User:Kyshiggins/sandbox

After 1492, race relations changed. They evolved in order to meet Europe’s needs economically, to accommodate the change in demographic ratios, and to address politics in the community. It seems that the idea of limpieza de sangra and segregation were counterproductive to the running of the Spanis empire. There was an abundance of racial categories, including mulatto, castizo, mestizo, quadroon and a host of others. These distinctions were used as a means of control and the determination of a person’s societal rights.1 However, the various categories show that there was an inability to stop the blurring of racial lines. According to Julio Cesar Pino, this shows that there were persons of blurring the racial lines and subsequently occupying space in a caste that should have barred them. Instead of color and bloodlines being the only factors defining one’s caste, the caste status also came to be determined by things such as occupation, religion, wealth and residence. Before European settlement, the indigenous people, particularly in Mexico, did not have a shared identity.2 Alan Knight supports this by saying “Indigenous identity was constructed by the [European majority] and imposed upon the indigenous people as a negative. Its designed identity, characterized by the lack of assimilation into modern Mexica”3 Still, historians have dispelled the myth that the Indian world did not survive long after colonization began. They proclaim that "Indian" was an invention of the Spanish settlers. Pino says it was a result of “what the conquerors saw as the overthrow of the indigenous people through demographic collapse, land grabs for the formation of haciendas (great estates), enforcement of the labor tribute system of encomienda, subjugation of national and regional political institutions, eradication of indigenous religions, and the gradual replacement of Indian languages”.4 The conquest did change Indian society but it did not completely eliminate it. Native elites were used to exploit Indian labor. Nobility came to be known as Don and Doña and was allowed to intermarry with the conquistadores. In addition, they were given part of the tribute labor. Commoners were able to retain their way of life because they learned to maneuver the ins and outs of Spanish society, church, and state. Under Spanish direction, they became mayors and town councils. Pino points out that “the indigenous people were also active in the world of the church” with political leaders aligning themselves with others against Crown officials. There was a definite contradiction when it came to Africans in the New Word. Oddly enough, most historians believe that the Africans, the farthest removed from Europeans, were actually closer to their masters than were the Indians in day to day life. Africans were, in legal terms, chattel slaves, but after a while they became liaisons between Europeans and Indians. They were allowed to be soldiers, to supervise Indians on haciendas and to manage domestics in the homes. It was common for there to be a shortage of labor in urban areas. Because of this, a class of skilled black craftsmen came into being. The study of the slaves social life, especially in Brazil, shows that many African ways survived in the Americas. Godparenthood and co-parenting were common, taking the pace of missing extended family. In cities, lay brotherhoods were sponsored by the Catholic Church. This sponsorship allowed Africans, free and slaves, as well as mulattos, to congregate on holidays, to observe the rituals of their saints, and to collect charitable funds for the less fortunate. The study of race is not new. It dates back to the early days of the Spanish Empire. Then there were arguments made about the status of indigenous persons. Did they have souls? Could they be enslaved? Could they be priests? Were they subject to the Inquisition? The answers to these questions led policy and practices, both crown and ecclesiastical. The introduction of African slaves and subsequent race mixture led to complex social hierarchy and racial categorization. In recent years, there has been a lot of scholarly work on social structure and race. Modern studies go back to the 1940s when Gonzalo Aguirre Beltran published his monograph on Africans in Mexico.5 In the United States, Frank Tannenbaum’s Slave and Citizen: The Negro in the Americas publication made Latin American slavery seem more kindhearted compared to North American slavery. He argued that “although slaves in Latin America were in forced servitude, they were included in society. They were Catholics, could sue in Spanish courts for better treatment, had legal ways to freedom, and in most places abolition was without armed conflicts, such as Civil War in the United States”.6 Since its publication, many scholars have dismissed it as being outdated or just plain wrong. Others, however, think of the comparison as valid and “simply no longer label it as ‘Tannenbaum thesis’”.7 The 1960s saw an increase in studies about race and race mixing. In 1967, Magnus Morner, a Swedish historian, published Race Mixture in the History of Latin America that helped define issues surrounding race.8 Frederick Bowser examined the historiography of African slavery in Latin America in his Latin American Research article. It was a summary of research to date and spoke of prospects for further examination. Following the article, he wrote his monograph, The African Slave in Colonial Peru, 1524-1650. It was an advancement in the field. He used archival sources and broadened the research to Peru.910 Debates about race, class, and castes increased in the 1970s. There were a number of works by various scholars such as John Chance and William Taylor, Robert McCaa, Stuart Schwartz and Arturo Grubessich, Patricia Seed and Philip Rust, Bruce Castleman, and finally Aaron Althouse.111213141516 In Spanish America, the elites sought racial purity. They did not want the taint of nonwhite blood. Genealogical Fictions by Maria Elena Martinez shows how far elite families were willing to go to “erase blemishes from genealogies”.17 Another good writing that helps to understand how race worked in Spanish America is Ann Twinam’s review of “mulatto and pardo petitions to the crown for dispensation from their non-white status, to get an education or enter a profession, and later as a all-encompassing request not tied to professional rules prohibiting non-whites to practice”.18 In the years following Tannenbaum's thesis, there were documents, known as  ”cédulas de gracias al sacar, that only included four identified cases, but the prospect of achieving upward mobility played an “important role in framing scholarly analysis of dynamics of race in Spanish America”.19 There was some writing on social mobility prior to that. R. Douglas Cope’s work, The Limits of Racial Domination, remains important.20 Blacks and Indians were being included in Spanish American Catholicism. Therefore they were considered to be a part of the spiritual community. Recently, there have been works that “indicate blacks in Castile were classified as ‘Old Christians’ and were able to obtain licenses to migrate to the Spanish Indies. There many became artisans. Some even became wealthy and prominent”.21 More work has been done to look at the previously unexamined complexities of the interactions between blacks, indigenous people and those that fall into mixed categories. Matthew Restall and a few others have explored race in Mexico as well as colonial Andes.22232425262728