Black mexico timesraceuniversity of new mexico press r

1. Black Mexico
TimesRace
University of New Mexico Press r Albuquerque
Edited by
BEN VINSON III
and
MATTHEW RESTALL
Colonial to Modernandsociety from
:ss
DESIGN AND LAYOUT: MELISSA TANDYSH
Composed in 10/13.5 Janson Text Lt Std
Display type is Bernhard Modern Std
Black Mexico: race and society from colonial to modern times /
edited by Ben Vinson III and Matthew Restall.
p. cm. — (Dialogos)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
is b n 978-0-8263-4701-5 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. Blacks—Mexico—History. 2. Blacks—Mexico—Social

2. conditions.
3. Blacks—Race identity—Mexico. 4. Mexico—Race relations.
5. Mexico—History—Spanish colony, 1540-1810.
6. Mexico—History—1810- I. Vinson, Ben, III. II. Restall,
Matthew, 1964-
F1392.B55B55 2009
972’.oo496—dc22
2009020457
© 2009 by the University of New Mexico Pre:
All rights reserved. Published 2009
Printed in the United States of America
19 18 17 16 15 14 345678
l ib r a r y o f CONGRESS CATALOGING-1N-
PUBLICATION d a t a
BEN VINSON III
96
From
■J- ON APRIL 18, 1793, MEXICAN MILITARY INSPECTOR
DON BENITO
Perez drafted a lengthy letter to the viceroy detailing the state
of affairs
among the free-colored communities and militiamen that he had
spent

3. several months reviewing. Contained within the pages of his
report were
opinions that were probably consistent with the views of many
elites of
the time. In his estimation, the colony’s interior was crowded
with unem
ployed blacks who congregated on the outskirts of major urban
areas such
as Mexico City. He wrote that the best way of dealing with this
poten
tially troublesome lot was to be zealous in charging tribute,
which would
have the effect of pushing blacks to the coasts as they sought to
evade the
heavy burden of unwanted taxation.1 On the one hand Perez’s
comments
revealed an interesting understanding of the black predicament:
the quite
sizeable free black population found itself struggling to survive
financially
in freedom. Any efforts to circumscribe their freedom even
more (in this
case, through exacting straining financial demands) produced
visceral
reactions. Black populations would move in order to defend
their liberty.
But while Perez’s letter offered some astute understandings of
colonial
Dawn til Dusk
Black Labor in Late Colonial Mexico
From Dawn 'til Dusk 91

4. black life, they were also a bit misguided. He ignored some of
the com
plex realities of black life with which even he must have been
quite famil
iar. The colonial archives are filled with evidence of gainful
black labor
and enterprise. Indeed, urban blacks in particular were probably
found
employed more often than not.
However, as evidenced in Perez’s dispatch, it was easy for free
coloreds
to be misunderstood by their society. Even when they worked a
trade,
sometimes for the government itself, innocent and industrious
activity
could be egregiously mistaken for criminality and deviancy. In
October
of 1785, Leberina Azevedo, the wife of Vicente Medina, wrote
an impas
sioned letter to the viceroy begging that her husband, a free-
colored mili
tiaman, not be incarcerated and shipped to Puerto Rico for being
found on
the streets of Mexico City carrying sharp scissors. He was not a
vagabond
toting an illegal weapon she pleaded, but a hired employee of
the Royal
tobacco factory where he had responsibilities in the cigar -
making indus
try. He had been found simply carrying a tool of his trade.2
Similarly, at 8:00 p.m. on the night of July 20, 1789, Lucio
Antonio
Rodriguez (another black soldier) was apprehended on the
streets of Mex

5. ico City for carrying a knife. According to his testimony, he had
recently
gotten off work from the Royal custom’s house where he held a
job as
an artisan. Like Medina, his knife was his occupational tool,
and he had
been using it that evening to cut wineskins and boots at the
house of don
Juan Maranon. Rather than being caught committing a crime, he
had been
apprehended while innocently going about his daily business.
After sev
eral rounds of testimony lasting for over a year, proof of his
impeccable
character and service record were provided and all charges were
cleared.
However, until then, he had to endure the humiliation of being
dragged
through the courts.3 In a world where stereotypes and laws
inhibiting the
black population lingered, distortions regarding black laborers
and black
employment persisted.
From the standpoint of scholars, labor has been one of the great
top
ics of study regarding black life in the colonial Americas. In
many ways,
research on slavery has captivated and monopolized historical
scholarship,
yielding tremendously important results that have greatly
improved our
understanding of the colonial and modern worlds. We now know
more
about how slavery contributed to the development of capitalism,
global

6. economies, world systems, Western notions of modernity, and
colonial/
metropolitan relationships. We have sharper understandings of
how slavery
98 BEN VINSON III
contributed to the structuring of social hierarchies and racial
systems, as
well as how it impacted independence movements and the
mundane opera
tion of everyday politics."* But while slavery certainly
occupied a founda
tional and prominent role in the colonial black experience, it is
important
to remember that it was only a part of black life. Particularly in
the Latin
American context, free coloreds such as Vicente Medina and
Lucio Antonio
Rodriguez, comprised a substantial workforce that also strongly
influenced
broader social, political, and economic processes.* Their
activities in places
such as Brazil, Venezuela, and Cuba are well known but, in
other colo
nial contexts, such as Mexico, Bolivia, and Guatemala, their
worlds are
less understood. At least for Mexico, this is not necessarily due
to scholarly
neglect. Over the past several decades, a number of important
studies have
been produced that have either featured free coloreds, or have
included
them in broader analyses of regional and local economies.6

7. However,
few attempts at achieving a general synthesis of free-colored
labor have
been achieved.
This chapter is an initial attempt at expanding our knowledge of
free-
black Mexican labor, especially for the late eighteenth century.
There may
have been fewmoments in Mexican history that present better
circumstances
for evaluating free-colored labor. The 1790s marked the eve
ofindependence
and the close of the colonial era. If, as some have argued, the
eighteenth
century was a period of general prosperity in Mexico, where
greater social
mobility for blacks was possible due to a weakening caste
system, a stron
ger class system, and greater racial hybridity, then these years
offer one of
the richest opportunities to take the pulse of Afro-Mexican
socioeconomic
progress. Second, the production of an extraordinary colony-
wide census,
commissioned by viceroy Revillagigedo between 1790 and
1793, provides
an unparalleled opportunity to examine free-colored
occupational habits.
Since the census was raised to identify potential recruits for
military duty,
detailed information on women (including their professions)
was largely
excluded, as was data on the native population. Nonetheless,
combined with
other sources, such as parish registers and tribute data, the late

8. colonial
period is one for which we may be able to know the Afro-
Mexican popula
tion intimately.
It is important to stress that for Afro-Mexicans, the eighteenth
cen
tury was in many ways a mulato and pardo century and that, at
some level,
blackness and the black experience should be evaluated on these
terms. As
a colony, Mexico experienced tremendous demographic growth,
nearly
From Dawn ’til Dusk 99
doubling in size from four to seven million inhabitants between
the 1650s
and the late 1700s. The Afro-Mexican population grew, too,
more than
tripling from roughly 116,000 in the 1640s to almost 370,000 by
the
1790s.7 But with the decline of the slave trade after the 1640s,
much of the
expansion of the Afro-Mexican population came not through
substantial
increases in the shipment of new slaves, or by large measures of
endoga
mous natural growth among free blacks (negros), but rather
through the
miscegenation of existing slaves and free blacks with mestizos,
whites,
natives and other groups.8 By the 1790s, the Revillagigedo
census only

9. identified a scant five hundred morenos, or “pure blacks,”
throughout New
Spain, along with another 6,100 black “Africans.”9
Apart from being a mulatto century, one might also argue that
the
1700s were an era of Afro-Mexican success. Using the lens of
“success”
to discuss the black experience offers an important alternative
to some
traditional models of studying black life. Particularly in Latin
American
contexts, life after slavery is often processed within the
framework of
assimilation and mestizaje. Interpreting life after slavery
through the
“success” lens opens new opportunities for engaging blacks on
different
terms, notably ones that compel us to measure free-colored
populations
in light of their respective societies and that demand us to
reckon with
blacks as a group struggling for their own internal cultural,
political, and
social cohesion.
Two potential barometers for measuring black success rest in
com
paring the economic livelihood of blacks in the 1700s against
benchmarks
from the previous two centuries, as well as against the
conditions of black
life in the greater Atlantic world. In simplest form, an argument
can be
made that because so many of Mexico’s blacks were free in the
eighteenth

10. century, their liberty should be celebrated over the more
pervasive slavery
that governed a great deal of New Spain’s black life from the
1500s into the
1600s, and that shackled so much of the black population in
slave regimes
throughout the French and British Caribbean in the 1700s. Some
might
also be persuaded to argue that the very prevalence of black
freedom in
New Spain during the eighteenth century partially compensated
for the
many misfortunes that some blacks encountered when they took
marginal
and menial positions.
Of course, this vision of eighteenth-century black success in
New Spain
comes with some caveats. While most Afro-Mexicans were
indeed free dur
ing the 1700s, the truth is that slavery persisted as an institution
until 1829.
BEN VINSON IIIIOO
In the years preceding emancipation, anywhere from three
thousand to ten
thousand slaves worked in a range of professions including
mining, textiles,
and sugar cultivation. Some of the regions where slaves
continued working
included the cane fields of Cordoba, the developing frontier
areas of north
ern Alexico (Sonora, Durango, and Sinaloa), the textile center

11. of Queretaro,
as well as select coastal regions including Tamiahua and
Acapulco. As strict
trade controls and monopolies were removed from ports
throughout Mexico
in the eighteenth century, a small, renewed slave trade appeared
in tropical
regions like Tabasco. Essentially, what these factors mean is
that any dis
cussion of eighteenth-century Afro-Alexican success must be
situated in a
context in which slavery continued to exist, even if only on a
small scale. In
some of the locations where slavery remained visible, the
cultural impact of
the system may have borne implications upon free-colored
social relation
ships, as well as their prospects for advancement in society.
The meaning of free-colored economic progress must also be
situ
ated in a society characterized by great inequality. In broad
measure, the
eighteenth century was generally one of economic growth for
Mexico on
the whole. The colony ranked first among the world’s silver
producers and
mining triggered the development of a variety of industries,
includi ng agri
cultural, ceramic, and textile production. Yet at the same time,
the story
of Mexican economic progress was greatly disjointed. Equal
opportunities
were not available for all, and while more millionaires were
created in New
Spain than anywhere else in the Spanish empire, the Alexican

12. working
masses saw a 25 percent drop in real earnings during the last
half of the
eighteenth century, thanks in part to inflation, crop failures, and
epidem
ics. While some free coloreds were absorbed into the middle
class, others
who occupied the lowest strata of the economy were exposed to
extreme
income volatility, squalid poverty, and exploitation by a
supremely power
ful elite class. Was this a fate better than slavery? Indeed, was
this success?
Arguably yes, arguably no. However, such observations only
seem to beg
the question: to what degree should black success be measured
against the
benchmark of slavery or against the material opportunities and
livelihoods
of others who were free?10
The following sections, essentially a series of economic
narratives, do
not pretend to fully answer the questions raised here, but they
help pro
vide a context for resolving them. By providing a broad
understanding of
the general contours of free-colored economic life, and
highlighting the
roles that blacks played in specific local and regional
economies, we can
From Dnivn ’til Dusk io i

13. arrive at a better grasp of how free coloreds lived, articulated,
and defined
their freedom, as well as how they translated it into
opportunities that
intersected with the most powerful forces of the colonial
economy.
Colonial Snapshots:
A Portrait of New Spain's Free-Colored Labor Scene
Throughout the second half of the eighteenth century and up
until the
outbreak of the wars for independence, Afro-Mexicans
comprised roughly
io percent of New Spain’s population.” Table 5.1 provides
occupational
information on 11,730 free coloreds (mainly males) who came
from twenty
different provinces, districts, and urban centers throughout the
viceroy
alty (see Maps 5.1 and 5.2). Combined, these regions housed
approximately
64,000 free coloreds, or roughly 17 percent of the nearly
370,000 Afro-
Mexicans who lived in Mexico during the 1790s.”
In a predominantly agricultural society, it should not surprise us
that
agriculture was the largest arena of work for free coloreds.13
Entire prov
inces, such as Igualapa, Guazacoalcos (Acayucan), and Tampico
housed
scores of labradores (farmers) and baqueros (cowboys), almost
to the near
exclusion of other professions. Indeed, the labrador may have
been the

14. most common black male occupation in colonial Mexico. Using
census
records alone, it is hard to distinguish among the labradores and
baqueros
who owned their own plots or flocks, and those who were
sharecroppers,
hacienda laborers, and ranch hands.14 Of those who worked as
employees
on the larger estates, differences in salary existed between
seasonal work
ers and year-round hacienda residents. While seasonal workers
could gen
erally benefit from high wages paid during harvest seasons, they
did not
always have access to adequate housing and their employment
was irregu
lar throughout the year. Meanwhile, laborers who lived
permanently on
an estate might have enjoyed better lodging facilities and more
continual
employment, yet at the same time they could incur greater debts
there,
where they also typically bought their goods and wares. All of
the earnings
of agriculturalists and ranchers were further subjected to market
forces.
Fluctuations in product value and levels of occupational
experience also
affected wage differentials?5
Some of the free-colored agricultural workforce was mobile. As
evi
denced in regions such as the Pacific coast as early as the
sixteenth century,
black populations both enslaved and free, moved from estate to
estate, or

15. BEN VINSON III102
5.1. Free-Colored Labor in Late Colonial Mexico, 1780—
1794TABLE
Economic Sector
982 8.4
17 .1
6,160 52.5
Number of
Workers
170
1,961
101
306
230
76
11,730
1,113
133

16. 261
15
119
86
1.4
16.7
.9
2.0
2.6
.7
99.9
.1
1.0
.7
Percentage of
Workforce (%)
9.5
1.1
2.2

17. Source: AGN, Padrones, vols. 11, 12, 13, 16, 17, 18, 21, 35, and
37; AGN, I.G., vol. 53-A;
I.G., vol. 416-A, Acayucan, 1795, Biblioteca Nacional de
Antropologia y Historia (BNAH)
Archivo Judicial de Puebla, rollos 43-44, Tributes Expediente
formado en virtud de las
diligencias hechas por los alcaldes ordinarios al gobernador
intendente Don Manuel
de Flon, Puebla, 1795; Archivo Historico de la Ciudad de
Mexico (AHCM), Ciudad de
Mexico, vol. 1; Juan Andrade Torres, El comercio de esclavos
en la provincia de Tabasco (Siglos
XV1-XIX) (Villahermosa, Mexico: Universidad Juarez
Autonoma de Tabasco, 1994),
60-61; Jorge Amos Martinez Ayala, Epa! Epa! Toro Prieto, Toro
Prieto (Morelia: Institute
Michaocano de Cultura, 2001), 67-69; Bruce Castleman, “Social
Climbers in a Colonial
Mexican City: Individual Mobility within the Sistema de Castas
in Orizaba, 1777-1791,”
Colonial Latin American Review (CLAR) 10, no. 2 (2001): 242-
44; David A. Brading,
“Grupos etnicos: Clases y estructura ocupacional en Guanajuato
(1792),” in Historiay
poblacidn en Mexico (Siglos XVI-XIX), ed. Thomas Calvo, 256
(Mexico City: El Colegio
Transport and services
Construction
Metal, wood, pottery
Textiles, dress, shoes,
leatherworking

18. Arts and entertainment
Food and drink
Commerce
Administrative,
professional,
church, military
Agricultural, fishing,
and pastoral
Tobacco
Mining and refining
Mill workers3
Other industry13
Other
Unknown
Total
From Dawn ’til Dusk i°3
de Mexico, 1994); Wu, “The Population of the City of
Queretaro in 1791 f Journal of Latin
American Studies 16, no. 2 (1984): 293; Guillermina del Valle
Pavon, “Transformaciones de
la poblacion afromestiza de Orizaba segun los padrones de 1777
y 1791,” in Pardos, niulatos
y libertos, Sexto encuentro de Afromexianistas, 88-93 (Xalapa:

19. Universidad Veracruzana,
2001); and Juan Carlos Reyes G., “Negros y afromestizos en
Colima, siglos XVI-XIX,” in
Prcsencia africana en Mexico, ed. Luz Maria Montiel Martinez,
301 (Mexico City: Consejo
Nacional para la Cultura y Artes, 1993).
Note: The study includes seven cities (Guanajuato, Valladolid,
Queretaro. Orizaba,
Mexico City, Puebla, and Oaxaca), and thirteen
provinces/districts (Acayucan. Tabasco,
Guamelula, Tixtla, Acapulco, Tlapa, Chilapa, Motines,
Tampico, Colima, Igualapa,
Sanjuan del Rio, and Irapuato).
3 These workers were all in the mining industry.
11 Includes thirty-eight workers in the sugar industry, some of
whom were agriculturalists.
from village to village in search of better livelihoods.1*5 In
some instances,
black residential and occupational mobility even helped anchor
the devel
opment of certain townships, such as the village of Tonameca
located in
the Pacific province of Guamelula (see Map 5.1).17 By the
second half of
the eighteenth century, this town had come to possess the
highest popula
tion density of blacks in the district. Although market forces did
produce
important moments of opportunity that helped push and attract
black
agriculturalists to various parts of the colony, not everyone
heeded the
logic of the market. In the second half of the eighteenth century,

20. as cotton
and sugar production reinvigorated the Pacific basin’s economy,
causing
some free coloreds to move onto or near estates in areas such as
Zacatula
(see Map 5.1), others opted not to leave their homes or change
their long
established lifeways. In the province of Igualapa, also in the
Pacific basin,
as some blacks moved to take advantage of special economic
opportuni
ties, others solidified their roots in the orbit of the great estates,
forming
a number of black settlements in the Costa Chica whose cultural
legacies
remain felt even today.’8
New Spain’s black agricultural and pastoral workers included a
num
ber of individuals categorized as sirvientes (servants) and
operarios (work
ers) who labored on estates, small farms, and ranches. It was
generally
understood that many “servants” in rural areas did not always
perform
domestic labor, but also worked in the agricultural and ranching
profes
sions as assistants, peons, and farmhands. Their servant status
probably
signaled a lower position within the labor hierarchy. A few rural
servants
BEN VINSON III104

21. ICO1'!*/102’’W lo'V‘tzl’u'TP'*/
to
GUANAJUATO
to YbcATAM
ZAllAPoLil
XOUMA
to cHilAPA KW
ACAYVCAM
I
llb*M
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22. ib>J
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f QUERETARO
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Ne w Sp a in
• Mexico
•1W>Ca
(iUjA
VilkJotzl
m a p 5.1. Mexico’s provinces. Map drawn by Severine

23. Rebourcet.
UaMpico
CusmaxDzzi • Orizabax
SPAIN
CkiCapa.
. p .Ttwa.
■Acaputco
mo t i^e s^^y
_-4t Ac A7ULA
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ACAPUlXO-^/S
V2lz—^l&VALAPA
m a p j.2. Mexico s cities. Map drawn by Severine Rebourcet.
From Dawn 'til Dusk 105
were more specifically categorized as sirvientes de trapiches,
meaning that
they worked on sugar cane mills. Operarios, meanwhile,
typically referred
to unskilled industrial workers and manufacturers, particularly
in urban
settings. But in the rural world of New Spain, many operarios
worked on
plantations, haciendas, and cotton estates—sometimes as

24. machinists, but
not necessarily. This intriguing group of all-purpose black
laborers prob
ably resembled the indiscriminate category of rural
“trabajadores" (work
ers) found in regions like Tabasco.’9
After the agricultural and pastoral professions, the second
largest
employment arena for the free coloreds surveyed in this sample
was min
ing (see Table 5.1).20 It is almost certain that as future research
allows us to
acquire more data on New Spain’s free-colored labor force,
mining’s role
will diminish within the hierarchy of eighteenth-century Afro-
Mexican
professions. As with the labradores and baqueros, the
particularities of the
census make it hard to distinguish among miners. The category
included
refiners, pick and blast men (who extracted ore from its
deposit), whim
minders (who hoisted ore from shafts), smelters, amalgamators,
foremen,
and peons alike. Needless to say, the skill level and pay scale of
these
workers varied tremendously. Virtually all of the mining jobs in
the data
sample were located in Guanajuato, the premier silver center of
the late
colonial empire. In the 1790s, Guanajuato had a large black
labor force,
much of which was born in the city or its surrounding province,
and that
had ancestral roots stemming back into the sixteenth and

25. seventeenth
centuries.21 Despite the presence of black miners in other areas
of the
colony, such as Taxco and Sultepec, it is unlikely that any
mining cen
ter in the eighteenth century came close to matching
Guanajuato’s black
workforce. Consequently, the total number of blacks in the
Mexican min
ing industry must have assuredly been overtaken by other
sectors of free-
colored employment.
Among these were the transport and service industries, which
included
porters, water carriers, muleteers, domestics, cooks, servants,
laundresses,
and coachmen (see Table 5.1). If complete employment
information was
available for women, we would also find more wet nurses,
nannies, house
keepers, and attendants.22 One surprise is that muleteers
(arrieros), who
have long been perceived as a niche profession for blacks, were
relatively
few among employed free-colored males in the transport
industry. Their
strongest representation came in the colony’s western highland
regions
(Tixtla, Tlapa, and Chilapa) and in Guanajuato, which possessed
over 250
io6 BEN VINSON III

26. black arrieros. Elsewhere, and especially in the major regional
market cities
of Puebla, Oaxaca, Valladolid, and Orizaba, muleteers were
almost absent.
What this suggests is that except for a few instances, many free-
colored
muleteers tended to live in smaller towns along major
thoroughfares that
tied together the colony’s primary markets.2* Another trend,
more notice
able in the Pacific highlands than elsewhere, was evidence for
the employ
ment of free coloreds as muleteers’ assistants de arrieros).
These
workers were mainly responsible for helping pack and feed the
animals,
while also assisting with driving mule trains from various
mountainous
passageways down to the colony’s coastal and heartland zones
Artisans in the textile, dress, leatherworking, and shoemaking
indus
tries competed fiercely with the service and transport sector for
third
place within the free-colored occupational hierarchy (see Table
5.1). These
professions included tailors, seamstresses, cobblers, textile mill
workers,
hatters, cloth cutters, needle makers, spinners, tanners, weavers,
and rib
bon makers, among others. Some of these trades, such as cloth
cutters
involved minimal expertise and were mainly considered to be
manufac
turing professions. Others demanded superior craftsmanship and
even

27. guild membership. During the colonial period, and especially
during the
eighteenth century, free coloreds were known to have access to
the upper
ranks of several guilds and many emerged as examined masters
in their
trades. However, in the census documents examined here, not a
single
free-colored master artisan was found among the 11,000-plus
laborers.2*
When combined with workers in the metal, woodworking, and
pot
tery sector, as well as candlemakers, wax producers, and cigar
makers,
the total population of free-colored artisans actually
outnumbered those
employed in the service and transport industries. Of course, the
lack of
information on women complicates matters.2* Like their male
counter
parts, free-colored women were also employed as artisans, with
perhaps
their heaviest representation coming in the textile industry.
There were
probably significant numbers of black female confectioners and
tobacco
factory workers as well. All of this begs the question: what was
the likely
impact of females on the overall free-colored workforce? It is
hard to say
with certainty, but it is highly probable that the number of
female artisans
never overtook the number of female service workers.26
Consequently,
women most likely affected the free-colored labor force by

28. substantially
increasing the representation of service and textile workers in
the labor
hierarchy. Moreover, it is likely that female representation
increased the
From Dawn ’til Dusk 107
A Tale of Four Cities: Free-Colored Big City Labor
No single colony in the Spanish empire had two urban centers
that rivaled
the size of Mexico City and Puebla in the late eighteenth
century and,
quite possibly, few could boast the economic diversity and
complexity of
Mexico’s four largest metropolises, including Guanajuato and
Queretaro
(see Map 5.2). All dominated the political and economic
landscapes of their
regions by buying goods and supplying manufactured wares,
furnishing
credit for business ventures, as well as administering the greater
affairs
of governance, justice, and military order. Collectively, these
centers also
offered opportunities that were simply unavailable in smaller
towns and
the rural countryside. Whereas one might be hard pressed to
find a sil
versmith, painter, or teacher in less populated zones, in New
Spain’s first-
order cities, such professions were more commonplace.
Similarly, whereas
only a handful of occupational options existed in smaller towns,

29. in places
like Mexico City there were well over six hundred different
professions
available between 1790 and 1842.28 Of course, the industrial
and service
functions of most cities meant that artisans and unskilled
laborers com
prised the lifeblood of urban economies. In a typical Latin
American
metropolis anywhere between 20 and 40 percent of the
population worked
as artisans, while another 30 to 40 percent were unskilled
laborers?9 As
might be expected, the status of these professions varied widely,
and argu
ments can be made that the social position of many artisans did
not match
their actual worth in the economy?0
By and large, free coloreds found themselves navigating the
colonial
urban world of honor, position, and status by maximizing and
exploit
ing whatever opportunities (big and small) their professions
allowed. As
a general rule, free blacks found some of their best access to
jobs in the
focal industries of the larger metropolises, in part because of
the cities’
overwhelming need to furnish workers in these trades. These
professions.
variety of trades to be found in the services, while raising the
number of
workers in both the food industry and petty commerce—women
worked

30. as waitresses, tortilla makers, street peddlers (selling stockings
and combs),
fruit vendors, and druggists, among other positions?7 With
female help,
the service industry probably surfaced as the second most
important free-
colored occupational arena (over mining), followed by the
textile-related
craft trades.
io8 BEN VINSON III
in turn, linked free coloreds professionally to large swathes of
the …
Genealogical Fictions
Limpieza de Sangre,
Religion, and Gender in Colonial Mexieo
Maria Elena Martinez
STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRliSS
STANFORD, CALIFORNIA 2008
This book has been published with the assistance
of the University of Southern California
Stanford University Press

31. Stanford, California
©2008 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior
University.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by
any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying
and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system without the
prior written
permission of Stanford University Press.
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-
quality paper
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Martinez, Maria Elena
Genealogical fictions; limpieza de sangre, religion, and gender
in colonial
Mexico I Maria Elena Martinez.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8°47-5648-8 (cloth; alk. paper)
1. Mexico-Race l-. Racism-Mexico-History.
3. Social classes-Mexico-History 4. Social c1asses-
Religious Church. I. Title.
fr39l-.ArM37 wo8

32. 305.5' r 2l-0890097.l.-dl'l-l-
l-007 0 3875 1
Typeset by Thompson Type in roll l- Sabon
•
To my parents,
Aurelia Lopez Corral and Nicolas Martinez Corral
To my grandparents (mis cuatro costados),
Fwrentina Corral Esparza, Severo LOpez Avitia,
Marla de JesUs Corral Corral, and Enrique Martinez Corral
And to the precious land, our patria chica, that gave us life
226 Purity, Race, and ereo/ism
candidate's baptismal information (with affidavits from priests)
b
III the latter half of the colonial period, which began in the
1670s,
?ecame a standard feature. As the seventeenth century dosed
these
Ish . d . . I ' par-recor s were mcreasmg y using the formula
"people of reason" "
"b " f 5 . d ' as In 0 pamar s and other castes of people of
reason" (bautismos
y demas castas de, de raz6n). The discourse of
lirnpleza de sangre and the colomal sistema de castas that it
inspired had

33. entered the Age of Reason.
CHAPTER NINE
Changing Contours
(Limpieza de Sangre' in the Age
of Reason and Reform
two decades ago, a series of paintings that are unique to
eighteenth-
rP''''",V Spanish America began to attract the attention of
students of
The which modern scholars have labeled "casta paint-
and was developed in the viceroyalty of New Spain. '
a growing metropolitan curiosity over the nature and in-
New World, Mexican artists produced the vast majority
paintings to represent the different "types" of people that sexual
«I"ioo" among Amerindians, blacks, and Spaniards had
engendered in
Americas. The main subject of the paintings, in other words,
was
population of mixed descent. The painters, a good number of
whom
were creoles,2 shared a concern with depicting how
reproduction among
.. the three main colonial combinations (Spanish-Indian,
Spanish-black,
and black-Indian) unfolded in the course of several generations.
To il-
lustrate this process of generational mestizaje, they relied on

34. multiple
panels-normally three to five for the first two units and several
more
for the third-and on the family trope. A typical series consisted
of six-
teen panels, each featuring a mother, father, and a child
(sometimes two);
an inscription providing the casta terminology for the particular
family
members; and a focus on skin color distinctions. The intended
audience
for at least some of the paintings was European, because several
of the
series were commissioned by colonial officials who intended
them as
gifts for relatives or institutions in Spain. l Casta sets were als o
destined
for the Real Gabinete de Historia Natural (Royal Cabinet of
Natural
History), which Charles III founded in Madrid in 1771 in order
to dis-
play objects from different pans of the world, including
Castile's over-
seas territories. Together with minerals, fossils, rocks, flora,
and other
u8 Purity, Race, and Creolism
products from the Americas, various paintings were shipped
across th
a?d consumed by a Spanish public. Yet some sets stayed in
lCD, Implymg that there was a local market for them as weJI.4
With the possible exception of only one series, by Luis de

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

36. context in eighteenth-century central Mexico, the changing
relationship
between metropole and colony, and the discourse of Iimpieza de
san-
gre. This chapter focuses on these issues. It stresses that casta
paintings,
which emerged during a period of deepening anxieties about the
shift-
ing social order, construct a narrative of mestizaje informed by
the dis-
course of purity of blood. They also reflect some of the changes
that the
concept of limpieza de sangre had undetgone in colonial
Mexico, most
notably its association with whiteness. The chapter emphasizes
that the
existence of multiple definitions of purity of blood, some
religious, oth-
ers more secular, helped fuel a creole patriotic defense of
Spanish-Indian
unions at a time of growing concerns about mestizaje and its
supposed
degenerating potential.
AN ICONOGRAPHY OF MESTIZAJE: PAINTINGS
AND THE INTERSECTION or RACE, CLASS, AND GENDER
At the end the seventeenth century, various Spanish arbitristas
(authors
of treatises on economic and fiscal reform) were convinced that
both
the Castilian state and economy were in crisis. They mainly
attributed
the country's lamentable economic situation to its failure to
develop its

37. Changing Contours 229
.Iu",i" and to its being reduced to exporting agricultural
products
return for manufactures. Politically, (he monarchy was weak
and
death of Charles II in 1700 plunged the country and other parts
of
into a war of succession {170I-13} between supporters of Arch-
of Austria and those of Philip of Anjou, respectively, the
!a and Bourbon contenders. By the second decade of the eight-
century, Spain had not only a new king, Philip V {1701-46}, but
a
",,' dyna",y in power. The Bourbons would devote a great deal
of time
to explain why the coumry had fallen behind other parts of
west-
and strategizing about how to strengthen the crown and the
. Their efforts would yield a series of reforms that had sweeping
in both Spain and its colonies.
The "Bourbon reforms," however, did not begin in earnest umil
af-
the middle of the eighteenth century. By then, Mexico had
already
undergoing important socioeconomic and cultural changes.
Demo-
ral,h.ealily the region wem from having a population of about
1.5 mil-

38. in 1650 to having between 2.5 and 3 million people in the early
The native population's "recovery" played an important role in
increase, as did the rapid numerical growth of people of mixed
an-
7 The demographic upsurge together with shifts in the economy,
.cludin! a rise in silver production that stimulated economic
activities
northern resulted in an expanded market for internal goods.
goods included textiles, most of which were produced in obrajes
manufactories) or domestic artisan establishments; pulque, the
Ico,holi·, beverage of pre-Hispanic origins; and tobacco, which
until
crown brought the industry under its control in 1765 was sold
by
shopkeepers and street vendors. The virtual self-sufficiency and
"",""di·ng market and productive capacity that Mexico enjoyed
in the
of the eighteenth century, not to mention the economic in-
it still had on other parts of Spanish America, made its political
economic elites confident about its future and not a little
arrogant
their capital's place in the hemisphere. The most prominent of
elites lived in Mexico City and Puebla, which had emerged not
as the viceroyalty'S main sociopolitical centers but as its
principal
of artistic production. 9 It was in these two cities that many of
the

39. :art"" who produced casta paintings were trained and in the
fanner
that the genre was born.
The first paintings to exhibit conventions of the casta genre
were done
by a member of a family of artists from Mexico City, the
Arellanos, at the
request of the Viceroy Alencastre Norona y Silva. Two works in
particu-
lar, both dated 17 I I, are considered early manifestations of the
art form.
The first is titled Sketch ora Mulatto, Daughtero{ a Black
[Woman] and a
fIG. 4· Arellano. Dicei/o de Mulata yia de negra y espai/o/ en la
Ciudad de
MeXICO. Lahesa de La America a 22 de Agosto de 17' , (Sketch
of a Mulatto, Daughter
of a Black Woman and a Spaniard in Mexico City, Capital of
America on the H of
August of 171 l). SOURCE: Courtesy of Denver Art Museum:
Collection of hederick
and Jan Mayer. © photugraph Denver Art
Changing Contuurs 2) ,
in Mexico City, Capital of America (Fig. 4), and the second,
of a Mulatto, Son of a Black [Woman] and a Spaniard in Mexico
Capital of America. III The mulata is dressed in sumptuous
clothing
lOw,."pearis around her neck and wrist, a figure certainly
worthy of

40. "seat" of the Americas. Her male counterpart, the mulato
is likewise adorned with fancy attire, including a Spanish
and hat that rest on his left shoulder and arm. The figure looks
di-
into the eyes of the viewer as he holds a substance up to his
nose,
scent of which he is clearly appreciating. The substance is
tobacco, the
exotic import from the Americas to become a product of mass
con-
ompdon in western Europe,ll but one that Mexico produced
exclusively
internal market. Standing beside the male mulatto is a little boy
,.spi"g a wooden horse with one hand and a flag or streamer
with the
The two canvases were meant to function as a unit, thus
rendering
family triad that was to become characteristic of casta
paintings.ll
While the two Arellano representations of mulattos anticipated
casta
it was the work of the Mexico City artist Juan Rodriguez
(1675-1728) that first exhibited the principal traits of the genre.
"",most among these traits was a concern with depicting how
repro-
between people of different ancestries unfolds in the course of
generations. This process of ongoing mestizaje was represented

41. a sequence of separate images or family vignettes. Starting with
works belonging to the casta genre were produced as series,
normally consisting of separate canvases or copper plates. A
few
the different images on a single surface. Each image normally
fca-
a man, a woman, and their child. ll Some indude two children,
the standard family unit of casta paintings was a trinity. Series
were
in order to facilitate the ordering of the images.
each vignette included an inscription providing the no-
for the family members. Most casta sets, for example, begin
the representation of an elite Spanish male, an indigenous
woman
of high socioeconomic status, their offspring, and a title that
reads
f",m,,,hing like From a Spaniard and Indian [Woman] a Mestizo
Is Born
Espanal e India nace Mestizo) (fig. 5).
Casta sets are somewhat different depending on the painter and
pe-
riod in which they were produced, but they nonetheless share a
number
of underlying principles that produce a particular narrative of
mestizaje.
One of these principles is the idea that blood is a vehide for
transmitting
a host of physical, psychological, and moral traits. The most
explicit

42. series in this regard was by Jose Joaquin Mag6n, an artist from
the city
of Puebla who worked during the second half of the eighteenth
century.
One of the two casta sets that he completed indudes inscriptions
listing
the qualities that children supposedly received from one or both
parents.
FIG. 5· Jose de Ibarra, De espana/ e india. mestizo (From
Spaniard and
Indian, Me,tizo), ca. 1725. Oil on canvas, 164 x 91 cm.
SOURCE: Courtesy
of Mu,eo de America, Madrid.
Changing Contours 233
first painting, for example, starts with the message that in "the
;,.,,,i,,,, people of different colour, customs, temperaments and
lan-
are born" and then describes the mestizo born of a Spaniard and
won",,,, "generally humble, tranquil and straightforward." The
and last vignette in the unit explains that the Spanish boy, born
of
man and a castiza, "takes entirely after his father." He appar -
inherited nothing from his indigenous great-grandmother or any
of
ancestors. The next sequence of images begins by announcing
that
"proud nature and sharp wits of the Mulatto woman come from
White [male] and Black woman who produce her" and ends with
a

43. that features a child called torna atras (return backwards) and
that describes him as having "bearing, temperament and
r, "
Another idea present in casta paintings is that while mixture is a
po-
infinite process, it is not irreversible; returning to one of the
purity is possible. In particular, they allow for the possibil-
that a Spanish-Indian union can on the third generation result in
a
Spania<·d" if its descendants continue to reproduce with
persons of
descent. However, while admitting that reproduction with Span-
can also Hispanicize or whiten blacks, casta paintings as a
whole
that black blood inevitably resurfaces, that "blackness" cannot
entirely absorbed into Spanish lineages, or native ones fot that
mat-
The last generational unit of a typical series, which is
characterized
the total or ncar-total absence of Spaniards and by ongoing
reproduc-
between people of African and indigenous descent, normally
links
to incomprehensibility (as conveyed by terms such as "hold
r< in mid-air," "return backwards," "lobo return backwards,"
return backwards," "lobo once again," and "I don't get you")
in some cases to moral degencration.1'i

44. The narrative of mestizaje constructed by casta paintings also
de-
an the strong interdependence of race and gender. The first se-
Iqu"",,, of a typical set normally begins with the family of a
Spanish
and an indigenous female, and the second, with that of a
Spaniard
a black woman. Some representations of black men with
Spanish
''')me< do appear, but these are not common, and rarer still arc
images
of Spanish women with Amerindians. 16 That in the majority of
casta sets
,the Spanish-Indian and Spanish-black unions involve Spanish
males
. not only promotes the notion that elite white men were in
command of
the sexuality of all women (thereby emasculating other men),
but con-
Struct a gendered image of New Spain's three main populations.
Sexual
subordination essentiatty functions as a metaphor for colonial
domina-
tion. However, casta paintings gender indigenous and black
people dif-
ferently. Whereas the genre links the former to biological
"weakness"
FIG. 6. Andres de Islas [Mexican), NO.4. De espaiio/ y negra,
nace mufata (From

45. Spaniard and Black, Mulatto), 1774. Oil on canvas, 75 x 54 cm.
SOURCE: Courtesy of
Museo de America, Madrid.
Changing Contours 235
it implies that their blood can be completely absorbed into
Spanish
it associates blacks with strength and thus codes them more as
casta iconography imbues them with the power, for example,
",.m,mit their qualities to their descendants.
In some of the paintings that have images of domestic violence
(Fig. 6),
is mulatto women in particular who are masculinized. These
Ii tend to feature Spaniards serving black or mulatto women or
the victims of female aggression; they thus reverse traditional
gen-
roles and figure women of African ancestry primarily as
atavistic
violent forces. J7 Not all images of African-descended people in
casta
.intin.g' are negative, but the genre's inclusion of violent black
women
absence of similar representations of indigenous women are
consis-
with its overall privileging of the family, the images
. are generally characterized by patriarchal domestic harmony,
rank, and a return to purity. The implication that Spanish blood
be restored when it mixes with that of native people but
corrupted
that of blacks suggests that the paintings draw on a set of

46. notions
generation, regeneration, and degeneration.
In a sense, the genre offers a secularized recasting of Christian
my-
not only in that the family images are obviously a product of
imagination (joseph, Mary, and Jesus; Father, Son, and
Spirit) but in that the degeneration narrative can be read as a
kind
from grace, one that always begins with the sexual act. As in
thought, "the fall" is not irrevocable; redemption is possible.
Edenic ideal, embodied in the actual body of the Spanish male,
can
into a state of "barbaric heathenism" (if his descendants can-
to reproduce with native and black people), but it can also be
re-
. Spanish (Christian) blood has redemptive power. But again,
the
"",,",i1il:, of complete redemption is admitted only for Spanish-
Indian
and not for those involving blacks. From this perspective, the
of casta paintings is not so much the castas but the Spanish
male,
is warned that reproducing with black women can lead to the
loss
purity, and identity, to the corruption of his "seeds."
reveal the importance of the Spanish male within the
narrative as dramatically as the first canvas (Fig. 7) of a 1763

47. Cabrera It features a Spanish male [0 the
. woman [0 the right, and their daughter in the mid-
dle. l In the is a wall, and between it and the figures, a stall
with neatly arranged, luxurious Mexican textiles, indicating that
the
SCene takes place in a marketplace. The male, who stands
perfectly erect,
is turned toward the adult female. His right hand rests on his
daughter,
and with the left he points toward the indigenous woman,
displaying her
FIG. 7. Miguel [Mexi.canj, I. De espaiio/ y de india, mestiza
(From Spaniard
and Indian, Mestiza), 1763,011 on canvas, 132 x rOI em.
SOURCE; Private collection.
Changing Contours 237
the viewer of the painting. The Spaniard's face is not shown, but
his
"Slm"md hand gestures leave no doubt as to where his eyes are
fixed.
object of his gaze is the native woman, who returns the look
with
slightly raised eyebrow and somewhat flirtatious expression on
her
She holds her daughter by the hand and is standing in front of
the
of finely detailed textiles, as if she herself were a commodity.
The

48. girl, who is holding a Spanish fan and like her mother is dressed
in
iislpa"ic attire, looks at her father with an expression of
deference.
Both the positioning of the figures in relation to each arher and
body language create an idealized patriarchal order, one based
Aristarelian formulations of family and polity in which children
are
.b<"dlin,", to adults and women to men and in which the
authority
the father is linked to that of the king. The painting consists of
four
of vision: that of the Spanish man, which is directed at
woman; that of the latter back toward the Spaniard; that
also directed at the male figure; and that of the viewer of the
.h"i"g, whose eyes are first led to the mother and then to the
child
exoticized products from New Spain {the textiles in the back-
and the pineapple on the lower right corner of the frame}. These
,m,ii"" paradoxically position not the woman and child, which
are be-
displayed, but the Spanish male as the center of the painting.
Indeed,
is he who through the whole visual rhetoric of the painting-the
three
body language, the deployment of the male gaze, and the spatial
of humans and objects-is rendered as in command nar

49. the wealth and products of New Spain, but of the sexuality and
rep,wduction of the native female, his most valued possession.
Through its fetishized portrayal of barh the textiles and the
indige-
woman, Cabrera's painting hints at the process of creole class
for-
one fetish conceals the work that produced New Spain's
enterprises and therefore most of its wealth; the other hides
labor, dumestic and reproductive, that gave rise to a guod
number
Spanish colonial estates. The implied phallus in the painting,
the in-
through which some indigenous women were inseminated and II
which Spaniards were able in the course of a few generations
reproduce themselves, stands as a symbol of patriarchal control,
eco-
exploitation, and racial dispossession-a signifier of multiple and
overlapping structures of domination. Through the iconography
of pro-
ductive sexuality in the domestic sphere, Cabrera's casta set
thus exposes
the dynamic relationship of race, class, and gender and the
importance
of the Spanish appropriation of the labor and reproductive
capacity of
native women to the colonial order.
Purity, Race, and Creolism

50. born in (now Oaxaca), was eighteenth-century
MexICo s most promment pamter. He produced a large body of
officialJ
sponsored works featuring religious themes as well as portrait
painting;
including one of the Virgin of Guadalupe and another of the
Mexican writer Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz. Credited by some art
historians with taking casta paintings to their highest levels of
artis_
tic sophistication, Cabrera also was involved in introducing
important
changes into the genre. These changes include more attention to
emotion
and contact the figures, a stronger reliance on clothing
to mark socioeconomIC dtfferences, and a greater stress on
order and hi-
erarchy.2u Nonetheless, sets from the second half of the century
contin_
ued to convey the message that parents transmit a series of traits
to their
children through their blood, that after three generations the
descen_
dants of Spanish-Indian unions can return to the Spanish pole,
and that
black blood eventually stains pure lineages-ideas that were all
part of
the discourse of limpieza de sangre as it had developed in New
Spain.
The paintings also still generally offered a vision of Mexican
society in
which race, gender, and class intersected and in which Spanish
men's
control over female sexuality, especially over that of their own
women,

51. enabled the survival of colonial hierarchies. Paradoxically, the
period in
which casta paintings were produced was one in which those
hierarchies
and the very category of Spaniard were becoming highly
unstable.
TilE SISTEMA DE CASTAS IN FLUX AND
TIlE PROLIFERATION OF STATUTES AND STAINS
This instability of the sistema de castas in central Mexico was
partly
due to changes in marriage panerns and legitimacy rates. In the
capital
and Puebla, for example, marriages between Spaniards and
women of
partial African descent experienced slight but significant
increases in the
final decades of the seventeenth century. The church might have
played
a role in these increases, for it intensified its campaign to
compel couples
in informal unions to marry by threatening them with
excommunica-
tion.21 Thus, when in 1695 the Inquisition asked the bishop of
Puebla
to compile a list of the couples that had wed under those
circumstances,
it learned that during the preceding five years, twenty Spanish
men had
married African-descended women, free and enslavedY By the
start of
the next century, legitimacy rates among the broader casta
population
were rising, and Spanish women were taking men from other

52. groups as
husbands at higher rates than before. 2l Because the church had
a history
Changing Contours 239
upholding the principle of free will in choice of marriage
partners
parental wishes (a policy that the state had for most of
seventeenth century), families had no legal or Illstuutlonal
mecha-
to halt such unions, at least not yet. 24
The growing instability of the sistema de castas was also due to
the
complexity of colonial society, which witnessed a dramatic
surge
the population of mixed ancestry, the beginnings of a working
class
(especially in the northern mining towns and in Mexico City
Puebla), and increasing social mobility due to the expansion of
mer-
capitalism. Mobility went in both directions, however, and eco-
trends were by no means uniform. Improvements in mining and
ogrind"",,d production and greater integration into the Atlantic
econ-
gave Mexico modest but steady economic growth rates. But not
followed the same trajectory, and some experienced more
than growth. In Puebla, for example, signs of economic prob-
relatively early. In 1724, a number of Puebla's residents

53. regarding the city's downturn and the flight of many of its af-
vecinos, namely, business owners and merchants, to Mexico
City
OaxacaY The out-migration had been so large that a section of
capital, comprised of several neighborhoods, came to be known
as
Puebla."
According to those who testified, many of the Spaniards that
remained
inPu,bla had become impoverished, and the city itself had lost
some of
charm. Previously opulent homes had fallen into disrepair; the
popu-
had dropped significantly; and many private citizens, convents,
obrajes had been unable to collect rents on their properties
(some of
in the most exdusive streets) because of the shortage of
currency
the city. Viceroy Fernando de Alencastre Norona y Silva (1711-
16),
Duke of Linares, called attention to similar problems. Puebla,
he
in a 1723 report, was blessed with good agricultural production,
but many of its·industries, including its wool, soap, and glass
worksho.ps,
suffering because of competition from other regions and movmg
"el,e'Nh,,,,, Only the city's craft guilds were doing well. 2f,
Economic co?-

54. . . in Puebla took a turn for the worse in 1736, when harvest
fatl-
l d .. Z7 ures and an epidemic that hit the central region created
a 00 cnsls.
As the viceroy suggested, during these decades of economic
problems
and fluctuations, colonial officials looked to the craft gui lds as
models
- of order and regimentation. Especially strong in Mexico City
and Puebla
but also important in other cities, these bodies were in charge of
ing a good portion of the working population and thus played a
III
reproducing social hierarchies. In the capital, for example, one-
third to
Purity, Race, and Creo/ism
one-half?f working males participated in artisan crafts, which
despite
the growmg number of non-Spaniards owning their own shops
tend d
to be structured according to racial lines. 2S Even if master
artisans w.e
no longer all. Spaniards and creoles, and even if workers were
by
means exclusIvely people of indigenous and black ancestry the .
, "Im_
portam trad.es and obrajes were still controlted by people of
European

55. descent, whICh gave the semblance of order and the sense that
the sis_
de castas was alive and well. For example, the textile worksho s
III the Puebla-Tlaxcala basin, the Bajfo, and the Mexico City
area
almost all owned by Spaniards (who in the case of the fir st two
regio . I . I n,
were mam y penmsu ars married to wealthy creole wives), but
their
workforce consisted primarily of people of mixed ancestry and
black
29 surviving hierarchical nature of certain trade occupations
mIght explam why a num?er of them are represented in casta
paintings
of the second half of the eIghteenth century. The vision of order
that the
paintings project, however, was more illusion than reality, and
this be-
came especially evident as the colonial period dtew to a close.
The instability of the sistema de castas was parodied in a 1754
man-
uscript titled "Ordenanzas del Baratillo de Mexico" ("Decrees
of the
Baratillo of Mexico"), which turned the system of classification
on its
head, poked fun at its failure to work as intended, mocked its
effort
to create institutional exclusivity on the basis of blood-putity
laws
and invented castalike categories based on the marking of
("one-half Spanish," "one-quarter Spanish," and so forth).3(1
Although
the manuscript correctly identified cracks in the system, the

56. fluidity that
it conveyed did not apply to the entire population. Social
mobility did
not really affect the upper class, which was constituted by the
owners of
large estates and mines, wholesale merchants, high-ranking
royal offi-
cials and clerics, and large-scale retailers; nor did it apply to
the bottom
social levels, which mainly consisted of unskilled indigenous
manual lab-
orers. Fluidity …