However frequently and thoughtlessly referred to nowadays, race is a highly fluid and complex historical construct that should be invoked with caution. Sinclair Thomson underscores that “If the enormous, charged literature concerning ‘race’ in twentieth-century social science has shown anything, it is that the category itself is extremely slippery.”[1] It also implies the imperative to understand the concept of race, especially in contexts like colonial Latin America where the encounter of diverse populations spurred significant miscegenation that challenges scholars to rethink the definition of race. By exploring the complexity of race in colonial Latin America, we could better understand the Latin American origin and development of racism. This paper will review two scholarly conversations about race in colonial Latin America and examine how well-accepted and accurate the racial categories were in describing or even altering social realities in the region.
Racial Category in Predicting Socioeconomic Position: 18th Century Mexico City
In “Social Dimensions of Race: Mexico City, 1753”, Patricia Seed examines the accuracy of racial labels in predicting different racial groups’ positions in the division of labor. She analyzes both the intermediate racial groups that originated from miscegenation (e.g., black-white descents, Indian-white descents, black-Indian descents) and the intermediate groups’ parent groups (i.e., whites, blacks, Indians) for an understanding of the intermediate groups’ family background.[2] Seed focuses on Mexico City, the center of political and economic activities and the hub of large-scale racial and ethnic mingling.[3] She analyzes the census of 1753, which offers racial and occupational information by breaking down the percentage of each racial population (Peninsular Spanish, Creole Spanish, Castizo, Mestizo, Free Mulatto, Free Black, Indian) in different occupations: elite, shop-owners/merchants, managers, artisans, laborers, and servants (ranked according to socioeconomic status).[4]
Seed explains that, in colonial Mexico, three major groups (Spanish, Black, and Indian) formed the following basic combinations: mulato (Spanish-Black), mestizo (Spanish-Indian), and Zambo/Zambaigo (Black-Indian).[5] Additionally, “Castizo referred to a light-skinned mestizo and morisco to a light-skinned mulatto,” whereby “the continuum Indian—mestizo—Castizo—Spaniard paralleled the progression Black—mulatto—morisco—Spaniard.”[6]
According to the census data of free men, Seed finds a significant occupational pattern among different racial groups. Indians (laborers) and blacks (domestic servants) both occupied relatively unskilled jobs and “were at the bottom of the free population.”[7] For the intermediate racial groups, “both mestizos (darker-skinned Spanish-Indian) and mulattoes (Spanish-Black) were more likely to be skilled craftsmen than either of their parent groups…with mestizos more commonly laborers and mulattoes more commonly domestic servants.”[8] Meanwhile, the population of another intermediate group, Castizo (lighter-skinned Spanish-Indian), had the highest percentage as artisans (72%).[9] Comparing the three intermediate groups to their parent group creole Spaniards shows that a significant portion of creole Spaniards was much more likely to be upper-class shop-owners/merchants or elites.[10] As the parent group of creole Spaniards, the peninsular Spaniards had an even greater portion of its population (93.2%) engaging in the aforementioned upper-class occupations.[11] With the census information, Seed establishes a hypothetical pattern with two separate transitions: “The movement from Black or Indian to mestizo or mulatto would have entailed becoming a craftsman. The movement from the intermediate groups to Spanish would have required not the acquisition of skills, but sufficient capital to establish a small shop.”[12] Seed further simplifies the relations that “If Black or Indian upward socioeconomic mobility was achieved by the acquisition of a skill, the upward mobility of mestizos or mulattoes was attained by the acquisition of property.”[13]
In this section, we focus primarily on Seed’s analysis of men, but a glance at the socioeconomic position of women helps depict a better picture. Overall, the percentage of women employed in each racial forms an increasing ladder in the following order: Spanish women (14.9%) < Castizo women (21.4%) < Mestizo women (43.5%) < Indian women (533.6%) < Mulatto women (60%) < Black women (87.5%)[14]. Among the women employed, “whiter” women tended to occupy relatively more upper-class positions.[15] That is, the social reality for women in Mexico city implied that fewer upper-class women were employed, and those employed occupied higher socioeconomic positions. Meanwhile, more lower-class women were employed, and those employed occupied lower socioeconomic positions.
The occupational pattern of different races in 18th century Mexico City that Seed concludes from her study indicates that racial category was a reliable indicator or predictor of the socioeconomic positions in that colonial region. Moreover, the pattern suggests a strong correlation between whiter complexion—or more Spanish appearance—and higher socioeconomic status. Thus, in the case of colonial Mexico City, race as a historical category suggests significant accuracy in describing some aspects of socioeconomic reality—the employment condition of males and females in different racial groups.
Racial Category in Altering Socioeconomic Positions: Colonial Peru
In the article “The Work of Race in Colonial Peru,” O’Toole provides more evidence on the fluidity of race as a social construction and how racial category/labeling was effectively utilized as a tool to improve one’s socioeconomic status in colonial Peru.[16]
In colonial Peru, moreno and morena were a thin line separating the free and respectable and those individuals more proximate to the class of slaves, and while slaves exploited this principle to escape from slavery, free African-descent individuals employed it to maintain their socioeconomic status and well-being.[17] According to Rachel Sarah O’Toole, black slaves in colonial Peru secured legal freedom from slavery by reaching a manumission agreement along with a separate debt agreement (payment) to their ex-owners.[18] The debt agreement allowed the newly freed slaves to self-identify as moreno/morena (brown person) instead of their biological color of black, which enabled an institutional change of their official racial category.[19] For instance, the ex-slave Catalina del Risco, although referred to by her slaveholder as “my negra [black woman], my slave” in the official manumission document, she named herself in the following debt agreement “not only as free, but also as a morena, or a ‘brown woman’.”[20] In this scenario, Risco transacted a change in her race to morena, and thus distinguished herself from the racial category of black slaves.[21] Although bounding the freed individuals to new financial obligations, this form of debt agreement transformed them from an “object who would garner payment” to “a subject who would pay,” signifying their personal autonomy[22] and worthiness of engagement in financial transactions.[23] In another instance, one of the free people-of-color slaveholders, Toledo, was constantly delegated as a negra criolla by the elite Spanish-descent slaveholders in her slave-exchange agreements with those elites.[24] However, she always corrected the elites through identifying herself as morena in her part of the agreement to distinguish herself from her negra (slaves) and what the elites had called her.[25] This type of maneuver maintained the reputation of slaveholders like Toledo who “earned her living from her slaves’ daily wages, petty merchandising, and debt management,” and whose reputation is “exceptionally critical to her financial wellbeing.”[26] O’Toole states that “more than merely a cultural marker, their status as morena allowed free women of African descent to guarantee that they could engage in the market according to their own volition, and therefore be able to engage in the debt-credit economy that predominated in the colonial Andes.”[27]
In a word, in colonial Peru, free people used the racial categories of morena and moreno to not only distance themselves from the social class of slaves, but also to signify their financial capabilities as autonomous individuals to enter the economic credit system.[28] This new position, however, was still vulnerable. Financial obligations to their former owners could constrain the freed individuals into a more subtle kind of servitude while upper-class Spanish could still officially delegate the free individuals by naming or categorizing them as negra. However, O’Toole suggests that this manipulation of casta or race terminology was an essential way for people of color to improve and maintain their socioeconomic status. That is, racial category was a powerful tool to alter socioeconomic realities in colonial Peru.
Seed and O’Toole and the Mainstream Conversation about Race
In his work “Was There Race in Colonial Latin America,” Thomson makes clear that both critics of racist thinking and historians have been trying to “denaturalize” race in order to emphasize race as a construct in cultural discourse other than as a natural phenomenon, and to take account of the role of major processes in history in the ideation of race.[29] That is, according to the critics, “the aura of ‘naturalness’ from race” needs to be removed.[30] This idea, not surprisingly, corresponds to the findings demonstrated by Seed and O’Toole.
Seed’s and O’Toole’s case studies of colonial Mexico City and colonial Peru confirm that race as a historical category was evidently present and served as an efficient tool in both predicting and manipulating social realities. More importantly, both Seed and O’Toole agree that other than seeing race as a simplistic biological notion, it should be recognized as a social construction that had been utilized to maintain social order and hierarchy and to exploit the suppressed populations. Meanwhile, race had also been manipulated by the suppressed to improve their socioeconomic status. In a nutshell, Seed and O’Toole support the mainstream idea on race indicated by Thomson that whenever discussions are concerned with “race,” its fluidity and versatility should never be overlooked. Thus, it is much more accurate to describe race as a social and historical construction than a biological category.
Footnotes
[1] Sinclair Thomson, “Was There Race in Colonial Latin America? Identifying Selves and Others in the Insurgent Andes,” Histories of Race and Racism, 2012, pp. 72-92, https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822394334-004, 72.
[2] Seed, Patricia. “Social Dimensions of Race: Mexico City, 1753,” 571. Hispanic American Historical Review 62, no. 4 (1982): 569–606. https://doi.org/10.1215/00182168-62.4.569.
[3] Seed, “Social Dimensions of Race: Mexico City, 1753,” 571.
[4] Seed, “Social Dimensions of Race: Mexico City, 1753,” 577-580.
[5] Seed, “Social Dimensions of Race: Mexico City, 1753,” 572.
[6] Seed, “Social Dimensions of Race: Mexico City, 1753,” 573.
[7] Seed, “Social Dimensions of Race: Mexico City, 1753,” 582.
[8] Seed, “Social Dimensions of Race: Mexico City, 1753,” 582.
[9] Seed, “Social Dimensions of Race: Mexico City, 1753,” 580.
[10] Seed, “Social Dimensions of Race: Mexico City, 1753,” 580.
[11] Seed, “Social Dimensions of Race: Mexico City, 1753,” 580.
[12] Seed, “Social Dimensions of Race: Mexico City, 1753,” 583.
[13] Seed, “Social Dimensions of Race: Mexico City, 1753,” 583.
[14] Seed, “Social Dimensions of Race: Mexico City, 1753,” 585.
[15] Seed, “Social Dimensions of Race: Mexico City, 1753,” 585.
[16] Rachel Sarah O’Toole, “The Work of Race in Colonial Peru,” Ethnicity as a Political Resource, 2015, pp. 209-220, https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839430132-016.
[17] O’Toole, “The Work of Race in Colonial Peru,” 217.
[18] O’Toole, “The Work of Race in Colonial Peru,” 217.
[19] O’Toole, “The Work of Race in Colonial Peru,” 213.
[20] O’Toole, “The Work of Race in Colonial Peru,” 214.
[21] O’Toole, “The Work of Race in Colonial Peru,” 215.
[22] O’Toole, “The Work of Race in Colonial Peru,” 214.
[23] O’Toole, “The Work of Race in Colonial Peru,” 217.
[24] O’Toole, “The Work of Race in Colonial Peru,” 217.
[25] O’Toole, “The Work of Race in Colonial Peru,” 215.
[26] O’Toole, “The Work of Race in Colonial Peru,” 216.
[27] O’Toole, “The Work of Race in Colonial Peru,” 216.
[28] O’Toole, “The Work of Race in Colonial Peru,” 217-218.
[29] Sinclair Thomson, “Was There Race in Colonial Latin America,” 72.
[30] Sinclair Thomson, “Was There Race in Colonial Latin America,” 72.
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