BLOG 5
Locating Race in Late Colonial Mexico
Author(syf 0 D J D O L 0 & D U U H U a
Source: Art Journal, Vol. 57, No. 3 (Autumn, 1998yf S S 5
Published by: College Art Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/777968
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http://www.jstor.org It is a warm summer morning in late eighteenth-century Mexico City. An even-
ing rain has left a soft haze hanging over the cobblestone streets; the sweet smell
of wood fires fills the nostrils as street vendors prepare fresh tortillas; the swish-
ing sound of brooms is heard as merchants sweep the walkways in front of their
shops. The bells of the cathedral drone the beginning of another busy day in the
capital city of New Spain.
Early on this morning, Mauricia Josepha de Apelo, a light olive-skinned
woman of about thirty-five, clothed in an old but clean silk dress and a shawl,
with a strand of pearls around her neck, strides quickly down Calle Guatemala
Magali M. Carrera
Locating Race in Late
Colonial Mexico
on her way to the Inquisition tribunal. She has been summoned
to explain the nature of her belief in heaven and the devil. She
cannot remember how many times she has appeared in the court
and wonders what new charges will be brought against her. She
does recall that the prosecutor's questions confuse her at times;
she knows that no matter how truthful she is, the inquisitor will
call her tonta (stupid) again. Lost in her thoughts, Mauricia acci-
dentally bumps into a light-skinned criollo (Spaniard born in New
Spain) woman as she descends from a carriage with the help of her mulatta (of
black and Spanish parentage) maid. Smoothing her heavily embroidered velvet
gown and adjusting a multistrand pearl necklace, the young woman hisses, "Back
to your barrio, mestiza [of Spanish and Indian parentage] wretch! You may wear
pearls and own a silk dress, but you are still a lowly casta [person of mixed
blood] who disgraces our land with your contemptible social characteristics."
Mauricia stares coldly at the young woman, then pulls her shawl tightly around
her head and shoulders and mumbles "criolla tramp" as she hurries on.
Crossing the zocalo (central plaza), Mauricia passes the great cathedral and
notices a huge, circular, stone sculpture recently embedded in the bell-tower
wall. City gossips say that it is a pagan image made by the ancient Indians. "Blas-
phemy! The indios [Indians] are the lowest of peoples. Why would the Church
allow such a thing to be placed there?" she mutters to herself. As she turns the
last corner to the tribunal building, she is again stopped. This time the walkway
is obstructed by a stack of oil paintings leaning against the wall, waiting to be
placed in a nearby carriage. Mauricia gazes at one canvas: a man dressed in the
latest fashion plays a violin, and a finely dressed woman holds a squirming child
who tries to grab the violin bow; they sit in an elegantly decorated room. Al-
though almost illiterate, Mauricia can distinguish a few words. She identifies the
word espafiola (Spanish), inscribed next to the image of the woman; the word
castizo (of mestizo and Spanish parentage) next to the man; and the word espafiola above the child. Born of a castizo mother and an espahiol father, Mauricia consid-
ers herself to be an espafiola. Drawn to these people who gaze back at her, she
identifies her casta designation, yet she does not recognize herself in this paint-
ing. The cathedral bells toll again. Jolted from staring at the picture, Mauricia
hurries two doors down to the entryway of the tribunal. She turns to look at the
painting one more time. She wonders who those people could possibly be.
Although fictitious, this story is based in historical fact. Mauricia Josepha de
Apelo did live in late colonial Mexico City; and when she was summoned to the
Inquisition court because of her alleged disbelief in the Holy Faith, her racial
identity was called into question.' Criollos of Mexico City are known to have had
37 art journal Ilk, 471 'A,~-
I. I de Espaliol Yndia Mestizo (I from a
Spaniard and an Indian
Woman, Mestizo), last
quarter 18th c. Oil. 14 x 19 (36 x 48). Museo de America, Madrid.
36 FALL 1998 great contempt for people of mixed ancestry, and an ancient Aztec sculpture was placed on the cathedral tower.2 Finally, casta paintings, which portrayed the three major groups who inhabited the colony-Indians, Spaniards, and
Africans-and their offspring were produced throughout the eighteenth century. In my fictional narration these seemingly disparate fragments of late colo-
nial life in New Spain intersect with two distinct notions of race: biological
(based on perceived physical characteristics, such as skin color or hair texture,
believed to identify one as of a particular race) and social (based on social per-
ceptions, associations, and definitions believed to delimit one as of a particular
race).3 This essay will examine the functioning of these conceptions of race in a
late eighteenth-century casta painting series (figs. I-g). The realism, detail, and
organization emphasized in casta paintings persuade the viewer that he or she
is seeing accurate and comprehensive illustrations of the diverse peoples who
composed the colonial society of New Spain. In fact, casta paintings do not
illustrate race but instead locate it in the intersection of certain physical, econ-
omic, and social spaces of late colonial Mexico. Analyses of colonial defini-
tions of casta rankings, Mauricia's encounter with the Inquisition, and late
eighteenth-century views on the social ordering of urban Mexico City provide narrative positions for this examination.
Social identity in colonial Mexico was embedded in the belief that New
Spain consisted of two distinct republics: rephiblica de los indios and rephiblica de los
espafioles. The two republics, however, were populated by three distinct peoples or races: Indians, Spaniards, and sub-Saharan Africans (the last were brought to
New Spain to fulfill certain labor needs but fit into neither republic). Despite the imagined binary social division, the mixing of blood produced a tertiary, intermediate people identified as castas and resulted in a complex and contra-
dictory society.4
As early as the I540s, the Spanish crown sought ways to bring the castas
into social and economic alignment with the two republics. A society of castes
was established in which fourteen to twenty distinct castas were ranked accord-
ing to the amount of mixing of Spanish, Indian and/or African blood.5 For
example, a person of half-Spanish and half-African ancestry was designated as
mulatto; a person of mulatto and Indian ancestry, zambo; and so on. Further
mixing was duly classified and labeled. As used in reference to castas, the term
espaiol indicated someone whose blood had returned to the state of being
Spanish-that is, a person having one-eighth or less Indian ancestry. This sys- tem also proscribed the physical and social mobility of castas. Castas were not
allowed to live in the Indian neighborhoods; certain official posts were denied
to mestizos; and sumptuary legislation denied specific types of clothing and
jewelry to certain castas.6
Mauricia was well acquainted with the casta system and the dilemma of
having a labeled identity. She was called to the Inquisition in two separate pro-
ceedings: sometime between 1768 and 1773 and then again between 1784 and
i785. Her confessors claimed that Mauricia did not believe in certain articles of
faith.7 After extended hearings and surveillance reports, the court determined
that she had "disruptive spiritual diseases or illnesses" and ordered her to
undergo certain curative penances.8
Although for the most part the inquisitors assessed Mauricia's spiritual con-
I. Inquisici6n fiscal de Sto Oficio contra Mauricia Josepha de Apelo, espaiiola de estate soltera vecina de esta ciudad. Por dichos y hechos hereticales. Espontanea. Reclusa en el Hospico y declarada loca. M6xico Inquisici6n, AGN Ramos de Inquisici6n 1768, tomo 1009, exp. 15 fs 309-353, Archivo General de la Naci6n, Mexico City. 2. Antonio Le6n y Gama, Descripci6n hist6rica y cronol6gica de las dos piedras que con ocasi6n del nuevo empredrado que se est6 formando en la plaza principal de Mexico se hallaron en ella el aiio de 1 790, 2d ed., ed. C. de Bustamente (Mexico: Alejandro Vald6s, 1832). 3. Patricia Seed, "The Social Dimensions of Race: Mexico City, 1753," Hispanic American Historical Review 62, no. 4 (November 1982): 574. 4. Douglas Cope, The Limits of Racial Discrimin- ation (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994), 3-7. 5. Magnus M6rner, Race Mixture in the History of Latin America (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967), 51-58. 6. Cope, 15-17. 7. Inquisici6n, fs 31 1-13. 8. Ibid., 332.
38 FALL 1998 dition, various asides in the tribunal records provide glimpses into her life as a
casta. She was identified as the thirty-five-year-old unwed daughter of Martin
de Apelo, espafiol, and Phelesia Galizia, castiza, and servant to Francisco Azullar
de Maianry, an artisan. Theoretically, Mauricia was of the highest level of casta
classification-an espafiola. But in spite of her confirmed parentage, throughout
the court documents her caste was identified inconsistently: sometimes she
was labeled a castiza; at other times, a mestiza. Furthermore, in an unusual
digression a notary responded to Mauricia's claim to be an espafiola with the
comment, "It's doubtful."9 This confusion about her casta category probably
indicates that Mauricia's physical racial markers (skin color, hair texture) were
not easily classified. Most likely, she was identified as a castiza or mestiza
because she was illiterate, a servant, and unmarried. That is, in the court pro-
ceedings, intellectual, economic, and social markers located Mauricia's racial
designation more readily than her physical characteristics.
Living with this mislabeling and confusion about her casta designation irri-
tated Mauricia. She complained to her confessor that certain supposed espafiola
ladies in the hospital where she took her curative penances were allowed to use
their parish priest, while she had to use the hospital chaplain.'o More informa-
tive is her elaboration of the nature of heavenly reward. She believed that there
are seven heavens and in all there is glory, but with this difference: that in the
highest heaven, and most glorious, are the priests and nuns; in the next level
are the espafiols, in the third, others of inferior quality according to their color
and caste. Of course, the Indians and the blacks are in this last heaven and here
there is not that much glory because it does not conform to one's merit, but to
one's caste."
The court did not receive this view of heaven well. For Mauricia, however,
no mysteries of faith or curative penances could clarify why the earthly hier-
archy of race did not exist in the spiritual world. Analysis of this episode of
Mauricia's case reveals that her "disruptive illness" exposed the ambiguous and
contradictory boundaries of race and suggests that she attempted to undermine
her labeled identities-mestiza and castiza-and to relocate her preferred iden-
tity, espafiola, in an important spiritual space, the afterlife.
In her daily movements through the streets of Mexico City, Mauricia would
have seen sculptural fragments of ancient monuments embedded in many colo-
nial edifices as building material. In 1790 two sculpted monoliths were un-
earthed near the city's central plaza. One-a large, flat, disc-shaped relief later
named the Sun Stone or Calendar Stone-was displayed for public viewing on a
tower wall of the cathedral.' In 1792 Antonio Le6n y Gama, a mathematician
with an interest in antiquities, published a lengthy and detailed essay on the Sun
Stone. He concluded that, as a complex calendar, it manifested the great intellec-
tual achievements of the ancient Indians.' Two years later, reacting to caustic
criticism of his original essay, an odd, parenthetical discussion of racial identity
surfaced in Le6n y Gama's writings.
A certain writer, Josi Alzate y Ramirez, had questioned the validity of Le6n
y Gama's research by asserting that one of his primary sources was not authen-
tic; he alleged that it was written by a mestizo, not an indio.'4 Le6n y Gama jus-
tified his scholarly reasoning for using this source, then claimed that he knew
the differences in character between indios and mestizos because of his daily
9. Ibid., 323. 10. Ibid., 35 1 I . Ibid., 35 1-51 b. 12. Le6n y Gama, I I. 13. Ibid., 5. 14. This edition was published posthumously; Antonio Le6n y Gama, Descripci6n hist6rica y cronol6gica de las dos piedras que con ocasi6n del nuevo empredrado que se est6 formando en la plaza principal de Mkxico se hallaron en ella el aiio de 1790, 2d ed., ed. C. de Bustamente (Mexico: Alejandro Valdes, 1832), 1-40.
39 art journal V V.
E~B~t.? Z4
2.2 de Mestiza y Espafiol Castizo (2 from a Mestizo Woman and a Spaniard, Castizo), last quarter 18th c. Oil. 14 x 19 (36 x
48). Museo de America, Madrid.
business encounters with these people. Although both indios and mestizos
knew Spanish well, he stated that the indios adulterated "our language" and
were better able to explain themselves in their native tongue.'5 Furthermore,
he dared Alzate to go to the corridors of the palace, where he would find
"real" indios with last names like Cortes, Mendoza, Pefia, Luna, and Mendez,
which were properly Castilian surnames. It was ridiculous, Le6n y Gama con-
cluded sarcastically, to believe someone was a mestizo just because of a last
name.16
Like Mauricia's lived confusion of racial labels, Le6n y Gama's comments
attest to the discontinuity between racial theory and lived social reality in
New Spain. Distinguishing between mestizos and indios was confusing if one
depended on skin color or labels, such as surnames. For Le6n y Gama, catego-
rizing people by race was a process of knowing the boundaries of language
usage and listening to how non-native speakers manipulated the limits of
usage in certain public contexts. Here, Le6n y Gama directed his critic-and
reader-to consider the authenticity of race in the context of urban encoun-
ters. In fact, the ordering of metropolitan spaces was a crucial theme of late
colonial culture. In calling for a reordering of urban spaces, various writers
cited Mexico City's disorderly and unsanitary physical conditions caused by
40 FALL 1998
15. Ibid., 12-13. 16. Ibid., 15. .. . . ....
3.3 de Castizo y Espafiola Espariol (3 from a Castizo and a Spanish Woman, Spaniard), last quarter 18th c. Oil. 14 x 19 (36 x
48). Museo de America, Madrid.
unkempt street vendors and such activities as maintaining livestock within the
city limits. i'
The notion of structured and bounded metropolitan spaces is projected
into high relief in Jose Fernaindez de Lizardi's late colonial novel El periquillo
sarniento (The Itching Parrot, 1816).8' Living in Mexico City, Fernandez de
Lizardi (1776-1827) would have encountered the same people and places as
de Apelo and Le6n y Gama. The novel tracks the slow moral, social, and finan-
cial deterioration of Pedro Sarmiento, who was born into the criollo rank of
Mexican society, but without the family financial resources to support his
desired life of elite leisure. Fernaindez de Lizardi critiques Pedro's life as a
scoundrel and charlatan by having him explore the shops, marketplaces, bars,
jails, hospitals, and rich and poor houses where people of diverse social and
casta rank work and live. Here, the people of late colonial Mexico City are
characterized by their actions in the specific, hierarchical, metropolitan spaces
they inhabit. Fernaindez de Lizardi's novel expands and confirms the concept
of spatial ordering-physical, social, and economic-as being a significant
defining and locating boundary of late colonial life.
Casta paintings explore the same boundaries and contradictions of race in
late colonial Mexico lived by Mauricia, evoked by Le6n y Gama, and critiqued
41 art journal
17. See Antologia de textos sobre la ciudad de
M4xico en el periodo de la Ilustraci6n (1 788-1792), ed. Sonia Lombardo de Ruiz (Mexico: Instituto Nacional Antropologia e Historia, 1982), 12-17.
18. Jose Fernandez de Lizardi, El periquillo sarnien- to (Mexico: Editorial Porrua, 1964). by Fernandez de Lizardi. Produced in Mexico from the eighteenth through the
beginning of the nineteenth century, these paintings typically were executed
in series, with each panel showing a specific casta grouping. An inscription
annotates the casta nomenclature of the group. The earliest paintings show
half-length figures with little or no background detail. After the mid-eighteenth
century, figures are represented more consistently full-length in explicit locales,
including domestic interiors, commercial cityscapes, and open landscapes.
Within these urban and countryside settings, material aspects of colonial life,
such as clothing, foodstuffs, and vocational/trade items and activities are also
depicted.'9
Little is known about who commissioned the casta cycles. Because many
of the paintings have been located in Spain, it is thought that the intended
viewers were Spaniards or criollos.20 Some scholars suggest that the paintings
were executed as souvenirs for Spaniards returning to their native land,2' and
documents indicate that certain casta paintings were presented to the king of
Spain.22 Because of their wide dispersal in public and private collections in
Europe and the Americas and their scant documentation, scholarship on casta
paintings has been limited. Maria Concepci6n Garcia S.iz's 1989 catalogue pro-
vided the first comprehensive survey of the genre. More recently, an exhibition
catalogue edited by Ilona Katzew offered an overview of current scholarship.
Katzew argues that the paintings promoted a regulated and controlled
image of the colony, which countered the anxiety fostered by the perceived
threat of the castas. The paintings also precisely demonstrated those aspects of
colonial society that distinguished Mexico from the Old World.23 As strategies
of self-representation, Katzew continues, casta paintings emphasized the overall
stratification of society through the metaphor of race, highlighted the wealth
and abundance of Mexico, and involved "the deliberate mediation of reality
S. . through scenes selected for representation."24 Unexplored in these interpre-
tations, however, is the critical question of how the meanings of race circulated
within the painted images through the location and depiction of certain bound-
aries and limits.
It is easy to recognize specific factual references to colonial life in these
paintings: the architecture of Mexico City (fig. 5); the distinctive landscape
of the basin of Mexico (fig. i); the characteristic dress of indigenous people,
as well as that of the Spanish elite (figs. I, 3); artisans making and selling their
wares; and the tropical fruits and vegetables seen in every local market (fig. 5).
Unexpectedly though, the physical markers of race-skin and hair color-are
inconsistent, even ambiguous, and vary from scene to scene. Thus, in one
vignette a mulatto may have very dark brown skin, while in a subsequent
depiction a mulatta may be shown with light brown skin. Casta paintings
depict imagined people wearing specific eighteenth-century clothing, living in
particular colonial locales, and participating in the typical economies of New
Spain. They commingle and confuse physical race with the sociospatial bound-
aries of race. Indeed, casta paintings inform the viewer that physical race is
confusing and ambiguous. They attempt to bring order to the deceptive and
equivocal nature of the physical markers of race by constructing it as social-
encountered, negotiated, and lived between and among specified boundaries.
In their keen attention to specific physical, economic, and social spaces, the
19. Ilona Katzew, "Casta Painting, Identity, and Social Stratification in Colonial Mexico," in Katzew, ed., New World Orders: Casta Painting and Colonial Latin America, exh. cat. (New York: Americas Society, 1996), 19-29. 20. Ibid., 13. 21. Maria Concepci6n Garcia Saiz, Las castas mex-
icanas: Un g6nero de pict6rico americano, exh. cat.
(Milan: Olivetti, 1989), 44. 22. Katzew, 13. 23. Ibid. 24. Ibid., 27.
42 FALL 1998 paintings are congruent with Lizardi's descriptions of colonial life. Visually
and conceptually, they conflate social order with spatial order.
Visual analysis of one late series of casta paintings in the collection of
the Museo de America in Madrid elucidates this juxtapositioning of imagined
people with real and specific boundaries.2s The first painting (fig. i) shows
an Indian woman dressed in a huipil (indigenous dress) with an espafiol man
who wears elegant European-style clothing. Their son, identified as a mestizo,
walks between his parents as they stroll in the countryside. Behind the woman
is a portion of a wall; the espafiol father points to a building on the horizon.
In the next panel (fig. 2), another family sits in a foyer of a house. The mesti-
zo mother, dressed in European fashion, nurses her castizo child; the espafiol
father offers her a flower. To the right of the group, we glimpse a garden; to
the left, a doorway leads to other parts of the house. In the third painting of
the series (fig. 3), a finely dressed castizo man attempts to play a violin. The
bow is grabbed by his son, an espafiol, who is held by his elegantly dressed
mother, also espafiola. The group is seated in a decorated room with a large
glass window and tapestry-covered walls.
These three panels show the "purification" of casta blood, moving from
mestizo to castizo and finally to espafiol. This purification is made explicit, not
by the lightening of skin color, but by the shift from traditional, indigenous
clothing to rich European-style clothing and, most significantly, by the move
from a suburban setting to luxurious urban interiors. Hence, as the child of
an india, the mestizo boy is located outside the city, while the castizo child's
placement between the garden and the interior depths of the house suggests
castizo identity is transitional between urban and suburban. Finally, in the
third panel, the espafiol son is depicted in the parlor, the heart of an elite
house, where visitors are received and the amenities of privileged colonial life
are enjoyed.
In stark contrast to the refined settings of the previous panels, the fourth
scene (fig. 4) dramatically switches to the bowels of the eighteenth-century house-the kitchen. This location introduces the notion of unskilled, domestic
labor. A simply dressed black woman physically accosts an espafiol man with
a cooking utensil. He fends off her attack while their child, a mulatta, pulls at
her mother's skirts. This unruly exchange is diametrically opposed to the con-
trolled, formal behavior of the castas of the previous panel. Unlike the purifi-
cation by Spanish blood of the indio-mixed mestizo and castizo, the misce-
genation of Spanish and African blood is contrasted with the boundaries
established by behavior, clothing, and physical location in the previous panels.
Furthermore, labor is introduced here as an economic marker of casta identity. In the next panel a mulatta, an espafiol, and their morisco son are placed in
a tobacco shop. Although European in style, their clothing is not elegant, and
the scene has shifted from a domestic to a semipublic, commercial space.
Engaged in cigarette making, these castas are semiskilled laborers or possibly
shop owners. Their pursuit of their trade contrasts with the leisure activities
seen in the first three panels, as well as with the fractious behavior depicted in
the previous panel, and confirms that social race is being described in the
paintings. Each casta grouping is explicated by contrast with the specified
boundaries of social race established in previous panels. Constant reference to
25. I thank the Museo de America for allowing me to reproduce these paintings. The complete series is reproduced in Garcia Sdiz, 144-5 I.
43 art journal 4.4 de Espaiol y Negra Mulata (4 from a
Spaniard and an African
Woman, a Mulatto Girl), last quarter 18th c. Oil. 14 x 19 (36 x 48). Museo de America, Madrid.
Ilk-
the city/countryside distinction further locates the social position of these people.
The series continues showing more casta admixtures seen laboring as
tailors, cobblers, and street vendors in public and semipublic spaces. In the
twelfth panel (fig. 5), a casta identified as tente en el aire (hold-yourself-up-in-the-
air, a Mexican localism) and a mulatta with their albarrasado (white-spotted) child
are depicted. With city buildings in the background, they sit under an awning
on a sidewalk, selling produce from their makeshift fruit stand. We are now fully
in the public domain. The vendor, like the mulatta servant and unlike the espafiol
cigarette maker, is unskilled. Her simple clothing mixes indigenous and European
elements. A rich array of produce suggests this casta grouping operates between
the city and the agricultural countryside outside of Mexico City. This highly
mixed casta group is visually labeled as problematic, however, because it is sta-
tioned in a locale considered disorderly and liminal in urban society, the street.
The series ends with a sixteenth panel showing "pure" indios. The viewer
is taken far from the plush interiors of the espafiol house, the city streets, and
even the cultivated fields to a rough, untamed environment. There people wear
scant clothing made of skins and leaves and subsist by hunting and gathering.
They are without any of the contrivances of colonial culture. Theoretically, in
casta hierarchy indios were not castas. They conclude this series because their
44 FALL 1998 "NA
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dress, subsistence economy, and locale mark that which is outside the bound-
aries of colonial life.
In the panels of this casta series, the viewer is walked through distinct
spheres of late colonial Mexican life. As a twentieth-century viewer, I have
begun to comprehend the complexity of racial identity experienced by
Mauricia Josepha de Apelo. Traveling the streets of Mexico City, Mauricia met
people of various skin colors, dressed in a variety of ways. She saw an urban
economy consisting of neat shops tended by mixed-blood castas selling the
natural and manufactured products of New Spain. She stumbled into the disor-
der of public space with lower casta vendors hawking their goods, obstructing
the public way, and leaving the streets filthy. Mauricia was keenly aware that
there were distinct, hierarchical, social and physical spaces in Mexico City.
Some, like the Inquisition court, were established for surveillance and social
control. Others, like elite domestic spaces, marked the social site equated with
the most pure-blooded castes. As visualizations of race, casta paintings stabilize
the ambiguity and complexity of physical race by locating the meanings of
race in the confluence, interactions, and mediations between and among phys-
ical, social, and economic spaces.
5. 12 de Tente en elAire y Mulata,Albarrasado (12 from Tente en el Aire and a Mulatto Woman, Albarrasado), last quar- ter 18th c. Oil. 14 x 19
(36 x 48). Museo de
America, Madrid.
Magali M. Carrera is professor of art history at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. Her most recent publication is "The Inquisition Case of Mauricia Josepha de Apelo: Questioning Identity," in the August 1996 issue of The
Community College Humanities Review.
45 art journal
