholt the' nquisition's findings
played a key role in bringing about the decision.
36. Mark D. Meyerson, The Muslims of Valencia in the Age of Fernan~o an.d
isahel: Between Coexisterlce and Crusade (Berkeley: University of Cahfofllla
Press, 199J), pp. 56-57

300

Notes to Chapter 1

_ 37 The term moriscos derived from the pejorative Spanish word for Mus_
bms, morriS (Moors). Between 1609 and 1614, the moriscos were fon:ed to
leave the Iberian Peninsula, a fate that the conversos were able co escape. See
Bernard Vinn~nt, Mmorias y marginados en la Espana del siglo XVI (Granad-.
Diputa<.:i6n Provincial de Granada, 1987); Antonio Dominguez Ortiz and Bernar~
Vincent, Hlstoria de los morisc(Js; Vida y tragedia de una minoria (Madnd:
Alianza Editorial, 1997, [1985]); Roger Boase, "The Morisco ExpulsioIl and
Diaspora: An Example of Racial and Religious Intolaancc," in Cultures in
Contact in Medieval.Spain: ed: David Hook and Barry Taylor (London: King's
College London MedIeval StudIes, 1990), pp. 9-28; and Stephen Haliczer, "The
Moriscos: Loyal Subjects of his Catholic Majesty Philip III," in Christians,
Muslims, and jews in Medieval and t'arly Modern Spain: Jnteraction and Cultural Ch4ltge, cd, Mark D, Meyerson and Edward D, English (Notre Dame, IN:
University of Notre Dame Pres~, 1999), pr. 265-89.
38. See Kamen, The Spanish IlIquisition: A HIstorical ReviSIOn, pp. 204-13.
Also see Francisco Bethencourr, "The Auto da fe: Ritual and Imagery," journal
of the Warhurg and Courtlaud InstItutes 55 (1992): pp. 155-68. The first auto
de fe took place in Seville in February 148r. Although autos continued to be
staged throughout the sixteenth and ~eventeenth centuries (one of the most
spectacular was held in 1680), in Castile they reached their apogee from I559
to the 15705, the period of intense per~ecution of Protestants. "Judaizers" of
Portuguese origin tended to he a standard feature of autos de fe as of the last decade of the sixteenth century and figured prominently in those of the last quarter of the seventeenth.
39 .For estimates, see Kamen, The Spanish Inquisitirm; A Historical ReL'ision, pp. 59-60, 198, 203.
40. As of about the middle of the sixteenth century, the inquisitors shifted
their attention to other groups. They continued to be concerned with identifymg crypto-Jews, particularly Portuguese ones, but after 1550, they concenrrated
also on Protestdnts and monscos (the latter especially from 1560 to 1614) as well
as Old Christians. The Inquisition thus went through several stages in which It
targeted different groups. See Jean Pierre Dedieu, L'admlllistration de la tfU'.
L'jnquisition de TolMe XV I'-X V II J" siecle (Madnd: Ca~a de VeLizquez, 198~J,
pp. 2'40-41; and Bartolome BeIlnas~ar, 1:lnqllisition Fspaglwle X\I"-XIX"
(Paris: Hachette, 1979), pp. I 5-4 I.
4 L Besides Yitzhak Bder and Haim Beinart, scholars who have argued that
a significant number of eonver~os duting and after the founding of the Inquisition were crypto-Jews or Judaizers include Renee Levine Melammed, Heretics or Daughters of Israel? The Crypto-jcwish Women of Castile (New York:
Oxford University Pres~, 1999); and Alpert, Crypto-judaism. Historians who
deny that crypto-Judalsm was a senous problem in fifteenth-century Spain 1Ildude Netanyahu, The Origin;; of the InqUIsition; <lnd Kamen, The Sllallish
InqUlsiti(ln: A Historical Revision, pp. 36-42. and 6r-6.
42. See, for example, Starr-LeBeau, In the Shadow of the Virgin, pp. 50-110;
and David L. Gnllzbord, Souls In DiS/lUte; COllverso IdentitIes in Iberia and the

Notes to Chapter 1

3 01

lJias/JoTa, 151iO-1700 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,

2.004), esp. pp. 8-12. Also see Nathan Wachtel, Foi du SO/lvenir: La/ryrinthes
Marranes (Pari~, Edition~ du Seuil, 200r), which not only problematizes argu-

ments that present conversos as either ~table Chflstians or secret Jews but also
analyzes the complex role of memory in shaping their identities. These points
are also made in Wachtel, "Marrano Religiosity in Hispanic America in the
Seventeenth Century,~ in The jews and the FX1!allsion of Europe to the West
1450-l800, ed. Paolo Bernardini and Norman Fiering (New York and Oxford:
Berghahn Books, 2001), pp. 149-7I.
43. Starr-LeBeol.u, I" the Shadow of the Virgin, pp. 89-90.
44. The campaigns to "Christianize" Old Christians began in the IHOS and
i,,""~fi,d 'I~"i,?g and after the Counter-Reformation and Council of Trent. See
Pierre Dedieu, "'Christiani7.ation' in New Castile: Catechism, Commun"",M";, and Confirmation in the Toledo Archbishopric, 1HO-1650,~ in Culand Control til Counter-Reformatio" Spain, cd. Anne J. Cruz and Mary
,E'Ii",b,,,h Perry (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992), pp. 1-24.
45. Norman Roth points out, for example, that for medieval Jews, the term
Jud,,,,n would not have made much sense because they did not ~ee themselves
adberents of a religion but as a people, an under~tanding encouraged by
I'
law, which makes no distinction between religIOUS and secular levels
'of existence and em:ompasses just about every a~pect of life. Roth, Conversos,
Inquisition, and the EX/lUisio", p. 29
4 6 . Haim Beinart, "The Conversos in Spain and Portugal in the 16th to
18th Centuries," in The SephardI Legacy, vol. 2., ed. Haim Beinart (Jerusalem:
Magnes l'ress, Hebrew University, 1992), pp. 62-63
47. Because men enjoyed more authority in the household, marriages between Old Christian males and moriscas did not pose as significant a threat to
the social order as the alternative "mixed" arrangement. See Mary Elizabeth
Perry, "Moriscas and the Limit~ of Assimilation;' in Christians, Muslims, and
Jews in MedieFal and carly Modem Spain: Interaction and Culturul Change,
ed. Mark D. Meyerson .md Edward D. English (Notre Dame, IN: University of
Notre Dame Press, 1978), p. 275
4 8 . Vincent, Mlllorias y margillados, pp. 25-99. Although Old Christian authoritie~ tended to claim otherwise, polygamy was not a widespread prdctiee
among the moris..:os. Vincent notes that the more common arrangement was the
double marriage or acqubitioll of two wives, one an Old Christian, the other a
morisca (pp. 56-57)
.
49. See, for example, Vincent, Minorias y marKinad(Js, pp. 2.5-99
. 50. SignifiCJntiy, historians of the Inquisition and the _limpieLa statutes, mcluding BenLIOIl Netanyahu, have tended to avoid the critical issue of how to
distinglllsh between a true and fal~e conversIOn. Even those who have :1rgued
that religious tensions were real, ~uch as Henry Charles Lea, Cedi Roth, and
Albert A. Sinoff, did not demonstrate that crypto-Juddism was widespread;
they simply assumed it was on the basis of Spanish sources that complained
ahout the proble,TI. See Lea, A His(or}' of the InqUisition ill Spalll, vol. 2. (New

Notes to Chapter 2

Notes to Chapter 2

York: Macmillan, T906), p. 314; Roth, The Spanish Inquisiti{JII, pp. 30-3~'
and Sicroff, Los estatutos de Il1npieza de sangre, P.49, For a recent Spanish
edition of Lea's classic work on the Inquisition, one that includes a prolo
and updated bibliography, see Lea, Historia de la inquisici6n espanola, voJ~ue
tran~, Angel Alcala and Jesus Tobia, ed. Angel Alcala, prologue by Angel Alca~:
(Madrid: f"undaci6n Universitaria Espanola, T9 82 - 1 9 8 3).
a
5 I. Stuart Hall, "On postmoderni~m and aTricularion," in Stuart Hall: Criti_
cal Dialogues In Cultllral Studies, ed. David Morley and Kuan-Hsing Chcn
(London and New York: Routledge, 1996), pp. I41-43.

8. Lea, A Histor)' of the Inquisition in Spain (1906), vol. 2, p. 306. At fir~t,

rehabilitdcione~ were sold mainly by the Inquisition, but as of 1501, the crown
to issue them (usually for steep amounts of money) for the exercise of
i posts and certain professions. The Holy Office retained the right to grant
mainly for Sumptudry restrictions or personal punishments. The sale of
'i I . to conversos and moriscos peaked under Ferdinand, the Catholic
king, and Charles V. On the pardons sold to conversos in Seville from the late
fifteenth century to the reign of Philip II, see Gil, Los convers()s y La inquisicidn
sevillana, vol. I, pp. T89-92 and 229-25.
9. Hernandez Franco, Cultura Y !Impieza de sangre, p. 68.
10. Kamen, The S/Janish Inquisitirw: A Historical Revision, p. 239; and
Kamen, "Limpieza and the Ghost of Americo Castro: Ra(.:ism a~ a Too[ of Literary Analysis,~ His/Jame Review 64, no. I (1996); p. 20. Kamen's point about
the statutes and public law was part of his revisionist argument about the
pf'Ob[em of limpieza de sangre, which he contend& historians of early modern
,Spain have grossly exaggerated. His revisiolllst arguments are offered in The
Spanish InquisItion: A Histrmcal Revisioll, pp. 230-54, and "Limpieza and the
Ghost of Americo Castro," pp. 19-29. For Kamen's earlier and different views
on the problem, see Inquisitwn and Society 11/ Spain in the Sixteenth and Sezlenteenth Centuries (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), pp. 114-33.
For the view that the statutes acquired the force of law and constituted "the
first example in history of legalized raci~m," see Leon PoJiakov, The History
of Attti-Semitism, vol. 2, trans. Natalie Gerardi (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsyh',mia Press, 1973}, pp. :(.IT and HI!.
II. BNM, MS 109I8, fob. T-I29r: discourse (dlscurso) on the statutes of
purity of blood by Juan Rom Campofrlo, president of the Coun(.:il of Finance.
Campofrfo was a bishop of Zamora at the start of the 1620S and Idter of Soria.
ll. Gil, Los crJ1lversos y la inquisicidn scuil/ana, voL 2, p. I32.
13. A discussion of the literature on the Portuguese New Christians is provided in Bruce A. Loren(.:e, "The Inquisition and the New Christians in the
Iberian Peninsula-Main Historiographi(.: Issues and Controversies," in The
Sepharadi and Oriental Jewish Heritage Studies, International Congress on
the Sepharadi and Orient'dl J~wry, and Issachar Ben-Ami (Jerusdlem: Magncs
Press, Hebrew University, 1982) pp. I3-72.
14. Sec, for example, BNM, MS I043I, fo[s. 131-150v.
15. Spanish expansionism generdted significant migration to the Americas
(initially mainly from southern Spain) and spurred internal population movements. Be(.:ause of their paramount role III transatlantic commerce, Seville and
Cadiz became magnets for people from other regions .in Spain and broader
Europe. Through mu(.:h of the sixteenth century, they experienced sustained
demographic groWTh. See Antonio Garcia-Baquero Gonzalez, Andalucia Y
La Carrera de Indws, 14'12.-1 H2.4 (Seville: Biblioteca de la Cu[tura Andalu'la,
1986), pp. 17-2.0 and 56-F. And for other good ~tudies of the effects of migration to America on local Spanish society, see Ida Altman, Emigrants and Society,
Extremadura and America in the Sixteenth Celltury (Berkeley: University of
Cahfornia Pre~~, 1989}; and Juan Javier Pescador, The New World Inside a

302

CHAP1ER 2
I , For example, one of Cordoba's private chapeh established a purity statute in 1466, and by about I473, one of its (.:onfratemit1e~, the Brotherhood
?f Charity, had as well. Its town coun(.:il also adopted a limpieza statute, but
It was suppressed by the Catholi(.: Kings. See John Edward~, "The Beginnings
of a S(.:ientifi(.: Theory of Race? Spain, 1450-1600," in From Iberia to Dws_
pora: Studies in Sephardic History alld Culture, ed. Yedida K. Stillman and
Norman A. Stillman (Leiden, Bo~ton, and Cologne: Brill, 1999), p. 18~; Jnd
Edwards, Christian CrJrd()/Ja: The City and Its RegIOn in the Late Middle Ages
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 198~), pp. 182-88.
2. The Order of Saint jerome's <486 decision to establish purity-of-blood
requirements was subsequently suspended, but by 15I5 it had a statute firmly
in place. See Starr-LeBeau, In the Shaduw of the Virgin, pp. 235-36, 240, and
249 With regard to other religious orden, the Dominicans' efforts to e~tabli~h
a generallimpieza statute in the 1480S did not suc(.:eed, but some of the order's
priories did adopt the requirement. The Jesuits resisted adopting the purity requirement until the end of the sixteenth century. Even though efforts to revoke
the $tatute did not end, the order thereafter tended to implement it with rigor.
Sicroff, Los estatu((Js de !impieza de sangre, pp. 326-29.
3 See Lea, A History of the Inquisitiun in Spain (I906), vol. 2, p. 287.
4 Lea, A History ()f the Inquisition in Spam (1906), vol. 2, pp. 285-90;
Juan Hernandez Franco, Cu/tura )' !impieza de umgre en la Espaiia moderna: Puritate sanguinis (Mu[(.:ia: Universidad de Murcia, I996), pp ..,\8-3'1;
Dominguez Ortiz, La clase social de los wI/versos ell Cajtil/a, pp. 54-68; and
Pere Molas Ribalt>l, "l::J exdusivi~mo de [os gremios de la Corolla de Aragon:
Limpie1.a de sangre y limpieza de 0660s," in Les societes fermees dans Ie
monde Iberique, XV l'-X V Ill" siecfes. Ddfimtirms et prob!ematique: Actes de
la table mnde des get y fevrier l'jHj (Paris: Editions du Centre National de la
Re(.:herche Scientifiqlle, I91!6), pp. 6'3-80. By the I560s, the Military Order of
San Juan had also adopted a purity statute. See Biblioteca Nacional (Madrid)
[hereafter BNM], MSS 114JO-14: "questions that are included in the purity of
blood investigatiom of candidates for the military habit of San Juan."
5 See Hernandez I;ranco, Cu!tlIra y Ilrllpieza de sangre, p. 63.
6. Dominguez Ortiz, La clase social de los conversos en Castilla. p. 35.
7 See SlCroff, Los estatutos de (impieza de sangre, pp. 132-T;!..

30 3

Notes to Chapter 2

Notes to Chapter 2

Basque Village: The Oiartzun Valley and Its Atlantic Emigrants, '550-1Iioo
(Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2004).
16. On the gradual classification of religious dissent as heresy in secular law
theology, and canon law during the late medieval period, see Peters, Inquisition'

the Grl!eks to Freud (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University

1990), pp. r 48-92, passim. For an introduction to the historical rdationship between theories of bIOlogical diff~rence and the construction of gender
, and sexuality, see Anne Fausto-Sterling, Sexing the Body: Gender /'(Jlitics and
the Constmction of Sexuality (New York: Basic Booh, 2000).
25. The traditional avenue to Spani~h ennoblement, military service, experienccd its last important pha~e during th~ reign of the Catholic Kings. Subsequently, ennoblement entailed either a legal proccss in which candidates sought
to prove that they were already noble or the purchase of patents from the crown.
The latter process resulted in the status of nohleza de privilegio (or Imvifegio
de hidalguia).
26. Lea, A History of the Inquisition ill S/IQill (1906), vol. 2, p. 287.
27. See, for example, AHN, Inquisicion, Libro T247, fols. 156-76: Memorial
on the statutes of limpia;J, 1655.
28. Roberto Lopez Vela, "Estrucruras administrativas del Santo Oficio," in
. Historia de fa Inqllisicir)n en Espana y America, ed. Joaquin rtrez Villanueva
and Bartolome Escandell Bonet, vol. 2 (Madnd: Bihlioteca de Autores Cristianos, Centro de Estuclios inguisitorialcs, 1993), p. 231.
29. Kamen, The Spanish Inquisitio/l, p. 234
30. Lea, A History of the Inquisition in Spam (1906), voL 2, p. 299.
3 I. Julio Caro Hamja, Razas, Imeb/os y finales (Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1957), p. 108.
32. See Julio Caro Baroja, Los morisCllS del Remo de Granada (Madrid:
Diana, 1957), p. 65; and Vincent, Minorias y marginados, pp. 25-28.
33. The same shift to a more rigid dual-descent model of cLlssification occurred in the process of acquiring military habits. After the 1550s, Castile's main
military orders required examinations of both bloodlines, mainly because of the
influence of the limpieza requirement~. See Elena Postigo Castellanos, HOIl()r y
privilegio en la CIIfflna de Castilla: Ef COllsejl! de las Ordelles y los Cahalleros
de Hahito en ef s. XVII (Almazan, Soria: Junta de Castilla y I.eon, 1988), pp. 134
and 138; and Caro Baroja, Los iudios lOti fa Espana moderna y conteml}{)ranea,
vol. II (Madrid: Ediciones Arion, 1961), pp. 301-02. Nonethd~ss, patrilineal
ideas periodically reappeared in discussions of limpieza. In th~ 1620S, for example, the inqui~itor Campofrio argued that genealogical investigations in purity cases should be limited, becau~e if it was true that all the conversos who
descended from Jews on the paternal lin~ were now secure in the Christian faith,
"much more arc those who have !Jewish ance~try] on their maternallinc, since
they nev~r had much zeal [for Judaism] to begin wiTh." BNM, MS I0918, fol. 73 V .
Also s~e Dom[ngu~z Oniz, La clase social de los c(Jl/versos ell Castilla, p. 20I.
34. Lea, A Hist()ry of the /rlquisition ill SI/aill (1906)', vol. 2, p. 291L
35. The concept of tteml}{) immemurial was vague but initially seelns to have
referred-at l~a~t in the legal determination of nobility-to three or four generatIOns. Within the discourse of limpieza de sangre, howevcr, it became elusive.
36. Naturalizing concepts invoke "natura!" processes, inc!udmg biological
on'e~, but do not discount th~ pos~ihility of change; essentializmg ones always
presuppose immutahility, that is, unchanging e~sences. Wade, Race, Natllre
alld Culture, p. 18.

W~

17 AHN, Inquisicion, Libro 1247: Memorial on the statutes of limpiez<3. de

sangre, 1655.
18. The extemion of divine puni~hments to third- or fourth-generation de~cendants appears in the Bihle. See, for example, Exodus 34:6-7.
19 AHN, lnqui~icion, Lihro 1247, fols. 156-76: Memorial on the statutes
of limpieza, 1655. Tran~Jation mine. Note that unless otherwise indicated, all
sub~equent transcriptions and translations are also mine.
20. See Edwards, "Thl;: Beginnings of a Scientific Thl;:ory of Racd" pp. 184-96;
and Frano;oise Hhitier-Augt, "Semen and Blood: Some Ancient Theories Concerning Their Genesis and Relationship," Fragments f(Jr a Hlstury of the Humml Body, vol. 3, ed. Michel teher with Ramona Naddaff and Nadia Tazi
(New York: Urzone, 1989), pp. 159-75.
21. The slippage between nature and culture was especially evident in the
theory of pangenesis, which originated in ancient Greece and became one of
the most mfluential theones of heredity in the West. According to this theory,
the "male seed," formed by all parts of the body, was the most potent of the
generative fluids and therefore determined the characteristics of the child.
Although pangenesis dearly stressed the role of nature (biology) in human conception and heredity, it also tuok culture into accoum, for it posited that semen
could be lIlfluenced by food intake and dimate. See Wade, Race. Nature and
Culture, p. 47. Juan de Pineda, a sixteenth-century Spanish Franciscan friar,
dIscussed theories about the rule of food in the cr~ation of life (by authoritin
such as Hippocrates, Galen, and Aristotl~) in Didlugos familiares de la agriclIltura cristiana, vol. 3, ed. Juan Meseguer Fernandez (Madrid: Edicioncs Atlas,
1963-64), Biblioteca de Autores Espanoles, vol. 163, pp. 32-33.
22. Sec Caroline W'Jlker Bynum, "The Female Body and Religious Practice
in the Later Middle Ages," in hagments for a H,story of the Human Body,
vol. I, ed. Michel Feher with Ramona Naddaff and Nadia Tazi (New York:
Urzone, 1989), p. r82; and Edward~, "The Beginnings of a Scientific Theory
of Race?" p. 185. Th~ notion that wom~n's breast milk was "cooked blood"
probably sprang from theorie~ regardmg reproduction in the animal world.
Covarrubias, for example, defin~d milk as the "juice of the cooked blood that,
among animals, nature sends to th~ udders of the femal~, so that sh~ can raise
h~r offspring." CO\'arrubias Orozco, Tesoro de la lengua castellana, p. 705.
23. Heritier-Auge, "Semen and Blood," p. 168.
24 According to Thomas Lacgueur, women were seen as imperfect mcn and
their sexual organs as inverted mall;: genitalia until about the eighteenth century,
whcn natural scil;:nces started to produce two ,:ategocies of male and female JS
oppositc biological ~ex~s. Although Theories of sexual and reproductive organ>
wen~ never a~ uniform as he sugg~~ts, notions of female weakn~~s and imperfectability were prominem in Western medical thinkmg about sex throughout the
medieval and early modern period~. Lacqueur, A1aklllg SI!X: Hody and Gl!lIJer

Notes to Chapter 2

Notes to Chapter 2

37. As far as can be deTermined, the word raza was not sy~tematically de_
ployed againsT conversos in the fifteenth century, at least not until the purity
statutes had managed to spread. The SentenciaEstatuto, for example, does not
contain The term. It describe5 the c()nversos a~ a "lineage," not a "race," and
specifically as "the descendants of the lineage and caSTe [raleal of the Jews. See
the copy of the statute in Ruano, Toledo en el sigf(J XV. pp. 191-96.
38. See Michael Banton, Racial Theories (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, (998), pp. 4-S and 17-43.
39. Some of Spain's military orders, for example, granted habiTS only to per.
sons whose afl(.:~stors had been of noble blood and without the "race or mixture
of commoners ("hiJosdalgo de sangre, sin raza ni mezcla de vil/ano
Postigo
Castellanos, HOImr y privliegio en la corona de Castilla, p. 139.
40. Covarrubias Orozco, Tesoro de la lengua castellana, p. 851. According
to Corominas, when the word raw was being Imked to Jewish and Muslim
descent, it incorporated the meanings of an older Castilian term (ra(a) that connmed defectiveness (as in "defect in the fabric") and guilt. See Joan Coromina~,
Diccionario critico etimoli!gicu de fa lenKua castelfana, vol. III (Berna, Switzerland: Editorial Francke, 1954), pp. 1019-). Ij and Verena Stoleke, "Conquered
Women," Report 1m the Americas (NACLA) 24, no. S (199I): pp. 23-2iL After
the mid-sixteenth ,-'entury, the term increasingly appeared as part of the phrase
mala raza ("bad race").
41. Banton, Racial Theories, p. 4.
42.. de Pineda, Didlogos (amiliares de la agricultura cristiana, vol. 3, pp. 4 IO-11.
43. Verena Stokke writes that the French word race originally referred malllly
to "belonging to and descending from a family or house of 'noble stock' or stlrpis nobllitas which was translated as noblesse de sang ('nobility of blood') in
IS33." See Stokke, "Conquered Women," Report on the Amertcas (NACLA) 2.4,
no. S (I991): p. 2.4
44. See Guillaume Aubert, "'The Blood of France': Race and Purity of
Blood in the French Atlantic World," William mid Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, vol. LXI (July 2.004): pp. 439-78. Aubert abo notes that because the early
modern French believed that "bloodmixing" between nobles and common~rS
resulted in new lineages or "races," the French word mitis was first applied to
the children of those "unequal" unions, or mesalliances.
45. In the case of Jew~, their "stained" blood was sometimes attributed to
their supposed role in the death of Christ but more often than not to a long his'
tory of rejecting Christianity In the Iberian Peninsula. Similar argument~ were
applied to Muslims, especially as of the middle of the sixteenth century. They
too were considered a "bkmished race" and "infidel~" be..:ause they had hc.uJ
the message of Christ and refused it. Caw Baroja di~cusses early seventeenth,
century depinions of monscos as incorrigible infidels in RaUlS, {mebios y lina'
les, pp. 83-98.
46. Elaine C. Wertheimer claims that the Spanish notion of limpiC7.a de S,1I1gre wa~ based on the Judaic concept taharot, but stresses that the twO wert used
for rather different ends. Wertheimer, Jewish Sources of Spanish Blood Punt)'
Concerns (Brooklyn, NY: Adelantre, the ,Judezmo Society, 1977), esp. pp. 6- 8.

America Castro was among the first to propose that biblical concepts as well
as the Jews' strong sense of purity and caste served a~ the basis for the Spani~h
idea of limpieza. See, for example, Castro, ES1/QJla en su hlstoria: Cristianos,
moms Y ,udios (Barcelona: Editorial Critica, 1984 [19481), pp. 512-15. Several
scholars subsequently refuted Castro'~ attribution of the origins of the concept
of Jimpieza de sangre to Jewish thought. See, for example, Benzion Netanyahu,
"The Racial Att,lCk on the Conversos: Americo Castro's View of Its Origins,"
in Toward the Inquisition: Essays on Jewish and Converso History ill Late
Medieval Spain (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), Pl'. 1-}9.
47. Effective at spreading fear, the edicts of grace produced a significant
number of confessions and accusations, which in turn fortified the Inquisition's
belief that there wa~ indeed a seriolls prohlem of heresy among the conversos
and, later, among the moriscos. l;or a tran~lated copy of a ISl9 edict of grace,
see Roth, The Spanish illquisition, pp. 76-83.
48. Dominguez Ortil., Los Jude(Jcollversos ell Fs/wiia y America, pp. Pj6-1 S7.
49. Echoing arguml;nts made by the Inquisition, some scholars have tended
to explain the relatively high number of conversas and moriscas prosecuted by
the Holy Office as a function of the disappearance of all Jewi~h and Muslim
institutional life, which tbey argue made the household into the locus of crypto. Jewish and crypto-Muslim practices. See Levme Mclammed, Heretics or Daughters of Israeli' p. 32; Perry, "Moriscas and the Limih of Assimilation," pp. 27489; Flora Garda Ivars, I.a represi()n en el trihunal inquisitorial de Granada.
IHO-lli I'} (Madnd: Edicionc5 Akal, 1991), pp. 196-98 and 2.}6-38; Haliczer,
InqUIsition and Society ill the Kingdom o( Valencia, pp. 2.71-72.; and Renee
Levine Melammed, "Crypto-Jewish Women Facing the Spanish Inqui~ition:
Transmitting Religious Practice~, Beliefs, and Attitude~," in Christians, Muslims, and Jews ill Medieval and Early Modern Spail', pp. T97-l.I9' On prob
lems associated with rdying on Inquisition sources for evidence of crypto
Judaism, 5ee, for example, Avita Novinsky, "Some Theor~tical C()n~iderations
about the New Christian Problem," in The Se!Jharadi and Oriental lewish Heritage Studscs, International Congress on the Sepharadi and Oriental Jewry,
and Issa~'har BenAmi (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew University, 1982.),
Pp4- 12 .
So. Sec de Pineda, J)ial(}gos (amihares de fa aKricultura cristiana, vol. 3,
pp. 102-10; Caro Baroja, I.os moriscos dd reino de Granada, p. 159; Edwards,
"The Beglllnings of a Scientific Theory of Race?" p. 185; and Mechoulan, El
honor de Dios, p. II}. The term Goiden Age is sometimes applied to Spain duringthe years between 1500 and 1650, when it became a powerful empire thanh
. to the mineral wealth It extracted from its colonies. It is. also sometimes used
to refer to the flourishing of Spanish arts and letters during the early modern
period and especially b~tween the years 15.)o-r650.
)1. As Mary Douglas pointed out in her classic discllssion of boundary ritu'
al~, the symbolic meaning assigned to hodily fluids such as breast milk, blood,
semen, and ~ali\'a-sub~tances that figure Illto the imagery of purity and contagion because they le>lve the body and become a potential source of, or vulnerable
to, cont.lminatlOn-1ll different cultural cont~xts will tend to reflect dominant

3 06

).

30 7

Notes to Chapter 2

Notes to Chapter 3

ideas regarding the proper social order. Mary Douglas, Punty and Dmlger: An
Analysis of the Concepts of Poilution and Talmo (London: Routledge, I995),
esp. pp. l!5-r6.
52. Refer to AGI, Mexico 28r: Petition for an ecdesiastical benefice by
Cristobal San Martin, 1567.
53 See Caro Baroja, "Antecedentes espafioles de algunos problemas socia_
les relativos al mestizaje," pp. 2.01; Roth, The Spanish Inquisition, p. 199; and
Wertheimer, Jewish Sources of Spanish Blood Purity Concerns, p. 15. The
classificatory impulse that the obsession with purity of blood generated was
also manifested in Portugal, where the Inquisition also conducted genealogi_
cal investigations and deployed categorie~ such as "meio-cristao," "quarto de
cristao novo,~ "mais de melO crist?/(J lIOVO," and so forth for the children of
marriages between New and Old Chri~tians. Maria LUlZa Tucci Carneiro
Preconcepto Racial: Portugal e Brasil-Co/rinia (Sao Paolo: Editora Brasiliense'
1988), p. 102..
'
54 The expression is used by one of Juan de Pineda's interlocutors in a discussion on the effects of wet nurses on Old Christian children, which mentions
the likelihood that Jewish or Muslim ancestry would eventually prevad over Old
Christian descent (a belief that some conversos and moriscos allegedly ~hared).
de Pineda, Dialogos familiares de la agricultllra cristiana, vol. 3, p. 103.
55 Dominguez Ortiz, La clase social de los conversos en Castilla, pp. 2.01-04.
56. Verena Stokke, "Invaded Women: Gender, Race, and Class in the Formation of Colonial Society," in Women, 'Race' and Writing in the Early Modern
Period, cds. Margo Hendricks and Patricia Parker (London: Routledge, 1994),
pp. 2.77-78; Mary Elizabeth P~rfY, Gender and Disorder in Early Modern
Seville (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), pp. 5~6; and Su~an
Socolow, The Women of Co/rmia/l.atin Amertca (Cambridge: Cambridge Univenity Pre~s, 2000), pp. 3-9. On honor, female enclosure, and social order in
early modern Spain, also see Jose Luis Sanchez Lora, Muieres, convelltos, y
formas de re/igiosidad Barroca (Madrid: FundaClon Universitaria EspaiiolJ.,

cal experience with "race~ and letting their "obsession" with the topic influence
their analyse~ of cultures where it is presumably weak. For a recent and particu. larly strong condemnation of such "imperiahst" uses of the notion of race, see
pierre Bourdieu and Lok Wacquant, "On the Cunning of Imperialist Reason,"
.r Theory, Cult/lre and Society 16, no. I (1999): pp. 41-58; and the response by
John D. French, "The Misteps of Anti-Imperialist Reason: Bourdieu, Wacquant
and Hanchard's Orpheus and Power," Theory, Culture and Society 17, no. l
(2000): pp. 107-28.
62.. On the rise of a secular, pseudoscientific, biologistic discourse that gradually eroded the idea of monogenesis and that to a great extent continues to
shape modern understandings of human difference, see Colette Guillaumin,
"The Idea of Race and its Elevation to Autonomous Scientific and Legal Status," in Sociological TheOries; Race and Colonialism (Paris: UNESCO, r980),
pp, 37-67; Lucius Outlaw, "Toward a Critical Theory of 'Race,'" in Anatomy
of RaCIsm, ed. Thea Goldberg (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1990), pp. 62-68; Elazar Barkan, "Race and the Social Sciences," in Camhridge
, Histor)' of Science, vol. 7 (2.003), p. 696; and Michael Banton, Racial Theories,
PP44- 80 .
63. West, "Race and Social Theory," pp. 82-83.
64. Holt, The Prohlem of Race, p. 20.
65. See Gilroy, 'There ain't no Black in the Union Jack'; Paul Gilroy, "One
Nation under a Groove: The Cultural Politics of 'Race' and Racism in Britain,"
in Anatomy of Rac/Sltl, ed. David Thea Goldberg (Minneapolis and London:
University of Minnesota I'ress, 1990), pp. 263-8:z.; Etienne Balibar, "Is there
a 'Neo-Racism'?~ in Race. Natwn, Class: Amhiguous Identities. ed. Etienne
Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein, trans. of Etienne Balibar by Chris Turner
(London and New York: Verso, r99r), pp. 17-2.3; and bye V. Harrisoll, "The
Persistent Power of 'Race' in the Cultural and Political Economy of Racism,"
Annual Relliew of Anthro/)()Iogy 2.4 (1995): pp. 48-5.
66. Wade, Race, Nature and Culture, pp. 14-15.
67. Wade, Race, Nature alld Culture, p. 12.; and Banton, Racial Theories, p. 17

1983 ).
57 Juan Luis Vives's manual for women, first published in 1F4, has recently

been translated into English. See Vives, The Education of a Christian Womml:
A Sixteenth Century Manual (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000).
Also see Perry, Gender and Disorder, pp. 53-54.
58. Perry, Gender and Disorder, esp. pp. 37-43.
59. Vives, The fducation ofa Christian Woman, p. 180.
60. See, for example, Lea, A History of the /nquisiti(Jn in Spain (I906), vol. 2,
pp. 286 and 314; Dominguez Ortiz, Los judeoconvers()s en fspana y America, p. 96; and Dominguez Ortil, Los iudeoc()nversos ell la fS1)uiw moderna
(Madrid: Editorial MAPFRE, 1992.), p. 137.
61. Debates over whether race was operating in late medieval Spain tend to
become more heated when those who argue in favor of that position are scholJ.n
trained in the United States, which (in both Europe and Latin America) often
arouses suspicions that they are universalizing their country's particular hiswn-

CHAPTER 3
I. On how social practices result from the mutually inHuential relationship
between the material and the representational and come to operate through
unstated assumptiolls, see Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice,
trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press,
1977), pp. 78-36. And on how race and racism in par!icular function throu~h
"agreed-upon fictions," that is, conventional or unconSl:ious aspects of SOCIal
practice, see Holt (who partly draws on Bourdieu), The Problem of Race ill t~le
21st Century, pp. r3 and 22-2.3; and Stuart Hall (who draws on Gramsci's d!scussion of how ideologics become "orga[jJc~ and transform popular thought),
"Gram~ci's Relevance for the Study of Race and Ethnicity," in Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, pp. 430-31.

lW

Notes to Chapter J

Notes to Chapter 3

2 ..See, for example, Sieroff, Los estatutos de ltmpieza de sangre, p. 48; and
Dommguez OrtiZ, Los /udcoconversus en Espana y Amenca, pp. 22-28.
3 Bourdicu, Outhne of a Theory of Practice, pp. 78-79.
4 L6pCl. Vela, "Estructuras adminiMrativas del Santo Oficio, ~ p. 238; Sieroff
Los estatutos de lim/licza de sangre, p. 268.
'
5 The passage reads, "Estas desceltdencias de las razas mahometana y ju_
daleo, por nmgun acto extrinseco visible, por ninguna nota 0 signo ocular e _
terno se distinguen de los autentiC(Js espaiio/es." Cited in Dominguez Ortiz, {a
close sOCIal de los convers(J$ en Castilla en la edad moJerna (Madrid: Iostttuto
Balmes de Sociologia, Departamento de Historia Social, Consejo Superior d
e
investiga(.:iones Cientfficas, 1955), p. J.p.
6. Sicroff, Los estatutos de limpieza, pp. 12.I, Il9-30 and 268-71.
" 7 L6,pez Vela, "Estructuras administrativas del Santo Oficio," pp. 23 8 -39.
For cople.' of the IS53 and 1572 decrees, see Archivo Historico Nacional (here_
after AHN), Inquisici6n, libro Il40, and AHN, Inquisici6n, libro 1243, fols.
4 00 -0.1; and for a detailed discussion of Toledo's inquisitorial personnel, see
Jean Pierre Dedieu, l.'administratlOn de La (oi. L'inquisitirm de TolMe XVI'_
XVtll" sii3c1e (Madrid: Casa de VeLizquez, 1989), pp. IS9-2II.
8. See, for example, Jean Pierre Dedieu, "Limpieza, Pouvoir et Richess e :
Conditions d'entree dans Ie corps des mimstres de l'inquisition. Tribunal de
Tolede, XIV'-XVII' siecles," in Les societes (ermees dans Ie monde Jbenque
(X VJ"-X V fl t" sii3c1e) (Paris: Editions du Centre National de la Recherche Scien_
tifique, 1986), pp. 168-87. "Oficios viles" (sometimes "oficios vulgares") ba~i
cally referred to trade and money lending, while people who were linked to
the "mechanical trades" included silversmiths, painters, embroiderers, slonemasons, innkeepers, tavern Owners, and scribes (except royal ones). The Holy
Office did not always succeed in excluding merchants from its ranks, especially
during the eighteenth century, when mercantile activity shed many of ih negative associations.
9 Lopez Vela, "Estructuras administrativas del Santo Oficio," p. 243. The
Inquisition's increasing exclusivity was extended to its American tribunals. In
1604, for example, the Suprema ordered the Mexican Holy Office and thlO othn
colonial tribunals not to accept any butchers, shoemakers, bakers, and in general anyone that had been involved in "vile or mechanical" trades or [hat descended from ~uch individuals. AI-IN, libro 1050, fol. So.
10. Lopez Vela, "Estructuras admlIlistrativas del Santo Oficio," p. 247.
II. In institutions in which the process of certific>1tion was not as rigorou>
(and sometimes in the Holy Office itself), the testimonies provided by the first
group of witnesses, those presented by the candidate, constiruted "the proof."
However, as of the second half of [h~ sixteenth century, the production of the
probanza tended to be controlled more by designatlOd officiab than candidare~
and to consist of more than one group of depositions.
12. 'J'he rransL1tion~ of the nativeness and citiL~nsbip offered here admittedly
Simplify what in early modern Castile were rather multivalent, Interrelated, and
fluctuating terms. Generally, ndturaleza was a status that accorded certain exclusive privillOglOs within the kingdom, namely eligibility for office holding and

ecclesiastical benefices. (The native monopoly on public and religious offices

was called the "reserva de oficio.") Nativeness was commonly e~tablished by
place of birth, but it was also ~'ocially and legally negotiated and it could be
acquirlOd from the king. Vecindad was a statu> determined primarily by integration in the local community. Implying certain rights and dutilOs, it amounted to
a more local type of citizenship. For more on the two concept~ and their relationship, see Herzog, Definmg Natio/ls, pp. 6-9, 17-42, and 64-93.
13. See AHN, Inquisici6n, libro 1266.
14. AHN, inquisicion, libro 1056, fols. 439-439V. This questionnaire was
sent to inquisitorial tribunals in Spain and Spanish Americd. It is included
in its original language (Spanisb) as an app~ndlx to this book. Otber copies
of the qu~stionnaire can be found in various Spanish and Spanish American
Inquisition archives_ After 1623, tbe year that Philip IV issued a decree that
sought to curb the number of times tbat an individual and members of the
same famdy were subjected to genealogical investigations, some interrogation
forms included a question about whetha any of the petitioner's ancestors had
proven their purity of blood. QuestionnaIres differed somewhat in terms of the
. language or questions, but the sections on limpieza de sangre remained essentially the same throughout the seventeenth century and well into the eighteenth
century. For copies of questionnaires that were sent to the Zaragoza, Valencia,
and Barcelona tribunah in the seventeenth century, see AHN, Inquisicion,
libro 1243; and for a questionnaire that was sent to Mexico in the early part of
the seventeenth century, sec AHN, Inquisici6n, libro [OS3, fol. 39.
15. Sometimes questions were added on the recommendatIOn of inquisitors
Visiting and reporting on tribunals. In 1661, for example, Visitador Medina
Rico, who had been sent to inspect the activities and records of the Mexican
Holy Office, proposed changing the interrogation to explicitly inquire into
the candidate's marital status, occupation, religious behavior, and peaceful or
restless nature (the last alluding to political activities). AHN, Inquisicion, libro 1058, fols. 581-582.v. The inclusion of more que~tions in purity-of-blood
certification~ in the second half of the seventeenth century al~o characterized
questionnaires used by cathedral chapters. The questionnaires used by Murcia's
cathedral chapter in 1672, for example, asked whether the candidate or any
of hi~ ancestors had engaged in "vile or vulgar work" (oficios viles (I bajos),
whether they had been comuneros or traitors to the king, and whether they had
practiced witchcraft or sorcery. The questionnaire is reproduced in Hermindez
Pranco, CII/tura}, limpieza de sangre, p. 135.
16. For a good introduction to the Spanish Inquisition's archives, see Gustav
Henningsen, "The Archives and the Historiography of the Spani~h inquisition,"
tram. LawrlOnce Scott Rainey, in The InquisitIon in Early M()dern Europe:
Studies ()11 Sources and Methods, cd. Gustav Henningsen, John Tedeschi, and
Charles Amid (Dekalb: Northern Illinois UniverSIty Press, 1986), pp. 54-7 8 .
17. LOpel. Vela, "E~tructuras administrativas del Santo Oficio," pp. 257-74
18. See Postigo Castellanos, Honor y priviiegio en la corona de Castjl!~,
pp. 141 and 144-55. For an example of the Council of the Orders' certlfication procedures, see BNM, MS 9881, fols. 26H-2.64V, which describ~s the

Notes to Chapter 3

Notes to Chapter 3

investigations conducted in the early seventeenth century in five different Spaniso

and Mexican cities to certify the purity and nobihty of blood of dOll francisco
Pa(.:heco de Cordoba y Bocanegra. And for a description of the procedures fol.
lowed by the military order of San Juan, sec BNM, MSS II4IO-14, fols. 1!l7_
90. Like other main military order~, the Order of San Juan required proof of
nohility aod excluded people who were or had engaged in mercantile activities ,
money lending, and "vulgar or mechanical" trades.
19 References to the certification procedures of cathedral chapters cao be
found in a memorial written by don Francisco de Cueva y Silva regarding the
statutes. See AHN, Inquisicion, libra 1266.
20. Uipez Vela, "EstrU(.:tura~ administrativas del Santo Oficio," p. 251.
21. BNM, MS 1043T, fols. 131-150V.
22. See Lopez Vela, "Estructuras administrativas del Santo Oficio," pp. 248-52.
23. Needless to say, tbe certification system was supposed to work one way,
but in practice it sometimes functioned differently. For example, although the
Suprema had already tried to bar petitioners from selecting the witnes~es who
were to be examined in their probanzas, in 1604 it acknowledged that thi~ COIltinued to be a problem.
24. During the 1620S and 1630S, the Suprema did grant candidates for oflices
and titles the right to appeal deciSIons on their limpieza cases, but according to
Lopez Vela, the policy did not have much eHect. "Estructuras administrativas
del Santo Olicio," p. 270.
25. BNM, MS non, fols. 304-:P1V: Memorial of Diego Gonzales MonJdrrh,
regarding his ancestry and purity of blood, 1605. For another example of an appeal to the Suprema on a purity of blood probanza, this time from New Spain,
see the case of Gregorio Romano, a familiar and alderman in the city of Puebla
who had his title removed after the Holy Office di~covered that he wa~ married to a woman whose grandmother wa~ known to be a "confesa" (conversa).
The Suprema revoked the sentence of the Mexican tribunal, which accordmg to
New Spain's inquisitors sent shock waves among Puebla's vecinos, not only because Romano was going to be allowed to continue being a familiar but because
they were aware that his brother Diego Romano had been removed from the
Inquisition due to his impurity and (as consolation?) granted the bishopric of
Puebla. AGI, AHN, Inquisicion 1729, Exp. 8: Case of Gregorio Romano, familiar of the Holy Office in Puebla de los Angeles, against the Mexican Inqui~ition,
October 5, 1602. For more on the case, see AGI, AHN, Inquisicion 1728,
Exp. 10; and AHN, libro I049, fol. 473v: Letter from the Mexican Inquisition
to the Suprema, March 23, 1603.
26. BNM, MS 1lOn.
27. The Council of Orders, the Cathedral of Toledo, and the Colegios Mayores rejected the three positive ans decree shortly afta it was pa~~ed and r~
fused to accept the probanzas of the Inqui~ition be:au~e its partial ac:eptance
of the law (it vacillated) was perceived as a sign of lax procedures. The decree
was also met with reluctance by some sectors of the traditional aristocracy a~
well a~ of the Holy Office, who feared that the measure would wre~t rigor ,Illd
legitimacy from the probanzas. A~ of the naming of a new inquisitor general
in J643, the Inquisition began to reassert its institutional autonomy, graduallY

rejecting a number of royal orders regarding the purity procedures. By 1654, it

tOO had rejened the pmitive ans component of the J61.3 Pragmatica. See I.opez
'Vela, "Estructuras administrativas del Santo Oficio," esp. pp. 258-59, 1.67-68,
and 27J-74
::.8. In both Spain and Spanish America, the "public voice and fame" was a
social and legal tate gory that stemmed from the system of honor and that gen: erally referred to how a community judged a person according to its system of
values. A mechanism of social control and part of local oral histories that were
subject to change and manipulation, it mainly entered the legal ~pherc through
, the witnes~es who were asked to testify about a given person's public reputation. On the distinction between rumor and reputation and the way the latter
, (which had more validity as evidence) functioned in the Spanish colonial admin. istration of justice, see Tamar Herzog, Uphn[ding Justice: Snciet}', State, alld
the Penal System in Quito (I6SO-1750) (Ann Arbor: UniverSIty of Michigan
Press, 2004), pp. 208-20.
29. Dominguez Ortiz, La clase de [ns conversos, p. 75.
30. According to Ruth Pike, linajudos (who tended to be doctors, lawyers,
and even former inquisitors) were most numerous in Seville because of the scores
of wealthy converso merchants who in the fifteenth century had married into its
aristocracy. The "mixed" nature of the city's nobility, in other words, provided
plenty of work for genealogi~ts who either dedicated themselves to policing lin. cages for Jewish ancestry or who simply wanted to profit III any way they could
from theIr "expertise.~ Pike, Linallld()s and COlll!ers{)s in Seville: Greed and
Prejudice ill Slxteenth- and Seventeellth-Century Spam (New York and Washington, DC: Peter Lang, 1.000), pp. 15-16. Also St;:e Postigo Castellanos, H{)I/or
, y privileglO, p. J 49.
31. Though unsalaried, the tide of familiar was eagerly sought. It automatically bestowed honor and local politi<.:al It;:verage and after IpS removed the
holder from civil jurisdiction.
32. In the Inquisition, when the petitioner initiated the process, he had to
make a deposit, the >um of which was based on the estimated costs of ~ending
commissioners to one or variou~ places and of compensating all other local officials involved in the process. To th;s payment might be added other~, depending
on how long and labyrinthine the investigation turned out to be. According to
Lea, the prohanzas sometimes provided important revenues for royal officials.
A Hist!)r}' of the InqUisitio/J, vol. 2, pp. -,01.-01'>.
B. Jaime Colltreras, "Limpieza de sangre, cambio social y manipulacion de
la memona," in Il1quisici(Jn y cOlwenm (Toledo: Caia de Castilla-La Mancha,
1994), pp. 8l-101.
34. I thank Tamar Herzog for thi~ insightful observatIon.
,
H. Cervantes satirizes the InquisltlOll and Spani~h cult of purity of blood In
D(~/J QII/jote de la Alal/cha. hut a Iso ill "I.e e len;i(}n de los a lcade~' de Daganzo,"
a short comedy that ridicules the tran~formati()n of poverty, ignorance, and
lazines~ into Old Christian "values"; and in his "EI retablo de las maravillas," a
more explicit critique of his society'S obsession with dean and legitimate hirth.
Miguel de Cervantes, r.ntremeses {Mexico City: Editorial Pornla, 19681, pp. 2740 and 73-86.

3"

313

Notes to Chapter J

Notes tu Chapter 3

36. Amonio Dominguez Ortiz, The Golden Age o/Spain, I; 16-1659, trans.
James Casey (New York; Basic Books, 1971), p. 254.
37. AHN, lnquisicion, libra 1266.
38. On the statutes' manipulation of time and privileging of obscure genea_
logical origin~, see Jaime Contreras'~ excellent prologue in Hernandez Franeo
Olltura y 1iml!ieza de sangre, esp. pp. iii-iv.
'
39. Peggy I.i~s, Mexico Under SI!ain, pp. 13-14.
40. Jaime Contreras, SoWs contra Rique/mes: Regsdares, inquisidores y cripto_
iudios (Madrid: Anaya & M. Muchnik, 1992), pp. 2.3.
41. The crown tried to suppress these and other genealogical compilations
(generically called Llbros verdes or Libras del becerro), but even after they were
banned by Philip lV's 162.3 Pragmatic, they continued to circulate and were
con~tantly being amended as they passed from hand TO hand. See Sicroff, Los
estatutos de limpieza de sangre, p. 2.)5; and Kamen, The Spanish Inqul$ltl<Jn:
A Historical Revision, p. 32..
42.. Pike, Lillajudos and Conversos in Seville, pp. 6, 16, 78, and 154. One
quarter of all noble title~ issued by the erown (19 out of 77) between 1552 and
1602. were purchased by men who had been in the Americas or whose fathers
had spent time tbere. Most of these men claimed nobility on the basis of miiJtary contribution, but a good number also acquired it through their involvement
in transatlantic trade. l.A.A. Thompson, "The Purchase of Nobility in Castile,
1552-1700," lVI/maio/ European Hcon(Jmic History I I (1982.): p. 347.
43. Thompson, "The Purchase of Nobility in Castile,~ pp. 323-26.
44. See Jose Antonio MaravaH, Poder, honor, )' elites en el sigfo X V I I (Madrid:
Sig!o Veintiuno Editores, 1984), pp. 173-250.
45. See, among others, Contreras, Sotos crmtra Rlque/mes, pp. 26-27; Maravall,
l'oder, honor,), elites en el siglo XVII, pp. 173-250; Hernandez Franco, Cufrura
y limpieza de sangre, pp. 12-17, 2.5-2.6, and 62.-65; Kamen, The SIJallish 111quisitlOll: A Historical RelJlsjon, pp. 28-36; and Postigo Castel!ano~, HOllor y
pnvifegio en fa corolla de Castilla, pp. 133-37.
46. See Ignacio Atienza Hernandez, .. 'Rcfeudalisation' in Castile during the
seventeenth century: A cliche?" in The Castilian Cnsis 0/ the Sl1venteenth CelltIIr),: New Perspectives on the economic and SOCIal History of SeventeenthCentury Spai", I'd. LA.A. Thompson and Bartolome Yun Casalilla (Cambridge
and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 249-76, esp. 254-56;
and, in the same volume, Bartolome Yun CasaliHa, "The Castilian AristocraC)"
in the Seventeenth Century: Crisis, Rcfeudalisation, or Political OffenSIve?"
pp. 277-300. Spain was not technically a "feudal" society siIlce serfdom, which
in medieval Ca~tile had been limited Thanh in part to the naTure of coloniwtion
and land dIstribution that accompanied [he Reconquista, had expired by the
late fifteenth celltury. William D. Phillips Jr. and Carla Rahn Phillips, "Sp,lin
1Il the Fifteenth Century," p. 17. AI~o ~ee Helen Nader, Liherty ill Ahsnlutist
Spain: The Habsbllrg Sale u/ Towns, 1 ;16-1700 (Baltimore: Johns Hopklll'
University Press, 1990), pp. 8-9.
47. See Atienza HernandeL, "'Refeudalisation' in Castile," e~p. p . .l.54. Abo
see Thompson, "The Purchase of Nobility in Castile," which drgue~ that the

extent and impact of the Habsburg sale of pril'ilegios de hidalguia has been
exaggerated in the histonography; and the response by James Amelang, "The
Purchase of Nobihty in Ca~tile, I 55.l.-1 700: A Comment," journal of EUropean
Economic History II, no. I (1982): pp. 219-26.48. Hern,indez Franco, r:ultura y lim{!ieza de sangre, pp. i-v and 61-62.
49. On the Counter-Reformation's influence on Spanish sexual attitudes
and practices, see Stephen H. Haliczer, "Sexuality and Repression in COunterReformation Spain," in Sex and LOi'e ill Golde" Age SI!am, ed. Alalll Saint$aens (New Orleans; University Pre~, of the South, 1999), pp. 81-94.
50. LA.A. Thomp~on, "Hidalgo and pechero: The language of 'estates' and
'dasse~' in early-modern Ca,tile," in Language, History and Class, ed. Penelope J. Corfield (Cambridge: Basil Black weB, 1991), pp. 70-7 I.
51. Cara Baroja, Razas, pueblos y Iinales, pp. 147-51.
52. See, for example, Francisco de Quevedo, "EI mundo por de dentro~ ("The
World from the Inside"), in Dreams and D,scourses, introduction and trans. by
R. K. Britton (Warminster, UK: Aris & Phillips, T989), pp. 187-89. Like other
works of the Spanish literary Baroque, Quevedo's suenos are chara..:terized
by self-doubt, skepticism, and pessimi~m and in particular by a deep suspi. cion of external appearances; their main themeS are iBu~ioll and disillusionment, engano and desellgaiio. See the introduction to Dreams mId Discourses,
esp. pp. 13-14.
B. HernandC7. Franco, Cultura y limpieza de sangre, p. 15
54. According to Poole, bishops and pastors were not required to have
limpieza de sangre because Rome opposed it. Stafford Poole, "The Politics of
Limpieza de Sangre: Juan de Ovando and his Circle in the Reign of Philip II,"
The Americas 55, no. 3 (January 1999): p . .367. However, a. Dominguez Ortiz
. points out, the Camara de Castilla was aware of this situation and took measures to ensure that the family background and genealogical purity of candidates
for the priesthood were inve~tigateJ while they were in seminaries. Dominguez
Ortiz, Los judeo(onvCTsos en la Espana moderna, p. 149
55. Fray Agustin Sa lucio, Discurso sobre los estatutos de limpieza de sangre, ed. Antonio Perez y GiJmez (Valencia: Artes Graficas Soler, [975 [1599]),
esp. fols. IV-4v, 26V-28r, and y;v. For two seventeenth-century memorials that
also complained that all Iberiam (Spaniards and Portuguese) were called Jews
and marranos in the rest of Europe, especially France and italy, see AHN, Inquisici6n, !ibm I2.47, fols. 156-76 and fols. 177-80.
56. For a discussion of the mechanism~ that Spanish kings had to erase
"defects of birth,~ see Twinam, "Pedro de Ayarzo: The Purchase of Whiteness~;
'and "Racial Passing; Informal and OffiCial 'Whiteness'_in Colonia! Spani~h
America."
57. The dispensatIon was granted by Philip III in 1604 and applied only to
his Jirect descendants. See Norman Roth, CO/lversos, IlIqlllsitiml, and the Ex/lulsi(J1/, pp. q6-44 and 148.
58. The inquisitor supported limiting the statutes and removing the historically unprecedented third division that had arisen in Spain, that of conversos. The distinction hetween Old and New Chri~tialls, he claimed, created a

.114

3'5

Notes to Chapter 4

Notes to Chapter 3
"monstrous" situation, in which plebei<lns, simply for being Old Chri~tians
could claim 5uperiority over patricians. See BNM, MS ro4}1: Memonal of do~
Diego Serrano de Silva. Similar arguments are made by Juan Roco Campofrio
in hi, discourse on the statutes. BNM, 10918.
59. AHN, Inquisici6n, libro Il66: Opinion of the licenciado don Francisco
de Cueva y Silva about why his Majesty should continue to support the statute~
of limpieza de sangre, ca. 1690S.
60. Graizbord, Souls in Dispute, pp. 116-20.
61. See, for example, Opinion of the licenciado Francisco de Cueva y Silva
.
'
op. Cit.
62. See, for example, Dominguez Ortiz, Los judeoconversos en Espana y
America, pp. ro9-14; Dominguez Ortiz, La clase de los conversos en Castilla
en La edad moderna, pp. Il6-30; and L{lpez Vela, "Fstructura~ administrativas
del Santo Oficio," pp. 273-74. Both authOr~ also stress that by the eighteenth
century, the concept of purity came to operate mainly a~ a nobility requirement
and as tool to check for llmpieza de o{icio. If their contention is correct, then
Spain's dominant notions of blood were once again operating in similar ways to
those of the rest of Europe.
63. Although the ISn liberal Constitution of Cadiz established the equality
of all Spaniards under the law, proof of purity continued to be required III some
public and private corporations for at least two more decades. (The Inquisition
was suspended during the French occupation, between IS08 and r813, but not
abolished until ISlO.) In 1834, the Spanish crown issued a law making limpieza
unnecessary for government jobs and institutions, and shortly thereafter, ecclesiastical and private secular bodies also suppressed their purity requirements.
Finally, in IS65, a royal decree abolished the limpieza information that had
betn demanded of prospective marriage partnen"dud candidates for bureaucratic posts. After more than five hundred years of their initial appearanct, Spain'~
requin;ments of purity of blood were dealt their final blow. Domingutz Ortiz,
Los judeocollversos en espana y America, pp. 123-34.
64. Martz, "Implementation of Purt-Blood Statutes in Sixteenth-Century
Toledo," pp. 245-71.
65. Pike, l.mafudus and Con versos in Sel/iile, pp. 1)4-55.
66. According to Nicolas L6pez Martinez, the effort failed largely because
a powtrful group of conversos in that body prevented Lt, successfully Invoking
the hull of Nicholas V, which had condemned people who made distinctions
betwetn New and Old Christians. Lopez Martintz, "1 estatuto de limpieza
de sangre en'la catedral de Burgos," Hlspmlia (Madrid) 19, no. 74 to 77 (1959):
pp. 52-81. Efforts to tMablish a statute III the University of Salamanca (whose
Colegio Mayor de San Bartolome had some of oldest purity requirements) III the
15605 also failed, but the reasons for this are not dear. Carlos Carrete ParronJo,
EI judaismo espanol y la illquis/C/rJlI (Madrid: Editorial Maptre, 1992), p. 156.
67. Contreras, Sotos contra Rique/mes.
6S. See, for txample, Hernandez Franco, Cu/tura y limpieza de sangre, pp. 13-14
and 62-63; and Poole, "The Politics of Limpieza de Sangre," p. 36S.

3'7

CHAPlloR 4
J. For a succinct discussion of Spanish society at the end of the fifteenth century, see Miguel Angel Ladera Ques<lda, uSpain, circa f492: Social Values and
Structures," in Implicit Understandmgs: Observing, Reporting, and Reflecting
011 the Encounters hetween Eurol!eaus and Other Peoples in the Farly Modern
Era, cd. Stuart B. Schwartz (Cambridge <lnd Ntw York: Cambridge University
Press, 1994), pp. 9 6 - 133.
2. The term Mexlca refers to the migratory people who in the fourteenth century settled on an island in the Valley of Mexico's central lake, founded the cities
of Tenochtitlan and Tlatcloleo, and btcame the dominant power of the Triple
Alliance. Popularly known as the "Aaec empire," the Triple Alliance was establishtd by tbe rulers of Tenochtitlan, Ttxcoco, and Tlacopan in 142S and sub- sequendy conqutred most of central Mexico and other parh of Mesoamerica.
Because the term Aztec was not llsed in the pre-Hispanic period, many historians of Mexico no longer use it, opting instead for Mexica or Mexica F.mlJire to
describe that tripartite political entity. They also use the more general Nahuas,
'. which refers to all the Nahuatl-speaking people of central Mexico (the majority).
3. On the environmental effects of Spanish colonialism, see Elinor G. K. Melville, A Plague of Sheel!: Environmental Consequences of the Conquest of Mex, ico (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994); and Alfred W.
. Crosby Jr., The r:olum"ian fxchmtge: Biological and Cilitural Consequences of
1492, 30th anniversary cd. (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003).
4. The ayuntamiento was a local governing body in charge of administering
an urban center and the territory under ih jurisdiction. It included a cabildo but
was larger and thus comisted of town council members as well as a corregidoT
(or alcalde mayor) and two alcaldes menures.
5. See Enrique Semo, Historia del capitalismo en Mexico: Los origelles, I J 2 l 1761 (Mexico City: Ediciones Fra, 1973), pp. 65-70.
6: Magnus Marner discus~es the evolution and failure~ of tbe tworepuhlic
social model in La corona espanola y los foraneos en los puehlos de indios de
America (Stol'kholm: Almqvist & Wiksel!, 1970).
7. See Edward Ca!nek, "Patterns of Empire Formation in the Valley of Mexico, Late Postda,sic Period, J 200-1521," in Inca and Aztec States, 140-11100:
Anthmpolog)' and History, ed. Gwrge Collier et al. (New York and London:
Academic Press, 1982), pp. 43-62; and Geoffrey W. Conrad and Arthur Andrew
Demartst, Religion and Empire: The Dynami.:s of Aztecalld Inca Expansionism
(Cambridge: Camhridgt University Press, 1984), pp. 17-20. Al~o refer to Nigel
Davies, The To/tee Heritage: Fmm the Fall o,f Tula to the Rise of Tellochtitlall
(Norm<lll: University of Oklahoma Pres~, 19S0).
8. See Nigel Davies, The Aztecs (Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1973), pp. 41-42; and for a detailed discu,~ion of Mexica rulers'
dynastic unions with women ofToltec descent, see Susan D. Gillespie, The ~zte~
Kings: The Construction of Rulership ill Mexica History (Tucson: UniversIty at
Arizon,l Press, 1989), esp. pp. 21 and 25-56.

--,
Notes to Chapter 4

Notes to Chapter 4

9 Worh on Nahua forms of writing include James Lockhart, The Nahu

After the Conquest: A Social and Cultural History of the Indians of Centr:~
MeXICO, SIxteenth through EIghteenth Centuries (STanford, CA: Stanford Uni_
versity Press, 1992), pp. 326-64; Elizabeth H. Boone, Stories 1/1 Red and Black.
Pictorial Histories of the Aztecs and Mixtecs (Austin: Univer~ity of Texas Press'
2000); and Boone, "Aztec Pictorial Histories: Records without Words," in Writ~
mg without Words: Alternative Literacies in Mesoamerica and the Andes, ed.
Elizabeth H. Boone and Walter D.1-lignolo (Durham, NC: Duke Univer:>ity Press
1994), pp. 50-76.
'
ro. Enrique Florescano, Memory, Myth, and T,me in Mexico: From the
Aztecs to Independence, trans. Albert G. Bork (Austin: University of Texas
Press, 1994), pp. 30-64' for more on Mexica religion, symbolism, and myth
see ,vligucl Leon-Portilla, Los antiguos mexictllws a traves de sus cronica;
y cantares (Mexico City: I'ondo de Cultura Economica, 19S7); Conrad and
Demarest, Religion and Em/n're, pp. 37-44; David Carrasco, Quetzalcoatl and
the Irony of bnpire: Myths and Prophecies in the Aztec Traditwn (Chicago
and London: University of Chicago Press, 1992); Alfredo LopeL Austin, The
Human Body and Ide%gy: Concepts of the Ancient Nahllas. trans. Thelma
Orti7. de Montdlano and Bernard Ortiz de Montellano, 2 vols. (-"alt I.ak~ City:
University of Utah Press, 1988); lnga Clendinnen, Aztecs: An InterpretatIOn
(Cambridge dnd New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Ri(.:hard F.
Towm~nd, The Aztecs, r~v. ~d. (London; Thames & Hudson, 2000 [T9~2]),
pp. 1 l6-62; and David Carra~(.:o, cd., Aztec Ceremonial Landscapes (Niwot:
University Press of Colorado, 1991).
II. On the politi(.:al and territorial organization of the Triple Alllanc~, see
Pedro Carrasco, The Tenochca EmpIre of Ancient Mexico: The Triple Alliance
of Tellochtitlan, Tet.l;ww, and Tlacupan (Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press, 1999). Although some sdlOlaf:i hav~ argued [hat the Tripl~ Alliance never
a(.:hieved a high level of political and territorial integration and therefore should
not be con~idered an "emplfe," Carrasco d~filles th~ t~rm loosely, as "a larges(.:ale state orgallll<ltion in which one people dominat~s other~" and in which
"on~ king IS ~upreme ov~r other ~ubordinate rulers" (p. 3).
12. hied rich Katl, The Anciellt American CIVilisations (London: W~id~nficld
and Nicolson, 1989 [1972]), pp. 138-47; and Conrad and Demarest, ReliguJ/I
and Empire, pp. 32-44.
13. See Ro~s Hassig, Trade, Trihute, and Transportation: The SixteenthaT/tury Political EnJl10my of the Valle}' of Mexico (Norman and London: University 6f Oklahoma Press, 1985); and Frances Berdan, "The Ewnomics of Az"
tee Trade and Tnbut~," in The Aztec Tem/I/o Mayor, ~d. E1izabdh Hill Boone
(Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Res~arch Library and Colknion, 1987),
pp. r61-83. On the Mexica's social structures, S~~ Pedro CarraKO, "Social Organization of Ancient Mexico," in Handhook of MIddle American IndIans, vo!' 10,
cd. R. Wauchope, G. F. Ekholm, and I. Bernal (Austin; UllIversity of Texas Prt~5,
197 1 ), pp. 349-75
14. See Anthony Pagd~n, Spanish imperialism and the Po/Iticallmaglllatio!l
(New Havcn, CT; Yale University Pre~s, r990), p. 6.

15. See David A. Brading, The First America: The Spanish Monarchy, Creole
Patriots, and the Liheral State, 1492-11167 (Cambridg~ [England]: Cambridge
University Press, J991), pp. r02-27; Jacques Lafaye, Quetzalcriat/ and Guadalupe: The Pormation of Mexican National Consciousness, 1531-111'3, trans.
, Benjamin Keen (Chicago: UniversiTY of Chicago Pr~ss, 1976), pp. 30-50; and
Georges Baudot, "Amerindian Image and Utopian Proj~ct: Motolinia and
Millenarian Discourse," in Amerindlall Images and the Legacy of Columbus,
vol. 9 of Hispanic Issues. ed. R~ne Jara and Nicholas Spadaccini (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Pre~s, 1992), pp. 375-400.
16. John L. Phelan, The Millennial Kingdom of the Franciscans III the New
Wurld: A Study of the Writings of Gerrlmmo de Mendieta. 1525-11)04 (Berkeley:
University of California Pre,s, 19.~6), p. 58.
17. A(':ulrding to Jesus Larios Martin, the Spanish crown's decision to grant
the native peopl~ the status of purity of blood was made rdatively soon, indeed,
even before it formally recognIZed indigenous nobility. Jesus Ldfios Martin,
Hida/guia e hidalgos de Jndias (Madrid: AsociaCion d~ hidalgos a fuero d~ Espana,
, 195 8), pp. 4-5'
18. Spanish debates regarding Castil~'s right to rule in the Americas are discussed in Anthony Pagden, The Fall of Natura/ Man: The American Illdian
and the Origins of Com/JaratH'e Ethn%gy (New York: Cambridg~ University
. Press, 1982); and in the first chapter of his Sllallish Imperiali,m and the ['oiltical
imagination (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 19'JO).
19. "Parecer de los frailes Franciscanos sabre repartimientos de Indios,'"
Bofetin del Archivo General de /a Nacirin 9 (J938): p. 176. In this remarkable
document, which amounts to an attack on the colonial srst~m of corvee labor
(repartimiento), the Franci~(.:ans go as far as to suggest that Spanish rul~ over
the n'ative people is illegitimate; that it was uniu~t for one republic, compmed
of "natural lords of the land," to be subordinat~ to the other, which wa~ new
and foreign to the land ("advelledizu )' extranjera"). By no title, the document
continoes, were the Indians obligated to serlle, or be ~Iaves to, the Spaniards.
20. See Pagden, Spanish Imperialism and the Political Imagmation, p. 22;
Lewis Hanke, All Mankind is Otle: A Study of the Disputation hetween Bartolome de Las Casas alld Juan Gines de .5e/Jlilveda III 1550 on the Intellectual
and Religious Ca{Jacit)' of the American IndIans (DeKalb: Northern Illinois
University Press, 1974); and Edmundo O'Gorman, La invel/clfin de America
(Mexico City: Fondode Cultura Economica, 1995 [first edition 1958]),PP- 27-28.
21. Sec Phelan, The Millellllial Kingdom. p. 82; and Woodrow Borah, "The
Spani~h and Indian Law: New Spain," in The Inca and Aztec States. 140-11100:
Anthrol)()/ogy and HIstory, ed. George Collier et al. (!'Jew York and London:
Academic Pre~s, [982), pp. 265-88.
22. Pagden, Spanish Imlleria/ism, p. 29.
23. On language policies JIl colonial and modern M~xico, s~~ Siudey Brice
Heath, Tel/ing Tongues; Language Polic)' III Mexico. Colony to Nathm (New
York: Teachers C:()lIq;~ Pr~ss, 1972).
24. Ridurd M. Mone argues that Philip II strength~ned the more Thomistic aspect of colonial rule, among other things by formally ~stablishing the

3'9

Notes to Chapter 4

Notes to Chapter 4

Inquisition in American lands and promoting the spiritual mission of the colonial enterprise. Political and sO(:iai hierarchies, he claims, were in theory
supposed to reflect the larger splriruai order. See Morse, "Toward a Theory
of Spani~h American Government," journal of the History of ideas 15, no, I
(January 1954): pp. 71-93. Abo ~ec LOffiIlltl:-Adler, EXIts from the I.ahyrinth
pp.262-6 5
'
25. See Jonathan J. Israel, Race, Class and Politics ill Colonial Mexico, 16 J 01670 (London: Oxford University Press, I975), esp. pp. 25-59.
26. Stern, "Paradigm~ of Conquesr/ p. 9.
27. On how the Castilian concept of vc!;indad operated in colonial Spanish
America, see Herzog, Vetini1lK Nations, pp. 43-6}; and hancisco Dominguez
y Company, "La condici6n de vecino: Su significacion e importancia en la vida
colonial hispanoamericana," in CrrJnica del VI congreso hist6rico mumcipal
ilfteramericano (Madrid-Barcelona, 1957) (Madrid: In~tituto de Estudios de
Administracion Local, J959), pp. 703-20.
28. See Marfa Elena Martinez, "Space, Order, and Group ldentitie~ in a
Spani~h Colonial Town: Puebla de los Angdes," in The Collective and the Pllhiic
in Latin America: Cultural IdentIties and Political Order, cd. Luis Roniger and
Tamar Herzog (Brighton, UK, and Portland, OR: Sussex Academic Pre~s, 2000),
pp. 13-36; Norman Martin, 1-05 vagabundos eIIla Nueva ESIJaiw (Mexico City:
EditorialJus, 1957), p. 42.; and Israel, Race, Class and Politics, pp. 6-10.
29. Silvio Zavala, "La utopia de Tomas Moro en la Nueva Espana," in La
utopia mexicafla del sig/o XVI: Lo bello, 10 verdadero y 10 bueno {Mexico City:
Grupo Azabache, 1992}, pp. 76-93, and Fintan B. Warren, Vasco de Quiroga
and his Pueb/o-Hos!JJ"taI5 of Santa Fe (Washington, DC: Academy of American
franciscan History, 1963).
30. See Woodrow Borah, Justice by Insurance: The General Indian Court
of Colonial Mexicu and the Legal Aides of the Half-Real (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1983); and Susan Kellogg, Law and tbe Transformation
of Aztec Culture, 1500-1700 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995)
Other works on thc role of law and legal tribunals in Spanish colonial ~ocie
ties include Stevej. Stern, "The Social Significance of judicial Institutions in
an Exploitative Society: Huamanga, Peru, 1570-1640," in The Inca and Aztec
States, pp. 289-320; Ward Stavig, UAmbiguous Visions: Nature, Law, and Culture in Indigenous-Spanish Land Relation~ in Cololllal Peru," Hispamc American Historical Review 80, no. 1 (2000): pp. 77-II1; Charle~ R. Cutter, The
Legal Culture of Northern New Spain, 1700-1810 (Albuquerque: University
of New Mexico Press, 1995); and l.auren Benton, Law a"d Colomal CII/tures:
l.egal Regimes ill World History: 1400-/900 (Cambridge and New York:
Cambridge Uiliver~ity Press, 2002), pp. 8T-I02.
31. Borah, "The Spani~h and IndiJ.Il LJ.w," pp. 278-82. ThejuLgado de IndioS
was based in Mexico City and was not extended to other provimial jurisdiv
tiollS. Therdore, if they wanted to use the court, communities ourside of the central valley had to send reprcsentative~ to the capital.
32. Sce Richard F. Greenleaf, Zumdrraga y III inquisicirJn mexicana (MexicO
City: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 19881, pp. 86-93; and Mariano CuevaS,

Historia de la Iglesia ell Mexico, vol. I, 3rd ed. (El Paso, TX: Editorial "Revista
Catohca," T928), pp. 369-80. For published documents relaring to various cases
of native idolatry from the r.'i30s and 1$40S, see Procesos de illdios id(Jlatras y
hechiceros (Mexico City: Secretaria de Gobernacion and Archivo Gencral de la
. Nacion, 2002).
33. Richard E. Greenleaf, "The Inquisition and the Indians of New Spain'
A Study in JurisdICtional Confusion," The Americas 22, no. 2 (19h5): p. 139.
Church authorities and the inquisitor general ordered an investigatIOn of Don
Carlos's case to see if he should hJ.ve been reconciled instead of relaxed. The results of the inquiry arc not clear, but Zumarraga was privately admonished. In a
1$74 lener, Mexican inquisitors noted that Don Carlos's punishment had been
considered too severe by many people in New Spain and even by the Suprema.
AHN, Inquisicion, l.ibro ID50, fols. 212-20: letter by inqui~itors Bonilla and
Avalos to the Suprema, October 20, 1574.
34. See Inga Clendinnen, Amhivalent Conquests: Maya and Spaniard ill Yucatan, lJ 17-1570 (New York: Cambridge University Press, T99I), esp. pp. 72-11 I;
Clendinnen, "Reading the InqUIsitorial Record in Yucatan: Fact or Fantasy,"
38, no. 3 (1982): pp. 327-45; and Greenleaf, "The Inquisition and
Indians of New Spain," pp. 140-41.
35. For an alternative view on why the native people were removed from
the Inquisition's jurisdiction, see Jorge Klor de Alva, "Colonizing Souls: The
Failure of the Indian Inquisition and the Rise of Penitential Discipline," Cultural
. Encounters: The 1m/Met of the fnquisitirJn in Spain and the New World, ed.
Mary Elizabeth Perry and AnneJ. Cruz (Berkeley: University of California
Press, T99r), pp. 3-2[
, 36. See Greenleaf, "The Inquisition and the Indians of New Spain," pp. 138-66;
and Roberto Moreno de los Arcos, "New Spain's Inquisition for Indians from
the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century," in Cultural Ellcounters: The Impact
of the InqUlsitlOll in Spain and the New World, pp. 23-32. Greenleaf notes that
there are indIcatIOns that in the eighteenth century, the crown was moving toward planng the native people under the full jurisdiction of thc Inquisition.
37. See Richard Greenleaf, "The Mexican Inquisition and the Indians: Sources
for the Ethnohistorian," The Americas H, no. 3 {T978}: pp. 315-44; and "The
Inquisition and the Indians of New Spain."
38. See juan de SolofLano Pereira, Politica Indiana, vol. I (Madrid: Compafiia Ibero-Americana de Publicaciones, 1930 [1648]), pp. 417-29. Note that the
native people's special juridico-rdigious status survived for a short while after
independence. In the T8ll Constitution, Emperor Iturbide clas,ified all of the
inhabitants of the "empire~ a~ "citiLens~ but singled out_ the Indians a~ people
that were to receive "apostolic privileges" and be designated as "cmdadanos agrac/ados por la stlla Apostriilca."
39. Sce Laura A. Lewis, "The 'Weakness' of Women and the femini.tation
of the Indian in Colonial Mexico," Colonial Latin American ReFleW 5, no. r

3'"

32 '

T/"A,,,,,,,,,,

(199 6 ): 73-94

40. See Greenleaf, "The Inquisition and the Indians of New Spain," pp. 150 -

5$; and Martha Few, Women Whu 1.we Evil Lwes: Gender, RdiglfJII, and the

Notes to Chapter 4

Notes to Chapter 4

Politics of Power in Colo/llal Guatemala (Austin: University of Texas Press

exploitation, one that suited the developing silver mining industry and the ris. ing fiscal demands of a Spanish state consumed by its wars in Europe but that
contributed to the demographic decline. See Peter Bakewell, "CollljUest after
the Conquest: The RIse of Spanish Domination in America," in Sllajll, Europe
and the Atlalltic World, cd. Richard Kagan and Geoffrey Parker (New York;
Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 296-315. III part because of its negative
effects on th~ native population, rhe repartimiento declined ill the first third of
the seventeenth century and was formally abolished in 1633.
52. Carrasco," La transformacion de la cultura indigena durante Ia l:olonia."
Historia Mexicana 25, no. 2 (1975), p. 177. Othtrs draw similar wnclusions.
See, for example, Lockhart Nahuas After the Conquest, p. 177; and Haskett,
Illdigellolis Rulers, pp. 158-59.
53. After independence from Spain, Mexico suppres.,ed noble titles and thus
also cacicazgos. Some of the descendants of the colonial native nobility were
initially able to maintain some of their landed estates, but in the course of the
nineteenth l:entury, properties that had been parts of indigenous rulerships
tended to be divided among family members or bought by hacendados (owners
. of haci~ndas or landed estates), thus eroding long-standlllg patterns of heredi, tary landholding.
,
54. The order was first sent to the Audiencia of Peru but was then extended
to all the Indies. See Richard Konetzke, Coleccirln de documentos {lara la historia de la formaci611 social de Hispanoamerica 14Y;-IIlIO, vol. I (Madrid:
Consejo Superior de Inve.,tigacioncs Cientificas, 1953), p. 560.
55. Sometimes a finer distinnion was made between the members of the main
royal lineages, laheled caciques principales or caciques y jlrinciJlales, and those
that ruled in less important areas. With time, however, the terms cacique and
principal both acquired more genera! meanings. The latter, for example, was
applied to all those who oc.:upied public office. Carrasco, "La transformacion
de la <:ultura," p. 182.
56. Franl:isco de Solano, Cedulariu de tiaras: Compilaci()n de leglslaci611
agraria c%nial 14Y7-1820 (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autonoma de
Mexico, 1984), p. 8,). On Spanish colonial laws regarding the purchase and alienation of land, see William B. Taylor, "Land and Water Rights in the Viceroyalty
of New Spain," New Mexico Historical Review 50, no. 3 (1975): pp. 189-211.
.'\"7. For a list of some indigenous rulers who under Viceroy Mendoza were
given permission to carry swords and be "treated like Spaniards," ~te Los virreyes eSllaiioles ell America durallte el gohieTl/o de la Casa de Austria, ed.
leWIS Hanke with th~ wllaboration of Cdso Rodriguez, vol. I (Madrid: Atlas,
'976), pp. 69-7'
_
';8. Lockhart, The Nahuas After the Conquest, p. 132. Note that ~ome cucicazgo tides induded Spanish last names.
59. See Guido Munch, F./ cacicazgo de San Juan Teotihuacan durante fa co/tmia, 1521- illz! (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia,
1976), p. 8.
60. Lopez Sarrdangue, La IIohleza indigena, p. 105.
hr. Guillermo S. Fermindez de Re.:a~, CaClcazgus y llOhiliario indigelfa de la
Nlleva t's/lmla (Mexico City: lnstituto Bibliogralim Mexil:ano de la Bibliotec a

3 22

p. 30.
'
41. As Lauran Benton has stressed, the existence of distinct and overlappin
legal jurisdictions in colonial Spamsh America and elsewhere contributed to th;
permeability of cultural boundaries by creating spaces for people to manipulate
and contest categories. Bemon, Law and Colonial Cultures, pp. 81 -102.
42. See, for example, AGN, Inquisicion, vol. 486 (2), fols. 45I-S!! (or 404-Jo)AGN, Inquisici6n, vol. 372, expo 14, AGN, InqUlsici6n, vol. 684, expo 1 I, fol s:
130-40; and AGN, Inquisicion, vol. 1044, fols. 50-S0V.
43 See, for example, AGN, CIvil 1094: Francisco Alonso de Be~ada against
Marcelo Rojas, 1798-1799.
44. Refer to AGN, Inquisil:ion, vol. 684, expo II.
45. Lockhart refers to the alteped as "ethnic states" in order to highlight
their strong ethnic and l:orporate identities during the pre-Hi~panic and colonial period. See l:hapter 2 in The Nahuas After the Conquest, pp. 14-58, esp.
P27
46. A number of scholars have studied the reconstituTion of pre-Hispanic
dynasties under Spani~h rule. I'or central Mexico, see, for example, Chdries
GIbson, The Aztecs under Spanish Rule. A History of the lndiam of the Va/ley of Mexico, 1519-t/jlo (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1964);
Delfina E. Lopez Sarrelangue, La n()hleza mdigena de Pdtzcuaro en fa epoca
virreint)1 (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Aut6noma de Mexiw, 196)),
pp. 52-53; and Robert Haskett, Indige/!ous Rulers: An Ethnohistory of Tuum
Government in Colonial Cuernavaca (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico
Press, 1991).
47. See Charles Gibson, Tlaxcala III the Sixteenth Century (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 1952); Jaime Cuadriello, Las g/orias de la repubbca de
Tlaxcala: 0 la conciellcia como imagen sublime (Mexico City: Tnstituto de investigaciones ESTeticas, UNAM, .md Musco Nacional de Arte, INBA, 2004); and
R. Jovita Baber, "The Construction of Empire: Politics, Law and Community III
TJ.1Xcala, New Spain, 1521-164" (PhD diss., University of Chi.:ago, 200SJ.
48. The main rulership of the province of Mil:hoacan was trammitted
through royal bloodlines until 1577, when no eltglble ~Ul:cessor remained. Lopez
Sarrelangue, La nohleza indlgena de Pdtzcuaro, pp. 52-53. Also .,ee JJme~
Krippner-Martinez, Rereadillg the Cunquest: Power, PolitiCS, and the Jiistory of
Early Colollial Michoacan, Mexiw, 1p 1-1565 (UnivtT5ity Park: PennsylvJniJ
State University Press, 200r).
49. Willidm B. Taylor, "Cal:icazgos coloniales en cI Valle de Oaxaca," HislOria Mexlcalla 20 (r970): pp. 1-41. Also see Kevin Terraciano, The Mlxtecs of
2002),

Colonial Oaxaca: Nudzahui History, Sixteenth thnmgh t'ighteenth Centuries

(Stdnford, CA: .':>tanford University Prtss, 2001).
50. On Cholula, see Francisco GonLidez Hermosillo, "La C1ite indigena de
Cholula en el siglo XVIII: EI caso de don Juan de Leon y Mend07,a," III CirculuS
de fi()der en la Nueva Fspafw. ed. Carmen Castaneda (Mexico City: CIESAS
and Grupo EdItorial Miguel Angel Porrua, 1998), pp. 61-62.
'po The establishment of the repartimieIlw, combined with the new forlD s
of l:akulating tribute quotas, led to a more regularized and regimented form of

323

Notes to Chapter 4

Notes to Chapter 4

National de Me~ico, _1961), p. xvii. Although it had earlier origins, the nla_
yorazgo wa~ codIfied In the 1505 Leye, de Toro and continued to be be modi_
fied throughout the sixteenth century. For a general work on the Castilian
mayorazgo, scc Bartolome Clavcro, Mayorazg(): l'ropiedad feudal en Castilt
136Y-I/J36 (Madrid: Siglo XXI de Espana Editore~, 1989); and for the instit ~
[ion in late medieval Andalusia, scc Miguel Angel Ladera Quesada, Los seniJr~s
de Andalucia: {llvestigac/(Jnes sohre nobles y seiiIJrios en Ius sig/os X / [I a XV
(Cadiz; llniversidad de Cadiz, 1998), pp. 30-31.
62. In the Iberian PeninsulJ. and in New Spain there were two main types
?f mayoraz.gos. The first and most common followed the crown's law~ regard_
ltlg succeSSIOn, whICh were based upon the principles of primogeniture, inalien_
ability, and indivisibdity. In the irregular form, the rules of inheritance Were
determined by the founder. See GuiHermo S. Fernandez de Recas, MayorazgoS
de la Nueva Es1Jaiia (Mexico City; Instituto Bibliografico Mexi\:ano, Biblioteca
~acional d~ !v~ex~co, 19.6,), p. xii. Although primogeniture became increasingly
Important 10 SpalO dunng the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Castilian legal
traditions as old as the Siete Partidas (the thirteenth-century Casule law code
that was still being used in the early modern period) stiH allowed for certain
types of feminine succession, and practices varied by region.
63 See J. Rounds, "Dynastic Succession and the Centralization of Power in
Tenochtitlan," in The Inca and Aztec States 1400-1800: Anthropology and
H,story, ed. George A. Collier, Renato I. Rosaldo, and John D. Wirth (New
York: Academic Press, 1982), pp. 63-89; and Kellogg, Law (md the Transfurmation of Aztec Culture, pp. 92-94.
64 For cacicas in Oaxaca, see Ronald Spores, "Mixteca Cacicas: Status,
Wealth, and the Political Accommodation of Native Elite Women in Early
Colonial Mexico," in Indian Wumen of Early MeXICO, d. Schroeder, Susan,
Stephanie Wood, and Robert Haskett (Norman and London; University of Oklahoma Press, (997), pp. 185-97. And for the \:ase of an eighteenth-century cacica
from central Mexico, see Robert HJskett, "Activist or Adulteress? The Life and
Struggle of Dona Josefa Maria of Tepoztlan," Indian Women of f.arty Mexico,
pp. I4,-64
65 See Lopez Sarrelangue, La nobleza indigena de Pdtzcuaro, p. 9;; and
GonzaleL Hermosillo, "La elite indigena dt Cholula," pp. 62-63.
66. See Lui~ Lira Montt, "La prueba dt la hidalguia en cI derecho Indiano,"
Revista Chilena de Historia del Derecho (Santiago) 7 (1978): pp. 131-;2.
67 1.ocal authorities (the alcaldes ordinarios or firM instance-judges who were
also memhers of cabildas) were ordered not to interfere or attempt to dtprive
IcgitimJ.te ca~iques of their rights to rulenhips. See, for instance, Konetzkt", Colecc/fJn, vol. 1, pp. 243-44.
68. In both purity and nobility prohanzas, the term tiempo immemorial
could refer to different span~ of time depending on who used it and when. In the
eighteenth-century Andes, native communities and individuals normally u~ed it
ta rda to one or two generations, spe..:ifically to the late Hapsburg period or
before the Bourbolls implemtnted their modernizing reforms. Scarlett O'l'hdJ.!i
Godoy, "Tiempo inmemoriJ.l, tiempo colonial: Un estudio de casas," I<el/ista

EcuatorJana de Historia 4 (1993); pp. 3-20. Doris M. LJ.dd states that in the
late eighteenth century, the ttrm in Mexico referred to forty years, but she does
not indicate how she determined its meaning. I.add, The Mexican Nobility at
Independence, 17150-11126 (Austin: Institute of Latin Ameri\:an Studies, University of Texas, 1976), p. 86.
69 See Amada l.opez de Meneses, "Grandezas y titulos de nobleza a los descendientes de Moctezuma II,~ Revista de Indias 12 (1962): pp. 341-52.
70. Tacuba's cacicazgo is discussed 1O Fernandez de Recas, Cacicazgos y nobiliario indigena, p. xvii.
7I. See Lope7. Sarrelangue, La nobleza indigena de Pdtzcuaro, pp. 2IQ-II.
Lopez Sarrelangue di~cusses the Tarascan cacicazgo in pp. 169-228.
72. Kellogg, Law and the Transformation of Aztec Culture, pp. 160-212.
7., Ibid, p. 87; and Susan Kellogg, "The Woman's Room: Some Aspects of
Gender Relations in T enochtitlan in the Late Pre-Hispani\: Period," Ethnohistory
42., no. 4 (1995): p. 572.
74 Born 1579, Chimalpahin was a descendant of the pre-Hispanic lesser
nobility of Chalco, one of the polities that struggled to remain indtptndent
during the Postclassic period. He wrote two major historical works in Nahuatl.
The first, the "Relacione.," was mainly a dynastic hIstory of the kingdom of
Chalco but also included suhstantial information about other kingdoms 1O central Mexico and various othn topics. Tht second, the "Didfio," rtcorded all
sorts of events in New Spain from 1.;89 to 16I2, in the pre-Hispanic tradition of annals. for an introduction to Chimalpahin's life and works, ste Susan
Schroeder, Chmwlpahill and the Kingdom of Chalco (Tucson; University of
ArizonJ Press, 1991), esp. pp. 7-30. Also ~et Domingo Francisco de San Amon
Munon Chimalpahin QuauhtlehuanitLin, Codex Chimal/Jahin: Society and
Politics In Mexico Ten()chtitlan, Tlare/()Ico, Texc()c(), Culhuacan, and Other
Nahua Alte/Jetl III Central Mexico, 2 vols., trans. Arthur J. Anderson and
Susan Schroeder (Norman and London; University of Oklahoma Press, 1997);
and Chimalpahin QuauhtlehuJnitzin, Annals of His Time: Dtm Domingo de
San Anuin Muntin Chlmalpahm Quauhtlehuallitzill, ed. and trans. James
Lockhart, Su~an S\:hroeder, and Doris Namala (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Pre~s, 2006).
75. The maps that native communities submitted with their relaciones have
been studied and published by a numba of scholars, including Barhara E.
Mundy, The Mapping of New S{JOin: Indigenous Cartograrhy alHi the Maps of
the Re/acitmes Geogrdficas (Chicago: The Univer~ity of Chi\:ago Press, 1996).
76. Carrasco, "l.a tran~formacion," p. 183. Tezozomoc, a descendant of the
ruler~ of TtxconJ, wrote an txtcnsive account of his ancestors' kingdom. See
Hernando de Alvarado TeLtlLom(}(:, C"imca mexicana (Mexico City: Secretaria
de Educacioll l'ubltca, 1944).
77. Schroeder, Chimai/Jahm and the Kingdom of Chalco, p. 24.
78. Bautista Pomar, one of tht fir~t m~stizos to elaborate a regional history,
produced the I<e/ac/(;II de Texc<Jc() as a respome to tht gov~rnment's request for
re1aciones geograficas. Ixtlilx<lchitl also wrote a historical account of Tex\:oeo
and it~ govtrnors, Historia de la nacirilt chichimeca. Munoz Camargo was

324

32 5

Notes to Chapter 4

Notes to Chapter 4

responsible for various works, including Descripci6n de la ciudad Y /Jr()vincja

de Tlaxcala, a copy of which was submitted to the viceregal government in the
1580s, possibly as a relaci6n geografica. The historical material from this work
provided the author with the ba~i~ for his Historja de Tlaxcala. Some schol an
believe that Munoz Camargo used the geographic and descriptive components
of the Descripci()n de la Cludad y provincia de Tlaxcala for another work whose
conclusion or "epilogue" bas recemly been located and published. See Andrea
Martinez Baracs and Carlm Sempat Assadourian, cds., Suma y e{!iloga de toda
la descripci(!n de Tlaxcala (Tlaxcala: Universidad de Tlaxcala and Centro de
lnvesriga(.:iones y Estudios Superiores en Antropologia Social, 1994), pp. 5-18.
79. Enrique Florescano, "La reconstruccion hi,t6rica eJaborada por la nobleza indigena y sus descendientes mestizos," in La memoria y el olvido; Segundo simposio de las mentalidades (Mexico City; Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia, 1985), pp. 11-:1.0.
80. Baracs and Sempat A,sadourian, eds., Suma y epiLoga de toda La descripci(in de Tlaxcala, p. 230. The text also discusses the origin~ of the people of Tlaxcala and of other parts of central Mexico, as well as some of the
pre-Hispanic founders of the noble lineages and "mayorazgos" of the town of
Atliguetza (pp. 239-47).
81. Although other source~ claim that Cortes wok Texcoco hy force, Ixtlilxochitl the author describe~ king Ixtlilxochitl'~ encounter with the Spaniards
as friendly. Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl, Hjstorw de La naci(!n chichimeca
(Madrid: Historia 16, 1985), pp. 272-73.
82. Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria, Myth and Archive: A TheorY of Latm
American Narratilie (Durham, NC, and London; Duke University Pre%, (998),
pp. 43-92, esp. 71-77.
83. Thanks in part to the efforh of Carlos Sigiienza y Gongora, a law yer and
one of the first important creole writers of the Americas, all of the properties
of the rulership (titled Cacicazgo Alva y Cortes de San Juan de Teotihuacan)
were eventually reconfirmed, and those that had been illegally expropriated
were returned. See Munch, / wClcazgo de San Juan Teotihuacan, pp. 20-27
and 47-48.
84. See Magnus Marner, "l.a infiltracion mestiza en los cacicazgos y cabildos de indios (siglos XVI-XVIII)," in XXXVI Congreso Internacional de
Amerlcanistas (Es/Mna Iy64): Actas y Memor/as, vol. 2. (SeviHe; Congreso Internacional de Americanistas, 1966), pp. t55-60. tor examples of cacicazgos
that were transferred to Spaniards or their descendants (a process that varied
hy region and depended in part on demographics), see fernandez de Rec;!S,
Cacicazgos y lIobiliario indigena, pp. 69-81; and Charles Gibson, "The Azw.:
Aristocracy in Colonial Mexico," Comparative Studies m Society and History 2.,
no. 2. (January 1960): pp. 191-92.. In the Valley of Oaxaca, Taylor found onlr
two case~ in which native nobles married non-Indians. In one case, a female
principal married a Spaniard, and in the other, a mulatto. Taylor, "Cacicazgos
coloniales," pp. 6-7.
85. Religiou~ and secular officiah initially promoted union. between Spanish
males and inJigenou~ noble women precisely because they aHowed conquero n

and colonists to acquire native propertie~, titles, and ca6cazgos. See Konetzke,
Co/eecilin, vol. 1, pp. 63-67. ror the 1576 law barring mesTizos from inheriting
cacicazgos, see Leyes de Indias (Madrid: Biblioteca Judicial, 1889), p. 72.. The
law was subsequcntly qualified so that mestizos descending from male caciques
would be able to inherit the title.
86. On the different uses and manipulation of Iimpieza de sangre status in
the greater Puebla area, see Norma Angelica Castillo Palma, "Los e~tatutos de
'pureza de sangre' como medio de acceso a las elites; cl caso de la region
de Puebla," in Circulos de Poder en la NUel!a F.s/Jalla, edited by Carmen
Castaneda (Mexico City: CIESAS and (;rupo Editorial Miguel Angel Porrlia,
1998), pp. 10 5-2.9.
87. Marner, "La mfiltraci6n mestiza ," pp. 158- 59. According to Mi'lrner, the
1576 law regarding the succession of cacicazgos was ignored throughout colonial Spanish America (p. 158).
88. See Juan de I'alafox y Mendoza, Manual de estados y profesiones de la
naturaleza del mdio (Mexico City: Coordinacion de Humanidades, Universidad
~,Nacional Aut6noma de Mexico y Miguel Angel Porrlia, 1986), pp. 55-59 and
60-61.
89. Enrique Florescano provides a good synthesis of recent literature on the
primordial titles in "EI canon memorioso forjado por los t(tulos primordiales,"
Colonial l.atin Americml Review 11, no. 2 (2.00.2.): pp. 183-230. Also see James
Lockhart, Nahuas and .~paniards: Postconquest Central Mexican History and
Philology (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center Publications, University
of California, Los Angeles, 1991), pp. 39-64; and Serge Gruzinski, La c%nizaci6n de 10 imagitlario: Sociedades indigenas y occidettta/i;zaci,)n en el Mexico
es/Mno/, sigLos XVI-XViII, Trans. Jorge Ferreiro (Mexico City; Fondo de Cultura Economica, 199I), pp. 104-48.
90. See }lorescano, "EI canon memorioso," pp. 196-97. The Techialuyan codices, a subgroup of thc titulos primordiales, were produced in a workshop in
Mexico City by a group of indigenous painters who provided their services in
surrounding areas, in parts of what today are the states of Hidalgo, Tlaxcala,
and MoreJos. The literature on the Techialoyan codices IS substantial and growing. It includes Donald Robertson, Mexican Manuscript I'amtmg of the carly
Co/mlia/ Period, foreword by El!zabeth Hill Boone (Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994), pp. J90~9S; Donald Robertson and Martha
Barton Robertson, "Techialoyan Manuscripts and Paintings, with a Catalog,"
in Handbook of Middle Americallindians, vol. 14, part 3, Guide to Ethnohistorical Source~ (Austin: UniversiTY of Texas Press, 1975), pp. 265-80; Maria Teresa
. Jarquin Onega, "EI c6dice Techialoyan Garcia Granado~ y la~ congregaciol~es
en d altiplano central de Mexico," in De Tlacuilos y escrihiJIlOs, ed. Xavier
Noguez and Stephanie Woud (Zamora: El Colegio de Michoacan and El Colegio Mexiquense, 1998), pp. 49-58., Stephanie Wood, "F.I problema de la historicidad de Titulos y los c6dices del grupo Techialoyan," in De rIa cui/os y escribanos: EstlJdl"s sohre documelltos inriigenas coloniales dd centro de MeXICO, ed.
Xavier Noguez and Stephanie Gail Wood (Zamora; El Colcgio de MichoacaIl,
1998), pp. 167-.2.2.1.

)26

327

Notes to Chapter 5

Notes to Chapter 5

91. For examples from the Cuernavaca region, see Haskett, Indigenous
Rulers, pp. 156-58.
92. See Gruzinski, La c%nizacirin de to imaginario, pp. 126-28; Lockh<lrt
Nahuas and SIMniards, pp. 57-64; F1orescano, Memory, Myth, and Til11e'
pp. 115-20; and Robert Haskett, "EI legendano don Toribio en los titulo, pri:
mordiales de Cuernavaca,~ in De T/acUilos y escribanos, ed. Xavier Nog uez
and Stephanie Gail Wood (Zamora, Michoadn: EI Colegio de Michoacin
1998), pp. 137-66. The extent to which Christianity and Spanish geneaiogieai
formulas influenced native ideas of community and lineage differed by region
and social group. For example, according to Matthew Restall, late colonial titulos primordiales produced by Mayan elites downplayed the significance of
the Spanish conquest and stressed continuities between the pre-Hispanic and
colonial communal forms. See Mattht:w Restall, Seven Myths o( the S,Janish
Conquest (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Pres~, 2003), p. IU.
93 The royal decree, which was sent to religious and secular officiah in the
viceroyalties of New Spain and Peru, is reproduced in Richard Konetzke, Coleccion de documentos para fa historia de /a (ormaci()n social de Hispanoamerica
'493-1810, vol. 3, bk. 1 (Madrid; Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Ciemificas, 1962), pp. 66-69.
94. Archivo General de la Nacion (hereafter AGN), BienesNacionales, vol. 553,
expo 8. The Spanish term capeilallia combined elements of the English chaplaincy (in which priests received fixed salaries in return for seeing to the religious needs of the corporation or other group whom they served) and chantry
(a pious work). In the latter, the priest or chaplain held a stipulated number of
masses per year for the benefit of the patron or founder and in return received
revenues from the pious work. Sec John Frederick Schwaller, The Church and
Clergy in Sixteemh-Celltury Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico
Press, 1997), p. Ilr.
95. Ibid, fol. 6ov. For a cadcazgo case involving the issue of mdigenoLls purity and accusations of black ancestry, see AGN, Tierras 224 (2).
96. AGN, General de Parte, vol. 37, doc. 71, fob. 92-92V: "EI Virrey manda
que se Ie guarden la~ exempciones y los privilegios con el de Armas a Ursula
Garcia Cortes y Moctezuma y sus hijos, que conforme a sus calidades de caciques principales y cristianos viejo, Ie corrcsponden," 1751.
97. See, for example, Morner; La wrolla eS/Jaiiu/a y [us (oraneos ell/os pueblos de illdios; and Christopher H. Lutz, Sa/ltlagu de Guatemala, 1541-1773=
City, Caste, and the C%mal f'.xperiellce (Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press, 1994), pp. 45-78 and 79-1 Il.

llistoria Mexicalla 14 (1964); pp. 102-29; and AGI, lndifereme 737, n.3.
Debates over the institution of the encomienda during the 1520S and IBoS are
d~[~:.:::;J,in the eLIssic work by Silvio A. Zavala, La encomlenda illdiana, JId ed.
I
City: editorial Pornia, 1992), pp. 40-73.
3. Robert Himmerich y Valencia, The Encomellderos o(New Spain, 1521-15H
IA'";;'~~,University of Texas Press, 1991), p. 12.
4. The term wages (J(omquestis borrowed from Hugo G. Nuttini, The Wages
of Conquest: The Mexican Aristocracy in the Context o( Westem Aristocrac/Cs
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995)
5. Although many encomiendas survived well into the seventeenth century
_and in places such as Yucatan until the end of the colonial period-during the ~econd half of the sixteenth century, some began to be repossessed by
royal authorities_ Zavala, La ellcomienda mdiana, pp. 101-8. Information on
seventeenth-century encomiendas in the Puebla-Tlaxcala region can be found in
AGI, Mexico 1952; and AGI, Mexico 1953
6. See the 1543 royal decree sent to Viceroy Mendoza. Konetzke, Cn/ecci6n,
vol. I , pp. 220-21. And for examples of royal grants (namely, pensions and stiderived from native tribute) given to the familie~ and descendants of the
~'m'lu",",,,,",d first colonists, see ACI, Mexi-.:o I.
7- Colonists used various types of documents to claim royal grants, including in(ormaciones de oficin y parte and ill(nrmaciolles de meritos y calidades.
These two genres were similar to the reporh of merits and services but stressed
different types of services rendered to the crown or community. Examples of
, informaciones (or relacione~) de meritos can be found in AGI, Indiferente 193;
and of informaciones de oficio y parte, in AGI, Mexico 599, 1064-67, and
1088-1100. Also see AGI, Mexico 1952 and 1953, which contain royal decrees
regarding encomiendds, grants, pensions, and so forth.
8. Various laws regarding the maintenance of archives for the children of conquerors were issued in the second half of the sixteenth century. See, for example,
the 159! royal decree sent to Mexico's viceroy, in AGI, !\.1exico 1064, leg. 2.
9. Some of the reports submitted by juan de Cervantes Casau~'s descendants can be found in AGI, Patronato 62, r. I; AGI Patronato 62, r. 4; and AGI,
lndiferente II3, n_ 155.
10. See jesus Larios Martin, "Cien-.:ias complementarias de la nobiliaria,"
in Apuntes de nobiliaria y lIociones de gellea/ogia y herdldica, ed. Fran-.:isco
de Cadenas y Allende et al. (Madrid: Ediciones Hidalguia, 1960), p_ 29; LIra
Monrt, "La prueha de la hidalguld," pp_ 131-32, and Marques de Side Iglesias,
"{Que es nohleza de sangre?" in Apuntes de nobi/saria y llociones de gelleal o gia y herdldica, pp_ 105-6.
_
I I. See jesus Larios Martin, Hidalguia e hidalgos de Indias (Madrid: Asociaci6n de hidalgos a fuero de Espdiia, 1958), pp. 4-5; and Richard Konettke,
"La formacion de la nobleza en Indias," r.studios Amerlcanos (Seville) .'1, no. iO
(1951): pp. 331-39. And for examples of coats of arms granted to Ncw Spain's
conquerors, see AGI, Patronato 169, n. 1, r. 3: Royal decree granting Conulo
Rodriguez, a vecino in Puebld, a coat of arms because of his services in the conquests of Mexico and the province of Panuco, 1538; and AGI, Patronato ,69,

CIIAP n.R 5

1. See jose Antonio Maranll, Las comumdades de Casts/la (Madrid: Alianza

Editorial, 1994).
2. In the late IjlOS, variou~ conquerors tried to convince the crown to alloW
them to make native people into their personal vassals, including the comeT/dador Diego de Ordib. See Enrique One, "Nueve Cartas de Diego de Ord.i>,"

33 0

Notes to Chapter 5"

Notes to Chapter 5

n. I, r. 5; ~oyal dt;cree granting Alonso Galeotc: a verina of Puebla, a COat of

arms for hIs servIces In the taking of MCXH:O CIty and In the conquest of th
e
province of Panuca, 153 8.
12. Nunini, The Wages ()fConqllcst, p. 164.
I}. AGI, Mexico 168; Letter by various conquerors and settlers of New
Spain, February 17, 1564.
14. AGI, Mexico I, n. 275; AGI, Indiferentc 1530, n. 7.
15 Sec, for example, AGI, Mexico 168: Letter from Garda Aguilar to the
crown, 1570. Garcia de Aguilar's encomicnda was inherited by his son-ill-law
FeJi~e de Arellano. H~s eighteenth-century descendants ~nd their mayorazgo
carned the name RamJre,.; de Arellano. ~ee MafldllO Fernandez de Echeverria y
Vqria, Historia de fa fUlldacl('m de la c/Udad de La Puebla de los AI,geles, vol. I
(Puehla: Imprenta Labor, 193 I), p. 9; and AGI, Mexico 208, r. 3.
16. GonLalo G6me2 de Cervante~, La vida ecomjmica y social de Nueva
t"spaiza al finalizar el siglo XVI (Mexico: Antigua Libreria Robredo, de Jose
Porrua e Hijo~, 1944), e~p. pp. 77-79.
17 Bernard Lavalle, Las promesas amhiguas: Crio/lismo colonial en los
Andes (l.ima: Instituto Riva-Aguero de la Pontifiea Universidad Catolica del
Peru, 1993), p. 23.
18. For earlier decrees restricting emigration to the Americas to pure Old
Christians, see AGI, Indiferente 419, leg. 7, fols. 763V-764; AGI, Indiferente
420, leg. 8, fob. 92v-93r. At least until the 152os, the crown occasionally
granted temporary travel permits to individuals that fell under the prohibited
categories, many of them merchants. See AGI, Indiferente 421, leg. I 1, fol. f39;
and ACiI, Indiferente 420, leg. 10, {ols. IV-U.
19 See, for example, AGI, Mexico 1064, leg. 2, foJ. 155; and the 1539 order (rea/ pruvisilJII) br Charles V banning Jews, Moors, and conversos and
the children and grandchildren of people who had been burned or reconciled
from going to and residing in Spanish America. Konctzke, Co/ecciIJII, vol. I,
pp.19 2-93
20. Luis Lira Montt, "EI estatuto de limpieza de sa//gre en el derecho
Indiano," in Xl COIlgrew del Instituto Intemaciollal del Derecho /ndwlI(J
(Buenos Aires: Instituto de Investigaeion de Historia del Derecho, 1997), p. 39.
21. AHN, Inquisici6n de Mexico, libro 1050, fol. 75: Letter from Inqui~itor
Peralta, 1604.
22. Some of the conversos who arrived in New Spain later went to the I'hilippines, which offered many commercial opportunities and, until the 1590;, a
reLuively lax religious environment. See Eva Alexandra Uchmany, "Criptojudios
y cristianos nuevas en las filipinas durante cI siglo X VI," in The Se!Jharadi and
Of/ellla! Jewish Herilage Studies, ed. h~achar Ben-Ami (Jerusalem: Magnes
Pre~~, Hebrew University, 1982), pp. 8.'1-103.
23. See john Tate Lanning, "I.egitimacy and I.impieza deSangre in the Practice of Medicine in the Spani~h Empire," Jahrbllch fiir Geschtchte von Staal,
Wirtschaft, und Gesellschalt Lateillamerikas 4 (1967): p. 43. There i~ a ~ub
sramial scholarship on Jews and convcrso~ in colonial Spanish Amenca. For
Mexico, the literature includes Alfonso Toro, Los ,udios ell la Nueva espana,

(Mexico Ciry: Fondn de Cultura Economica, 1993); Alicia Goiman

~.:::~~.;;. /.,,5 cmwersos elt fa Nueva Espana (Mexico City: Universidad

.r

Aut6noma de Mexico, n.d.); Seymour B. Liebman, The Jews ill New

spaill: Failh, Flame, and the lllquisitilJlI (Coral Gables, FL University of Miami
Press, 1970); Eva Alexandra Uchmany, La vida elltre el judaisltto :v eI cristianismo ell la Nueva Espana, lJ1i0-llio6 (Mexico City: Archivo General de la
,. Nad6n and "ondo de Cultura Economica, 1992); Stanler M. Hordes, "The
Inquisition as Economic and Political Agent: The Campaign of the Mexican
Holy Office agalllst the Crypto-Jews in the Mid-Seventeenth Century," The
Americas 39, no. 1 (1982): PP.23-38; and SoJange Al berro, "Crypto-jews
and the Mexican Holr Office in the Seventeenth Century," in The Jews and
the EX1Jansinn of EUT01,e to the West 14'>0-11100, cd. Paolo Bernardini and
Norman Fiering (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, l.001), pp. 172-85.
2+ AGN, Inquislcion, vol. 189, expo 17.
15. Fray Agustin Sa lucio, Dlscurs() sohre los eslatutrJs, fol. 2V.
26. For example, the crown granted the audiencias and cahddos of Guatemala
and Quito the power to determine the Jimpieza status of candidates for public office. See j. JoaquJll Pardo, ed., Pnmtllario de Reales Cedulas 152Y-1599
(Guatemala: Union Tipogratica, 1941), p. 14; ACil, Indiferente 424, leg. 22,
fols. 262V-26~ and 406r-v.
27. AGr, Mexico 280. Probanza of Francisco Gutierrez de Leon, priest and
vecino of Puebla, April 14, I539.
28. AGI, Mexico 280. The precentor wa~ in charge of the music provided during cathedral services. Not a few probanzas de limpieza de sangre for Spaniards
in Mexico were requested by their rdatives in Spain. See, for example, AGI,
Mexico 2606; AGN, lnquisicion, vol. 194, expo .J; AGI, Mexico 121, r. I.
29. A(;I, Mexico 282.
30. AC;J, Mexico 281. For more examples of informaciones de limpleza de
sangre made br alcaldes or corregidores in Spain for people going to New Spain
or already there, see AGN, Inquisici6n, vol. 194, expo 3; John Carter Brown
Library, Rare Book Collection, Libra de lnformaciones (hereafter JCBLlU),
vol. r, fols. 17-64; JCBLlLI, \101. I, fols. 243-74; JCBLlLI, vol. 1, fok 331-50;
and JCBLlLl, \101. 1, fols. 685-720.
31. AGI, Mexico 280. The volume also contains a 1552 letter sent to the
crown by Mexico City's cathedral chapter requesting that all who were named
to it be Old Christians.
32. AGI, Mexico 2606. A prebend was a ~tipend or income from a position, u~ually eccle,ia~tica!. Prebends were provided by a cathedral or church
to clergymen as a kind of payment for their serVices Of_simply as an honorMY
recognition.
33. AGI, Mexico 121, r. I.
AGI, Mexico 121, T. I. The volume also includes the informaci6n suhmittted by Miguel de Asurcia, another applicant for the ririe of royal ;cribe at
the turn of the ~ixteenth century.
3$. Sec ~chwaller, The Church alld Clergy In Sixteenth-Century Mex/co,
pp.81- 109.

34.

Notes to Chapter 5

Notes to Chapter S

. 36. For examples of informaciones de olicio y parte with limpieza de Sangre

information, see AGI, Mexico 241, n. 4, fols. 1-22: Informao:i6n de oficio
parte of the priest Bartolome de Aguayo, 1642; and AGI, MexICO 241, n. Il~
Informa~ion de oficio.y parte of the priest hancisco de Castillo MiLln, 1644.
Requestmg a benefice III the cathedralo:hapter of Mexico or Puebla, Milan presented a report of his merits and information regarding his legitimao:y, !impieza
de sangre, and other qualifications.
F AHN, Inquisl66n de Mexico, libro lO50: Letter from the Mexican
Inquisition to the Suprema, November 1604.
38. Limpieza record~ submitted by candidates to the Franciscan Order's novitiate in Puebla de 10. Angeles can be consulted at the John Carter Brown
Library, Rare Book Collenion, Libros de lnformaciones, 14 volumes. Mexico's
Archivo General de la Nao:i6n has hundreds of limpieza documents submitted
by candidates to rhe Jesuit Order in Ncw Spain from the early seventeenth o:entury until 1767, the year that the Jesuits were expelled from Spanish America.
See AGN, Archivo Hist6rico de Hacienda, vols. 11-15,317, and 636-38; and
AGN, Jesuitas, vols. 1-15, I-L4, fl-ro, 11-18, 11-33, IV-2, IV-2.4, IV-L5, IV-37,
and IV-59.
39 According to Dominguez Ortiz, crypto-Judaism was perceived a~ a serious problem in Spanish America only whencristaos novo~ began to have a ~trong
presence there. L(Js judel!collversos ell t:spaiia y America (1971), p. 134.
40. Seymour B. Liebman, cd., The f.nlightened: The Writillgs of Luis de
Carvajal, el Mow, trans. Seymour B. Leibman (Coral Gables, FL UniverSIty of
;\liami Press 1967), pr. l.2.-2j.
4T. Sec AGN, Inquisicion, va!. 77, expo 34, fob. I91V-194V; and AGN,
J udi6al, vol. 5, expo 5.
4L. The Suprema sem colonial Inquisition tribunals frequent reminders of the
purity requirement for wives of familiars. See, for example, AHN, Inqui~ici6n
de Mexico, !ibro 1049, fols. 591-59IV; and AHN, Inquisici6n de MexlnJ, libro
ro5I, fo!' 58.
43 AHN, Inquisicion de Mexico, !ibro 1O)l, fo!' 47.
44. For example, in 1658, Martin Garcia Renr.l6n was denied a habit by the
Franciscan Order hecause of witness declarations that he was a descendant of
Pablo de la Cruz, who had been reconciled in Spain. Hoping that a more thorough investigation would help restore his family's honor, he requested a probanza from the Inquisition. AHN, Inquisici6n de Mexico, leg. 2.2.76.
45. Herzog, Defilling Nations, p. 65.
46. See Stafford Poole, "Criollos and Criollismo," in t:ncyclopedia of Mexico:
History, Society alld Culture, ed. Michael S. Werner (Chicago: huroy Dearborn,
1997), p. 371.
47. Lav.llle, Las 1!romesas amiJigllas, p. 20.
48. Himmerich y Valencia, The f.IlC(}IIlClfdcros of New Spaill, p. 6.1.
49 AGI, Mexico 343.
50. See Jo~e F. de la Pena, Oligarquia y pmp/edad ell NUCl'a bpafta (1550-1624)
(Mexico City: Fonda de Cultura E,:onomica, 198,), pp. I49-;I. Puebl.!'s conquerors and fint colonists also underwent a ~ociaJ and political decline, but it
wa~ neither as sudden nor a~ ~harp as that of theIr counrerpaft~ in the capital.

Some members of Puebta's more traditional families, those that had settled
there in tbe 1530S, continued to have an important presence in municipal government at the end of the sixteenth century and, indeed, throughout the co[onia[ period. For the first half of the wlonial period, ~et: r.le [a l'ena, Oligarquia
y lJropiedad en fa Nueva Espana, pp. 162-80; and for the second, Gustavo
Rafael Alfaro Ramirez, "F.[ reclutamiento oligarquico en el cabildo de la Puebla
de los Angeles, 1665-1765" (mastt:r'~ theSIS, Universidad Autbnoma de Puebla
Facultad de Filo,ofia y Letras, 1994).
'
51. AGI, Mexico L95: ""RelaCl6n del estado en que se hayan las cosas eelesiasticas en la Nueva Espana," report sent by Pedro Ramirez, 1606.
p. AGI, Mexiw 2.93; and AGI, Mexico 2606.
53. Archivo del Ayuntamiento de Puebla (Pueb[a), Aetas de Cabildo [hereafter
AAPAC], vol. 15, doc. 89, fols. 52-.)3v; AGI, Mexico 138, r. L. In the latter document, a fourth category was deployed: gachu{!illes (also cachupilles). Of uncertain origins, the word here referred to friars who were born in Spain and had
taken the habit there but were trying to monopolize religious offices and benefices in Mexico. Eventually the word became a derogatory name for Spaniards.
On lingering tensions between creole friars and those born in Spain over the
alternativa, see AGI, Mexico 548: Lt:ner from the bishop of Put:b[a, 1658.
54. See AGI, Mexico 1064, libro. L: Royal decree of 1591.
55. Government officials were especially concerned that creoles would forge
alliances with blacks, mulattos, and other "uprooted" individuals. For exampte, at one point Mt:xico City'S audlencia even supported giving encomienda~
to all the descendants of the conquerors and first colonists becau~e it feared
that otherwise they "might unite with mulattoes, blacks and other lost people
and attempt some kind of movement." AGI, Indiferente 1530, n. 7: "Parecer del
Virrey y [a Audiencia de Mexico sobre el estado de los rep.lrrimlentos y de las
encomiendas en dicha Audienl'ia," 1597.
56. On European theories of colonia! degeneration due to climate, see Lavalle,
Las 11rl!mesas amIJigllas. pp. 45-61.
57. Juan Lbpez de Velasco, Geogratra y descripwJn universal de las India>,
vo!' 248 of Blhlmteca de AmlJres ESll4iioles, ed. Don Marcos JImenez de la
Espada (Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1971), pp. 13-LO.
58. Gregorio Garcia, Origell de los il/dios del Nuevo Mundo (Mexico City:
Fonr.lo de Cultura Economica, 1981).
59. Lavalle, Las promesas amblguas, pp ..)0-$9.
(,0. Lavalle, Las promesas am/Jigllas, pp. 48-50; and Stuart B. Schwartz,
"Colonial Identities and the $ociedad de Castas." Colonial Latm America Review 4, no. r (1995): p. I~4
61. Stoler, Race alld the Educatio1/ of Desire, p. 32.
62. AGI, Mexico 547.
6J. AGI, MexICO 1064, !ibro L.
64. See Juan de Cardenas, Prohlemas y secretos marallillosos de las Indias
(Madrid: Alianza Editonal, 1988 [159IJ), esp. pp. :z.o8-9 and 217. Also rder to
Jorgt: Cani.lart:s-Esguerra, "'New World, New Star~: Patriotic Astrology and the
Invention of Indian and Crt:ole Bodies ill Colonial Spanish America 1600-165,"
American Historical Rel'/CI/J 104, no. 1 (1999): p. 60.

332

333

334

Notes to Chapter 6

65. See Brackette Williams, "C1a~sification Systems Revisited: Kinship, Caste

Race, and Nationality as the How of Blood and the ,<.,pread of Rights," in Natur:
a/izillK Power: Essays in Fellll1list Cultural Analysis, ed. Sylvia Yanagisako and
Carol Delaney (New York and London: Routledge, 1995), pp. 201-36.
66. See AGI, Mexico 2606; AGI, Mexico, leg. 295; and AGI Mexico 8u.
67. Lavalle, Las {lromcsas ambiguas, pp. 59-61.
68. Sulorzano Pereira, Po/itica India/la, vol. I, pp. 442-43.
CHAI'TlR 6

1. See, for example, Patricia Seed, To Love, Honor, and Obey in Colonial
MexIco: Conflicts Over Marriage Choice, 1574-18.1.1 (Stanford: Stanford \.1m,
versity Press, 1988), p. 251 n. 25; and Cope, The Limits of Racial Dnminatlull,
p. 24. Note that in certain places, parish books for people of mixed ancestry were
never kept, and in those that they were (mainly in larger citIes), the timing varied.
2. AHN, Inquislci6n, libro n66. The word mozarahe eventually came to
designate Christian~ who had lived under Muslim rule (especially in Toledo)
and adopted aspens of Islamic culture.
3. Franci~co Dominguez y Company notes that in sixteenth-century Havana
and other Spanish American towns, the children of Spanish males, even if dassified as mesti.w or mulatto, were considered vecinos, and some were able to
access land and even political po~ts. Dominguez y Company, "La condicion de
vecino," pp. 713-14.
4. Of the remaining fifty-four, forty-four had Castilian wives and ten were
single. See "Relaci6n de 105 vecinos que habia en Ie Ciudad de los Angele~ eI ai'io
de 1534," Epistoiario de Nueva Espana, vol. 3, pp. 1}7-40.
5. For example, III the 1534 report, Pedro Gallardo, Cristobal Martin, and
Cristobal de Morales were all listed as married to women "from the Lind."
When their (legitimate) children were registered in the Sagrario's bapti,mai
record~, however, no mention of thelf mothers being indigenous was made,
and they were not classified as mestizos. Academia Mexlcana de Genealogia y
Heraldica, Libras de Bautislllos de bpanoies de! Sagrario de Puehla (hereafter
I.BESP), vol. I, fols. If, 4r-jV, and 20r. The same pattern of classification can
be found in the Sagrario for the children of other conquerors and vecino, who
were married to native women.
6. The fir~t time the <:ategory of mestiw(a) was used in the Sagrario's baptismal records wa~ on Augu,t 3, '544. Signifi..:amly, the word appears cros~ed
out In the following manner: ~. The entry wa~ recorded for the daughter
of Benito Mendez aad his wife, who i., not named, but pre~um<lbly WJS indigenous. The next rime the term appeared was in the year 1550. LllES!', va!. I
(IH.)-91), fok J v and 10.
7. AHN, Inqui5icion de Mexico, libra 1049, fols. Hf-57v: Report from
Pedro de Vega regarding the population of Mexico City, Puebla, and other elties, 1595. The report was based on a census taken in New Spain III 1592. ror
Mexico City, Vega estimated a population of 60,000, consisting of 40,000 Jay
Spamards; 2,000 religious (friars and nuns); 400 clergymen; I,IDO studenr,;

Notes to Chapter 6

335

2,000 mestizos; T,$00 free blacks and mulattos; 10,000 slaves; and },OOO "foreigners." The e~timJte for the Spanish population wa, ba,eJ on a count of male
heads of households times eight (assumed to be the average number of people in
a Spanish household, induding parems, children, and servants).
8. See AAPAC, vo!' 5, doc. 167; AAPAC, vo!' 6, docs. II7, 124, 264; and
AAPAC, vol. 8, doc. 97. In 1556, the city (.:ouncil ordned "mestizos, mulatos,
indios," and free bJa(.:ks not to live in the (.:ity or o<:cupy any of ib lots without
first obtaining speCIal licenses. Biblioteca Nadonal de Antropologia e Historia
(Mexico City), Microfilm Collection (hereafter BNAHMC), Serie Puehla, roll
8I, fols. 47V-48.
9. The Sagrario's baptismal records are consistent with Peter Boyd-Bowman's
study of African slaves in mid-sixteenth century Puebla, in which he concluded
that few had surnames. Boyd-Bowman, "Negro Slaves in Early Colonial Mexico," The Americas 26, no. 2 (1969), p. 145
to. l.BESP, vol. I, fol. }or. While the terms IIllllata and negra appedr relatively soon, that of indIa hegins to be used only in the last decades of the ~ix
teenth century and even then only sporadically. See, for example, LBES}>, vol. 1,
fol. 131V; and LBES!', voL 3, fo!' 27v.
II. Elizabeth Anne Kuznesof stresses the same point in her study of parish rewrds from sixteenth-century Lima and Vera<:ruz. "Ethnic and Gender
Influences on 'Spanish' Creole Society in Colonial Sp<lnish America," Colonial
Latin American RelJiew 4, no. I (1995): p. 164
12. AGI, Mexico 168: Letter from GonzaJo DiaL de Vargas to the Spanish
king, May 2, 1556. My translation and interpolations.
13. See AGI, Mexico 280: LeTTer from Fr<ly Cfuzate requesting royal funds
to e'stablish a home for the daughters of Spanish males and indigenous women,
June 12, 1<;49; AGI, Indtferente 427, leg. 30, fols, 7}f-T,V: Decree ordering
New Spain;s viceroy and royal audiencia to assign tutors to orphaned me~tizo
boys and girls and to look out for their well-being, February 18, 1555; anJ AGI,
Mexico 1064, leg. 2, fols. 136-I36v: Decree to the viceroy of New Spain, requesting a report on the status of the monastery for orphaned young mesti~os,
March 3, 1585. Also ref~r to Antonio r. Garcia-Abasolo, Martin t:nriquez y
ta Reforma de 15611 ell Nueva bpana (Sevilla: Excelentisima Diputaci6n Provincial de Sevilla, 1983), pp. 212-57; and teyes de Indlas, vo!. 2 (Madrid: Blblioteca Judi(.:ial, 1889), p. 128.
14. Charles Gibson, "The Identity of Diego Munoz Camargo," Hispanic
American Historical Review 30, nn. 2 (1950): pp. 199-205.
15. Ibid., p. 207
16 For a listing of colomal parish records and the books kept by year, refer
to D~vid I. Robinson, ed., Research InventlJry of the 'Mexican Collection of
Cn/rJllwl Parish Registers (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1980).
17. Eva Alexandra Uchmany, "[I mestizaje en el siglo XVI novohispano,"
Historia Mexicalla 37, no. 1 (1987): pp. 31-}4
18. BNAHMC, Serie Pllebla, roll 8T, fol. I}V. A 1590 report by Viceroy Velasco
(the son) described the Spaniard, arriving on every fleet as a miserable I~t a.nd
a, thieves with man)' immoral habits. Velasco indi(.:ated that he was establl~hJllg

Notes to Chapter 6

Notes to Chapter 6

a rural police forct: or Hermandad to deal with all the "lost" peoplt: of the vice_
royalty, "white and black." AGI, Mexico 22, 11. 24.
19 Andrt:a Martinez Baracs and Carlos Sempat Assadourian, cds., Suma y
ell/loga de toda la descripcitln de Tlaxcala, p. 169.
20. Some guilds, such as tho~t: for silk producers, were closed to blacks
but others allowed them membt:rship and somt: mobdity. The lant:r included
the guilds for gold beaters, hat makers, glove makers, nt:edle makers, candle
makers, and leather drt:ssers (the last two acceptt:d them as masten). Rubert
LaDon Brady, "The Emagence of a Nt:gro Class in Mexico, 1524-1640," (PhD
diss., Univt:r~ity of Iowa, 1965), pp. 65 and 113. Also see Richard Kont:tzke,
"Ordenanzas dt: gremios durante la epoca colonial," in Estudios de Historia Social de Espana (Madrid: Con~ejo Superior dt: Investigaciunes Cientfficas, 1949),
PP4 8)-524.
21. BNAHMC, Serie Puebla, roll 81, fols. 52-52V and roll 98, fols. 89-89v.
22. Cope, The [.imits of Racial Domination, pp. 18-24.
2.~. In 1536, the crown madt: the succession uf encomiendas limitt:d to individuals of legitimatt: birth, whilh affected many of the childrt:n of Spani~h_
Indian unions. Thirtt:en years latt:r, it barred mt:~tizos from acquiring native
labor through the reparrimiento and from serving in royal or public posts.
Richard Konetzke, "Estado y Sociedad en las Indias," Estudios Americal/os 3,
no. 8 (1951): p. 57.
24 Marner, Race Mixture in the History of Latin America, pp. 42-43; C. E.
Marshall, "The Birth of the Mestiw in New Spain," Hispanic American Historical Review 19 (1939): pp. 160-84; and Richard Konetzke, "EI me,tizaje y
su Importancia en eI desarrollo de la poblacion hispano-americana durante Ia
epoca colonial," Revista de Indlas 7, no. 24 (April-June, 1946): p. 230.
25. AGI, Mb;:ico 1064, leg. 2.
26. See, for t:xample, Aguirre Beltran, l.a poblaci()n negra de Mtixiw,
pp. 153-54; Ben Vinson Ill, Bearing Arms fur his Majesty: The Free-colored MIlitia in Colomal Mexico (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Prt:ss, 2001), p. 3;
and Robert Jackson, "RaCe/caHe and the Creation and Meaning of Identity in
Colonial Spanish America,~ Revista de Indias 55, no. 203 (I995): pp. 150-73'
27. Among the Spanish writers whu linked the lndian~ to the Jews were Diego
Dur-.in, Jose de Acosta, and Gregorio Garcia. The theory was popular in the
Atlantic world as a whole. See Richard H. Popkin, "The Rise and Fall of the
Jt:wi~h Indian Theory," in Menasseh bell israel mid his World, ed. Yo~efKaplan,
Henry Mcchoulan, and Richard H. Hopkin (LeiJt:n, Netherlands: E. J. Brill,
19119), pp. 63-82.
28. fray Antonio V,izquez de Espmosa, Descripci(in de la Nueva Espana en eI
Siglo XVlI (Mexico City: Editorial Patria, 1944), pp. 49-50. The similarity be
tween the i and the i, as well d~ between tht: u and the n, in early modern manu~l'fipts has led many a re-dder to confuse the word indio for judio, and vice ver~'J
29. Ibid., pp. 41-45. VazqueL de Espinosa suggt:sted that the Indians d~
scended from Issachar, who in the Bible (Genesis, chap. 49) is likened to a do
mestlcated beast of burden ("a strong a~s~), satisfied with a pleasant plCce of
land dnd willing to becomt: a slave to the Canaanites.

30. AIIN, Inquisici(lll de Mexico, libro 1047, fols. 4.,0-34: Correspondence

from the Mexican Inquisition to the Suprema, November 5, 1576.
31. DiccirJ1larlO de Auturidades, vol. II (Madrid: Editorial Gredos, 199 0
{I7321}, pr. 14T and 204
32. AHN, 111(.IUi~icion, libro IOSl, fols. 223-224v: Letter to the Suprema
from Dr. l'ranci~co Bazan de Alhornoz and Dr. Juan Gutierrez Flores regarding heretic Indians ("indios hert:it:s~), Mexico, 1619. Tht: word ladilio had first
been used in the Iherian Peninsula to refer to Muslim, and "foreigners" who
were able to use the Castilian lan/<uage so well that Spaniards were not able to
tell their accents apart from their own. The word was also evt:ntually applit:d
to Jews and in particular to the languagt: spoken by the Sephardim. In the colonial contt:xt, depending on the region, it referred to H isp'Jnicized native people,
mestizos, or blacks and others who wt:rt: fluent in Spanish and had adopted
other e1emt:nts of Castilian culture but were not quite considered Spaniards. On
the term\ meanings in Spain, sec Covdfruhias, Tesoro de la lengua Castellmta,
p. 697; and Corominas, Diccirmario aitico etimolrJgico, vol. I, pp. 9-10.
33 Ma, Mexico 347
34. Francisco Moralt:s, O. F.M., Ethnic and SOCIal Background of the FrallC/Scan Friars m SClienterl/th-Centuf)' Mexico (~'Jshington, DC: Academy of
American Franciscan History, 1973), p. 16.
35. Jeronimo de Mendieta, Historia eclesidstica indiana, vol. 11, Bib/wteca
de Autores Espmloles, vol. 261 (Madrid: Ediciones Aria" 197.,), pp. 59-61.
36. See Gruzinski, La wirlllizacir)n de (o imagmaflo, pp. 146-83, esp. ISO-57
and 170-72; and Inga Clendinnen, "Ways totht: Sacred: Reconstructing 'Religi(;n'
in Sixteenth Century Mexic(),~ Histor)' and Alfthro/J()log), 5 (1990): pp. 105-41.
37. The term is borrowed from Gruzinski, La co{omzaCl611 de io imagmario,
p. 15 6.
)8. St:~ Ht:rzog, Defining Natiolls, pp. 43-63, esp. 44-45.
39. Garda, Origen de los indios del Nuevo Mundo, pp. 79-128. The book
was first pL!bli~ht:d in Valencla, Spain, in I607.
40. Garda, Origen de los indim del Nuevo Mundo, p. 102.
41. AHN, lnquisicion ro50, fol. 341. The word /laci(in was also ~ometimt:s
used to refer to socidl groups (such as pea~ants or soldiers), womt:n, and member~ of a kingdom (a, III the "Castilian nation~). In the late 1700S, it started
to be used in a more modern political territorial sense (as in naci6n espanola),
but even then, several of the term\ older connotations were still in usc. Pedro
Alvarez de Miranda, Palabras e ideas: EI iexiw de la l/ustracl')1I temprana
eSlmnofa (1680-1760) (Madrid: Real Academia EspaflOld, 1992), pp. 2Il-26.
Also set: Monica QUIjada, "~Que nacl6n? Dinamicas y c!icotomfas de Ia nacion
en eI imaginario hispanoamt:ricana del siglo XIX,~ in 'magmar la lIaci()". cd.
Frallo;ois-Xavier GUl;rra and Monica Quijada (Munster and Hamhurg: I.it,
1994), p. 22. NKhola~ HL!J~on points out that in early modern Europe, the conceph of race and nation both derived from "lineage" or "stock." Hudmn, "'From
'NatIOn' to 'Race': The Origin of Racial Classification in Eighteenth-Century
Thought," Eighteenth-Century 5t11dics 29, no. 3 (l996): pp. 247-64.
42. Garcia, Origen de los indios del Nllel'(J Mundo, p. 73.

337

Notes to Chapter 6

Notes to Chapter 6

43 As Stoler has observed, when sexual symbols are used to represent colonial domination, they are more than metaphors and not Just about gender
but about other social relations, including class and ra(.:e. See Stoler, "Carnal
Knowledge," pp. 54-55.
44 Cartas de lndias (Madrid: Mmisterio de fomento, 1877), p. 299.
45 Robin Blackburn, "The Old World Ba(.:kground to European Colonial
Slavery," William and Mary Quarterly 54, no. 1 (1997): pp. 70 and 73-75.
46. According to James H. Sweet, antihla(.:k imagery and the association of
"bla(.:kness" and slavery in Spain surfaced as early as the eighth century, when
Muslim rulers mtroduced increasing numbers of sub-Saharan African slaves
into the peninsula. Sweet, "The Iberian Roots of American Racist Thought,"
pp. 145-50. Also see David B. Davis, Challenging the Boundaries of Slavery
(Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 2003), pp. 7-8. And
on blacks in southern Iberia, see Ruth Pike, "Sevillian Society in the Sixteenth
Century: Slaves and Freedmen," Hispanic American Historical Review 7, no. 3
(1967): pp. 344-59.
47 "White slaves" (esc!av(Js hlancos) included Mu~lims, Berbers, and Jews
who had had been captured in North Africa. Although they were initially allowed in Spanish America, Spanish kings Issued various decrees, starting in
1501, which prohibited the practice. Aguirre Beltran attributed the deci~ion to
fcars that the presence of Muslim~ and other "infidels" In the colonies would
undermine the Christianizing mission. Aguirre Beltran, La IJOhlaci6n negra,
pp. 104 and 156.
48. See Matthew Re~tall, "Black Conquistadors: Armed Africans in Early
Spanish America," The Americas 57, no. 2 (2.000): pp. 167-205; Restall, Seven
Myths fl{ the Spanish Conquest, pp. 44-63; and Dominguez y Company, "La
condi(.:ion de vecino," pp. 7 I 3-T 4- For vecino titles granted to blacks 1Il l'uebla
during the 1530S and 1540S, see AAPAC, vols. I and 449 See Pagden, Fall of Natural Man, p. 33; William D. Phillips Jr., "The Old
World Background of Slavery in the Americas," in Slavery and the Rise of the
Atlantic System, cd. Barbara L Solow (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge UniversiTY
Press, 199rl, pp. 43-61; John Thormon, Africa and Afriwns ill the Makmg
of the Atlantic W(Jrld. /400-1/100 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Pres>,
19911), pp. 13-12.5; and Peter Wade, "Negros, ind[gena~ e identidad na<:ional
en Colombia," in lmaginar la nacilJn, ed. Fran'foisXavier Guerra and Monica
Quijada (Miinster and Hamburg: Lit, 1994), pp. 259-61.
50. Juan de Solorzano y l'ereira, De lnd/arum lure. Liber Ill: De retentione
lndiamm, ed. C. Baciero et aL (Madrid: Camejo Superior de Inve~tigaciones
Cientfficas, 1994), pp. 412-63, esp. 429-31.
5I. Henrique Urbano, cd., TradicilJn y modermdad en los Andes (CUSCO,
Peru: Centro de [studio. Regionales Andinos, "Bartolome de las Casas," 199.1.),
pp. xxxiv-xxxv.
52. See, for example, the 15liO report by the viceroy Martin Enriquez, who
warned his suo;;essor of the need for labor in the mines. lllstrucciolles que [os
vlrreyes de Nueva ESIJaiia dC/awn a sus silcesores (Mexico: lmprenta lmpenal,
186 7), p. 245

53 Letter from the ar(.:hbishop of Mexico to the king, June 30, 1560, in
Paso y Troncoso, Epistolano de Nueva Espana, vol. 9 (Mexico City: Antigua
Librerfa Robredo, de Jose Porrlia e Hijos, 1939-42), pp. 53-,'j5.
54 See Albornoz, "Tratado sabre la esclavitud," in Biblioteca de Autores
Espaiioles, vol. 6,'j (Madrid: M. Rivadeneyra, 1873), pp. 231-33; and Biblioteca de Autores ESIJaiioles, vol. 65, pp. Ixxxvi-Ixxxviii. For more on Spani~h
opponents of black slavery, see Colin A. Palmer, Slaves of the White God:
Blacks ill Mexico, 1570-lfiJo (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1976), pp. 167-72..
55 See Emiqueta Vila Vilar, Hispano-America y el comercio de esc!aV(ls
(Seville: Escuela de Estudios Hispanoamericanos, 1977), esp. pp. 2.3-91.
56. Jame~ H. Sweet, Recreating Africa: Culture, Kmshi/J, and Religion in
the African-Portuguese World, '441-1770 (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), pp. 3, 15-19, and 117-96. As of the
1580s, slaves increasingly derived from Central Africa, particularly, Kongo and
Angola.
57 Garcia-Abasolo, Martin Enriquez y 1'1 Reforma de '568, p. 261.
58. The Spanish began to use the curse of Ham to explain black ~lavery in
the last third of the sixteenth centurr; the Portuguese began to do ~o a century earlier. See Palmer, Slaves of the White Gnd, p. }9; and Russell-Wood,
"Before Columbus," p. 154. And for a discussion of the use~ of the biblical
myth in broader Europe, see Benjamin Braude, "The Sons of Noah and the
Construction of EthlllC and Geographical Identities in the Medieval and Early
Modern Periods," William alld Mary Quarterly 54, no. 1 (1997l: pp. 103-42.
59 See, for example, AGI, Indifcrente 42.5, leg. 24, foL I}f.
60. Fray Prudencio de Sandoval, Hlstoria de 1'1 vida y hechos del Emperador
Carlos V. Vol 82. of Bibliuteca de Autores Espanoles (Madrid: [diciolles Atlas,
1955 [1606]), p. 319.
61. Sandoval, Histrma de fa vida)J hechos del Emperador Carlos V, p. 319.
62. Patterson, Siallery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 19112), pp. 6 and 9.
63. As ClaudIO Lomnitz-Adler has pointed out, the Spanish system of slavery seemed to be premi~ed on the idea that individual blacks, under the supervision of their masters dnd church officials, could he brought into the Christian
fold, but that as "nations" they were inherently disloyal to the crown and Catholic faith and hence not viable as communities. Lomnitz-Adler, Exits from the
Lahyrinth, pp. 267-68.
64 For Puebla, see BNAHMC, Serie Puebla, roll 98, fols. 89V-94; and
AAPAC, Iibro 9, fol. 2.2..
65. Refer to Nicole von Germeten, Black Blood Brothers: C(}nfratentities
and Social Mobility for Afro-Mexicans (Gainewille: University Pres~ of }']orida,
2006). Recent works on the population of African descent in colonial Mexico
also include Adriana Naveda Chavez-Hita, Pardos, mulato:; y lihertos: Sexto
Encuelltm de Afromexlcamstas (Xalapa, Mexico: Universidad Veranuzana,
2.001); Ben Vinson, Bobhy Vaughn, and Cidra Garcia Ayluardo, Afromixico:
E! pulso de 1'1 /}()"laciIJII Jlegra en Mexico, ul/a historia recurdada, (JIl'idada y

339

Notes to Chapter 6
~'uelta a recordar (Mexico, City; Centro de Investigacion y Docencia Economica
2004); Lul. M. Martinez Montiel, Presencia afncalla en Mexico (Mexic~
City: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Arte~, 1995); Luz M. Martinez
Montiel and Juan Carlos Reyes G., Memoria delilf Encuentro NaciIJnal de
Afromexical/istas (Colima, Mexico: Gobierno del Estado, InsTltuto Colimense
de Cultura, 1993); and the spn:ial issue of Signos histriricos II, no. 4 (.WOO).
66. See, for example, the request for a papal dispensation for his "defect of
birth" ~ubmitted by Nicolas Antonio de Anijo, a physician in the city Puebl a
who in 1707 tried to be ordained as a priest. AGI, Mexico 709.
67. In the eyes of colonial officials, free blacks and mulattos demonstrated
their political disloyalty through their rebellious tendencies and refusal to pay
tribute to the crown, which they supposedly owed because they were living in
the lands of Castilian monarchs and enjoying the benefits of the Spani~h system
of "peace and justice," and because they had achieved their liberty. The claim
that blacks wae disloyal was also tied to the perception (whether justified or
not) of their mobility and lack of fixed residence, which automatically impli~d
lack of integration and hence another violation of the duties of a vecino. See
AGI, Indiferente 427, leg. 30, fols. 248r-249r: Royal decree ordering that blacks
and mulattos be made into tributaries, 1574; AGI, Contaduria 677: Regi~ten. of
black and mulatto tribute for Mexico, l576-7!!; and AGI, Mexico 22, no. 24:
Memorial of Villamanrique's government (included in the letters of his ,uccessor, Viceroy Luis de Velasco, the younger), 1590.
68. See Vinson Ill, Bearillg Arms for HIS Majesty. Also see the collectIOn of
articles on black militia participation in colOiliall.atin America in journal of
Co/rmialism and C%mal History 5, no. 2 (2004). Thanks primarily to their
military contributLOm in regions vulnerable to foreign encroachment, free (and
in some cases enslaved) blacks were able to obtain, if not the political rights of
vecindad, economic ones, such a~ access to land. See Jane G. Landers, Black
Society in S1Jamsh Florida (Urbana: UniverSity ofIlIinois Pres~, r999), pp. 21-13
and 20:l.-:l.8; Lander~, "Acquisition and Loss on a Spani~h Frontier: Tht
hee Black Homesteaders of Florida, 17!!4-r81I," in Agaillst the Odds: Free
Blacks in the Slave Societies of the Americas, ed. Jane G. Landers (London
and Portland, OR: Frank Cass, r996), pp. !!5-101; and Kimberly S. Hanger,
"Patronage, Property and Persistence: The Emergence of a Free Black Elite!Jl
Spanish New Orleans," in Against the Odds, pp. 44-64.
69. See Frederick Bowser, "Africans in Spanish American Colonial Society,"
in The Cambridge History of Latill America, vol. II, ed. Leslie Bethell (Cam,
bridge and New York: Cambridge Univenity Press), pp. 366-67.
70. A number of laws at tht turn of tht century tned to curb the trend. In
1601, for example, Viceroy Gaspar de Zutliga y Azevedo limited the number of
blacks and mulattos who could accompany allY Spaniard to three. AGI, 1-1cxlco
2.70: Decree regarding accompaniment~ of blacks and mulattos, 1601.
7r. See note 3:l. in thiS chapter.
72. See Maria Elena Martinez, "The Black Blood of New Spain: /.impia a
de Sangre, Racial Violence, and Gendered Power in Early Colonial Mexico,"
William ami Mary Quarterl), .'lrd ser., vol. LXI (july 204): pp. 479-520.

Notes to Chapter'',
73. Compare, for example, the fantasies that surfaced in 1612 with the fears
that Spaniards in Mexico City had about the possibility that blach and mulattoS would try to rebel in the year 1666. Martina., "The Black Blood of New
Spain"; and AHN, Inquisici6n, lihro [060, fols. 175-20F.
74. Corominas, Dicciollarj() critico etimoltigico de la leI/gila castellana,
pp. 7H-24. Corominas disagreed with Covarrubias's claim that the word casta
derived from the Latin eastus, which alluded to chastity.
75. Dominguez Ortiz made the same observation in La clase de los conver50S en Castilla ellla edad moderna, p. 55
76. "Castizos," ~tated Covarrubias, "we call those that derive from good lineage and caste." Tesoro de la lengua castellana, p. 282.
77. Because the word casta referred to people who were "mixed," it meant
the opposite of what caste meant when the British (who borrowed it from the
portuguese) applied it to the Hindu system of ~ocial differentiation, which was
based on endogamous social groups. In Spani$h Americ'J, then, the sistema de
castas was a function of the instability, not ngidity, of "caste." See Julian PittRivers, "On the Word 'Caste,''' in The Translatioll of Culture: Essays to E. E.
Evalls-Pritchard, ed. T. O. Beidelman (London: Tavistock, 1971), pp. 234-35
Iberians also u~ed the word casta to designate the place of origin of slaves who
had been born in Africa (a~ in casta angola) and thus applied it to "pure blacks.
According to Leslie Rout, all blacks were considered part of the castas, even if
they had no native or Spanish ancestry, because it was African blood itself,
not necessarily mixture, that was deemed to have a degenerating effect. Leslie
B. Rout, The African Experiellce in S/Janish America (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1976), p. Il7.
78. AGN, lnquisicion, Cajd l63, fols. 1-nV.
79. AGI, Mexico 280. My translation and interpolations.
80. See Williams, "Classification Systems Revisited," pp. wl-36.
8I. Garcia, Ongen de los indios del Nuevo Mund(), p. 65
82. Lewis, Hail of Mirrors. pp. 22-25
83. JCBLlLl, vol. I, fols. 487-9I. Also see JCBLlLI, vol. 2, fols. w7-14: informacion of Alonso Gomez, made in the Villd de Niebla (Spain), 1617
84. AGI, Mexico I2l, r. I.
85. Covarrubias Orol,co, Tesoro de la lengua castellana, p. 75I. For Corominas, the word mestizo waS of uncertain origin, but he speculated that it might
have come from the Latin mixtus. Corominas, DicclOnario aitico etimo/ligico
de la lel/gua castellalla, vol. 3, p. 359
86. Forbes writes that, in Mexico, the term mulat() continued to be used
for the descendants of blacks and Indians into the 165,oS and that within the
Spanish empire, the term generally meant a person who was half African and
half something else. As such, it could be applied to various comblllat1ons. Jack
D. Forbes, Black Africans and NatilJe Amenca1lS: Color, Race and Caste in the
El'oilltioll of R ed-Black Peoples (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1988), pp. 162-65
forbes also notes that the term muiatrJ initially appeared in legislation relating
to the America ... (p. 173), hut it is not dear whether it was first used in the colonial or Iberian context.

Notes to Chapter 6

Notes to Chapter 7

87. Solor7,ano Pereira, Politlca Indiana, vol. I, p. 445.

88. Covarrubias, Tesoro de la lengua castellana, p. 768.
89 Sec Doris Garraway, "Race, Reproduction and Family Romance in
Moreau de Saint-Mery's De~cription ... de Ia partie fran~aise de l'isle Saint_
Domingu~/ Eighteenth-Century Studies 38, no. 2. (2.005): 2.27-46.
90. The M~xican Holy Office, for instance, used the word castizo in the
1570S and stated that it was a term commonly applied in New Spain to the
children of mestizos (and presumably Spaniards). AHN, Inquisicion de Mexico
libra 1047, fols. 430-34; Correspondence from the Mexican Inquisition T~
the Supreme Council of the Inquisition, November 5, 1576. Abo see AHN
Inquisicion, libro 1064; Summary report of the bigamy case again~t Banolom
Hernandez, "castizo," native of the city of los Angeles (Puebla), 1578.
91. In 1539, for example, Viceroy Mendoza instructed Mexico City, Puebla,
and other cities not to allow negros or moriscos, whether free or slave, as
well as Indians, to carry arms without special permission. BNAHMC, Serie
Puebla, roll 8r, foJ. 12V. Viceroy Mendoza aho ordered that any "negro, negra
o morisca" who made pulque be punished with two hundred lashes. Condumex
(Mexico City), Fondo CMLXI-36, fol. 46. Also see AAPAC, vol. 1, doc. 234;
Puebla's city council orders penalties for anyone helping "runaway mori~co~
or black slaves," March 2., 1537. Noting the as~ociation that Spaniards in Peru
made between blacb and moriscos, Lockhart speculated that the latter, who
were usuallr described as white, were either Muslim Spaniards or slaves from
Morocco, but in Mexican sources there is not enough information to determine whether that was the case. James Lockhart, Spanish Peril, 1532.-J560
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1974), p. 196.
92. See AHN, Inquisicion, lihro 1064.
93 AGN, Inquisicion, vol. 372, expo 14; AHN, Inquisicion, libro 1065; and
AGN, Inquisicion, vol. 684, expo 4. Note the deployment of the word raza to
describe moriscos. For more on Beatriz de Padilla's case, see Solange Alberro,
"Beatriz de Padilla, Mulatta Mistress and Mother," in Colonial Spanish America: A Documentary History, cds. Kenneth Mills and William Taylor (Wilmington, DE; SR Books, 1998), pp. 178-8494 See, for example, I'hilip II's I582 letter to Mexican secular and rehgious
officials, which clarifies that any previous decrees limiting the access of mestizos to the prie~thood should be understood to apply only to the children of
Indian and Spanish unions, not to their subsequent de~cendants. See Konetzke,
Coleccion de documento~ para la historia, pp. 543-44.
95. AGN, Inquisicion, vol. 82, expo 4, fol. II!!.
96. See AHN, Inquisicion de Mtxico, libra 1057; and Morale~, Ethnic and
SOCIal Background of the Franciscan Friars in Seventeenth-Century Mexico.
pp.16- 1 7
97. Lo/)o (wolf) and coyote are zoological terms, while pardo and morenl)
refer to skin color and were applied to people of partial African descent. In ca~ta
paintings, the dassifi..:ation c/nf/o was designated to the child of a black and native woman, but colonial officials often used it as a generic name for A,lam,
particularly from the Philippines. Thus, when the religious official in charge

of the Provisorato or Inquisition for indigenous people changed his title in the
eighteenth century, he became "Provi~or de Indios y Chinos del Arzobispado"
because his juri~diction extended to the Philippines. AHN, Inquisition, leg.
2.2.86 (I).
98. See AGN, Bicnes Nacionales, vol. 578, expo 21; and AHN, Inquisicion,
libro 1067, fok 316-18, and 'jOO-500v. Ca,ta nomenclature came mainly from
a zoological vocabulary, particularly from the hreeding of hor~es and cattl~. See
NicoLls Leon, Las castas del Mexico cololllai (Mexico City: Talleres Gdficos
del Mu~eo Nacional de Arqueologia, Historia y Etnografia, 192.4), p. 27; and
Daisy Ripodas Ardanaz, El matrimonio en II/(lias: Realidad social y regulaci611
juridica (Buenos Aires: Fundacion para la Educacion, la Ciencia y la Cultura,
1977), p. 2.6.
99. Ramon A. Gutierrez, Whell Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Wellt Awa)':
Marriaxe, Sexlwlity and POlller in Nelli MeXICO, IJoo-1846 (Stanford, CA;
Stanford University Press, 1991), pp. 196-2.00; Jackson, "Race/caste and the
Creation and Meaning of Identity," p_ ISS; and Steven W. Hackel, Children of
Coyote, MisslVllaries of Saint 1-"ranos; India/l-Stlallish Re/atirJ1lS III Colo/lial
California. 176y-11i50 (Chapel Hill: Omohundro Institute of Early American
History and Culture and University of North Carolina Pre~s, 200S), pp. 59-60.
100. See, among others, Patricia Seed, "Social DimenSIOns of Race; M~xico
City, 1753," Hlstiallic Americall Historical Review 62., no. 4 (19!!2.): pp. 568606; Cope, The I.imits of RaCIal DommatlOlI, pp. 49-67; Schwartz, "Colonial
Identities and the Sociedad de Castas, "pp. 1!!5-2.01; and Richard Boyer, Cast
{sicl and Idelltit}' in Colo/lial Mexico; A Proposal and all F.xamtl/e (Storrs, CT;
Providence, RI; and Amherst, rvlA; Latin American Studies Consortium of New
England, 1997).
JOT. Foucault used the phrase in his discussion of the importance of blood in
the early modern period, which he suggested stemmed pnmarily from its function as a central ~ign for a person's place within the largely birth-determined
system of estates and from its role as a symbol of the sovereign'~ power of life
and death over his subjects. foucault, The Histvr)' of Sexuality. pp. 13.')-5.

343

CIIAPTER 7

Stoler, Race and the Educatioll of Desire, p. 30.

2._ See the 1575 Inquisition letter describmg problems with doing probanzas
de limpieza de'sangre ill Spanish America. AHN, Inquisicion, leg. 2.269.
.'1. AHN, Inquisicion de Mexico, Iibro ro.<;o, fols. 2.12.-2.0; Correspondence
from the MeXlcan Inqui~ition, 1574-75
4- AHN, Inquisicion de Mexico, Iibro T049, fols. 591':'59IV: Copy of thdetter from Peruvian inqUIsitors regarding genealogical information for the wiveS
of familiars, April 14, 160,.
5. AHN, Inquisicion de Mexico, libra W47, fols. 38o-3!!IV: LeTTer to the
Council of the Indies from the Mexican Inquisition, September 2.3, 157.<;; and
AHN, Inquisicion de Mexico, leg. 2.2.69. When port inspectors ~uspected
the use of a false genealogy or travel permit, they were supposed to request
1.

344

Notes to Chapter 7

investigations by appropria~e Spani,h tribunals. See AGN, Inquisici6n, vol. 77,

expo 34, fok 19IY-I94V: c.orrespondence of the MexIcan Holy Office, 15B).
6. AHN, Inquisici6n de Mexico, libra 1049, fols. 433-}4.
.
7 AHN, Inquisici6n de Mexico, libra 1058, fob. 152,-53: Letter from Medin
Rico to the Suprema, 1660. A ujsita was an administrative tour ordered by th:
crown In orda to study particular colonial affairs.
8. AHN, Inquisici6n de Mexico, libra r050, fol. ny.
9 AHN, Inquisicion de Mexico, libra IOH.
10. AHN, Inquisicion de Mexico, libra 1049, fols. 33v-34v. Birhiesca Roldan
suspected that the commissioner in charge of investigating his lineage in his
place of birth (Vi!la de Moguer, Spain) and other enemies that he had [eft b~.
hind there had declared against him, but other documents suggest that his can.
firmation was delayed because his wife's genealogi(.:a[ investigatIOn was not yet
complete. See AHN, Inquisicion de Mexico, libra 1048, fo[s. 335-335V; and
AHN, Inquisi(.:ion de Mexico, libro 1049, fols. 231-32.
II. Covarrubias, Tesoro de fa lengua castellana, p. 773.
12. Huntington Library (hereafter HL), MS 35149. Other witnes~es men.
tioned an announcement made in Zacatecas about francis(.:o de Cobarruvias's
limpieza de sangre, but they don't elaborate by whom or why. Perhaps it had
been made when he received his title of familiar, which had been before hi~
probanza was completed.
13_ HL, MS 351So. For another sixteenth-century probanza in which witnesses argued that their knowledge of the lineage in question was rdi.lble because they were from small Spanish towns, see AGN, Inquisicion, vol. 2.02.,
expo 10.
14 AGN, Inquisicion, vol. 325, expo 3.
I S. In the sixteenth century, the Spanish Inquisition did conduct genealogical
investigations in the parts of Italy in which it had jurisdi(.:tion. See, for example,
the references to purity probanzas done in Sicily for the wives of familiarcs and
officials. AHN, Inquisicion, leg. 12.54.
16. AHN, Inquisicion de Mexico, libro 1049, fols. r67-167V.
17 For example~ in which "public opinion" is pani(.:ularly underscored III
witness testimonies, sec HL, MSS 3F4S, 15149, and 3F44; AGI, Mexico 280;
and AGN, Inquisicion, vol. 6S, expo 4, fols. 64-87v.
18. Vera rdared to a royal decree stating that all of the Holy Office's consultares should be chosen from audiencia magistrates and judges who had proven
their limpieza and the purity of their wives. The decree hints at how the issue
of Iimpieza cut across different institutions, even those that did not have formal
purity requirement~, and at how the tendency among colonial officia[~ to want
to work for the Inquisition meant that many of them underwent genealogica[
investigations. HL, MS 35145.
19 Because Santiago de Vera's paternal grandfather had married Twice, the
Seville commi,~ioner also had to determine who his hiological grandmother
wa~ and her punty statu~. AGN, Inqui~i(.:i(m, vol. 77, expo 34: C:orre~pondence
of the Mexican Inquisition, [S82.
20. AHN, Inquisicion de Mexico, libra 1048, fol~. 139-14ov: Letter from tbe
Mexi(.:an Inqulsitiun to the Suprema, Octoher 22, IS83; and IlL, ;ViS 35145.

Notes to Chapter 7

345

:1.1. The Mexican inquisitors denied Vera's petition. In a 1584 letter, they
thanked Seville's tribundl for exposing the truth about his wife's ancestry and
blamed an uncle in Spain for having arranged to produce false genealogies and
probanzas. AGN, Inqui~icion, vol. 177, expo 34.
2.2. AGN,Judicial, vol. 5, expo 5.
23. Ibid.
24. AGN, Inquisicion, vol. 233 (I).
2S. AGN, Inquisicion, vol. 77, expo 34.
26. AHN, Inquisicion de Mexico, lihra JOSI, fols. 184-8S: Letter from the
Mexican inquisitors to the Suprema, May 29, 1619.
27. AHN, Inquisicion de Mexico, Itbro 1056, fol. 374.
28. AHN, Inquisicion de Mexico, lihro 1049, fols. 429-429V and 506-7. Also
see the ca~e of Juan Ruiz Martinez, a priest who in the mid-sixteenth century
applied for a benefi(.:e in Oaxaca's cathedral chapter. His petition led to two
inquiries in Spanish towns, one in his native town of Villa del Campanario, the
other in Montanez. The Council of the Indies approved the two probanzas, but
after receiving a report accusing Ruiz Martinez of being a confeso, it ordered a
new investigation and dose examination of the scribes, witnesses, and ar(.:hives
that had been involved in the fint procedures. AGI, Indiferente General, 1210.
2.9. AHN, Inquisicion de Mexico, lihro 1048, fo[s. 139-14ov: Letter from the
Mexican Inquisition to the Suprema, October H, 1581.
30. See AGN, Inquisicion, vol. 177, expo 34; AGN, Inquisicion, vol. 202.,
expo 10; and HL, MS 35144.
31. AGN, Tnquisi(.:ion, vol. 372., expo 23.
p. See AHN, Inquisicion de Mexico, Iibro ro50; and AHN, Inquisicion de
Mexico, Iibro 1047, fol~. I7IV-172.
B. For the Puebid region, see Ida Altman, Transatlantic Ties in the Spallish
Em/lire: Brihuega, Spaill, and Puehla, Mexico, 1560-1620 (Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 2000); and Guadalupe Albi Romero, "La sociedad
de Puebla de los Angeles en eI siglo XVI," Jahrhuch fur Geschichte VOl/ Staat,
Wirtschaft, und Gesellschaft Lateillamerikas 7 (T970): pp. 76-145.
34. Nuttini, The Wages of COli quest, Pl'. 411-49 and lSS-82.
35. Doila Mariana de Ircio y de Velasco's paternal grandfather was Viceroy
Luis de Velasco (senior), who arrived in New Spain in 1550. Her mother wa~
Maria de Mendoza, daughter of the illegitimate siSTer of Viceroy Antonio de
Mendoza and a miner, Martin de Ircio, both of whom must have arrived in
~lexico not too long after the conquest.
36. AHN, Inquisicion de MexICO, libro 1051. The probanza~ done for Juan
de Altamirano .lnd dofla Maria!ld Ircio y de Velasco in N<:w Spain were later put
to good usc by their descendants. They were among the documents presented,
for example, by the <.:ouple'~ ~on, don Fernando Altamirano y Velasco, when he
received the title of count of SantIago Calimaya (J616), when he be(.:ame corregidor, and when he was named capitan general of Guatemala and pre~ident
of its audiencia. For more on the Velasco lineage, its endogamic practices, and
its variou,., tide, of nobility, see de !a Pena, Oligarquia }' pr(Jpiedad CII N'lcva
Espana, pp. 200-2.09.
37. Sol(lrzano Per~ira, Politlca Indiana, pp. 442-4.'1.

Notes to Chapter 7

Notes to Chapter 8

38. Anthony Pagden, "Identity Formation in Spanish America," in Colonial

Idel/tity in the Atlantic World, IJoo-dioo, ed. Nicholas Canny and Anthon
Pagden (Princeton, NJ; Princeton University Press, 19S 7), p. 63.
y
39 On the ambiguity of rhe Castilian concept of nacion with respect to terri_
tory (parria) and bloodlines and the >:onflicted loyalties of creok~, see Lomnitz.
Adler, "Nationalism as a Practical System," pp. 333-34 and 342.
40. AHN, Inquisicion, libra 1051, fo!. 5T Unsigned letter from Mexico to
the Suprema, received in Madrid on April ra, 1612. A note at the top of the
document (presumably written by a member of Supremd) attributes the Jetter to
the dr>:hbishop of Mni>:o. Although the archbishop is not named, he was prob_
ably Fray Garcia Guerra, who died III February 16I2.
41. Solange AJberro, blQuislcitJn y sIJciedad en meXICO, 157/-/700 (Mexico
City: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1~88), p. 54. For a study of the Mexican
Inquisition'S familiars in the sixteenth century, see Javier Eusebio Sanchiz
Ruiz, "La limpieza de sangre en Nueva Espana; EI funcionariado del tribu_
nal del Santo Oficio de la Inquhicion, siglo XVI" (master's thesis, Universidad
Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, l'acultad de fdosofia y Letra~, 1~88). I thank
Professor Sanchiz Ruiz for generously giving me a >:opy of his master's the~ls.
42. AHN, Inquisition de MeXICO, libro lOB, fols. 214-15.
4.'). AHN, Inquisicion de Mexico, Iibro 1058, fols. 185-18SV. Also see AHN,
Inquisicion de Mexico, libro 1057, fol. I2SV.
44. See AHN, Inquisi>:ion, libro 1051, fols. 22, 287-289V and 2~0-292V.
45. AHN, Inquisicion d~ Mexico, libro 1057, fols. 127-.')0. To le~sen corruption, !vledina Ri(;o introdu(;ed a seri~s of changes III payment pro(;edures that
were meant to make official~ more a(;>:ountable. See, for exampk, AHN, lnqui .. i(;ion de Mexiw, libro 1057, fols. 125-41; and AHN, Inquisicion de Mexico,
libro I05s, fols. 151-IBV.
46. AHN, Inquisicion de Mexico, libro 1056, fols. 373-382V; Report from
the visitador Pedro Medina Rico on the proofs of limpieza for the Mexican
Holy Office's ministers and familiars, 1657. The report includes a list of all the
Inquisition officials and familiares whose probanzas the visitador considered
unacceptable.
47. AHN, Inquisicion de Mexico, libro 1057, fols. II7-I8; L~tter from Dr.
Juan de Aguirre, 165~.
48. AHN, Inquisicion de Mexico, libm I057, fols. 127-30.
49. AHN, Inquisicion de Mexico, libro IOj7, fols. 137-41; Letters from the
an:hbishop of Mexico and from Medina Riw, 1658.
50. AHN, Inquisi>:ion de Mexico, Iibro 1055, fols. 313-314v; Letters from inquisitors don Franci'ico Estrada y Escobedo, don Juan SaenL de Manozca, and
don Bernabe de la Higuera y Amarilla, Mexico, july 20, 1650, and Augu;t 8,
165 r. The Suprema appar~ntly did not rescind its order; "que SI: guardc II!
proveido" (let what had b~en decided ,rand) was its respon,e.
51. It had become so customary for the >:hildren of Inqui,ition mmisters and
familiars to inhent their honors that in 165S the Holy Office Illformed Pedro de
Soto Lopez, who was attempting to become a familiar simply by establi,hing
that his father had held the title, that the proces'i wa, no longer going to operate

that way. AHN, lnquisicion de Mexico, lihra I057 Also see AHN, Inquisicion
de Mexico, libro 1056, fols. 277-282; Petition and genealogy of joseph Rey y
Alarcon, 16-';6. 'rhe file includ~s a letter from the father of the petitioner indi>:ating that he expened his son to inherit his title.
52. AHN, Inquisicion, libro 1063, iols. 200-200V. At the end of the letter,
the memhers of the Suprema jotted down that they would look into the mdtter
further, but it is unclear that they did. In fact, the coun>:il did not change its
policy of reqUiring that proof of purity be established in lugares de naturaleza,
which mainly referred to communities in Spain. Thus, in the eighteenth (;entury,
Mexican inquisitors continued to complain that it was hard to >:omply with that
requirement because of how long creole families had been in New Spain. See,
for example, AHN, Inquisi(;ion, leg. 2279 (1); Letter to the Suprema, 1725.
B. Brading, The hrst America, pp. 2 and 293-3q; Lavalle, Las promesas
ambiguas, pp. 63-77, esp. 64-65; 'and Herzog, Defining Nations, p. 146.
54. Brading, The First America, p. 3~O; and HL, MS 35174
55. La faye, Quetzaletlatl and Guadalupe, pp. 59-61; and Rrading, The First
America, pp. -,6.')-72.
56. Pagd~n, "Identity Formation in Spanish Ameri>:a," p. 67. For Pagden and
other scholars, Mexi>:an creole, could exalt and appropriate the native past to
a greater degree than their Peruvian counterparts because, by the ~~venteenth
century, the indigenou~ people of the central valley were presumed to he toO
devastated or too acculturated to find inspiration in theic imperial past to oppose Spanish rule. See Pagden, p. 67; and Lafaye, Quetzalcrlatl and Guadalupe,
pp. 65-66.
57. john Leddy Phelan, "Nco-Aztccism in the Eighteenth Century and the
Genesis of Mexican Nationalism," in Culture in History: Essays ill Honor
of Paul Radm, ed. Stanley Diamond (New York; Columbia University Press,
1960), p. 76 1.
58. See, for example, jCBLlLI, vol. IV, fols. 819-23; vol. V, fols. 165- 1 7 1 ;
and vol. VI, fols. 76,,-67.
59. Pagden, S//anish Imperialism mId the Politicallmagmation, p. 10.

347

CHAPTER 8
1. Edmundo O'Gorman, FUlldamenfos de la historia de America (Mexico
City: lmprenta Univer~itaria, 1~42), pp. 87-99. Also see Stephen Greenblatt,
Marvelous Possessiorls: The Wonder of the New World (Chicago: University of
. "
,
Chi(;ago Pre~s, 1991).
2. AHN, Inquisicion, libro T266. The do(;ument containing the InqUISItion s
deliherations IS not dated. Given the reference to Solorzana Per~ira's po/itica
Indiana (published in the mid-seventeenth (;cJ}tury) and the oth~r papers. amid
which the report i~ found, howcver, it is probable thJt it wa~ produced ill the
last third of the seventeenth century.
~. See Politlw Indiana. vol. I, bk. 2, chap ..w
The category of zambahigo referred mainly to p~ople of indigel?ous ~nd
African ance~try, but sometimes of Spalllsh as well. In the Suprema's dlscu5$lon

4.

Notes to Chapter 8
of the purity statutes, for example, zambahigos are defined as the children of
"white Indians" and "black Indians," term~ referring, respectively, to people of
Spanish-Indian and African-Indian descem. Note the emphasi, on skin color.
5. AHN, Inquisicion, libra I266.
6. AHN, Inqui,ici6n, libro I266.
7. A[fonso Perez de Lara, De anniversariis, et capellaniis, lib" dv(). Qvibus
vltra generalem anniuersariorum & capellamarum materiam, 5{Jecsaliter dispu_
latur de annuo re/icto: [Iro virgimbus maritiidis: pro infantibus expositls nutriendis: IJro redlmendis calltillis: pro rclaxadis carceratis: pro miite pietatis: pro
celebriido festo Corporis Christl, cum pra:cedentijs prucessionis: de Iriisferedis
cadalleribus, absque trilmto. De qlwrta funerali: de prubatione generlS & qualitatis sangullils ad capellaniam requwta:, et ad alia statuta. Opvs qvidem, 1'/ plVm
et practicabile, ita & vtile vtroque foro r>ersantibus, iudicibus, aduocatis, clericis, & monachis, & qllibuscunqlle alijs piorllm executoribus (Matriti[Madrid):
ex typographia IlIephonsi Martini, (608), e~p. bk. l,chap. 4, fols. 333-36. This
work appears to have been widely circulated throughout Europe, for it was ~ub
sequently published several times in various European, especially Italian, cities.
8. See Mechoulan, fl honor de Dios, pp. 58-59
9. Juan Escobar del Corro, Tractalus bi{Jartltus de puri/ate et nobiiltate probanda (lyon: Sumptibus Rochi Deville and L. Chalmette, 1737). The work was
first published in 1633.
roo Solorzano Pereira based his argument on two points. First, he poimed
Out that technically, a person stopped being a neophyte (en years after having
been baptized. And second, he contended that interpretations of the statutes
that advocated that at lea~t two hundred years had to pass before conver~os
could be con~idered Old Christians could be appl!ed only to the descendants of
converted Jew~ and Musl!ms becau~e they were special cases. Politlca Ilidialla,
vol. I, pp. 436-37.
I I. Sol6rzdno Pereira considered mestizos the best possible "mix" in the
colonie~, even though he also warned thdt their growth was considered dangerous because of their "vices" and ~depraved customs." Politica Indialla, vol. I,
pp. 446-48.
12. For a brief overview of general demographic, social, and economic patterns in seventeenth-centurr Spanish America, see John E. Kicza, "Ndtive
American, African, and Hispanic Communities During the Middle Period In
the Colonial America~," Histortcal Archaeology 31, no. I (1997): pp. 9-17.
T3. The Requerimiento, or "Requirement," was a military and political ritual that defined the term~ under which war could legally be launched on the
native people. A manifesto that was supposed to be read before war was legally
declared, it was designed by Spanish jurists and theologians in 1513 to establish
Spam's political authonty over the Americas. It is reprudw.:ed and trJmLIted JIl
Lewis Hanke, ed., History of Larin American CIVilizatIOn: Sources and IlfterIJretat/(J/I, vol. J, The Colonial f.xperience (London: Methuen and Co., I9 6 9),
pp. 93-95. Also see Seed, Ceremonies of Possession, pp. 69-99
14. See Luciano Pereila, "Defensor oficlal de la Corona," in Juan de SolOrzano
y Pereira, De IIldwrum lure: Liher Ill: "/Je retent/one Indiarum, ~ ed. C. Baciero,
F. Cantclar, A. Garda, J. M. Garda Ailoveros, F. Maseda, L. Pereila, and

Notes to Chapter 8

J. M.

349

Perez-Prendes (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientfficas,

1994), pp. 20-61; and book 3 of Indiarum lure, in which Solorzano explains
why it i~ just that Spain remain in the Americas and retain its titles, ibid.,
pp.208-4 8 ).
15. See Thomas Cohen, "Nation, Lineage, and Jesuit Unity in Antonio Posscvino's Memorial to Everard Mercurian (1576)," in A Companh/a de jesus na
Pettillsula Iberica llOS sewlos XVI e XV/!: ESllirltualidade e cu/tura (POrto:
Editora Universidade do Porto, 2004), pp. 543-61.
16. AHN, Inquisicion, [ibro 10'50, fo[s. IIO-ll.
17. The complete title of the book is Luz y methodo de Cfmfesar idrilatras y
destierro de idolatrias dehajo del tratado sigmcnte. Tratado de avisos y puntos
importantes de la ahomillahic seta de fa ido/atria, /lara examillar {lor el/os al
pellitellte ell eI fuem interior de la nJnscicncia, y exterior judicial. Sacados
no de los libms, sillo de la eX/lenellcia en las aberiguaciones COIl los rabbies
de ella (Pueb[a: Imprenta de Diego fernandez de Leon, 1692). John Carter
Brown Library, Rare Book Collection. The book was dedicated to don Isidro
de Sariilana y Cuenca. Note that Villavicencio's text had precedents, including
the works by Hernando Ruiz de A[arcon (162~) and Jacinto d1' la Serna (1656).
The latter two works, which described rituals associated with idolatry, were
not printed in the seventeenth century but probably lirculated nonetheless. See
Gruzinski, The c,mqllcst of Mexico, pp. 148-4~. Abo refer to the undated
manuscript by P. R. Lopez de Martinez, in BNAHMC, Serie Puebla, Roll 100.
r8. Hernando Ruiz de Alarcon had a[rcady alluded to the problem of distinguishing idolatrous practices among the native people from simple ~cu~toms" in
his colonial treaty (written in the 1620S but unpublished until modern times) on
native idolatry. Indeed, w[onial priests, many of whom were not well educated
on certain doctrinal matters, had to be taught, precisely through manuals such
as that of Villavicen;:io, what concepts such as "idolatry" and usuperstition"
meant and how to Identify them. See Hernando Ruiz De Alarcon, Treatise 011
the Heathen Superstitions: That Today Live Among the Indlalls Nati/'e to This
New S[lain, /1l2Y, cd. Ross Hassig andJ. Richard Andrews (Norman: University
of Oklahoma Press, 1999). And on the production of writings on idolatry by
colonial scholan, ~ee Magdalena G. Chocano Mena, "Colonial Scholars in the
Cultural Establishment of Seventeenth Century New Spain" (PhD diss., State
University of New York at Stony Brook, I994), pp. [61-20I.
19. See Villavicencio's Lul. y method!! de wllfesar idr)latras, part I, p. 28; and
chaps. 6, 10, and r I.
20. Ibid., pan 1, p. 1.0.
21. Ibid., part 1, pp. 93-95. After the 1692 riot, many church officials advocated reinforcing the segregation of native people in order to keep them under
stricter vigilance.
22. On drinking in colonial Mexico, see Wilham B. Tdylor, DrilikilfK, Homicide alld Rehel/ion in Colonial Mexican Villages (Stanford, CA: Stanford Univer~ity Press, 1979J
2,. AHN, inquisicion de Mexico, lihro ro50, fol. 75.
24. Judith Laikin Flkin, "lmagliling Idolatry: Missionaries, Indians, and
.Jews," in Religion alld the Authority of the Past, ed. Tobin Siebers (Ann Arbor:

Notes to Chapter 8

Notes to Chapter 9

University of Michigan Pres~, 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. ~orab, Ethnic and Social Backg~ound 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 ca~e stated that
the investigation was not complete because not enough information was gathered 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 <.:onvi need of his religious devotion.
33 See Morale~, 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 History,~ (lecture, University of Southern California, Los Angeles,
Novemba 22,205); and Cuadriello, Las glorias de fa repliblica de Tfaxc<lla: 0
fa concie7lcia como imagen sublime (Mexico City: Instituto de InvestigaC1one~
Esteticas, UNAM, and Mu~eo NacionaJ de Ane, INBA, 2004), p. 78.
36. Colin A. Palmer, "Religion and Magic in Mexican Slave Society, 1.\701650," 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 en~laved 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, ~ee JCBI ILl, vol. 2, fols. 207-14: Information regarding Alonso Gomez, made in the Villa de Niebla, 1617.
41. AGI, Indiferente 272, no. 44. As of the 153OS, Spanish laws barred mulattos (along with othn categories) from going to the Indies without fint obtain-

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, Inqui~icion, libra 1066, fok 379-382V and 389.
43. AHN, Jnquisiclon, libro 1066, fols. 387-390V.
44 JCBLlI.J, vol. n, fol~. 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 (resistance 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.

351

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 PailltinKS {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., Ulliver~ity 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 anonymous. for Peru, one serie~, COl11mi~;ioned by VIceroy Amat, has been identified. 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.

Notes to Chapter 9

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; IlQn~
Kan.ew, "Casta Painting; Identity and Social Stratification in Colonial Mexico"
in New World Orders: Casta Painting 411d Coloniall.atin America, ed. llo~a
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 (Brw.sel~, 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 mid-~eventeenth 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 1790~, 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, 1450-1~30 (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 Salazar'~ HistiJria
de la /Jintura en Puebla (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Aut6noma de Mexiw, 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 Ca~ta
Painting" in New World Orders, p. 31. See p. 31 and plate I for reproductions
of the two paintings as well a~ Katzew, Casta Pall/tll/g, pp. IO-I I.
II. Robin Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery: From the Bamque to the Modern, 14~2-1800 (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 family units within a ~ingle lands!.:ape.
14. The series, which i~ 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 Spani~h women, they are u~ually depicted as belonging to a relatively privileged socioeconomic ,tatus and often appear a~ coachmen. See plates 2 I and
34 in Garcia Saiz, New World Orders.

17. See plate~ 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 ~ixteen 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 America, 1492-Ilho (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2006),
pp4 0 4-4 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, ~u!.:h 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 examples 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 inve~tigated the
bloodlines of the would-be spouse. See the 1703 testimony of Juan de Valdez
regarding the purity of don ignacio Marquez de los Rio~ 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 produced in 1724. Also refer to Guy P. C. Thomson, Puebla de los Angeles: II/dustr)' and Society ill a Mexican (;ity, 1700-1850 (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1989).
26. BNM, MS 292.9: lnstrunion~ from the Duke of Linares to hi~ successor,
March 2.2, 172.3.
27. AHN, Inqui~i!.:i6n, 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
A~sdmo Chreslos Ja!.:he, but Katzew speculates that this name was fictitious.
31. In the 1760s, Spam allowed New Spain to trade with its other !.:olonics, and in 1778, It abolished the Cadiz monopoly on commer!.:e with Spanish
Amenca. furthermore, in 1789, it made it~ policy of "free trade" uniform for all
Its American pos~essiolls. In addition to modifying trade poli!.:ies, the Bourbon
rcform~ includcd reducing the power of the church, strengthening military
for!.:cs, reorganiLing poiiti!.:al admiillstration, and promoting science, the !a,t

35 2

353

Notes to Chapter 9

Note5 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: Th~
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, ~ee Susan Dean~-Smith, Bureaucrats, Planters, and
Workers: The Making of the Tohacco Monopoly in Bourbon Mexico (Austin:
University of Texas Pre~s, 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. Jo~efina 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 tardio, 1760-1808," in lllterpretaciones del ~igl(/ 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 5I ,
no. 4 (1994): pp. 219-31; and Paul Goorenberg, "On Salamanders, PyramIds,
and Mexico's 'Growth-without-Change': Anal'hroni~tic Reflections on a Ca,e
of Bourbon New Spain," Colonial Lati" America Review 4, no. J (1995):
pp.117- 27

39. Some Spaniards and creoles attempted to preserve their soclal preeminence by buying title~ of nobility. Chdfles III alone granted at least twentythree 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. Ca~tro Morales, "Los cuadro~ de cJstas," pp. 679-81.
41. AHN, Inquisici6n, leg. 22S0. The inquisitors admitted to not always demanding th.at the inveMigations be done in Spain but simply conduering "extraoffi6al~ inquiries into the purity, calidad, and reputation of the wives of candidates.
42. AHN, Inqui~ici6n, 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 Africandescended population ("Afromestizos"l amounted to about IO percent of Mexico'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 Mexico,~ The
Americas 44, no. 2 (1987); p. T77.
44. On the use of different strategies by African-descended people in Cholula
to a~<.:end the social ladder and erase the stigma of their ~lave past, including intermarrying with mestizos and the indIgenous population, ~ee Norma Angelica
Ca~tiJlo Palma, "MatrimOlllos minos y cruce de la barrera de color como vias
para el mestizaje de la poblaci6n negra y mulata (1674-1796),~ Sigllos histriricos 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, seminarie~, and so forth.
See, AHN, Jnqui~ici6n, leg. 2284. For examples of town councds with purity 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 RC!igiosa~ 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 nece~sary to' ensure "that all those
that become part of the ecclesiasti<.:al est>lte are individual~ 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 elite~," p. I20 (my translation). Note how hy the eighteenth century

.3S4

355

Notes to Chapter 9

Notes to Chapter 9

purity was equated with Spanish ancestry and how mulattos explicitly formed
part of the impure cat~gorie~.
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 ~ev
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_
tor~ 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 submit 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 ("chinos") 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
~ale, por!.jue la expefiencia en~ena, !.jue a la tefcera, cuarta, 0 quinta generac!()n,
pulula, produciendo dos blanco~ un negro, !.jue lIaman tornatras, 0 saltatds."
AHN, Inqui~icion, 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 wa~ already used in the sixteenth cemury, it became mu..:h
more common in the eighteenth. By then, it referred to a number of factor~, lfleluding economic status, occupation, purity of blood, and birthplace, in ~hort,
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 record~. See, for ~xample, 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

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
it~ 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 physiognomy in the eighteenth-century Hispanic world, see Rebecca Haidt, Embodying the Enlightenment: Knowing the Body in F.ighteenth-Cemury Spamsh Literature 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 indfgenas del monasterio de Corpus Chri~ti de la ciudad de Mexico, 1724-1821,"
in Las mUJeres latillo-americallas: l'erspecth1as histilricas, ed. A~unci6n 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 Guadalupe: 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: InverMexico 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 Fay~, 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.

357

Notes to Chapter 9

Notes to the Conclusion

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. I55-57~
68. UavlJero wrote In part to relute arguments by the Comte de Buffo n
the Abbe Raynal, the Scotti~h historian William Robertson, and the Pru%ial~
naturalist Cornelius de Pauw about how all nature, physical and human, degen_
erated in the Americas. See Phelan, "Neo-Aztecism in the Eighteenth Celltury,~
pp. 760-70; Brading, The first America, PP450-62 (esp. pp. 461-62); and
Caiiizare~-Esguerra, 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 Me~tizaje: Gendered Images of
Ethnoral'e in Colonial Mexican Texts," journal of Women's History n, no. 3
(2000): p. 73.
72. Twinam, "Racial Pa~sing," pp. 249-72. Twinam notes that the fifteen applications that were submitted between 1795 and r 816 wae all from pardos and
mlilatos. Twinam, "Racial Passing," p. 2jO. Nont~ 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/d5 These probanza~ were handled by the Real Tribunal General
de Mineria but induded the participation of alcaldes, intendants, corregidore~,
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 indigenou~ petItions to
entail estates, struggles over cabildo offices or lands, and daims regarding pure
bioodlllle~. See, for example, Bancroft Library, MS M-M 13; and AGN, Bienes
Nacionale~, 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 creole~ 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 America; A Documelttar}' History (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1998),
pp. 270-7 2.
77. Sce the 1725 "representation" ~ent to Philip V by Juan Antonio de
Ahumada, a bwyer in Mexico City'S audiencia. It built on older argumentS

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, ~obrc aSllnto~ de interes comun para toda Ia America Septentrional,~
1771. The J771 Repre~entacion 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 position~. In a l792 lctter to Charle~ IV, the ayuntamicnto 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,
PP479- 8 3
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 ~end some
case~ to Spain, where genealogies for Spaniards in the cl)lonie~ continued to be
inve~tigated. The~e investigation~ still entailed probing into the candidate's ancestry and overall Christian conduct and reputation. ror references to problems
associated with doing probanzas, see AHN, lnquisicion, legs. 2280-83. t'or examples 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 tho~e 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.
Mo~t 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 Manue! Joachin Barrientos Lomelin y Cervante~, a eanon
in Mexico City's Cathedral, lawyer in the royal audiencia. and university rector. AHN, Inqui~i(i6n, leg. 1.282 and 2284.
84. Cuadriello, "Cortes as the American Moses."

359

CONCLUSION

r. See, for example, Castro, ES{Jaiia en su histona.

2. As late as the eight~enth century, Franciscan friars examining an informacion in New Spalll expre~sed the oplilion that birth records establish legitima<.:y, while oral te~timonies (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 pa~sim.
4. Cuadriello, Las g/vrias de fa rept/hliea de Tlan'ala, pp. 26-27 and 6r 86 .

Bibliography

Adelman, Jeremy. "Introduction: The Problem of Persistence In Latin American History." In Colonial Legacies: The Problem of Persistence ill 1.atl/l
America" History, edited by Jeremy Adelman, r-T3. New York and London;
Routledge, 1999.
- - - , Sovereignty and Revolution in the Iheriall At/alltic. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006.
Aguirre Bdtnin, Gonz<lio. "The Slave Trade in Mexico." Hisf)Qllic American
Historical Review 24 (1944): 412.-31.
- - - . La poh/aciiln negra de Mexico; Estudio etltohist6riw. 3rd ed. Mexico
City: Fonda de Cultura Economica, 1989 [19461.
Alherro, Solangc. "Beatri7. de Padilla, MuiaTTa Mistress and Mother." In Co.
lonial Spalllsh America: A Documentary HIstory, edited by Ken Mills and
William Taylor, 178-84. Wilmington, DE: SR Books, 1998.
- - - . "Crypto-Jews and the Mexican Holy Offite in the Seventeenth Century." In The Jews and the f.xpmlslfJn ()f F,uro!JI? to the West 1450-IHoo,
edited by Paolo Bernardini and Norman Fiering, 172-85. New York and
Oxford: Berghahn Books, 200!.
- - - . Inquisici6n y sociedad en Mixico, 1571-1700. Mexi(.:o City: Fonda de
Cultura Ewnomica, 1988.
Albi Romero, Guadalupe. "La sociedad de Puebla de los Angeles en d siglo
XVl." Jahrhuch fiir Geschichte von Staat, Wirtschaft, und Geseilschaft
Lateinamerikas 7 (1970): 76-145.
Albornol" Bartolome de. "Tratado sobre la Esdavitud,~ 231-33. Biblioteca de
Autores Espaii()/es, vol. 65. Madrid: M. Rivadeneyra, 187.').
Aldridge, A. Owen. "reijoo and the Problem of Ethiopian Color." In RaCIsm
in the Eighteenth Celftury, edited by Harold E. Pagliaro, 263-77. Cleveland,
OH, and London: The Press of Case Western Reserve University, 1973.
Aifdfo Ramire/, Gu~tavo Rafael. "El redutamiento oligarqui..:o en cI ..:abildo
de la Puebla de los A.ngde~" 1665-1765." Master's thesis, Universidad Autonoma de Puebla, Facultad de Filosoiia y Letras, J994.
Alpert, MkhaeL CrY1lto-Judaism and the Sj1anish Inquisition. New York;
Palgrave, 2001.

Bibliography

Bibliography

Altman, Ida. fmigrants and Society: Extremadllra and America in the Six.
teenth Century. Berkeley: Univer~ity of California Press, 1989.
- - - . Transatlantic Ties in the Spanish Empire: Brihucga, Spain, and Puehl a
'
Mexico, 1560-16:1.0. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000.
Alvarez de Mirand"d, Pedro. Palabras e ideas: Elli:xico de la ilustraci{m tern.
prana espaflola (161i0-1760). Madrid: Real Academia Espanola, 1992.
Amelang,James ..... The Purchase of Nobility in Castile, 1552-170: A Comment."
Journal of European fconomlC History II, no. r (I98:1.): :l.l9-2.6.
Anderson, Benedict. fmagined Communities. London: Verso, r991.
Appelbaum, Nancy P., Anne S. Macpherson, and Karin Alejandra Roserllblatt,
eds. Race and NatirJlf in Modern Latin America. Chapel Hill and London:
University of North Carolina Press, 2003.
Arnorldsson, Sverker. ta conquista espanola de America seglln eI iuicio de la
I}()steridad; !lestlgios de la leyenda negra. Madrid: In~ula, 1960.
Atienza Hernandez, Ignacio ... 'Refeudalisation' in Castile during the Seventeenth
Century: A Cliche1" In The Castilian Crisis of the Seventeenth Century: New
Persjlecti!les un the Economic alld Social History of Se!lenteellthCentur)'
Slmin, edited by l. A. A. Thompson and Bartolome Yun CasaliJla, 2.49-76.
Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Aubert, Guillaume. "'Tbe Blood of France': Race and Purity of Blood in the
French Atlantic World.~ WIlliam alld Mary Quarterly, 3fd series, vol. LXI
(July 2.004): 4.'19-7!L
Baber, R. Jovita. "The Construction of Empire: Poittics, Law and Community
in Tlaxcala, New Spain, 1521-1640." PhD diss., University of Chicago, :1.005.
Baer, Yitzhak. A History of the jews in Christian Spain. Vol. :1.. Translated from
the Hebrew by Loui~ S-.:hoffman. Philadelphia: Jewi~h Publication Society of
America, 1978.
Bailyn, Bernard. Atlantic History: Concellt and COlliours. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2005.
Bakewell, Peter. "Conquest after Conquest: The Rise of Spanish Domination in
America." In Spain, Eurolle and the Atlantic World, edited by Rkhard Kdgan
and Geoffrey Parker, 296-3 l5. New York: Cambridge University Ple~,>, 1'195
- - - . A History of Latin America: Emllires and Sequels, 1450-1930. Malden,
MA: Blackwell, 1997.
Balibar, Etienne. "Is there a 'NeoRacism'?" In Race, Nation, Class: Amhigu
(Jus [dentities, edited hy F.tienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein, trans'
!ation of Etienne !:Salibar by Chris Turner, 17-:1.8. London and New York:
Verso, 199r.
- - - . "Ra<:i~m and Nationalism." Translated by Chris Turner. In Race, Na
tioll, Class: AmbJguous Identities, edited by F.tienne Balibar and Immanuel
Waller~tein, 37-67. LOildon and New York: Veno, 199I.
Banton, Michael. Racial Theories. Cambridge: Cambridge Umvenity Press, J998.
Barkan, Elazar. "Race and Ihe Social Sciences." Cambridge History ()f Science
7 (2.00.'1): 693-707.
Baudot, George~. "Amerindian Image and Utopian Project: Motolinia and
Millenaridn Di~course." In Amermdian Images alld thtl Legac)' of Co/tllli'

hus. Vol. 9 of His/lallic Issues, edited by Rene Jara and Nicholas Spadaccini,
375-400. Minneapoli,: University of Minnesota Press, 1992.
Beinart, Haim. "The Conversos in Spain and Portugal in the r6th to 18th
Centuries." In The Sephardi Legac)', vol. 2, edited by Haim Beinart, 43-67.
Jerusalem: Magnes Press and Hebrew Univer~ity, 1992..
- - - . ClJlwersl)s on Trial: The InquiSition ill Ciudad Real. Translated by
Yael Guiladi . .Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1981.
- - - . "The Expulsion from Spain: Causes and Results." In The Sephardi
Legacy, vol. 2., edited by Haim Beinart, rr-42. Jerusalem: Magnes Press and
Hebrew University, 1992.
- - - . The Expulsion of the jews from Spain. Translated by Jeffrey M. Green.
Oxford and Portland, OR; Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2002.
Bennassar, BartolOillc. L'lnqllisitirJII EspagmJ/c X V"-X I X'. Paris: Ha<:hette,
1979
Bennett, Herman. Africans in Colonial Mexico: Absolutism, Christianity, and
AfroCreole C(!I1scirJIIsness, l.i70-1640. Bloomington and Indianapolis:
Indiana University Press, 2003.
Benton, Lauren. Law and Colonial Cultures: Legal Regimes in World History:
1400-1<)00. Camhridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002..
Berdan, Franas. "The Ewnomics of Aztec Trade and Tribute.~ In The Aztec
Templo Mayor, edited by Elizabeth Hill Boone, 16T-83. Washington, DC:
Dumharton Oaks Resean.:h Library and Collection, T987.
Belhencourt, Francisco. "The Auto da fe: Ritual and Imagery." journal of the
Warburg mId CUllrtlaud 'nstitutes 55 (1992): 155-68.
Blh/ioteca de Autores Espaiio/es, vol. 65. Madrid: M. Rivadeneyra, 1873.
Blackburn, Robin. The Making of New World Slawr)': From the Baroque to
the Modenf, 1492-11500. New York and London: Verso, 1997.
- - - . "The Old World Background to European Colonial Slavery." William
alld Mary Quarterly 54, no. I (1997): 65-I02..
Boase, Roger. "The Morisco Expulsion and Diaspora: An Example of Racial
and Religious Intolerance." In Cultures ill Contact in Medie/'at Spain, cd
ited hy David Hook and Barry Taylor, 9-2.8. London: King's College l.ondon
Medieval Studies, 1990.
Boone, Elizabeth Hill. "Aztec Pictorial Histories: Records witbout Words."
Tn Writing with()ut Words: Alternatl!le Literacies in Mesoamerica and the
Andes, edited by Elizabeth H. Boone and Walter D. Mignolo, 50-76. Durham,
NC: Duke Ull1ver~ity Press, 1994
- - - . Stories In Red and Bla ck: /'iaorial Histories of the Aztecs and M ixtecs.
Austin: University of Texas Pre~s, 2.000.
.
Borah, Woodrow. lustiee hy Insurance: The General Indian Court of Co/lmial
MeXICO and the' Legal AIdes of the Half Real. Berkeley: University of Cali
fornia Press, I9!l3.
- - - . ~Thc Spanish and Indian Law: New Spain." In The Inca and Aztec
States, 140o-llioo: Allthrol)()/ogy and History, edited by George A. Collier,
Renato I. Rosaldo, and Jobn D. Wirth, 2nS-88. New York and London:
Academic Press, 19!12.

Bibliography

Bibliography

Bourdieu, Pierre. Out/ine of a Theory of Practice. Translated by Richard Nice

Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, l,)77.
.
Bourdieu, Pierre, and LO'ic Wacquant. "'On the Cunning of Imperialist Reason.~
Theory, Cuitureand Society 16, no. I (1999): 41-58.
Bowser, Frederick. "Africans in Spanish American Colonial Society." In The
Camhridge History of Latin America, vol. II, edited by Leslie Bethell, 357-79.
Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.
Boyd-Bowman, Peter. "Negro Slaves in Early Colonial Mexico." The Americas
26, no. 2 (1969): 134-151.
Boyer, Rich<lrd. Cast [sic] and Identity in Colollial Mexico: A Proposal and an
Exam/lIe. Storr~, CT, Providence, RI, and Amherst, MA: Latin American
Studies Consortium of New England, 1')97.
Bnding, David A. "Bourbon Spain and its American Empires." In Colonial
Spanish America, edited by Leslie Bethell, 112-62. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1987.
- - - . The First America: The Spanish Monarchy, Creole Patriots. and the
LIberal State, 149Z-1867. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
- - - . Mexican Phoelllx: Our Lady of Guadalupe: Image and Tradltwn Acr(),s
l'ive Centuries. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge Univetsity Press, 200T.
- - - . The OrigillS of Mexlcatl Nati()nalism. Cambridge: Centre of Latin American Studies, University of Cambridge, 1985.
Brady, Robert LaDon. "The Emergence of a Negro Class in Mexico, 1524-1640."
PhD diss., University of Iowa, 1965.
Braude, Benjamin. "The Sons of Noah and the Construction of Ethnic and Geographical Identities in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods." Wilham and
Mary Quartaly 54, no. I (1997): 1O}-42.
Brice Heath, Shirley. Telling Tongues: Language Policy in Mexico, Colony to
Nation. New York: Teachers College Press, 197z.
Brown, Jonathan. Latin Amenca: A Socia! History of the Colonial World.
Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, zo05.
Burdick, John. "The Myth of RaCial Democracy." Report on the Americas
(NACLA) 25, no. 4 (February, 1992): 40-44.
Burkholder, Mark A., and Lyman L. Johnson. Coloniall.atin America. New
York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Calnek, Edward. "Patterns of Empire Formation in the Valley of Mexico, LHe
Postdassic Period, 1200-1521." In The Inca and Aztec States, 14oo-llioo:
AI/thm/mlogy and History. edited by George Collier et aI., 43-62. New York
and London: Academic Press, 19!!2.
Cailizares-Esguerra, Jorge. "New World, New Stars: Patriotic Astrology and
the Invention of Indian and Creole Bodie~ in Colonial Spanish Amcrica
1600-r650." American Historical Review 104, no. I (I,)9,)): B-68
- - - . Puritan Conquistadors: lheriamzmg the At/alltic, 1550-1700. Stanford,
CA: Smnford University Press, 2006.
Cirdenas, Juan de. Problemas y seaetos maravillosos de las lndias. Madrid:
Alianza Editorial, 1988 [159rJ.
Carillo y Garicl, Abelardo. Miguel Cabrera. Mexico City: Imtituto Nacional de
Antropologfa e Hi~toria, 1966.

Caro Baroja, Julio. "AnteLedentes espafioles de algunos problemas sociales relativos al mestizaje." Revista Hist6rica (Lima) 28 (T965): I,)7-uo.
~. Los iudios en la Espana moderna y contemll(minea. Vol. 2. Madrid:
Edkiones Arion, 1961.
- - - . Los monscos del Reino de Granada. Madrid: Diana, 1957.
- - - . Raws, pueblos y Imajes. Madrid; Revista de Occidente, 1957.
Carra~co, David, I'd. Aztec CeremoniaIl.andscapes. Niwot: University Press of
Colorado, 1')91.
- - - . Quetzalcoati and the /rony of Empire: Myths mid Prophecies in the
Aztec Tradition. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, I992.
Carrasco, Pedro. "Social Organization of Ancient Mexico." In Handbook of
Middle Amencan lndians, vol. IO, edited by R. Wauchope, G. F. Ekholm,
and L Bernal, 349-75. Austin: Univer~ity of Texas Press, 1971.
- - - . The Tenochca Em/)ire of Anciellt Mexico; The Trit,le Alliance of Tenochtitfan, Tetzcoco, and Tiacopall. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,
1999
- - - . "La transformacion de la cultma indigena durante la colonia." Historia
Mexicalla 25, no. 2 (T975): I75-20}. Carrera, Magali M. Imagining Identity
ill New Spain: Race, Lineage, and the Colonial Body in P()rtraiture and Casta
Paitltings. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003.
Carrete Parrondo, Carlos. EI judaismo espanol y la inquisici()n. Madrid: Editorial Marfre, 1992.
Cartagena, Alonso de. Defensorium unitaus chrlst/anae (tratado en favor de
los judios coll1lersos). Madrid: C. Bermejo, Impresor, 1943.
Cartas de Indias. Madrid: Ministerio de Fomento, 1877.
Castillo Palma, Norma Angelica. "Los estatutos de 'pureza de sangre' como
medio de acceso a las elites: el ca~() de la region de Pueb!a." In Circu{os de
Puder en la Nueva f.spaiia, edited by Carmen Castaneda, I05-I29. Mexico
City: CIESAS and Grupo Editorial Miguel Angel Porrua, 1998.
- - - . "Matrimonios mixtos y cruce de la barrera de color como vias para el
mestizaje de la poblaci6n negra y mulata (1674-1796)." Sigll()s histtlrico5 II,
nO4 (zooo); T07-37
Castro, Americo. ESfJaiia en su historla: Cristiatlos. m(Jf(JS y judftlS. Barcelona:
Editorial Critica, 1')84 [1')48).
Castro Morales, Efrain. "Los cuadros de ca~ta~ de la Nueva Espafia.~ Jahrhltch
fiir Geschichte von Staat, Wirtschaft. und Gesellschaft Lateinamerikas. no. 20
(19R3); 671-,)0.
Cervantes, Miguel de. Entremeses. Mexico City: Editorial Porrua, 1968.
Chance, John K., and William B. T<lylur. "Estate and C!a~s: A Reply.~ Com!Iarati/le StudieS o( SOCiety and History Zl, no. 3 (1979): 434-41.
- - - . "Estate and Class III a Colonial City: Oaxaca in 1792." Comparative
Studies III S(Jciety and History 19 (1977): 454-87.
Chasteen, John Charles. "Introduction; Beyond Imagined Communities." In
Beyond Imagined C(Jmmunities: Reading and Writing the NatiOlt in the
NineteenthCentury tatm America, edited by Sara Castro-Klaren and John
Charles Chasteen, ix-xxv. Washington, DC, Baltimore, and London: \X'oodrow Wilson Press and Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003.

Bibliography

Bibliography

Chimalpahin Quauhdthuanitzin, Domingo Francisco de San Anton MUi'ion

Annals o( His Time: DOli Dommgo de San Antr!n Munr!n Chimalpahm Qua:
uhtlehuallitzin. Edited and translated by James Lockhart, Susan Schroedtr
and Doris Namala. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006.
'
- - - . Codex Chlmalpahils: Society and Politics in MexICo Tenochtitlan, Tla,
te/olco, Texwco, Culhuacall, and Other Nahua Altepetl in Cel/trat Mexico.
2 vols. Translated by Arthur J. Anderson and Susan Schroeder. Norman and
London: University of Oklaholna Press, 1997.
Chocano Mena,Magdalena G. "Colonial Scholars in the Cultural Establishment
of Seventeenth Century New Spain." PhD dis'>., State University of New York
at Stony Brook, 1994.
Clavero, Bartolome. Mayorazgo: Propiedad (eudal en Castilla, 131l9-il536.
Madrid: Siglo XXI de Espana Editores, 1989.
Cltndinnen, lnga. Ambivalent Conquests: Maya and S/Jam'ard in Yucatan,
1517-1570. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
- - - . Aztecs: An Interpretation. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1~;I9l.
- - - . "Reading the Inquisitorial Record in Yucatan: Fact or fantasy." The
Americas 38, no. 3 (1982): 327-45.
- - - . "Ways to the Sacred: Reconstructing 'Religion' in Sixteenth Century
Mexico." History and Anthm/Jology 5 (1990): 105-41.
Coatsworth, John H. "The Limits of Colonial Absolutism: Mexico in the Eighteenrh Century." In F.ssays in the PolitICal, Economic and Social History of
Colonial Latm America, edited hy Karen Spalding, 25-51. Newark: UIllvenity of Delaware, Latin American Studies Program, OC(.:a~ionaIPapers and
Monographs NO.3, 1982.
Cohen, Thomas. "Nation, Lineage, and Jesuit Unity in AntonIO P05sevino',
Memorial to Everard Mercuflan (1576)." In A Com111lnhia de Jesus na Peninsula Iberica nos semlos X VI e XVII; F.s1Jiritualidade e cultura, 543-6r.
Porto, Portugal: Editora Universidade do Porto, 2004.
Conrad, Geoffrey W., and Arthur Andrew Demarest. ReligIOn and EmpIre:
The Dynamics o( Aztec and Inca F.xIJansionism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.
Contreras, Jaime. EI Santo O{icio de la Inquisici6n en Galicia, 1560-170:
Poder, s()ciedad y cultura. Madrid: Akal, 1982.
- - - . Historia de la Inquisici6n t:spafiola (1478-1834). Madrid: Arco!
Libras, 1997.
- - - . "I.impieza de sangre, cambio social y manipulaci6n de la memoria." In
illquisici(Jn y CUllversos, 8 I-lOr. Toledo: Caja de CasTilla-La Mancha, 1;194
- - - . Sotos colltra Rlque/mes: Regidores, inquisidores y cnptojudios. Madrid:
Anaya & M. Muchnik, 1992.
Contreras, Jaime, and Jean Pierre Dedieu. "Estru,:turas geogdficas del Santo
Oficio en bpana." In Historia de la inqUlsicirin en t:spaiia y America; Las
estructuras del Santo O{icio, vo!' 2, edited by Joaquin Perez Villanueva and
Bartolome bcandell Bonet, 3-48. '\ladrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristiano'>,
Centro de Esrudios Inquisitoriales, 1993.

Cooper, Frederick. Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History.

Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.
Cooper, Frederi.;.k, and Ann L. Stoler. "Tensions of Empire: Colonial Control
and Visions of Rule." American EthnologIst 16, no. 4 (1989): 609-21.
Cope, Douglas R. The Limits (J( Racsal Domination: Plebeian Society in Colonial Mexico Clly, 1660-1720. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press ,
1994
Corommas, Joan. Dice/ullario critico etimol(iglco de la lengua castellana.
4 vols. Berne: Editorial.Francke, 1954.
Corr2~, Rodulfo. F.I regimen de las "gracias al sacar" en Venezuela durante el
Ileriodo IJlSf!anico. Vol. I. Caracas: Academia Naciona! de la Historia, I978.
Covarrubias OroLco, Sebastian d~. Tesoru de la lel/gua castellana (J estlllnola.
Edited by Felipe C. R. Maldonado MJdrid: Editorial Ca~talia, 199; [16IlJ.
Crosby, Alfr~d W., Jr. The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural
Consequcnces of 1492. 30th anniversary cd. We~tport, CT: Praeger, 2003.
Cuadriel!o, Jaime. "Cones as the Ameri..::an Moses: The Mural Writing of Patriotic Hi~tory." Lecture given at the UniverSity of Southern Califorma, Los
Angeles, November 22, 2005.
- - - . Las glorias de la ref!uh!ica de Tlaxcala: () la wncienCla wmo imagen
sublime. Mexico City: Instituto de Investiga..::ione~ Esteticas, Universidad
Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, and Musco Na..::iona! de Arte, INBA, 2004.
Cuevas, Mariano. Historia de la Iglesia en Mexico. Fd cd., vol. 1. EI Paso, TX:
Editorial "Revista Cat6Ii..::a," 1928.
Cutter, Charles R. The Legal Culture of Northern New Spain, 170o-JlslO.
Albuljuerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995.
Davies, Nigel. The Aztecs. Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press,
1973
- - - . The Toltec Herstage: From the Fall o(Tula to the Rise of Tenochtittan.
Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1980.
Dads, David B. Challenging the Boundaries of Sialler),. Cambridge, MA, and
London: Harvard Univen'ity Press, 2003.
- - - . "Constructing Race: A Reflection." William and Mar), Quarterly 54,
no. T (1997): 7-18.
Deans-Smith, Susan. Bureaucrats, Plal/ters, and Workers: The Making of thc
Tohacco Monopoly III Bourh{JI/ Mexico. Austin: University of Texas Press,
199 2 .
Dedieu, Jean Pierre. L'admil/istratirJl/ de la (oi: L'inquisitiml de To/ede XVI'XVII/" siijcle. Madrid: Casa de Velazquez, 1989.
- - - . "'Christianization' in New Castde: Catechism, Communion, Mass,
and Confirmation in the Toledo Archbishopric, 154-'-165." In Culture and
Control /II CoulIter-Reformatm1/ S(!ain, edited by Anne J. Cruz and Mary
Ehzabeth Perry, 1-2+ .MHlneapoli~: University of MinnesotJ Press, (992.
- - - . "I.impieza, Pouvoir et Richesse: Conditions d'entrCe dans It corps des
ministres de I'inquisltion: Tribunal de Tolede, Xl V"-XVII'" siecles." In I.es st)cirites (ermees dan, Ie monde Iberique (XVI"-XVIIF siiicle), 168-87. Pans:
Edition~ du Centre NJtio!lal de la Recherche Scientifique, r986.

368

Bibliography

Dicciunario de Autoridades. Madrid: Editorial Gredos, 1990 [T732J.

Dominguez OrtiL, Antonio. La close sucial de los cOllverso,; en Castilla en la
edad moderna. Madrid; In~tituto Balmes de Sociologia, Depart"amemo de
Historia Social, Cunseju Suptrior de Investigaciones Cientfficas, 1955.
--~. The Go/den Age o(Spain, 1516-1659. Translated by James Casey. New
York: Basic Books, 1971.
--~. Los judcocrmversus en Espana y America. Madrid: Ediciones Istmo,
197I.
--~.

Los judeocOIl!lcrs()s en 10 Espana moderna. Madrid: Editorial MAPFRE,

1992.

Dominguez Ortiz, Antonio, and Bernard Vincent. Historia de los moriseos;

Vida y tragudia de una minor/a. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1997 [1985J.
Dominguez y Company, Francisw. "La condicion de vecino: Su significal"ion e
importancia en la vida colonial hispanoamericana." In Crtlllica del VI CUll"
greso h,stiJriw municipal interamericano (Madrid-Barcelona. J 957), 70}-2.0.
Madrid: Inst!tuto de Estudios de Administracion Local, 1959
Doug[as, Mary. PUrity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Po/lurion
and Taboo. London: Routledge, 1995.
Edwards, John. "The Beginnings of a Scientific Theory of Race? Spain, 14501600." In From Iberia to Diaspora: Studies in Se/Jhardic History and Culture,
edited by Yedida K. Stillman and Norman A. Stillman. Leiden, Bo~ton, and
Cologne: Brill, 1999.
--~. Christian Cordoba: The City and its Region in the Late Middle Ai-Ies.
New York: Cambridge University Pres~, 1981.
Elliot, John H. Imperial Spain, J 469-1 7 I 6. London: Edward Arno[d Pub!i~hef'>,
19 6 3.
Escobar del CorrO, Juan. Tractatus bipartitus de puritate et nobditate probanda.
Lyon: Sumptibu~ Rochi Deville & L. Chalmette, 1737.
Estensoro, Juan Carlos, Pilar Romero de Tepda y Picatoste, I.uis Eduardo
Wuffarden, and Natalia Majluf, cds. Los cuadros del mestizaje del vlrrey
Amat: La represemacii"m etllog"ifica en el Peru colonial. Lima: Museo del
Arte de Lima, 1999.
Fausto-Ster[ing, Anne. Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construct/lJlf
of Sexuality. New York: Basic Books, lOOO.
Fernandez de Echeverria y Veytia, Mariano. Historia de la fundacirin de 11 ciw
dad de la Puebla de Ius Angeles en 11 Nueva Espana. l vols. Puebla: Imprent a
Labor, 1931.
Fernandez de Recas, Guillermo S. Cacicazgos y nobiiiar/(J indigena de la Nlle~'a
ES/Jaiia. Mexico City: Instituto Bibliogra!lco Mexicano de la Blbliotcca N~
cional de Mexico, 1961.
--~. Mayurazl{os de fa Nueva Espana. Mexico City: In~tituto Bib[iognirico
Mexicano, Bib[ioteca Naciona[ de MexICO, 1965.
l-ew, Martha. Womell Who I.ive Evil Li~'es: Gender, Relii-liiJIl, and the PuliticS
of ['ower III Colonial Guatemala. Austin: University of Texas l'res~, 200l.
Florescano, Enrique. "El canon melllOrioso forjado por [os dtulos primordia[es." Colu/llal Latm American Review 11, no. l (2.00l): l83-230.

Bibliography
--~.

Memory, Myth, alld Time in Mexico: From the Aztecs to Independence.

Translated by Alberr G. Bark. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994--~. "La reconstruccion historica e1ahorada par [a noblela indigena y sus
descendienteS me~tizo~." In La memoria y eI otvido; Segundo simposio de
las mentalidades, 11-l0. Mexico City: lnstituto Nacional de Antropologfa
e Historia, 1985.
Forbes, jack D. Black Africalls and NatllJe Americans: C%r, Race and Caste
In the Evolutioll of Red-Black Peo/,les. New York: Basil Blackwell, 1988.
Foster, George. Culture and COllquest: America's Spanish Heritage. New York:
Wenner-Gren Foundation for Antbropo[ogical Research, 1960.
Foucau[t, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge. Tran~[ated from the French
by A. M. Sheridan Smith. New York: Pantheon, 1972.
--~. The History of Sexuality. Vol. I. Translatl'd by Robert Hurley. New
York: Vintage, 1990.
--~. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human SCIences. New
York: Vintage, 1973.
Fredrickson, George M. RaCIsm: A Short History. Princeton, NJ, and Oxford:
Princeton University Press, l002.
Freedman, Paul. Images of the Medieval Peasant. Stanford, CA: Stanford Uni"
versity Press, 1999.
French, John D. "The Misteps of Anti-Imperialist Rea~on: Bourdieu, Wacquant
and Hanchard's Orj,heus and Power." Theory, Culture and Society l7, no. 1
(2000): I07-28.

Gallagher, Ann Miriam, R. S. M. "Las monjas indigenas del monasterio de

C[)rpu~ Chri~ti de [a ciud'Jd de Mexico, 172.4-182.1." In Las ml/jeres latinoarnericanas; perspectivas histliricas, edited by Asuncion Lavrin, translated
by Mercedes Pi.lJrro de Parlante, T77-2.01. Mexico City: Fonda de Cultura
Economica, 1985.
Gampcl, Benjamin R. "Does Medieval NavarreSe jewry Salvage Our Notion of
COIwivencia?" In In Iberia and Beyolld: Hispanic Jews Between Cultures,
edited by Bernard Dov Cooperman, 97-12.l. Newark: University of Delaware
Press, 1998.
Garcia, Gregorio. Origen de los illdios del Nuevo Mundo. Mexico City: Fonda
de Cultura Economica, 1981.
Garda-Abaso[o, Antonio F. Martin Enriquez y la Reforma de 156S ell Nueva
fspaiia. Seville: Excelentisima Diputacion Provincial de Sevilla, 1983.
Garcia-Baquero Gonza[ez, Antonio. Alldalucia y la Carrera de Indias, 1492-1 S24
Seville: Bih[ioteca de lJ. Cu[tura Anda[u..:a, [986.
GardJ. Carcel, Ricardo. La leyellda negra: HistorJa y o1!illirlll. Madrid: Alianza
Editorial, 1992..
_ _~. Origenes de la inquisici()11 espaiiola: Ef Tribunal de ValenCIa, I 471i-1.5"3 o.
Barcelona: Edil"iones Peninsula, [976.
GardJ lcalbaketa, joaquin, cd. ColecC/lin de documentos I,ara la historia de
MeXICO. Vol. II. Mexico City: joaquin Garcia Icazbaketa, IS66.
Garcia Ivar~, Flora. La represJ()n ell el trihunal inquisitorial de Granada,
'UO-I S 1'1. Madrid: Ediciones Akal, 1991.

Bibliography

Bibliography

Garda Sai7., Marfa Concepcion. "The Artistic Development of Casta Painting."

In New World Ordas: Casta Paintmg alld Colonial I.atm Amenca, edited
hy Ilona Katzew, 30-41. New York; Amencas Society Art Gallery, 1996.
- - - . Las castas mexicanas: Un genero picttlriw americano. Milan: Olivetti

Espana, edited by Carmen Castaneda, S9-103. Mexico City; CIESAS and

Grupo Editorial Miguel Angel Porrua, I99/l.
Gootenberg, Paul. "On Salamanders, Pyramid~, and Mexico's 'Growth-without-Change': Anachronistic Rdlections on a Case of Bourbon New Spain."
Coloniall.atin America ReVieW 4, no. I (l995): rI7-2.7.
Graizbord, D<lvid L. Souls in Dispute: Converso Identities in Iberia and the
Jewish Dias/JOra, 1580-1700. Philadelphia: Universitr of Pennsylvania Press,

1989

'

- - - . "The Contribution of Colonial Painting to the Spread of the Image of

America." In Amenca: Bride of the Sun; 500 Years of Latin America mid the
Low Countries: 1.2-31.5.:,12: Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwer[J. Edited
by Bernadette J. Bucher l77-78. Brussels, Belgium: Hemi~h Community,
AdministratiOn of External Relations, 1992.
Garner, Richard L., and SPirO L Stefanou. Economic Growth and Change III
Bour/mn Mexico. Gainesville; University Press of Florida, 1993.
Garraway, Doris. "Race, Reproduction and Family Romance in Moreau de
Saint-Mery's Description . .. de la partie franr;mse de /'isle Saint-Domingue."
Eighteenth-Century Studies 38, no. 2 (2005): 227-46.
Germeten, Nicole von. Black Blood Brothers: Confraternities and Social Mobility for Afro-MexicallS. Gainesville: University Pre~s of florida, 2006.
Gibson, Charles. "The Aztec Aristocracy in Colonial Mexico." Cmnparatille
Studies in Society and History 2., no. 2 (January 1960), pp. 169-96.
- - - . The Aztecs under Spanish Rule; A History of the Indians of the Valley
of Mexico, 1519-1 H 10. Stanford, CA; Stanford Univer~ity Press, 1964.
- - - , ed. The Black l.egend: Anti-Spallish Attitudes in the Old W()rld and
the New. New York: Knopf, 1971.
- - - . "The Identity of Diego Munoz Camargo.~ Hispanic American Historical Review .,0, no. 2 (1950): 199-205.
- - - . Tlaxcala ill the Sixteenth Century. New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 1952.
Gil, Juan. L()s C(Jllversos y la fnquisici(in sevdlalla. Vo!. 1. Seville; Universldad
de Sevilla: Fund.lCioil EI Monte, 2000.
Gillespie, Susan D. The Aztec Kings; The Construction of RulershilJ in Mexic<l
History. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 19/19.
Gilroy, Paul. "One Nation under a Groove: The Cultural Politics of 'Race' and
Racism in Britain." In Anal()my of Racism, edited by David Theo Goldberg,
263-82. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1990.
- - - . 'There ain't no Black 111 the Union Jack'; The Cultural Politics of Race
alld Nation. ChIcago: University of ChICago Press, 1991.
Gojman (;oldberg, Alicia. Los conversos ell la Nueva Espana. Mexico CIty:
Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Escucla Nacional de Estudios
ProfesioJlo.[es Acathin, and B'nai B'rith, n.d.
G6mez de Cervantes, Gonzalo. La vida eC()lIrimica y social de Nueva Espana
al (inaltzar eI sig/() XVI. Mexico City: Antigua Libreria Rohredo, de Jose
Porrua e Hijos, 1944.
Gondlez Fchevarr[a, Roberto. Myth and Archille: A Theory of Latin American
Narratiw. Durham, NC, and London; Duke University Pres~, 1998.
GOlll.alcz Hermosillo, francisco. "La elite indfgena de Cholula en eI sig[o X VIII:
EI caso de don Juan de Leon y Mendoza." [n Circul(Js de poder en la Nueva

37 I

204
Greenblatt, Stephen. Marvelous Possessions; The Wrmder of the New World.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.
Greenleaf, Richard E. "Thc Inquisition and the Indians of New Spain; A Study
in Jurisdictional Confusion." The Americas 2.2, no. 2. (196S): 138-66.
- - - . "The Mexican Inquisition and the Indians: Sources for the Ethnohistorian." The Americas 34, no. 3 (1978); 3IS-44.
- - - . Zumarraga y la lnquisiwJII mexicana. Mexico City; Fondo de Cultura
Economica, 1988.
Gruzinski, Serge. La cO/fJllizaci(!n de 10 imaginario: Sociedades illdigenas y
occidellta/izacirin ell el Mexico espanol, siglos XVI-XVlll. Translated by
Jorge Ferreiro. Mexico City: fondo de Cultura Econ6mica, 1991.
Guerra, Fram;ois-Xavier. "Identidade~ e independencia: La excepcion americana." In lmagmar fa naci(!II, edited by fran~ois-Xavier Guerrd and Monica
Quijada, 93-I34. Munster, Hamburg; Lit, 1994.
Guillaumin, Colette. "The Idea of Race and its Elevation to Autonomous Scientific and Legal Status." In Sociological Theories: /{ace and Colonialism,
37-67. Paris: UNESCO, 1980.
- - - . Racism, SexIsm, Power alld Ideology. London and New York; Routledge,
I995

Gutierrez, Ramon A. When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away: Marriage,
Sexuality and Power in New Mexico, IJOO-1846. Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 199I.
Hackel, Steven W. ClJ/ldren of Coyote. Missirmanes of Saint Francis: lndianSpanish Relations in Colonial Cail(ornia, 1769-18ro. Ch.lpd Hill; Omo
hundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and University of
North Carolina Pres~, 2005.
Haidt, Rebecca. Emb(Jdying the Enlightenment: KII()wing the Body ill EighteenthCentury Spanish Literature and Culture. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998.
Haliczer, Stephen. inquisition alld Soclf.'ty in the Kingdom of Valencia, 1478J 834. Berkeley: Ulllversity of California Press, 1990.
- - - . "The Moriscos: Loyal Subjects of his Clthojic Majesty Philip IIL"
In Christians, Muslims, and Jews III Medieval and Early Modern Spaill:
interactllm and Cultural Challge, edited by Mark D. Mcrer~on and Edward
D. English, 265-/l9. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press,
1999

- - - . "Sexuality and Repression in Counter-Reformation Spain." In Sex alld

Love in Go/dell Age S/Jam, edited by Alain Saint-Sacns, /lI-94' New Orleans:
University Prc~s of the South, 1999.

Bibliography

Bibliography

Hall, Stuart. "Gramsci'~ Relevance for the Study of Race and Ethnicity." In
Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues ill Cultural Studies, edited by David Morley
and Kuan-Hsing Chen, 41 1-40. London and New York: Routledge, 1996.
--~. "On Postmodernism and Articulation." In Stuart Hall: Critical DIalogues in CU/fllral Studies, edited by David Morley and Kuan-Hsing Chen,
131-50. London and New York: Routledge, 1996.
--~. "Race, Articulation and Societies Structured in Dominance." In Unesco
Reader, ~()ci()I{)glcal71)e()rie5: Race alld CoifJlfialism, 305-45. Paris: UNESCO
198o.
'
Hammon, Brian R. "Absolutismo ilustrado y la crisis multidimensional en d
periodo colonial tardio, 1760-1808," In InterfJretaclUnes del slgio XVIII
mexicano; EI impaC(o de las reformas borbdnicas, edited by joseflna Zoraida
Vaz4UeZ, 67-108. Mexil'o City: Nueva Imagen, 199~.
Hanger, Kimberly S. "Patronage, Property and Persistence: The Emergence of a
Free Black Elite in Spanish New Orleans." In Agaillst the Odds: Free Blacks
in the Slave SOCietieS of the Amencas, edited by jane G. Lander~, 44-64'
London and Portland, OR; frank Cass, 1996.
Hanke, Lewis. All Mankmd is One; A Study of the Disputation between
Bartolome de Las Casas and Juan Gines de Sepulveda in / jiO Oil the
intellectual and Religious Capacity of the Americall india,;s. DeKalb:
Northern Illinois University Press, 1974--~. ed. History of Latill American Civilization; Sources and Interpretati(J/ls.
Vol. i, The Colonial Experience. London: Methuen and Co., 1969.
--~. "A Modest Propo~al for a Moratorium on Grand Generalizations: Some
Thoughts on the Black Legend." Hisllanic American Historical Review 51,
no. I (197l): I I 2-27.
Hannaford, Ivan. The Idea of Race: The History of all Idea m the West. Wa~h
ington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Johns Hopkins Univenity
Press, 1996.
Harrison, bye V. "The Persistent Power of 'Race' in the Cultural and Political
Economy of RalIsm." Annual Review of Anthrop{)/ogy ~4 (I995): 47-74.
Haskett, Robert. "Activist or Adulteress? The Life and Struggle of Dona Jo~efa
Marfa of Tepoztlan.~ In Indian Women of Early Mexico, edited by Susall
Schroeder, Stephanie Wood, and Robert Haskett, [45-64. Norman and
London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997.
--~. indigen(/us Rulers: An Ethn()history of Town G ovemment 1/1 Colonial
Cuernavaca. Albuquerque: Gniversity of New Mexico Press, 1991.
--~. "Ellegendario don Toribio en los titulos primordiales de Cuernavaca."
In De Tlacui/()s y -escrihall(Js, edited by Xavier Nogllez and Stephanie Gail
Wood, 137-66. Zamora, Michoadn: El Colegio de Michoadn, 1998.
Hassig, Ross. Trade, Tribute, and Tralls/lOrtati(JlI: The Sixteenth Century Po
lltical Ecollomy of the Valley of Mexico. Norman dnd London: University of
Oklahoma Press, [985.
Henningsen, Gu~tav. "The Archives and the Hi~tori()graphy of the Spanish
In4ui~jtjon," translated by Lawren<:e Scott Ramey. In The InqJlisitJOIl III
tarly Modern ElifO/Je: StudieS on Sources and Methods, edited by Gusrav

Henningsen, John Tede<;chi, and Charles Amiel, 54-78. Dekalb: Northern

lIIinOls University, 1986.
Heritier-Auge, Fran'foise. "Semen and Blood: Some Ancient Theories Concerning Their Genesis and Relationship." In Fragments for a Hist(Jry of the
Humall Body, vol. 3, edITed by MIchel Feher WIth Ramona Naddaff and
Nadia Tazi, 159-75. New York: Urwne, 1989.
Hernandez Franco, Juan. Cliltura)' limpleza de sallxre en la Espana moderna:
Pllritate sangllinis. Murcia: Ulllversidad de Murcia, 1996.
Herzog, Tamar. Defil/ing NatIOns: Immigrants and CitIZens in Early M(Jdem
Spain alld Sllamsh America. New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University
Press, 2.003.
--~. Upholding Justice: Society. State, and the Penal System ill Quito (1650[7.';0). Ann Arbor: Univer~ity of Michigan Press, 2004.
Himmerich y Valencia, Robert. The Encomenderos of New Spaifl. '521-1555.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991.
Hodes, Martha. White Women, Black Men. New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 1997.
Holt, Thomas C. "Marking: Race, Race-making and the Writing of Hi~tory."
American Historical Review 100, no. I (1995): [-20.
--~. The Problem of Race in the 21st Century. Cambridge, MA, and London:
Harvard University Pre~s, 2000.
--~. "Slavery and Freedom in the Atlantic World: Reflections on the Diasporan Framework." In Crossing Boundaries; ComparatIVe /1istory of Black
People in Diaspora, edited by Darlene Clark Hine and Jacqueline McLeod,
33-44. Bloomington and IndianapoliS: Indiana University Press, i999.
Hordes, Stanley M. "The Inqui~jtion as Economic and Political Agent: The
Campaign of the Mexicdn Holy Office against the Crypto-Jews in the MidSeventeenth Century." The Americas 39, no. I (1982): pp. 23-38.
Hudson, Nicholas. "From 'Nation' to 'Race': The Origin of Racial Classification
in Eighteenth-Century Thought." Eighteenth Century StudieS 29, no. 3 (1996):

37'

373

247-6 4.

Instrucciones que los virreyes de Nueva Espmla dejaroll a sus sucesores. MexICO: Imprenta Imperial, 1867.
Israel, Jonathan I. Race, Class and Politics in Colonial Mexic(), /f)/O-/f)70.
London: Oxford University Press, 1975.
lxtlilxochitl, Fernando de Alva. Hlstoria de la naci(1n chichimeca. Madrid:
Historia 16, 198$.
Ja<:hon, Robert H. "Race/caste and the Creation and Meaning of Identity in
Colonial Spanish America.~ Revista de Indias 55, no. 20, (1995): 150-73.
janiufn Ortega, Maria Teresa. "El coJice Techialoyan" Garda Granados y las
congregacione~ en cl altiplano central de Mexico." In De Tlacuilos y escr/banus. edittxl hy Xavier Nogl.1ez and Stephanie Wood, 49-$8. Zamor<l,
Michoadn: El Colegio de Michoaran, 1998.
Javier Pescador, Juan. The New World Inside a Basque Village: The Oiartzlm
Valle}' and Its Atlalltic Emigrauts, 1550-[/100. Reno: University of Nevada
Pre~s,

2004.

Bibliography

Bibliography

journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 5, no. 2 (2004).

Kamen, Henry. Inquisition and Society in Spailt in the Sixteeltth and Sevelt_
teeltth Centuries. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985.
- - - . "Limpiaa and tbe Gho'>t of Ameriw Castro: Racism as a Tool of Literary Analysis." HiS/Janie Review 64, no. 1 (1996): 19-29.
- - - . The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision. New Haven, CT, and
London: Yale University Press, 1998.
Kamen, H;:nr)", and Joseph Perez. La imagen de la Cs{JQ"na de Felipe II: "Leyenda negra" 0 contlicto de intereses. VaIJadoJid: Universidad de Valladolid,

"EI mestizaje y su importancia t;:n eJ desarrollo de la poblacion hispanoamt;:ricana durantt;: la epoca colonial." Reliisla de /ttdias 7, no. 24 (AprilJune, 1946): 215-37.
- - - . "Ordenanzas de grt;:mios durante ]a epoca colonial." Estudios de HistoT/a Social de Es//ana, 483-524. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Ciemilir:as, 1949.
Krippner-Martinez, James. Rereading the Conquest: I'ower, Politics, and the
History of Early Colonial Michoacdn, Mexico, 1521-1565. University Park:
Pennsylvania State Unlvenity Press, 200T.
Kruger, Steven F. "Conversion and Medit;:val Sexual, Religious, and Racial Categories." In C(JIIstructmg Medieval Sexualit}', editt::d by Karma Lochrie, Peggy
McCracken, and James A. Schultz, 164-76. MinnC"dpciis and London: UniversiTy of Minnt;:sota l'ress, T997.
Kuznt;:sof, Elizaht::th Anne. "Ethnic and Gender lnflut::nces on 'Spanish' Creole
Society in Colonia! Spanish America." Colomal Latin American Review 4,
no. T (I995): 153-76.
Lacr.jueur, Thomas. Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud.
Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard Univt::rsity Pre~s, 1990.
Ladd, Doris M. The MeXIcan Nohility at I!lde/lelldence. 1780-1826. Austin:
Institute of Latin Amaican STUdies, University of Texas, 1976.
Ladera Quesada, Miguel Angel. Los sci/ores de Alldalucia: lnvestigaciones so/ire nohles y senorios ell los 5igbs XIII a xv. Cadi7.: Universidad de Cadiz,

374

1980.

Katz, Friedrich. The Anciell! American Ch'11isations. London: Weidenlidd and

Nicolson, 1989 [1972].
Katzew, Ilona. "Casta Painting: Identity and Social Stratification in Colonial
Mexico." In New World Orders: Casta Paintillg and Colonial Latin America,
edited by Ilona Katzew, 8-29. New York: Americas Society An Gallery, 1996.
- - - . Casta Pailltmg: Images of Race in Eighteellth-Century Mexico. New
Havt::n, CT, and London: Yale Univt;:Csity Prt::~s, 2004.
Keen, Benjamin. "The Black Legend Revi,ited: Assumptions and Realitie~."
Hispanic American Historical Review 49, no. 4 (1969): 703-19.
- - - . "The White Legend Revisited: A Reply to Professor Hanke's 'Mode:.t
Proposal.'" His/wnic American Histnrlcal Review 51, no. 2 (1971): 336-55.
Kellogg, Susan. "DepiCTing Mestizajt;:: Gendt::rt;:d Images of Ethnorace in Colomal
Mexican Texts.~ journal of Women's Hi,tory 12, no. 3 (2000): 69-92.
- - - . Law alld the Transformatwu of Aztec Culture, 1500-1700. Norman:
University of Oklahoma Prt;:ss, 1995.
- - - . "The Woman's Room: Some Aspects of Gender Relations in Teno(,:htitlan
in the LaTe Pre-Hispanic Period." Ethnohistory 42, no. 4 (1995): 563-76.
Kennt::th Mills, "The Limits of Religious Coercion in Midcolonial Peru.~ In
The Church in Co/omal Latill America, editt;:d by John F. Schwalkr, I47-!!o.
Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resourct;:s, 2000.
Kicza, John E. "Native American, African, and Hispanic Communities during the MidJk Period in the Colonial Americas." Historical Archae/OK}" 31,
no. 1 (1997): 9-17.
Klor de Alva, Jorge. "Colonizing Souls: The Failure of the Indian Inquisition and
the Rise of Penitential DiKipline." In Cultural Encollllters: The impact of the
Inquisition ilt Spam and the New World, edited by Mary Elizabt::th Perry and
Anne J. Cruz, 3-21. Berkdt;:y: Univt;:rsity of California Press, 1991.
Konctzh, Richard. Co/ealrJlt de documentos tiara la historia de la formaci(JIl
social de Hispmmamerica. 1493-11110. Vol. 1. Madnd: Consejo Superior de
Investigaciones Cienrilicds, 1953.
- - - . ColecCitin de documentos para la hi,toria de la formacllin social de
HispanoamcrtC4 1493-JlJ /0. Vol. 3, bk.l. MaJnJ: ConseJo Supenor Jt;: Inve~
tigaciones Cientificds, 1962.
- - - . "Estado y So..:iedad t;:n las Indias." Estudios Americall(iS (Seville) 3, no. 8
(195 1): 33-5 8.

- - - . "l.a formacion de la nobleLa en Indids." Fstudios AmeTlcan(JS 3, no. 10

(1951): 3 29-57.

375

199,11
M

- - - . "Spain, circa 1492: Social Values and Structures. In Implicit Ullderstandings: Observmg. Re(lOrting, and Reflecting on the F.ncuunters hetween
Europeans and other I'coples in the Early M (Jdern l'eri(u/, edited by Stuart B.
Schwartz, 96-135. Cambridgt;: and New York: Cambridge University Press,
T994-

Lafayt;:, Jacques. Quetza/c!iatl and Guadalupe: The Formation of Mexican National ConscIOusness, 101-JII13. Translated by Bt;:njamin Keen. Chicago:
Ul1Ivt;:rsity of Chicago Press, 1976.
Laikin Elkin, Judith. "Imagining Idolarry: Missionaries, Indians, and Jt;:ws." In
Religion and the Authority of the i'ast. t::diud by Tobin Sit::bt::rs, 75-97. Ann
Arbor: Univt;:rsity of Michigan Press, 1993
i.andns, Jane G. "AnJuisition and Lo~s on a Spani.h Frontier: Tht;: Free Black
Homesteaders of Florida, 1784-182J.M In Against the Odds: Free Blacks
in the Slave Societies of the Americas. edited by Jane G. Landers, 85- 10 1.
London and Portland, OR, Frank Cass, 1996.
- - - . Black Societ)' in Spanish Florida. Urbana: University of ll!inois Press,
1999

Ldrios Martin, Jesl\s. "Ciencias complemt::ntarias de la nobiliarid." In Apuntes

de nofniiana }' lIociunes de geneaiogia y herdldica. editt::d by Francisco ~e
Caden>ls y Allende, Vir:ente de Cadenas y Vict;:llt, Julio Atlellza, Jesus LHJO
Martin, Antonio de Vargas-Zuiliga, and Marques de Sine Iglesias, 29-49
Madrid: EdlclOnes Hlddlguia, 1960.
___ . Hidalg/Jia e hidalgos de Indias. Madrid: Asociacion de hidalgos a fuero
de Espana, 1958.

Bibliography

Bibliography

Lavalle, Bernard. Las prumesas ambiguas: criolltsmo colonial en los Andes.

l.ima: Instituto RivaAgUero de la Pontifica Universidad Catolica del Pnu,
1993
Lavrin, Asun~ion. "Indian Brides of Christ: Creating New Spaces for Indigenous
Women in New Spain." In Mexican Studie,/cstudios Mexicaf/os 15, no. 2
(1999): 225-60.
Lea, Henry Charles. Historia de la InquisiCl6n espanola. Vol. 2. Tramlated
by Angel Alcala and Je~u, Tab!!), edited by Angel Alcala, prologue by Angel
Alcala. MJdrid: runda<.:i6n Universitaria Espanola, 1982-83.
- - - . A History of the fnquisitirJ/l in S1Min. Vol. 2. New York: Macmillan,
196.
Le6n, NicoLis. Las castas del Mexico colonial. Mexico City: Tallere~ Graficos
del Museo Na<.:ional de Arqueologia, Historia, y Etnografia, 1924.
Le6n-Portilla, Miguel. Los antigu()s mexicanos a traves de sus crrlnicas y can.
tares. Mexico City: fond!) de Cultura Economica, 1987.
Levine, Philippa, ed. Gender and Empire. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Pre~s, 2004.
Levine Melammed, Rmee. "Crypta-Jewish Women Facing the Spanish Inqui
sition: Transmitting Religiou~ Practices, Beliefs, and Attitudes." In Christians,
Muslims, alld jews in Medieval and Early Modern S/Jam: Interaction and Cultural Change, edited by Mark D. Meyerson and Edward D. English, 197-219.
Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, [999.
- - - . HeretIcs or Dat/ghters of Israel? The Crypto-jewish Women of Castile.
New York: Oxford University l)re~s, I999.
Lewis, Laura A. Hall of Mirrors: Power, Witchcraft, and Caste ill Colonial
Mexico. Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2003.
- - - . "The 'Weakness' of Women and the Femmization of the Indi.w in
Colonial Mexico." Colonial Latin American Review 5, no. I (1996): 73-94
Leyes de India,. Madrid: Biblioteca judicial, 1889.
Liebman, Seymour B., ed. The Enlightened: The Writings of Luis de Carvala/,
el Mozo. Translated by Seymour B. Leibman. Coral Gables, FL University of
Miami Pre~s, I967.
- - - . Thelews In New Spaill: Faith, Flame, and the Inquisition. Coral Gabb,
Fl: University of Miami Press, 1970.
lira Monu, Luis. "EI estatuto de flmpieza de sangre en el derecho Indiano." In
Xl Congreso dellrlstituto Internacirma/ del Derecho Irldiano, 31-47. Bu~nos
Aires: Imtituto de Investigacion de Historia del Derecho, 1997.
- - - . "La-prueba de la bidalguia en el derrcho Indiano." Revista Chilena de
HistrJria del Derecho (Santiago) 7 (I978); 13I-P
Liss, P~ggy. Mexlcu Under Spain, 1521-!5JI1; Society and the Ongllls of NatlOllality. Chi<.:ago: Univer~ity of Chicago Pr~ss, 1975.
Lockhan, James. The Nalll4as After the Conquest: A Social and Cultural
History of the Indians of Central Mexiw, SIxteenth Through Eighteenth
CentUrtes. Stanford, CA: Stanford UnivtTsity Pres~, [992.
- - - . Nahuas and Spaniards: Postconquest Central Mexican History and
Philology. Lm Angeles: UCLA Latin Am~ri<.:an Center Publi<.:ations, Univer;ity of CalifornIa, Los Angel~~, 1991.

- - - . Spanish Peru, 1532-/5110. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1974.

lockhart, James, and Stuart B. Schwartz. Early Latin America. New York: Cambridge Univ~r~ity Press, 1983.
Lomnitl.-Adler, Claudio. J:-.'xits from the Lahyrinth: Culture and Ideology in the
Mexican National Space. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.
___ . "Nationalism as a Practical System: Benedin Anderson's Theory of
Nationalism from the Vantage Point of Spanish America." Jn The Other Mirror; Grand The()ry through the Lens ()f Latin America, edited by Miguel
Angel Centeno and Fernando L6pez-Alves, 329-59. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
UniverSity Pre~s, 2001.
L6pei' Austin, Alfredo. The Human Body and Ideolog)'; Concepts of the Ancient
Nahuas. 2 vols. Translated by Thelma Ortiz de Montellano and Bernard
Ortiz de Montellano. Salt Lake City: Univenity of Utah Press, I988.
l.6pez de Meneses, Amada. "Grandezas y titulos de nobleza a los descendientes
de Moctezuma II." Revista de Indias 2l (1962): 341-52.
L6pei' de Velasco, Juan. Geografia y descripcirJn universal de las Indias.
Vol. 248 of i3iblioteca de Autores F.s/}Qllo/es. Edited by dOll Marcos Jimenez
de la Espada. Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1971.
L6po. Martinez, Nicolas. "EI estatuto de limpieza de sangre en la catedral de
Burgos.~ Hispania (Madrid) 19, no. 74-77 (1959): 52-81.
L6pez Sarrclallgue, Delfina E. La nobleza illdigella de Pdtu-uaro en la epoca
virreinal. Mexico City: Universidad Na<.:ional Aut6noma de Mexico, 1965.
Lopez Vela, Roberto. "Estructuras administrativas del Santo Oflcio." In Historia de fa lnquisicirin en Espana)' America: Las estmcturas del Santo
O(ici(J, edited by joaquin Perez Villanueva and Bartolome Escandell Bonet,
63-274. Vol. 2. Madrid: Bibliote<.:a de Autores Cristianos, Centro de Estudios
Inquisitoriales, 1993.
___ . "InqUlsici6n y monarquia: Estado de la cuesti6n (1940-1990)." Hispallia 3,no. 176 (1990): TI33-40.
Lor~n<.:e, Bruce A. "The Inquisition and the New Christiam in the Iberian
PeJ1insula: Main Historiographi<.: Issues and Controversies." In The Sepharadi
and Orielltal jewish Heritage Studies, International Congress on the Sepharadi and Orienta! Jewry, and Issacbar Ben-Ami, 13-72. Jerusalem: Magnes
Press, Hebrew University, 1982.
Los /lirreyes es/}aiioles en America durante el gobierno de fa Casa de Austria.
Vol. 1. Edited by Lewis Hanke with the collaboration of Celso Rodriguez.
Vol. 273 of Bihfjotcca de Autores Fs/}aiio/es. Madrid: Atlas, J976.
Luis Sanchez Lora, Jose. M ujeres, cunverltos, y formas de reiigi(Jsidad Barroca.
M;ldrid: Fundaci6n Universitaria Espanola, T988.
.
Luis Vives, Juan. The Education of a Christian Woman: A Sixteenth Celltury
Manual. C:hicago: University of Chi<.:ago Press, 2000.
Lutz, Christopher H. Smltwgo de Guatemala, 154/-1773; City, Caste, and the
Colonial Ex/Jeriellce. Norman: Univer~ity of Oklahoma Pr~ss, 1994
Lynch, John. Spain IInder the Habshurgs. VoL 1. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1964.
.
Mahmood, Saba. The Politics of Piety: The Islamic Re~'il'al and the Femmlst
.'iufljat. Princeton, Nj, and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2005

377

BIbliography

Bibliography

Maltby, William S. The Black Legend in England: The Development of Anti

Spanish Sentiment, 1558-1660. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1971.
MaravaH, Jose Antonio. Las comullidades de Castilia. Madrid; Alianza Editorial, [994.
- - - . Poder, honor,), elites en eI slglo XVll. Madrid; Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 1984.
Marichal, Carlos. "La bancarrota del virrcinato; Finanzas, guerra,}" poJitica
en la Nueva bpana, 1770-1808." In Interpretacirmes del siglo XVllJ mexicano; El impaau de las reformas horhr)mcas, edited by Josefina Zoraida
Vazquez, 153-116. Mexico City: Nueva Imagen, 1992.
Marquez Villanueva, Francisco. "Convenos y (.:argos consejiles en el ~iglo Xv."
Revista de Archivos, Bibliotecas y Museos 63 (1957); 503-40.
- - - . "Noticias de la Inquisicion sevillana." Plenary address, conference tided "Los conversos y la historia de Espana de 1248 a 1700," Saint Louis
University (Madrid Campus), May 1l-1.2, 2004.
Marshall, C. E. "The Birth of the Mestizo in New Spain." Hispanic American
Historical Relliew 19 (1939); 160-84.
Martin, Norman. I.os vagahundos en la Nueva Espana. Mexico City; Editonal
Jus, 1957.
Martinez, Maria Elena. "The Black Blood of New Spain; I.impieza de Sangre,
Racial Violence, and Gendered Power in Early Colonial Mexico." WIlliam
and Mary Quarterly, Fd serie~, vol. LXI (july 2004): 479-520.
- - - . "Space, Order, and Group Identities in a Spanish Colonial Town; Puebla
de los Angeles." In The Co/lective and the Public in Latin America: Cultural
Identities and Political Order, edited by Luis Roniger and Tamar Herzog,
13-36. Brighton, UK, and Portland, OR; Sussex Academic Press, 2000.
- - - . "The Spani~h Concept of I.impieza de Sangre and the Emergence of the
'Race/Caste' SYStem in the Viceroyalty of New Spain." PhD diss., University
of Chicago, 2002.
Martinez-Alier (now Stokke), Verena. Marriage, Class and Colour in NmeteenthCentury ClIha: A Study of Racial Attitudes and Sexual Values in a Slaw
Society. Ann Arbor; University of Mi(.:higan Press, 1989 [I9741.
Martinez Bara(.:s, Andrea, and Carlos Sempat Assadourian, eds. Suma y epiloga de toda la descripcidn de Tlaxcala. TlaxcaJa: Universidad de Tlaxcala
and Centro de Investigacioms y Estudios Superiores en Antropologia .... ocial,
1994
Martinez Montiel, Luz M. Presencia africana en Mexico. Mexico City; Come]o
Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 1995.
Martinez Montiel, Luz M., and Juan Carlos Reyes G. MemOria del III Erlcuelltm Naci(Jllal de Afromexicanistas. Colima, Mexi(.:o: Gobierno del Estado,
Instituto Colimcnse J~ Cultura, 1993.
Martz, Linda. "Implementation of Pure-Blood Statutes in Sixteenth-Century
Toledo." In In lbersa and Beyond; Hispanic Jews Between Cultllres, edited
by Bernard Dov Cooperman, 245-71. Newark; UniverSlty of Delaware Pr~,s,
199 8.
Maxwell, Kenneth R. "Hegemonies Old and New: The Ibero-Atlantic in the
Long Eighteenth Century." In Colonia! Legacies; The Pruhlem of l'ersistem:e

in Latill American History, edited by ./eremy Adelman, 69-90. New York

and London: Routledge, 1999.
McAlister, Lyle N. "SrKial Structure and Social Change in New Spain." Hispanic Amerscall His/orical ReVieW 43, no. 3 (I963): 349-70.
M(.:Caa, Rohert. "Calsdad, Clase, and Marriage in Colonial Mexico; The Case
of Parral, 1788-90." Hispanic American Historical Review 64, no. 3 (19 84):
477-;01.
McCaa, Robert, and Stuart B. Schwartz. "Measuring Marriage i'atterns; Per(.:entages, Cohen'~ Kappa, and Log-Linear Models." Coml!arative Studies of
Society and History 25, no. 4 (1983); 7II-20.
McCaa, Robert, Stuart B. Schwartz, and Arturo Grubessich. "Race and Class
in Colonial Latin America: A Critique." Comparati/1e Studies of S odety mId
History 21, no. 3 (I979); 421-33.
McClintock, Anne. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonsal Contest. New York: Routledge, 199.;.
- - - . "'No Longer in a Future Heaven': Gender, Race and Nationalism."
In Dangerous Liaisons: Gel/der, Natl1Jll and Postcolonial Perspectives, edited by Anne McClintock, Aamir Mufti, and Ella Shohat. Minneapolis and
London: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.
Mechoulan, Henry. El hi!/mr de Dios. Translated from the French by Enrique
Sordo. Barcelona: Editorial Argos Vergara, 19111.
Melville, Elinor C;. K. A Plague of Sheel/; Environmental Consequences of
the Conquest of Mexico. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1994.
Mendieta, Jer6nimo de. Historia eclesidstica indiana. Vol. 2. Vol. 261 of 8i/>[joteca de Autores Espanoles. Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1973.
Menocal, Maria Rosa. The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and
Christians Created a Culture of Tolermlce in Medieval SIJain. Boston: Little,
Brown, 2002.
Meyerson, Mark D. A Jewish Renaissance in Fifteenth-Century SIMin. Princeton, N.J; Princeton University Press, 2004.
- - - . The MuslIms of Valellcia in the Age of Fernando and Isahel: Between
Coexistellce and Crusade. Berkeley; University of California Press, 199T.
Mills, Kenneth R. Idolatry and its F.nemies: Colonial Andean ReligirJll and
Extlfl>atiorl, lfi4o-1 7JO. Princeton, NJ; Princeton University Press, I997.
- - - . "The Limits of Religious Coercion in Midcolonial Peru." In The
Church in Colonial Lati'l America, edited by John l'. Schwaller, 147-80.
Wdmington, DE: Scholarly ResouT(.:es, 2000.
Mitre l'ernindez, Flnilio. Los judios de Castdla en tiemflo de Fllrique Ill: El
pogrom de 1391. Va!ladolid: Se(.:retariado de l'ubJica~ione~, Universidad de
ValJadolid,1994
MoLls Ribalta, Pen:. "FI excJusivismo de los gremios de la Corona de Aragon:
I.impieza de sangre y limpie7.a de oficios." In Les societes fermees dans Ie
mOllde IhJrique, X VJ"-X V I If" siecles. Definitions et problematique; Actes
de la table rOllde des II et 9 (evrier 19115. 6,-80. Paris; Editions du Cemre
National de la Recherche Scientifique, I986.
Molina Martinez, Miguel. La leycnda Negra. Madrid: Nerea, 1991.

379

Bihliography

Bibliography

Monter, E. William. Frontiers of Heresy: The Spanish Inquisition from the

Basque l.ands to Sicily. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Monter, E. William. "The Death of Conistcnce: Jews and Moslems in Chris_
tian Spain, r 480-1 502." In The t:xpu/siO/l of the Jews: 1492 and After, ed.
ited by Raymond B. Waddington and Arthur H. Williamson, 5-14. New York
and London: Garland, 1994.
Moore, R. 1. The Formation of a Persecuting SOCiety: Power and DellimlCe in
Western blro/Je, Y50-1250. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990.
Morales, hancisco, O. F. M. Ethnic and Social Backgruund of the Pranciscan
Friars In SeIJClltecnth Celltury Mexico. Washington, DC: Academy of Amtriean FranCIscan History, 1973.
Moreno de los Arcos, Roberto. "New Spain'~ Inquisition for IndiaIlS from the
Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century." In Cultural Encounters: The Impact of
the Inquisiti{JII in Spain and the New World, edited by Mary Elizabeth !'erry
and Anne J. Cruz, 23-32. Berkeley: University of California Press, 199I.
Morner, Magnu~. La corona espanola y 105 foraneos en los pueblos de mdios
de America. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1970'
- - - . "La infiltracion mestiza en los cacicazgos y cabildos de indios (~i
glos XVI-XVIII)." In XXXVI Congreso Internacional de Americanistas
(Es/lana 1~(4): Actas y Memorias. Vol. 2. Seville: Congre~o Internacional
de Americanistas, 1966.
- - - . Race Mixture in the History of Latin America. Boston: l.ittle, Brown,
19 6 7.
Morse, Richard M. "Toward a Theory of Spanish American Government."
journal of the History of Ideas 15, no. I (January 1951): 71-93.
Munch, Guido. EI cacicazgo de San juan Teotihuacan durante la colonia,
152./-182.1. Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropologfa e Historia,
1976.
Mundy, Barbara E. The Mapping of New Spain; Indigenous Cartography and
the Maps of the Relacl(Jlles GeoKra{icas. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1996.
Nader, Helen. Liberty ill Absolutist Spain: The Hahsburg Sale of Towns, 15/6f700. Baltimore: Johm Hopkins University I'res~, 1990.
Naveda Chavez-Hita, Adriana. Pardos, mulatus y lihertos: Sexto Encuelltro de
Afromexicamstas. Xalapa, Mexico: Universidad Veracruzana, 200l.
Netanyahu, Benzion. The Origllls of the Inquisition III hfteenth Century
Spain. New York: Random Home, 199'i.
- - - . "The Racial Attack on the Conversos: America CastrO'S View of Its
Origins." In Toward the InquisitIOn: ES5aY5 on jewish and Converso History
ill Late Medieval Spalll, 1-39. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997.
Nirenberg, DaVid. C()mmulllties of VIOlence: PersecutIon of Mill(Jrities ill the
Middle Ages. Princetoll, NJ: Princetoll Univenity Press, 1996.
- - - . "El concepto de la raza en la Espana medieval." E:.dad Media: Revista
de H,storia 3 (Spring 2000): 'iO-H.
- - - . "Conversion, Sex, and Segregation: Jews and Chnstian~ in Medieval
Spain." America'i Historical ReView 107, no. 4 (2002): I.47!l-92.

- - - . "Mass Conversions and Genealogical Mentalities: Jews and Christians

in Fifteenth-Century Spain." f'ast atld ('resellt I74 (2002): 18-33.
Novin~ky, Avita. "Some Theoretical Con~iderations about the New Christian
Problem." In The Sepharadi and Oriental Jewish Heritage StudieS, edited by
Issachar Ben-Ami, 4-12. JerusallOm: Magnes l're~s, Hebrew UllIversity, 1982.
Nuttini, Hugo G. The Wages of Conquest: The Mexican Aristocracy in the
Context of Western AristrJcracies. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
1995
O'Gorman, Edmundo. Destierru de las somhra: Luz en eI or/gell de fa imagen
y culto de Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe del Tepeyac. Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, 1991.
- - - . f-undamentos de la h,stoYia de America. Mexico City: lmprenta UniversiTdria,194 2.
- - - . La invenci(Jn de America. Mexico City: rondo de Cultura Economica,
199.'i
O'Phclan Godoy, Scarlett. "Tiempo inmemorial, tlempo colonial: Un estudio
de casos." Revista Eeuatmialla de H,storia 4 (1993): pp. 3-20.
Oraci611 d nuestra senora de Guadalupe. compuesta por e1 //lmo. Senor D.
Francisco Antonio de Lorellzana, arzo/Jisf}(J de Mexico. Mexico City: Don
Joseph AntOlllO de Hogal, 1770.
Otte, Enrique. "Nueve Canas de Diego de Ord.h." Historia Mexicana 14 (I964):
102-29
Outlaw, Lucius. "Toward a Critical Theory of 'Race.''' In Anatomy of Racism,
edited by Thea Goldberg, 62-6!l. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1990.
I'agden, Anthony. The Fall of Natural Man: The AmerlCall Indian and the
OriKins of Comparative Ethnology. New York: Cambridge University Press,
19 82 .
- - - . "Identity Formation in Spanish America." In Colonial Identity ill the
Atlantic World, IJOO-llloo, edited by Nicholas Canny and Anthony I'dgden,
51-93. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UOlversity Press, 19!17.
- - - . Spallish Imperialism alld the Pulitical fmagmatiml. New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, I990.
Palafox y Mendoza, .Juan de. Manual de estados y profesi()nes de la IIaturaleza del indi(). Mexico City: Coordinacion de Humanidades, Universidad
Nacional Aut6noIlla de Mexico y Miguel Angel Porrua, 1986.
Palmer, Colin A. "Religion and Magic in Mexican Slave Society, 1570-1650."
In Race and Slavery in the Westem Hemisphere; Quantitative Studies, edited by Stanley 1.. Engermdn dnd Eugene D. Genovese, 3 II-2!l. Stdnford, CA:
Center for Adva[](.;eJ Study in the Behavioral Sciences; 197.'i'
- - - . Slaves of the White G()d: Blacks in Mexico, 157o-!f'50. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, I976.
"Parecer de los fraiJes franciscanos sobre repartimientCl de Indios." Boletill del
Arc/iiv() General de la Naci(ln (Mexico City) 9 (193!l): 173-80.
Pardo, J. JOdquin, ed. 1'"mtuan(J de Reales Cedillas, I)" 19-159':1. Guatemala City:
Union Tipogdfica, 1941.

3 80

Bibliography

Bibliography

Paso y Troncoso, Francisco del, cd. Epistolario de Nueva t"spana. 16 vols.

M~xi(.:o City: Antigua Libr~ria Robr~do, d~ Jose l'orrua e Hijos, 1939-4;1..
Pat~man, Carole. The Sexual Contract. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,

Phillips, William D., Jr., Enrique IV and the Crisis of Fiftemth-Century Castile, 141J-I4No. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978.
Phillips, William D., Jr., and Carla Rahn Phillips. "Spain in the Fifteenth Century." In TransatlantIC Elicounters: Europeans and Andeans ill the Sixteenth
Century, edited by Kenneth J. Andrien and Rolena Adorno, 11-39. Berkeley:
University of California Press, T991.
Pike, Ruth. l.inajudos and Conversos in Seville: Greed and Prejudice in Sixteenthand Sevl/ltteenth-CClltury Spain. New York and Washington, DC: Peter Lang,

I988.

Patkrson, Orlando. Slavery and Socwl Death: A Cvmparative Study. Camhridg t ,

MA: Harvard University Press, 1982.
Pena, Jose F. de la Oligarquia y propledad en Nueva Espana (IUO-1624J.
Mexico City: rondo de Cultura Econ6mica, 1983.
Perena, Luciano. "Defensor oficial de la Corona." In Juan de Sol6rzano y Pereira,
De Indiarum lure: Llber Ill: "De retentiOl/e lndwrum, " edited by C. Ba(.:iero,
E CanteLu, A. Garcia, J. M. Garda Anov~ros, F. Mas~da, L. P~n:fta, and
J. M. Perez-Prendes, 2O-6I. Madrid: Conseio Sup~rior de InvestigaclOne~
Cientificas, 1994.
Perez de Lara, Alfonso. De almiversariis, et capel/anUs. libri dvo. Qvi/JUs vltra genera/em alilliuersariorum & capel/alliarum materiam, specialiter disputaWr de anllUf) re/ietf); IJT/J virgillibus maritadis: pro infantibus exposltis
Ilutrielldis: pro redimendis captiuis: pro relaxadis earceratls; pro mote pietatis; liTO ce/ehrado fest() Corporis Christl, cum pracedelltijs processlOms: de
trasferedis cadauerihus, absque tri/Juto. De quarta fUlierali; de liro/Jatione
gelleris & qualltatis sangumis ad capel/amam requisita, et ad alia statuta.
Opvs qvidem, vt pivm et pract,cab,le, ita & vtile vtroque foro versanti!Jlls,
iudicilms, aduocatis, ciericls, & mona chis, & qmbusnmque al;;s piIJTllm exeClltoT/bus. Matriti [Madrid]: ex typographia IIlephonsi Martini, 1608.
Perez de Salazar, Francisco. Histuna de la pintura ell Puebla. M~xico City:
Universidad Nacional Aut6noma de Mexico, Instituto de Inve~tiga(.:ione~ EstetICas, 1963.
Perez Herrero, Pedro. "1 mexico borb6nico: (un exito' fraeasado?" In Interpretaciones del siglo X VII I mexicano: El imlJQCto de las re(ormas borhdmeas, edited by Josefina Zoraida Vazquez, 109-51. MeXiCO City: Nueva Imagen, 199;1.
Perry, Mary Elizabeth. Gender mid Disorder in Early Modern Sellille. Pnnceton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990.
- - - . "MoriKa~ and the Limits of Assimilation." In ChT/stlans, Muslims,
and Jews in Medieval and Ear/y Modern Spam; Interaction and Culturd
Change, edited by MJfk D. Meyerson and Edward D. Engli~h, ;1.74-89. Notre
Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999.
P~ters, Edward, Iliquisitiol/. Berkeley: University of California Pre~s, 1989.
Phelan, John Leddy. "Neo-A7.tecism in the Eighteenth C~ntury and the Genesi;
of Mexi,an Nationalism." In ClIlture ill Histury: E,;sa},; in Honor of Palll
Radin, edited by Stanley Diamond, 760-70. New York: Columbia UniverSIty
Pre~s,

1960.

- - - . The Mll/ell/tial Killgdom of the Franciscans in the New World: A Stlldy

of the Writings of Ger6111mo de Mendieta, '52.5-,604- Berkeley: University
of California Pr~~;, 1956.
Phillip~, William D. "The Old World Ba.:kground of Slavery in the Amencas."
In SlaFery and the Rise of the Atlantic System, edited by B>lrbara L Solow,
4-,-6I. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Ulliversity Press, I99I.

2000.

___ . "SevLllian So<:iety in the Sixteenth Century: Slave~ and Freedmen."

Hispanic American HistoT/cal Review 7, no. 3 (1967): 344-59.
Pineda, Juan de. Didl(Jgos familiares de la agricultura cristiana. Vol. -,. Edited
by Juan Meseguer Fernandez. Vol. 163 of Biblioteca de AutoT(!s Espaiioles.
Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1963-64.
Pitt-Rivers, Julian. "On the Word 'Caste.''' In The Translatjon of Cultllre:
Essays to E. E. Ellans-l'ritchard, edited by T. O. Beidelman, 23 I-54. London:
Tavistock, 197 I.
Poliakov, Leon. The History of Anti-Semitism. VoL 1. Translated from the
French bv Ri(.:hard Howard. New York: Schocken, 1974
___ . Th~ History of Anti-Semitism. Vol. 2. Translated by Natalie Gerardi.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Pres~, 1973
Poole, Stafford. "Criollos and Criollismo." In Elicyclopedia of Mexico: History, Society and Cit/titre, edited by Michael S. Werner. Chi(.:ago: Fitzroy
Dearborn, 1997.
___ . "Th~ Politics of Limpieza de Sangre: Juan de Ovando and his Circle in
the Reign of Philip II." The Americas 55, no. 3 (January 1999): 359-89.
Popkin, Richard H. "'The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Indian Theory." In Menasseh hell Israel a"d his World, edited by Yoscf Kaplan, Henry Mechoulan,
and Richard H. Hopkin, 63-8;1.. Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1989.
Postigo Castellanos, Elena. Honor y priVllegio ell la corona de Castilla: E/
COlisejo de las ()rdenes y los cahalleros de hahito en el s. XVII. Almazan,
Soria: Junta de Castilla y Le6n, 1988.
Proces()s de il/dios Idrilatras y hechlceros. Mexico City: Secretaria de Gobernaci6n and Ar(.:hivo General de la Naci6n, 2002.
Quevedo, han(.:isco de. Dreams and Discourses. Translated by R. K. Britton.
Warminster, UK: Aris & Phillips, 1989.
Quiiada, Monica. "o::Que naci6n? Dinamicas y dicotomias de la nad6n en eI
imaginario hispanoameri,ana del ~iglo XIX." In Imaginar fa naci6n, edited
by Fram;:ois-Xavier Guerra and Moni<:a Quiiada. MiHls~er and Hamburg: Lit,
1994

Qumtanilla Raso, Maria C:oncep,i6n. "La noblcza en Ia historia politiea castellana en 1.1 segunda mitad del siglo XV: Bases de poder y pautas de comportamiento." In Congresso Ilfterllaciunal Barto/()meu Dias e a slta epoca:
Actas, vol. 1, 181-200. Oporto, Portugal: Ulllversidade do Porto, 19 8 9.
___ . "Nobleza y seftorios en Castilla durante la haia edad media: Aportaciones de la historiografia re,iente." Anl/aT/o de F.stlldi()s Medie/lales (Bar<:do na )
J4 (1984): 61 3-39.

Bibliography

Bibliography

Restall, Matthew. uBlack Conquistadors: Armed Africans in Early Spanish

America." The Americas 57, no. 2 (2000):167-205.
- - - . Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest. Oxford and New York: Oxford
University Press, 200.,.
Ripodas Ardanaz, Daisy. El matrimonio en llldws: Realidad social y regu_
laci(JII juridica, Buenos Aires: Fundaci6n para [a Educaciun, la Ciencia y la
Cultura, 1977.
Rishel Joseph j., and Suzanne Stratton-Pruitt, eds. The Arts in Latin America,
149z-ilizo. New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University l'ress, 2006.
Robertson, Donald. Mexican Manuscript Painting of the tarly Co/umal Period.
"'oreword by E[i7.abeth Hill Boone. Norman and London: Univer~ity of Oklahoma Press, J994.
Robertson, Dona[d, and Martha Barton Robertson. "Techialoyan Manuscripts
and Paintings, with a Catalog." In Handbook of Middle Americall Indians,
vol. 14, part 3, Guide to Ethnohistorical Sources, 265-80. Austin: UniverSity
ofTexa~ Press, 1975.
Robinson, David j., cd. Research lll/Jentory of the Mexican Col/ection of
Colonial Pam;h Registers. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1980.
Roseberry, William, "Hegemony and the Language of Contention." In Everyday f'orms of State Formation: Revolution and the Negotiation (If Rule in
Modern MeXICO, edited by Gilbert M. Joseph and Daniel Nugent, 355-66.
Durham, NC: Duke University Pres~, 1994.
Roth, Cecil. The S/Ianish Inquisition. New York: W. W. Norton, 1964.
Roth, Norman. Conversos, Inquisition and the Expulsion (If the Jews from
Spain. Madison: University of Wiscomin Press, 2002,
Rounds, J. "Dynastic Succession and The Centralization of Power in Ttnochtitlan," In The Inca and Aztec States, 14oo-rlfoo: Anthmpofog}' and HIStory, edited by George A. Collier, Renato 1. Rosaldo, and John D. W1fth,
63-89. New York: Academic Press, 1982.
Rout, Leslie B. The African Experience in Spanish America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976.
Ruano, Hoy Benito. Toledo en eI sigfo XV: Vida po/[tica. Madrid: Con~ejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, Escuela de Estudios Medievales, 1961.
Ruiz, Te6filo F. "The Holy Office in Medieval hance and in Late Medicv>ll
Ca~tile: Origins and Contrasts." In The S/Janish Inquisition and the Inquls"
itorial Mind, edited by Angel Alca[a, B-P. Highland Lakes, NJ: Atlantic
Research and l'llbhcations, 1987.
RUlz Dc Alarc6n, Hernando. Treatise on the Heathen Superstitir)lls: That Today Live Ammlg the Indians Native to This New Spam, 1629. Edited by Ros~
Hassig and J. Richard Andrews. Norman: University of Oklahom>l Prrs~,
1999
Ru~~e1I-Wood, A.j.R. "Before Columbus: Portugal's Afncan Prelude to the
Middlt Passage and Contribution to Di~cour~e on Race >lnd Slavery." In Race.
DisClJurse, and the Origins of the Americas: A New World View, edited by
Vera Lawrence and Rex Ntttleford, l34-65. Washington, DC, and London:
SlUitb~{}llian In;tirution Press, 1995.

Sa~ucio, Fray A~ustf!l. Disc,lI,rso sobre los estatutos de limpieza de sangre. Ed_ !ted b.y Antom(l ~:~ez y (JOme,l. ValenCIa: ~rw; G~aficas Soler, 1975 [1599].

SalVUCCI, RIchard. EconomIC browth and Change 1Il Bourbon Mexico: A Review Essay." The Americas 51, no. 4 (1994): 1I9-3I.
Salvucci, Richard J. Textiles and Capitalism in Mexico: An Economic History
of the Ob.faJes, IJ39~iIi40. Pnnceton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 19 87.
SalvucCi, RIchard J., LlIlda K. Salvucci, and A~Jan Cohen. "The Politics of
Protection: Interpreting Commercial Policy in Late Bourbon and Early NatIOnal Mexico," In The Political Economy of Spanish America in the Age
of Rev(Jlution, 17JO-iIi50, edited by Kenneth J. Andrien and Lyman L.
Johnson, 95-114. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994,
Sanchiz Ruiz, Javier Fus~bio. "La lim/Jieza de sangre en Nueva Espana: El
fllncionariado del tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisici6n, siglo XVI."
Master's the,is, Universidad Nacional AUT6noma de Mexico, racultad de
Filosoffa y Letras, 1988.
Sanders, Ronald. Lost Trihes and Promised Lands: The Origins of American
Racism. Boston: Litde, Brown, 1978.
Sandoval, Fray Prudencio de. HistrJria de la "Ida y "eehos del Emperador Carlos
V. Vol. 82 of BI/Ilioteca de Auto,,'s F.s/JailOles. Madrid: Ediciolles Arias, 1955
[1606]).
Sapir Abulafia, Anna. "The Intellectual and Spiritual Quest for Chri~t and Central
Medieval Persecution of Jews." In ReliKiolls Violence between Christians and
Jews: Medieval Roots, Modem Perspectives, edited by Anna Sapir Abulafia,
6r-85. Houndmills, Ba~ingstoke, Hampshire, UK, and New York: llalgrave,
2002.
Sarrailh, Jean. La Espana ilustrada de la segunda mitad del siglo XVIII. 4th
ed. Mexico City: Fondo de Culwra Economica, 199:1. [1St ed. 19541.
Schroeder, Susan. Chimalpahin and the Kmgdom ofCha/co. Tucson: University
of Arizona Press, 1991.
Schwaller, John Frederick. The Church and Clergy in Sixteenth-Century Mexico.
Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, J997.
Schwartz, Stuart B. "Co[onialldentitie~ and the Sociedad de Castas." Colonial
Latin American Review 4, no. 1 (1995): 185-201.
Schwartz, Smart B., and Frank Salomon. "New Peoples >lnd New Kinds of
People: Adaptation, Readju~tment, and Ethnogenesis in South American Indigenous Societies {colonial era)." In The CambridKe History of the Native
I'eoples of the Americas III {z}: South America, 443-50I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Scott, Joan W. "Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis.~ In Gender and
the Po/itlcs of History, 28-50. New York: Columbia Oniversity Press, 1988.
Seed, Ilatricia. Ceremonies of /'ossession i/1 Europe's Conquest of the New
World, 149Z-1 640. Cam bridge: Camhridge University Press, 1995
- - - . "Social Dimensions of Race: Mexico City, I7B." Hispanic American
Historical Review 62, no. 4 (I982): 568-606.
- - - . To L{Jve, flolwr, and Ohey in Colollial Mexlcfl: Conflicts Ol'er Marriage Choice, i J74-11i2 J. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988.

Bibliography

Bibliography

Seed, Patricia, and Philip F. Rust. "Estate and Class in Colonial Oaxaca Revisited." C()mparative SWdies ofS()Clety and History 25, no. 4 (1983); 703-10.
Serna, Enrique. H,storia del capltalismo en Mexico; Los origenes, 1521-1763.
Mexico City: Ediciones Era, 1973.
Sicroff, Albert A. Los estatutos de limt!ieza de Sangre: C(Jlltroversias ellfre los
sig/os XVy XVII. Tran~lated from the French by Mauro Armino. Madnd;
Tauros Fdiciones, T98S.
Siete Iglesias, Marques de. ",Que es nobleza de sangre?" In Apll1ltes de nobili_
aria y nociones de genea/ogia y herd/dica, edited by Francisco de Cadenas
y Allende, Vicente de Cadenas y Vitent, Julio AtienLa, Jesus Lario Martin,
Antonio de Vargas-Zuniga, and MJ.fques de Siete Iglesias, I05-lIS. Madrid;
Ediciones Hidalguia, 1960.
Signns histlJricos II, no. 4 (2000).
Sotolow, Susan. The Women ofCu/omal Latm America. Cambridge; Cambridge
University Press, 2000.
Solano, Francisco de. Cedularjo de tierras: Compilaci(in de legislacuin agraria
colonial J497-ilJzo (Mexico City; Universidad Nacional Autonorna de Mexico, 1984,
Solorzano Pereira, Juan de. De Indiarum /lIre. Liher Ill: De retentione Indiamm, edited by C. Baciero, F. Cantelar, A. Garcia, J. M. Garcia Anoveros,
F. Maseda, L. Perei'ta, and J. M. perez-Prendes. Madrid: Consejo Superior de
Investigacione~ Cientificas, 1994.
- - - . Politica indiana. Vol. 1. Madrid; Compania Ibero-Americana de Pu-

- - - . "Invaded Women; Gender, Race, and Class in the Formation of Colonial

Society." In WOl1lett, 'Race' and Writing ill the Early Modern Period, edited
by Margo Hendricks and Patricia Parker, 272-86. London: Routledge, 1994.
- - - . "1\ New World Engendered; The Making of the Ib~rian Transatlantic
F.mpire~" In A Companion to Gender History, edited by Teresa A. Meade
and Merry E. Weisner-Hanks, 371-92. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003.
Stol~r, Ann Laura. "Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power; Gender, Race and
Morality in Colonial Asia." In Gender at the Crossroads of Knowledge: Fem_
inist Anthropology in the P(Jstmodern Era, 51-WI. Berk~ley; University of
California Press, 1991.
- - - . Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault's "History of Sexuality"
and the C()1<mial Order of Things. Durham, NC, and London; Duke University Pres~, 1995.
- - - . "Rethinking Colonial Categories: European Communities and the
Boundaries of Rule." Com/wratillC Studies in Suciety and Histnry 31, no. I
(January 19S9): 1}4-61.
Sweet, James H. "The Iberian Roots of American Racist Thought." Wilbam
and Mary Quarterly 54, no. 1 (f997); f43-66.
- - - . Recreatmg Afnca; Culture, Kin:;hi/J, mid Religion in the AfricallPortuguese World, 1441-1770. Chapd Hill and London; University of North
Carolina Press, 2003.
Tate Lanning, John. "Legitimaq and Limpieza de Sangre in the Practice of
Medicine in the Spanish Empire." Jahrbuch fur Geschjehte von Staat,
Wirtschaft, Ulld Gesellschaft Lateinamerikas 4 (1967); 37-60.
Taylor, William. "The Virgin of Guadalupe in New Spain; An Inquiry into
the Social History of Marian Devotion." American Ethnologist 14, no. I

blicacione~, 1930 [164SJ.

Spor~~,

Ronald. "Mixteca Cacicas: Status, Wealth, and the Political Accommodation of Native Elite Women in Early Colonial M~xico." In Indl<lll
Womell of t".arly MexIco, edited by Susan Schroeder, Stephani~ Wood, and
Robert Hdskett, ISS-197. Norman and l.ondon; University of Oklahoma
Press, 1997.
Starr-LeBeau, Gretchen D. In the Shadow of the Virgin: Inquisitors, Friars, and
CVlwersos in Guadalupe, Spain. Princeton, NJ; Prill<:~ton University Pres~,
23

Stavig, Ward. "Ambiguous Visions; Natur~, Law, and Culture in IndigenousSpanish Land Relations in Colonial Peru." Hispanic American HistrJrical
Review 80, no. 1 (2000); 77-111.
Stern, Steve. "Paradigms of Con4u~st: History, Historiography, and Politics."
Journal of I.atin American Studies 24 (1992): 1-34.
Stern, Stev~ J. The Secret History of Gender: Women, Men, and Power in l.ate
(";olonial MexIco. Chapel Hill and London; Ulliver~jty of North Carolina
Pr~~s,

1995.

- - - . "The Social Significanc~ of Judicial Institutions in an Exploitdtivc

Society: Huamanga, Peru, 1570-164." In The Inca and Aztec States, 14001800; Anthrol}o/ogy and History, ediTed by George A. Collier, Renato I.
Rosaldo, and John D. Wirth, 2119-)1.0. N~w York and London; Acad~mic
Press, 19S2.
Stokke, Verena. "Conquered Women." Rep(Jrt On the Americas (NACLA) 24,
no. 5 (1991): 2.'1-38.

(1987); 9-33

Taylor, William B. "Between Global Process and-l.ocal Knowledge: An Inquiry

into Early Latin American Social History, fSOO-l900." In ReliVing the Past:
The Worlds of Social History, edited by Oliver Zunz, Il5-90. Chapd Hill
and London: University at North Carolina Press, 19S5.
- - - . "Cacicaz.gos coloniales en d Valle de Oaxaca." HistrJria Mexicana 20
(1970); 1-4 I.

- - - . Drinking, Homicide and Rehellioll in Colonial Mexican Villages.

Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1979.
- - - . "Land and \'(later Rights in the Vi<.:eroyalty of New Spain." New MeXICO
Historical Review 50, no. 3 (I97.'i); 189-211.
Terraciano, Kevin. The Mixtecs of C%llia/ Oaxaca: Nudzahui History, Sixteellth through Eighteenth Centuries. Sunford; Stanford Ulllver~ity Press,
2001.

Hernando de Alvarado. CnJllica mexicalla. MexICO City: Secretaria

de Educacion I'llbltca, 1944.
Thomson, Guy 1'. C. I'uehla de los Angeles: Industry and Snciety in a Mexican
City, 1700-1/1)"0. Boulder, CO: \'\'cstvicw, 19S9.
Thomp~on, l.A.A. "Hidalgo and (lechero: The language of 'estates' and 'classes'
in tdrly-modern Castile." In l.anguage, History alld Class, edited by l'eneiope
J. Corfield, $.'3-78. Cambridge; Ha~il Blackwell, 199f.
TClOZ0I110C,

Bibliography

Bibliography

- - - . "The Purcha~e of Nobility in Castile, 1552.- I700." JOllfIWI of Eum/lean

Economic History II (I9Sl): pp. 313-60.
Thornton, John. A{rica and Africans ill the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400J lioo. Cambridge: Cambridge University Pre%, 1998.
Toro, Alfonso. Los judios en ia Nueva Espana. 2nd ed. Mexico City: Fondo de
Cultura Economica, r993.
Toussaint, Manuel. Pi/ltura C%mal en Mexico. MeXICO City; Universidad
Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, In~tituto de Investigaciones Esthicas, 1990.
Tovar de Teresa, Guillermo. Miguel Cahrera; Pintor de Camara de la Reina
Celestial. Mexico City: inverMexico Grupo Financiero, 1995.
Town~end, Richard f. The Aztecs. London: Thames & Hudson, 2000 [19921.
Trachtenberg, Joshua. 1'he Devil and the Jews: The Medieval Conception of
the Jew and its Relation to Modern Antisemitism. New Haven, CT; Yale
University Press; London: H. Milford Oxford Uillversity Pre%, 1943.
Troui!lot, Michel-Rolph. Silencing the Past: Power and the Productiun of H,story. Boston: Beacon, 1995.
Tucci Carneiro, Maria Luiza. PrecIJncepto Racial: Portugal e Brasil-Co/tim'a.
Sao Paolo: Editora Bra~iliense, 1988.
Twinam, Ann. "Pedro de Ayar7.0: The Purchase of Whiteness.~ In The Human
TraditIOn in Colonial Latin America, edited by Kenneth J. Andrien, 194-2 ro.
Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Re~ources, 2002.
- - - . Public liveS, Private Secrets: Gender, Honor. Sexuality, and //Iegitlmac)'
III Co/o/lia/ Spanish America. Stanford, CA: Stanford Uillversity Pre~~, T999.
- - - . "RaciaII'assing: Informal and Official 'Whiteness' in Colonial Spanish
America." In New World Orders: Violence. Sanaion, and AuthOrity m the
Colonial Americas, edited by John Smolenski and Thoma~ J. Humphrey,
249-72. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005.
Uchmany, Eva Alexandra. "Criptojudios y cristianos nuevos w las filipinas durante cl s!glo XVI." In The SelJharadl and Oriental Jewish H(!ritage Studies,
edited by hsachar Ben-Ami, 85-13. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew University, 1982.
- - - . "EI mestizaje en eI siglo XVI novohispano." Historia Mexicafla 37, no. I

Villavicencio, Diego Jayme~ Ricardo de. L-uz y methodo de confesar idalatras

y destierro de idolatrias de/Jajo del tratado siguiellte. Tratado de avisos y
{Juntos Importante.> de /a a/Jommable seta de la idolatria, para examinar por
elio.> al'letl/tente en el fuero mterwr de la con.>ciencia, y exterior judicial.
Sacados no de los /Ibros, SinO de la experiencia en las aberiguaciones con los
rabbleS de ella. Puebla: Imprenta de Diego Fernandez de Leon, 1692. Rare
Book Collection. John Carter Brown Library.
Vincent, Bernard. Minorias y marginad,)s en fa Espana del sig/o XV J. Granada~
Diputaci6n Provincial de Granada, 1')87.
Vinson, Ben, Ill. Bearing Arms fflr His Majesty: The Free-Colored Militia in
Colonial Mexico. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001.
Vinson, Ben, lil, Bobby Vaughn, and Clara Garcia Ayluardo. Afromixico: 1
{mlso de la l/Oblaci6n negra en MexICO, una historia recordada, olvsdada y
vue/ta a reoJrdar. Mexico City: Centro de Investigaci6n y Docencia Economica,

3 88

(1,)87): 29-48.

- - - . La VIda entre eI iudaismo y el cristianismo en la Nueva Lspafia, 1580j 606. Mexico City: Archivo General de Ia Nacibn and Fondo de Cultura Economica, 19')2..
Urbano, Henrique, I'd. Tradici,!n y modermdad en los Andes. Cw;co, Peru:
Centro de Estudios Regionales Andin[)~, "Bartolome de las Casas," 1992.
Valde" Dennis Nodin. "The Decline of Slavery in :\1exico." The Americas 44,
no. 2 (1987): 167-')4.
- - - . "The Decline of the Sociedad de Castas in Mexico City." PhD di,s.,
University of Michigan, 1978.
Vazquez de Espinosa, Fray Antonio. De;;cri{!cilin de la Nlteva F;spmla en el
siglo XVlI. Mexico City: Editorial Patria, 1944.
Vila Vliar, Enriqueta. His/lano-Amerlca y el wmerr:io de esc/avos. Seville:
Escuela de [studios Hispanoamericanos, 1977.

200 4.

Viotti da Costa, Emilia. The Brazilian Empire: Myths and Histones. Chicago:
Dorsey, 1988.
Wachtel, Nathan. Foi du Snut'enir: Labyrillthes Marranes. Paris: Editions du
Seuil, 2001.
- - - . "Marrano Religio~ity in Hispanic America in the Seventeenth Century."
In The Jews and the EXflansion of f'.urope to the West, 1450-/800, edited
by Paolo Bernardmi and Norman Fiering, 149-7[. New York and Oxford:
Berghahn Books, 2001.
Wade, Pder. "Negros, mdigenas e identidad naciollal ell Colombia." In Imagilwr la nacil)lI, edited by Fran\()i~-Xavier Guerra and Monica Quijada.
Mlinster and Hamburg: Lit, 1994.
- - - . Race, Natltre and Ciliture: An Anthropological PerspectillC. London
and Sterling, VA: Pluto, 2002.
Walker Bynum, Caroline. "The Female Body and Religious Practice in the Later
Middle Ages." In Fragments for a History of the Human Bod}', vol. J, edited
by Michel feher with Ramona Naddaff and Nadia Tazi, 162-21,). New York:
Urzone, 1989.
Warren, Fintan B. Vasco de Quiroga and I)ls Pueblo-Hospitals of Santa Fe.
Wa~hington, DC: Academy of American Franciscan Hi~tory, 196j.
Wertheimer, Elaine C. Jewish Source.> of Spallish Blood PUrity CO/lcerlls. Brooklyn,
NY: AdeLllltre, the Judezmo Society, 1977.
West, Cornel. "Race and Social Theory: Toward a Genealogical Materialist
Analysis.~ In The Year Left 1.: An American Socialist Yearhook, edited by
Mike Davis et a1., 74-90. London: Verso, 1987.
Wheeler, Roxann. The Complexion of Race: Categl;ries of Difference in
Eighteenth-Century Brlflsh Cliiture. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 2000.
Williams, Brackette. "C1as~ification System~ Revisited: Kinship, Cdste, Race, and
Nationality .IS the Flow of Blood and the Spread of Rights." In Naturalizing
Power: Essays in Peminist Cltltural AnalYSIS. edited hy Sylvia Yanagi~ako
,lJId Carol Delaney, 201-.,6. New York and London: Routledge, J')')5.

39 0

Bibliography

Wolff, Philippe. "The I391 Pogrom in Spain: Social Cri,is or Not?" Past and
Present 50 (1971): 4-18.
Wood, Stephanie. "EI problema de la hi~toricidad de tltulos y los codices de!
grupo Techial()yan." In De tlacui/os y escrihanos; csWdim suhre docurnen.
(os indigenas co{vniales del centro de Mixiw, edited by Xavier Noguez and
Stephanie Wood, 167-221. Zamora, Mexico: El CoJegio de Michoacan and
El Colcgiu Mcxiquense, 1998.
Wynter, Sylvia. "1.192: A New World View," In Race, Discourse, and the Ori.
gins uf the Americas: A New World View, edited by Vera Lawrence and Rex
Nettleford, 5-57. Washington, DC, and London: Smithsonian Institution
Press, 1995.

Index

Yun Casa!il!a, Bartolome. "The Castilian Aristocra,-=y in the Seventeenth Century:

Crisis, Refeudali~ation, or Political Ofien~ive?" In The Castillall Crisis of the

Seventeenth Century: New PerspectIVes Oil the Economic and Social Hls/ory
of Sevellteenth-Century SIJain, edited by l.A.A. Thompson and Bartolome Yun
CasaJiBa, 277-300. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Pre~s,
1994
Zavala, Silvio A. La enwmienda indiana. 3rd ed. Mexico City: Editorial Porrua,
[992.
- - - . "La utopia de Tomas Moro en la Nueva Espana." In l.a utopia mexicana del sig/o X VI: Lo bel/o,!f) verdadero y /0 bilellO, 76-93. Mexico City:
Grupo Azabache, 1992.

Acosta, Jose de, 138, 336n27

Africans, 4, il, I2, lo.~, 340n70,
341073; as bozales, 135; category of
negro in ~istema de casta" I, 144,
161, I62-63, 164, 166-67, 259,
J35n1o, 341077, }42n9I, 35 6n 47;
('onfratcrnities of, 159, 60, 161;
conversos compared to, 158, 159;
in craft guilds, .n6n20; as creoles,
135,160-61, 350n3il; as free, 144,
147, I55, I~9-60, 220-24, 2.18, 243,
269, 3351l7, 340nn67,68, 3501l,8,
35 I1145, 356n47; as ladinos, 1150-61;
and limpieza de sangre, 163-64.
201,201-6, 207,2.)3, 21 4,220-2.5,
2.33,235, 2.18, 2.43-44, 245-47,
249.2.53,254, 2,H, 256-59. 267,
267-68, 26il, l71-7.l, 274, 275,
290n21, 356nn46,47; and principle
of the free womb, 144, 157, 222,
3351111; religiolls status of, 21, 121,
156, 157-59, 167-68,201,205,
220-24,225,270,272,339n6};
as slaves, 2,),9,10,20,60,121,
135, IJ6, 43, 144-45, 152, 154-61,
[64-65,168,169.218,221,222.
225,238,24,24),244, 267,
271-72, 290n19, 335nn7,9, B8n46,
339111156,58,6.1, 340n68, 341077,
.H2n9I, 3501138, 'l55n43. See a/so
mulattos; sistema de 'a~tas
Aguirre, Juan de, 194-95
Aguirre Beltrall, Gonzalo, 273, 290n2I,
.n Sn 47, 355n4.~
Ahumada, Juan Amonio de, .l59n77
Alhornoz, Bartolome, 157
alcabala,241-42

alcaldes: alcaldes mayores, IjI, 176,

317 n 4; alcaldes menores, }17n4;
alcaldes ordinarios, 130, 1}2, 175,
324n67, 3551146. See als() corregidores
Alencastrc Norona y Silva, Fernando de,
22.9,239
Alfaro,Jose, 352n2
Alfaro Ramirez, Rafael, 3.Bn50
Almaguer, Amonio dc, 1.30, 13 [
Alpert, Michael, .100114 r
Altamirano, Juan de, 191, 345n36
Altamirano Pizarro, Juana, 191
Altamirano y Velasco, Fernando.
345 11 36
Alvarez de Hira, Bernabe, 195-96
Alvarez de Mirallda, Pedro, 337n41
Alzate y Ramirez, Jose Antonio de,
257-5 8,259
Anderson, Benedict, 12, 14, 29211}4
Antequera, bishop of, 139, 150
Arce y Miranda, Andres: ~Noticias de
los escritores de la Nueva Espana,"
24 2 -43
archival practices: and Iimpieza de
sangre, 6, 17-18, 19, 20-21, 62,
65> 69, 76, 87, Tl3, 125, 142, 173,
175-76, 177-78, 199, 215-17, 218,
225-26, 264, 269, 274-75, 36002.;
and si~tema de eastus, 142, [43-46.
166,167, 17J, 175-76, 1I6, 225-26,
264,268, 334nIl1,5; of Spanish
Inquisitiun, 6, 18, 65, 69, 175-76
Arellano, Felipe de, 33011I5
ArcJlanu~, Manuel, 229-}l
Aristotle. 48, 1)9, 2.J7
Asperilla, l'edro Hernandez de, 173-74
Aubert, Guillaume, 306n44