On the Mexican Mestizo Author(s): John K. Chance Source: Latin American Research Review, Vol. 14, No. 3 (1979), pp. 153-168 Published by: The Latin American Studies Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2502968 . Accessed: 22/06/2011 11:58
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http://www.jstor.org RESEARCH REPORTS AND NOTES
ON THE MEXICAN MESTIZO
JohnK. Chance LawrenceUniversity
No one with even a passing acquaintance with the literatureon Mexican society, not to mention the rest of Spanish America, can fail to be impressed by the frequentuse of the termmestizo.' Despite its ubiquity in the writingsof social scientists,however, the concept of the mestizo is customarilyemployed in a vague fashion and usually leftundefined. This is especially evident in the work of anthropologists,who for many years have been preoccupied with defining the Mexican Indian but have rarelyfocused theiranalytical powers on the mes- tizo. The term itselfhas been used ratherloosely to referto a certaingroup of people who presumably comprise a majority of the Mexican population,2 a culturalpattern shared by these people and other Latin Americans,3and even a personalitytype.4 Ethnographersfrequently refer to the communitiesthey study as being eitherIndian or mestizo, but rarelydo theyprovide enough informationto allow us to decide whether these are viable identitiesfor the people themselves or distinctcultural configurations. Usually, when used as an adjective, "mestizo" is simply a shorthand descriptive term employed by the investigator.In this context,it is littlemore than a catch-all designation meaning non-Indian and non-Spanish, sometimes implyingas well an identificationwith Mexican na- tional culture.One wonders how social scientistsconcerned with Mexico and its people could ever get along without the term, despite the fact that it is only infrequentlyused by Mexicans themselves. Gonzalo Aguirre Beltranremarks: "In all cases when [Mexicans] are explicitlyasked if they consider themselves mestizos, only the educated ones, that is, the intellectualsor persons who have had contactwith large urban centers,agree thatthey are; the ordinaryperson is not familiarwith the termor gives it anothermeaning."5
153 LatinAmerican Research Review
It seemsclear that the term rarely, if at all,refers to a viableethnic identity in Mexicotoday. When called upon to distinguishthemselves from people of indigenousbackground, Mexicans are morelikely to call themselvesgente de razon,gente decente, vecinos, catrines, correctos, or simply mexicanos.6 Yet it is ob- viouslyimpossible to dismissthe conceptof the mestizoaltogether, for it has playedan importantpart in therise of Mexican nationalism, and theterm itself appears frequentlyin historicaldocuments, particularly those of the colonial period.This paperis not directlyconcerned with the current usage ofthe term amongMexicans themselves, nor will it deal withthe conceptas it is used by modernethnographers.7 The goal is ratherto clarifythe place ofthe mestizo in Mexicanhistory, particularly the colonialperiod. While most of the data pre- sentedpertain to a singlecity-Oaxaca, or Antequerain colonialtimes-it will be arguedthat a similarpattern probably existed in othercities of what was once known as New Spain. The basic contentionis thatthe historicalcontinuity assumedby manybetween the colonialand modernmestizo does not in fact existif we pay close attentionto how people wereracially classified in Mexican citiesduring the seventeenth, eighteenth, and earlynineteenth centuries. By farthe most influential work in Englishthat is based on thisassump- tionis thechapter entitled "The PowerSeekers" of Eric Wolf's classic Sons of the ShakingEarth.8 Because Wolf's portrait of the genesis of the mestizo and his role in themaking of modern Mexico has been so influential,I will use it as a foilat manypoints for the developmentof my argument.The criticismof Wolf'sac- count,however, is notintended to belittlewhat I regardas a masterlysynthesis of Mesoamericanculture history. Indeed, thoughit was writtentwenty years ago, Sonsof the Shaking Earth remains remarkably current in manyrespects. But someof the ideas couldstand revision, and thispaper will attempt to show that Wolf'streatment of the mestizo now needs to be reformulatedin view ofrecent evidence.
Wolftreats the evolutionof the mestizosector of the populationas the drivingforce behind the major social transformations in Mexican history. Rather thanattempting a seriouscultural analysis of the processby whichindividuals of mixedIndian and Spanishbackground were categorizedin the social struc- ture,Wolf stresses instead the significance of the biological fact of miscegenation and theinevitable expansion over time of the racially mixed ("mestizo") popula- tion.From their origins in a rootlessand unstableposition beyond the pale of whiteSpanish colonialsociety, the mestizos,according to Wolf,gradually in- creasedin numbersto thepoint where they overwhelmed both the whites and theIndians, the entire process coming to a head withthe Revolution of 1910. He pointsout that from 1650 on, themestizo sector grew at a muchhigher rate than theIndian sector: "In numbersthe Indian has held his own,but it is clearlythe mestizowho represents the future of Middle America."9 Fromour contemporaryvantage point, it is difficultto arguewith this statementin one sense. It is certainlytrue biologically, and fitswith mating practicesover the years as we knowthem. Yet, it seems,some important ques- tionshave notbeen asked:Were mestizos defined in colonialtimes in thesame
1154 RESEARCH REPORTS AND NOTES way they are today? Is it valid in this case to inferethnic and culturalprocesses fromthe biological fact of race mixture?Did individuals of mixed Spanish and Indian ancestryalways have a correspondingmestizo identityin the social struc- ture?Is there indeed a demonstrablehistorical connection between the colonial and modern mestizo? These are questions thathistorical research should be able to answer. Any effortto trace the connectionsbetween yesterday's"power seekers" and those of today is inevitably hampered by a major stumbling block: the fragmentarynature of colonial population data. Sources that provide informa- tion on the racial and ethnicdivisions of the population are especially difficultto work with because they frequentlycontradict one another.The task beforeus is to compare the relative growth in the mestizo and white (Spanish) sectors, for the Indians as a group have never been serious contenders for power. For the territoryof New Spain there are no comprehensive census counts that give racial divisions before1646, and censuses fromdifferent periods do not use the same racial categories to divide the population. The best available estimate for 1646 shows that the castas ("mixed bloods" in general, usually divided into mestizos and mulattoes) comprised approximately12.8 percent of the popula- tion,while the whites (includingboth peninsulars and creoles, or whites born in the New World) comprised 10.6 percent. The differenceis not great, but es- pecially importantis the fact that only half the castas were classified in the records as mestizos; the remainderwere mulattoes.10 A centurylater, according to the estimates for 1742, the mestizos had overtaken the whites in numbers, accountingfor slightly over 20 percentof the population (see table 1).
TA B L E I PopulationEstimate of New Spain in 1742 Classification Number Percent Spaniardsa 315,475 11.94 Mestizos 531,985 20.14 Mulattoes 187,900 7.11 Indians 1,603,220 60.70 Asiatics 2,800 0.11 TOTAL 2,641,380 100.00 Source:Peter Gerhard, Mexico en 1742 (Mexico City: Jos6 Porrua e Hijos,1966), p. 17. alncludesboth peninsulars and creoles.
The best sources forthe study of the racial compositionof New Spain are the militarycensuses of the non-Indian and nonslave population carriedout in many localities between 1791 and 1793 and now housed in the Ramos de Pa- drones e Historia in the Archivo General de la Naci6n in Mexico City.In work- ing with the original censuses and summaries prepared fromthem, however, Sherburne Cook noted some curious discrepancies.-"While the censuses them- selves all employ the four categories espafiol,castizo, mestizo, and mulato,the
155 LatinAmerican Research Review summarycompilations use onlythree: espafiol, indio, and mulato.While Indians werenot includedin the originalcensuses because they(along with black and mulattoslaves) were ineligiblefor military conscription, the deletionof the mestizocategory from the summaries is notso easilyexplained. The discrepancyin racialbreakdown between the two series is puzzling. Withoutquestion the same basic enumerationis the sourceof both series.... It is quiteprobable that the racial group- ingused by thefield enumerations was reclassifiedby thegovern- mentworkers in MexicoCity in conformitywith their own ideas. No materialchange could be made in the numberof Negroesor mulattoesbut the variousshades of white-Indianmixtures could easilybe segregatedin varyingcategories according to theanthro- pological,social and economicpredilections of governmentoffi- cials.12 Even thetwo mostreliable general sources on populationtrends in New Spain at theclose ofthe eighteenth century disagree on theproportional repre- sentationof the castas. In his calculationfor 1804, Humboldtestimated the castasto number2,400,000, not farbelow his figurefor the Indians.However, he was latertaken to taskby Fernando Navarro y Noriega,a MexicoCity statisti- cianwell acquaintedwith population data. Navarroclaimed that there were no more than 1,338,000castas, only three-eighthsthe numberof Indians or 22 percentof the populationas a whole.13 The two men also differedin their perceptionsof the size of the mestizogroup. While Humboldt, the foreigner, stressedthat close to 90 percentof the castas were mestizos, Navarro, the native, claimedthat Humboldt ignored the large mulatto population and estimatedthat
TA B L E 2 PopulationEstimate of New Spain in 1810 Classification Number Percent Spaniardsa 1,097,928 17.93 Castasb Mestizos 843,385 13.78 Mulattoes 495,321 8.09 Indians 3,676,281 60.05 SecularClergy 4,229 0.07 RegularClergy 3,112 0.05 Nuns 2,098 0.03 TOTAL 6,122,354 100.00 Source:Calculations of FernandoNavarro y Noriega,cited in Alejandrode Humboldt, Ensayopolitico sobre el reinode la NuevaEspaha (Mexico City: Editorial Pedro Robredo, 1941), 2:26-27. alncludesboth peninsulars and creoles. bNavarro'ssingle figure is brokendown on theassumption that mestizos accounted for 63 percentof the castas and mulattoes37 percent.
156 RESEARCH REPORTS AND NOTES only about 63 percent of the castas were mestizos.14 If we apply this formulato Navarro's comprehensive population estimate for1810, it turns out that mesti- zos comprised only 13.8 percentof the total-a significantdecline in representa- tion since 1742 (see table 2). It thus appears that racial divisions as they were culturallydefined did not wholly coincide with the physical racial types pro- duced by the miscegenationprocess. Clearly, then, the use of national level statisticsfor the study of racial composition necessarily involves a wide margin of error.It seems preferableto work instead with local sources-such as the originalcensuses of the 1790s and parish records-which are more likelyto reflectthe racial and ethnic categories in use in particularcommunities. The case of colonial Oaxaca provides some interestinginsights into the role of the mestizo in one importantsouthern city.
The preceding arithmeticalexercise forNew Spain, though froughtwith difficulties,finds some confirmationat the local level in Oaxaca.15 While no complete census figuresexist for the seventeenth century,parish records (see table 3) and a tributarycount of 166116indicate thatby 1700 mestizos comprised at best some 15 to 20 percentof the population of this cityof fiveto six thousand people. By the time of the more reliable Revillagigedo militarycensus of 1792, the population had tripled and reached the 18,000 mark, yet the mestizos still accounted foronly about 15 percentof the populace despite the high degree of ongoing race mixture(see table 4).
T A B L E 3 RacialComposition of Marriage Partners in Oaxaca, 1693-1700
Classification Men Women Total Percent Peninsulars 58 2 60 3.5 Creoles 258 278 536 31.2 Castizos 9 17 26 1.5 Mestizos 123 127 250 14.5 Free Mulattoes 172 174 346 20.1 Mulatto Slaves 24 14 38 2.2 Free Negroes 6 2 8 0.5 Negro Slaves 21 6 27 1.6 Caciques 8 10 18 1.0 Indians 145 176 321 18.7 Miscellaneous 3 53 86 0.3 Unidentified 33 51 84 4.9 TOTAL 860 860 1,720 100.0 Source:Archivo Parroquial del Sagrario,Oaxaca, Librosde Casamientos,1693-1700. Re- printedby permissionfrom John K. Chance,Race and Class in ColonialOaxaca (Stanford, Calif.:Stanford University Press, 1978), p. 132.
157 LatinAmerican Research Review
T A B L E 4 ThePopulation of Oaxaca, 1792 Classification Male Female Total Percent Peninsulars 261 13 274 1.5 Creoles 3,041 3,640 6,681a 37.1 Castizos 433 371 804 4.5 Mestizos 1,228 1,284 2,512 13.9 Moriscos or Pardos 95 118 213 1.2 Mulattoes 911 980 1,891 10.5 Afromestizosb 185 198 383 2.1 Negroesc 15 12 27 0.1 Indians 2,644 2,374 5,018 27.9 Unidentified 82 123 205 1.1 TOTAL 8,895 9,113 18,008 99.9 Source: Archivo General de la Naci6n (Mexico City), Padrones 13 and Tributos34, 7:51r. Reprintedby permissionfrom John K. Chance, Race and Class in ColonialOaxaca (Stanford, Calif.: StanfordUniversity Press, 1978), p. 156.
Note: Percentagesdo not sum to 100 due to rounding. aThis figureincludes membersof the religiousorders: 138 males and 177 females. Though the census does not give their racial classifications,miscellaneous sources suggest that most were creoles. bAnartificial category not appearing in the census itself. cDoes not include most of the Negro slaves.
This means that the proportionof mestizos in Oaxaca identifiedas such may even have declined during the course of the eighteenthcentury, a trend which in this case cannot be easily explained in termsof geographical mobility. During this period the city's creole and Indian sectors increased significantlyin size, and since the non-Indian population of the Bishopric of Oaxaca was quite small at this time, it is doubtfulthat the city's burgeoning economy of the late eighteenth century would attractonly creoles and Indians from other areas. While the informationon places of origin in the 1772 census is unreliable, a similarcount done in the cityof Guanajuato in the same year reveals that 77.7 percentof the adult non-Indian males were born in the cityor in nearbymining villages and ranchos.Only among the elite, and especially among the merchant class, was therea significantdegree of immigration.17 What, then, was happening to individuals of mixed Spanish and Indian ancestryand how were they identifiedin the parish recordsand census counts if not by the term"mestizo"? Marriage records fromthe last decade of the seven- teenth century show a considerable degree of intermarriageamong Oaxaca's socioracial categories of peninsular, creole, mestizo, mulatto, and Indian, the overall ratio of mixed unions during 1693-1700 being 41.6 percent.18 The mesti- zos were the most heterogeneous of all the categories,with only 37.5 percentof the grooms marryingwithin the group. Fully 22.7 percentmarried white women (creoles), 23.4 percent marriedmulatas, and 12.5 percenttook Indian mates. Of
158 RESEARCH REPORTS AND NOTES the mestiza women, 26.4 percent married peninsulars or creoles, Indian hus- bands were the choice of 15.2 percent,and 28.7 percentmarried mulatos. These figures suggest that the most probable explanation of the small size of the mestizo group in Oaxaca was the assimilation of large numbers of biological mestizos (and mulattoes as well) into the creole group. This process frequently occurredin cases where the childrenof, say, a mestizo man and a creole woman were identifiedas creoles. It is true that there was an additional category of castizo which could be applied to such offspring,but it was used sparinglyin Oaxaca and had very limited significance.Furthermore, it was not uncommon for mestizos and others of miscegenated background to attain the status of creole during their lifetimethrough the accumulation of wealth or strategic alliances. 19 These data show, then, that the standard picture of the genesis of the colonial mestizo as articulatedby Wolferrs in assuming thatthe culturalcatego- ries used by the people themselveswere in one-to-one correspondencewith the biological process of mestizaje.The biological mestizos of mixed Spanish and Indian extractionare assumed to have been operating with a corresponding mestizo identitywhen, in Oaxaca at least, they often were not. Indeed, both parish and census figuresshow thatin Oaxaca it was the white or creole popula- tion which was constantlyexpanding during the colonial period, not the mes- tizo sector.The urban Indian population was growingas well, primarilythrough migrationfrom rural towns and villages. Yet the urban Indians did not "feed" the mestizo sectorto the same extentthat the mestizos contributedto the growth of the creole sector. As I have discussed elsewhere, Indians in colonial Oaxaca formed a more homogeneous and tightlybounded ethnic group, occupied a more uniformposition at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder, and were residentiallysegregated.20 While some Indians undoubtedly succeeded in be- coming mestizos, this was an infrequentoccurrence in comparison to the exten- sive racial mobilityamong the castas. An additional, and perhaps more important,aspect of Wolf's argument concerns the position of the urban mestizo in Mexican colonial society. The mestizo, according to Wolf,was "disinherited," "socially alienated," and "de- prived of a stable place in the social order." "Such men constitutedneither a middle class nor a proletariat"but "belonged to a social shadow world."'21 Again, however, the data fromOaxaca point in a differentdirection. Only during the sixteenthcentury can the Oaxaca mestizos be characterized as rootless indi- viduals who formed an identifiablepariah group. At that time all people of miscegenated background were regarded as inherentlyinferior, both morally and biologically.They were categoricallydefined as illegitimateby the white elite. But during the seventeenth centuryrace became institutionalizedas a statusmarker and mestizos, along withthe mulattoes,were grudginglyaccorded a place in the urban racial system. By now too numerous to ignore and too necessary to the city's economic functionsto be excluded, the mestizos were incorporatedinto the system and conceptuallyranked between the whites and the urban Indian proletariat.A 1661 census shows thatin contrastto the Indians,
159 LatinAmerican Research Review mestizoswere not residentially segregated in Oaxaca. Manyof them were con- centratedin poor neighborhoodson the edge of town,but therewere also substantialnumbers mixed in amongthe whitesin areas whereIndian home- owners,in contrast,were totally absent.22 The occupationsof the mestizomales are also worthnoting. The late seventeenthcentury marriage sample referred to aboveyielded 132 mestizo and castizo23grooms, of which occupations were listed for68 percent. Not surpris- ingly,the figures show veryfew mestizos in theranks of the large landowners, merchants,and such high-statusartisans as the gilders,silversmiths, painters, and sculptors.They were, however,well representedin the city'slow-status artisantrades (especially those of the blacksmiths, carpenters, shoemakers, tan- ners,tailors, and hatmakers),and belongedto raciallymixed craft guilds (gre- mios).It is clearthat, taken as a whole,their occupational status did notimply a sociallymarginal position, for many whites held similar jobs. In fact,over half of themestizos in thesample were employed as artisansand manyof them worked at thesame jobs alongsidecreoles, mulattoes, and oftenIndians as well. The marriageregisters also providesome interesting figures on legitimacy ratesfor various racial categories of the population. They show that by 1700,57 percentof the mestizos married in thechurch (the only legal form of marriage at the time)were of legitimatebirth. It would seem thatsuch conditionswould makeit difficultfor whites to continueto stereotypeall mestizosas illegitimate, particularlysince 27 percentof the creoles in thesame samplewere born out of wedlock. The trendsjust outlinedcontinued to intensifyduring the course of the eighteenthcentury as themestizos were further assimilated into the creole group. Accordingto the1792 census, only 14 ofa totalof 754adult mestizo males were unemployed.Most held steadyjobs as membersof the city's artisan guilds, and a fewmanaged to penetratethe ranks of the hacendados, professionals, and high- statusartisans. Marriage records from the last decade ofthe eighteenth century show littlechange in the marryinghabits of mestizomales, who remaineda quite heterogeneousgroup althoughnow a slightlyhigher percentage (25.4) tookcreole wives.24 Among the mestiza brides, however, creole husbands were slightlymore common than mestizo husbands. Significantly, by thistime the legitimacyrate of mestizos married in churchapproached 90 percent,surpassing even thatof thecreoles and makingit highlyunlikely that mestizos could con- tinueto be characterizedas illegitimateany longer. The legal boundarybetween creoles and mestizos had also become blurred.Mestizos were no longercategorically excluded from public and re- ligiousoffice if they were of legitimate birth, and mostin Oaxaca were.Proof of mestizoancestry was becomingacceptable in legalproceedings to establish one's "/purityof blood" (limpiezade sangre),whereas a centurybefore only direct de- scentfrom pure Spanish stockwith no taintof Indianblood would do. By at leastthe mid-seventeenthcentury in Oaxaca the ongoingprocess of mestizaje had reacheda pointwhere it could no longerbe regardedby the eliteas an aberrationin an otherwise"normal" system of ethnicallydefined "estates" of Spaniards,Indians and blacks.The whiteelite ceased to view the mestizosas
160 RESEARCH REPORTS AND NOTES illegitimatemisfits and incorporatedthem into the urban stratificationand status system. On one importantpoint, however, I do agree with Wolf'sanalysis. He is right in stressing that the colonial mestizos comprised neither a class nor a culture.25Though they are oftenregarded by other writersas a distinctstratum in a hierarchyof raciallydefined estates or "castes," the case of Oaxaca does not wholly support this interpretation.26In a city like Oaxaca where race mixture was extensive and frequentlylegitimized by marriageand where the phenome- non of passing was endemic, it would be wrong to conceive of stratificationin racial termsalone. The observed heterogeneityof the mestizos and lack of corre- spondence between the city's occupational and racial hierarchiessuggest that economic determinantsof rank were also of some importance,perhaps equally importantas race by the close of the eighteenthcentury. But why then did racial classificationcontinue and the mestizo category persist as an element in the colonial sistemade castas? Above all, this systemin Oaxaca reflectedthe viewpoint of the people in power-the dominant white, Spanish elite and the secular and ecclesiasticbu- reaucracies. Though race as a status markerwas losing ground during the eigh- teenthcentury, the elite could not psychologicallyaccept this factwithout giving up its rationalefor colonial domination. People at the top thereforecontinued to view theirsociety in racial and ethnic terms(and classifypeople accordinglyin censuses and parish registers),even though people of mixed racial background at the middle and lower levels saw things differently.Racial mobilitywas the order of the day for many castas, and the system had actually become quite fluid. Like all other colonial societies, this one was not withoutits fundamental contradictions.There were most likely wide differencesin ideology and social values, the ideology of race being a case in point. The phenomenon of passing and the shrinkingsize of the mestizo group during the eighteenth century suggests that over time, race as defined fromabove-by governmentofficials, priests,and white elitists-was giving way to race as seen frombelow. Indeed, as will be shown below, thereis informationthat indicates thatthe categoriesof mestizo and creole were merged into one by many people at the start of the nineteenthcentury. It seems highly unlikelythat the Oaxaca mestizos comprised a group in the sociological sense, and theirawareness of a shared identitymust have been extremelyweak ifit existed at all. I would argue thata mestizo's racial classifica- tion in Oaxaca was situationallydetermined and contingentupon what he per- ceived as best servinghis own interestsin a given context.Racial identitiesmost frequentlycame into play when lower-class individuals came into contactwith membersof the elite and officialbureaucracies. These and other"racially signifi- cant" situations were, to use Harry Hoetink's phrase, "non-intimaterelations between the races in superficialeveryday intercourse."27In contrast,I suspect that racial labeling was of only minimal significancein more intimatesorts of situationswhere the participatingindividuals knew one anotherwell. The rigid view of the colonial elite notwithstanding,the rapidlyaccumu- latingexceptions to the normativeprescriptions of the sistema de castas during
161 LatinAmerican Research Review theeighteenth century show that we are dealingnot with a homogeneousethnic group or social stratum,but with a highlyflexible social identity. A mestizo regardedhis race not so much as an indicatorof group membershipor an ascriptivebadge of self-definitionwithin a staticand rigidsocial system,but ratheras one componentof his socialidentity which could be manipulatedand oftenchanged. Many "mestizos"who were economicallysuccessful or were ableto formstrategic marriage alliances ceased to be mestizos.
It remainsto be seen how theambiguous status of the mestizo in Oaxaca compareswith information from other parts of New Spain. Does Oaxaca repre- senta peculiarregional variant, or does it typifytrends that can also be found elsewhere?While no fullycomparable studies exist, what little data are available indicatethat the mestizo in colonialOaxaca probablyhad muchin commonwith hiscounterparts in otherurban areas. The parishmarriage registers of the north- erncity of Le6n, studiedby David Bradingand Celia Wu, show thatin thelate eighteenthcentury the mestizos were the smallest racial group, far outnumbered in eachcase bySpaniards, mulattoes, and Indians. The mestizos,the smallestgroup under consideration, betrayed a strikinglack of homogeneity.The male intermarriagerate ranged from61 percentin 1782-85to 52 percentin 1792-93.As befitted theirmiddle rank, about a fifthmarried "upwards" to Spaniards, and the remainder"downwards" to mulattoesand Indians.The ambiguous quality of mestizo status is best revealed in their womenfolk.In bothsamples there were considerably more mestizo womenthan men, and in each case aboutthree-quarters of them marriedout of their ethnic category. About two-fifths chose mulat- toes,and just undera fifthSpaniards. Unlike mulatto and Indian women,they were somewhatmore upwardlymobile than their men. Butthen, granted their greater number, the suspicionexists thatmany may well have been mulattoes or Indians on themove.28 Of course,further research is needed to make any meaningfulcomparisons betweenOaxaca arnI Le6n, but the ambiguitynoted by Bradingand Wu is certainlyreminiscent of what we have seen so far.This may be highlysignificant since in otherrespects the two citiesand theirsurrounding regions differed markedly.29 The smallsize ofthe mestizo population in otherlocalities of New Spain is reflectedin baptismaland marriagefigures from 1821 to 1832 publishedby Moises Gonzalez Navarro.30In Mexico City,Guadalajara, Ameca, Arandas, and Hermosillowe findthat there were far fewer mestizos than creoles listed in the records.Far betterconfirmation of thisgeneral trend comes fromthe 1793 censusesof New Spain referredto earlier.Aguirre Beltran's published tallies for sixty-fourdifferent communities-both rural and urban-show thatwhile pro- portionalrepresentation of mestizosdoes indeed varyfrom place to place, in virtuallyall themajor cities the creoles always comprised the single largest non- Indianracial group.31 A good exampleis the capitalitself, where, according to
162 RESEARCH REPORTS AND NOTES
Humboldt, in 1793 creoles accounted for49 percentof the population, peninsu- lars 2 percent,Indians 24 percent,and all castas combined only 25 percent.32 All of these figuressuggest a strongnegative correlationbetween degree of urbanizationand the relativesize of the mestizo sector.The more people and power concentratedin a given urban center,the greaterthe likelihoodthat many biological mestizos would swell the ranks of the creole group, leaving the mes- tizo categorywith proportionatelyfewer individuals. This is offeredas a hypo- thesis to be tested, not a finding,for I have not systematicallycompared the figures controllingfor city size. Generally, however, there seems to be good reason to expect thatthe overall patternof intermarriage,racial mobility,and the ambiguityof mestizo status in Oaxaca was more the rule ratherthan the excep- tion in urban New Spain toward the close of the colonial period. Mestizos, as they were then defined, were not multiplyingby leaps and bounds, but just barelyholding theirown. On the eve of independence, then, the "power seekers" were stilljust as white as ever and still"Spaniards" ratherthan mestizos. While theirphenotype had certainlydarkened over the years, their steady absorption of Indian and black genes did not seriously affecttheir social status as "whites." Indeed, it appears that the mestizos were being merged with the creoles ratherthan vice- versa. In Oaxaca, as pointed out, mestizos of legitimatebirth were no longer stigmatized as their ancestors had once been. That proof of mestizo ancestry was now oftenacceptable in limpieza de sangre proceedings indicatesthat mes- tizo statuswas at least forsome purposes functionallyequivalent to white. There is other evidence, though admittedlyslim, that suggests that cate- gories were being collapsed in a similarfashion in other regions. Three astute observers of Mexican society in the late eighteenthand early nineteenthcen- turiesgive the distinctimpression that the mestizo was no longer automatically included in the culturally-definedcasta (mixed) sector. In his 1820 critique of Humboldt's handling of population data, Navarro y Noriega accuses him of severelyunderestimating the mulattoelement: "It is veryimportant to note that among these castas, those of Africanextraction that were subject to tributeand also excluded fromhonorific posts can only enjoy the rightsof citizenshipwhen they prove themselves worthyby theirvirtue and merit. [If so] this prerogative is grantedby the C6rtes as provided by the politicalConstitution of the Monarchy in article22. They probably approximatehalf a million in numbers."33There is nothingnew in this statement,yet I thinkit significantthat Navarro did not feel compelled to say anythingat all about the legal status of mestizos. More directsupport formy hypothesiscomes fromthe pen of the Bishop of Michoacan in 1799, Fray Antonio de San Miguel, in the Informedel obispoy cabildoeclesidstico de Valladolidde Michoacanal reysobre jurisdicci6n e inmunidadesdel cleroamericano. The castas, descendants of the black slaves, are marked as despi- cable by the law and subject to tribute,which stains themindelibly. This is regarded as a stigma of slavery transmissibleto even the most remote generations. Among la raza de mezcla,that is, among
163 LatinAmerican Research Review
themestizos and mulattoes,there are manyfamilies that could be confusedwith the Spaniardson the basis of theircolor, physiog- nomy,and customs.But in the eyes of the law theyare debased and despised.These men of color, endowed with an energeticand ardentcharacter, live in a stateof constantirritation against the whites.It is a wonderthat their resentment does not moreoften promptthem to seekrevenge.34 In thisstatement we see a curiousinconsistency that further underscores theambiguity surrounding the late colonialmestizo. The bishopbegins by de- finingthe castas as descendantsof black slaves and tributepayers, thus exclud- ingthe mestizos from this group since they were eligible for neither. In thevery nextsentence, however, he includesboth mestizos and mulattoesin la razade mezcla.Finally, he suggeststo us the reasonfor his own confusion:that many mestizosand mulattoesby 1799 were virtuallyindistinguishable in outward appearancefrom the white Spaniards. The thirdand finalobserver I wish to mentionis theMexican critic and journalist,Jose Joaquin Fernandez de Lizardi,author of the novel Periquillo Sarniento.35First published in 1816, this early Latin American novel provides muchinsightful commentary on the socialcomposition of colonial Mexican so- ciety(especially in MexicoCity) in the finalyears before the war of indepen- dence.Significantly, among the many characters in thebook one findsespanioles, blancos(these terms are used interchangeably),mulatos, lobos, prietos, and more- nos.But there are no mestizos.Lizardi sketches the opposition and combination ofwhite and black,but the Indian's contribution to themiscegenation process is notexplicitly recognized by anyterm. In fact,the word mestizo does notappear even once in theentire work, so faras I am aware.Could itbe thatby thistime, the mestizoshad mergedto such a degreewith the creolesthat Lizardi could convenientlyconceptualize all theseindividuals simply as espafiolesor blancos? Ifso, itwould seemthat at thetime of independence the mestizos were headed forextinction.
It should now be clear why Wolf'suse of the conceptof the mestizo obscuresrather than highlights the social formation of modern Mexican society. He writes:"Denied his patrimonyby society,the mestizo was yetdestined to be itsheir and receiver.... As themestizos filled with their own web of relation- shipsthe socialvoid leftby the Spanishoverlords, they also projectedinto the societythat harbored them a commonemotional force, the passion of national- ism.... The mestizoemerged from his shadow worldon theedges of society intothe full light of day."36Most of all, Wolfsees theRevolution of 1910as the sourceof the mestizo's "legitimacy" and accessto the"levers of power." But in lightof the hard evidence examined so far,these sweeping generalizations seem untenable.The phrasesmay be finelyturned, but I thinkthe judgment must be thatthey do not add up to good history.The attemptto use the mestizoas a metaphorfor the formation of modern Mexican society simply doesn't work-at leastnot until the beginning of the twentieth century. I do notquestion the close relationship between Mexican nationalism and
164 RESEARCH REPORTS AND NOTES the concept of the mestizo as a political symbol today. It could be maintained thatit is impossible to separate the two, since the terms"mexicano" and "mes- tizo" are now oftentreated as synonymous. But to tracethe roots of nationalism directlyto the emergence of the colonial mestizo-the cruxof Wolf'sargument- confusesbiological mestizos as the productsof miscegenationwith the culturally defined colonial mestizo identity,which, as we have seen, was somethingquite different. The trajectoryof Mexican historyshows the progressive reduction of a complex racial classificationsystem through the eliminationof the whites and mulattoes. One must not make the mistake, however, of assigning the same meaning to the survivingterms in differentperiods. Wolf'serror is his failureto recognize the importanceof the white creole as an ethnic symbol in the process of nation-buildingduring the nineteenthcentury. His discussion of the "power seekers" overlooks one importantpoint: even in the late colonial and early national periods, in order to have any hope at all of gaining access to the "levers of power" one had to be classifiedas white, i.e., a creole or peninsular Spaniard. The evidence fromOaxaca shows thatmany "mestizos" were in factquite adept at thisgame. We are leftwith the problem of tracingracial and ethnic change through the nineteenthcentury in the absence of much concretedata.37 The legal aboli- tion of the entire racial classificationsystem in 1822 surely had some effecton race relationsand the stratificationsystem, though it has yet to receive detailed study.At this point we must relyon what Mexican intellectualhistory can tellus about the ideology of race and the mestizo during the nineteenthcentury. Com- prehensive treatmentof this topic lies beyond the scope of this article,and I merely wish to point out that Mexican "whites" were very much in evidence during these years. The firstsymbol of national identityto arise afterindepen- dence was the creole-not the mestizo-and during the entirenineteenth cen- tury "the Indian and the mestizo, the latterlacking private propertyand the formerunwilling to accept it, could not in any way be converted into ethnic symbolsof nationhood; theywere, as Pimentelput it [in 1864], strangersin their own country."38The pensadorand essayist Ignacio Ramirez ("El Nigromante"), himselfof Indian background,was the firstMexican writerto stressracial fusion and the pivotal role of the mestizo in Mexico's future.39Yet Aguirrepoints out thatit was not untilthe early twentiethcentury that thinkers like Andres Molina Enriquez and JoseVasconcelos put the mestizo at the apex of humanity.40 Thus, despite the preoccupationof a few nineteenth-centuryintellectuals with the implications of race mixture,it appears that it was in the main the Mexican Revolution with its ideology of "power to the people" thatbrought the mestizo back again, and this time to center stage. The creole was transformed into a new kind of person. The revolutioneffectively did away with the white- Spanish-creole category and the mestizos-now officiallysanctioned by the governmentand popular opinion-inherited the reins of power. This was no resurrectionof the old colonial mestizo identity,however, but a wholly new social vision based on differentpremises. The colonial mestizo was a memberof Hispanic societyand along with the Spaniards stood in fundamentalopposition
165 LatinAmerican Research Review to theIndian in theethnic sense. Butthe revolutionary mestizo of the twentieth century,as a symbolof national identity, is muchcloser to theIndian than to the whitesor Europeans.
To sum up, thereappears to be no directhistorical thread that connects today'surban mestizos with the colonial mestizos as I have describedthem. In each case, both the people and the conceptsdenoted by the termare quite different.It is clearthat the social historyof Mexicocannot be interpretedin termsof any monolithicethnic formula. What is not so clearis the fateof the mestizoduring most of the nineteenth century. Until more information becomes available,we cannotbe absolutelysure who werethe "power seekers"of that crucialperiod. In any case, the investigatormust take care to avoid projecting currentdefinitions of ethnic concepts back into previous eras. The issuesaddressed here are fundamentallyhistorical in nature,and itis not my wish to exaggeratethe importanceof the conceptof the mestizoin Mexicotoday. As an ethnicterm, it has been replacedin largepart by "mexi- cano" and otherwords that have no racialreferents. With the exception of some coastal regions,racial and ethnicterms of any sortare littleused in central Mexicotoday, Oaxaca included.When directinquiries about the termmestizo are made, moreoften than not theyare met withan indifferentshrug of the shouldersand thereply, "todos somos mestizos." One of the reasonsfor this shrug of the shouldersis thatthe symbolic referentof themestizo concept today is notrace or ethnicity,but culture. It is a symbol of national cultural unity,not racial fusion. This shiftin meaning, it seems to me, is one of the principalideological outcomes of the Mexican Revolu- tion and the ensuing politics of indigenismo.I think it fittingto close with a passage from Octavio Paz, who, in The Labyrinthof Solitude, perhaps comes closer than anyone else to capturingthe essence of Mexican identitytoday: "The Mexican does not want to be eitheran Indian or a Spaniard. Nor does he want to be descended fromthem. He denies them. And he does not affirmhimself as a mixture,but rather as an abstraction: he is a man. He becomes the son of Nothingness. His beginningsare in his own self."41
NOTES
1. This is a revised version of a paper presented at the 75th Annual Meeting of the AmericanAnthropological Association in Washington,D.C., 17-21 November 1976. I wish to thank my colleagues WilliamP Delaney, Karl L. Eggert,and Hugo Martines, as well as threeanonymous readers provided by thisjournal, fortheir comments and criticismson earlierdrafts. 2. For recentexamples see JudithFriedlander, Being Indian in Hueyapan:A Studyof Forced Identityin ContemporaryMexico (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1975); and Barbara Luise Margolies, Princesof the Earth: SubculturalDiversity in a MexicanMunicipality (Washington,D.C.: AmericanAnthropological Association, 1975). 3. John Gillin, "Modern Latin American Culture," Social Forces25 (1947):243-48; and "Mestizo America," in Most ofthe World, ed. Ralph Linton (New York:Columbia Uni- versityPress, 1949), pp. 156-211. 4. Eric Wolf,Sons ofthe Shaking Earth (Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press, 1959).
166 RESEARCH REPORTS AND NOTES
5. Gonzalo AguirreBeltran, Obra polemica (Mexico City:SEP-INAH, 1976), p. 119. 6. Ibid. 7. The differencein meaning between the termsmestizo and ladinois a related topic of interestthat will not be dealt with here. The latterterm is most commonlyused in the highland regions of Chiapas, Mexico and Guatemala. See JulianPitt-Rivers, "Mestizo or Ladino?," Race 10 (1969):463-77. 8. Wolf,Shaking Earth. 9. Ibid., p. 235. 10. Gonzalo Aguirre Beltran,La poblacionnegra de Mexico: estudioetnohistorico, Segunda Edici6n (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Econ6mica, 1972), p. 219. I have reinter- preted AguirreBeltran's idiosyncratic definition of racial categoriesin his table 10. 11. S. F. Cook, "The Population of Mexico in 1793," HumanBiology 14 (1942):499-515. 12. Ibid., p. 503 fn. 13. Fernando Navarro y Noriega, Memoriasobre la poblaciondel reinode Nueva Espafia (Mexico City:Oficina de D. JuanBautista de Arizpe, 1820), p. 15. 14. Alejandro de Humboldt, Ensayopolitico sobre el reinode la Nueva Espania(Mexico City: EditorialPedro Robredo, 1941) 2:140; Navarro y Noriega, Memoria,p. 15. 15. The data thatform the base forthis discussion come fromchapters 5 and 6 of JohnK. Chance, Race and Class in ColonialOaxaca (Stanford,Calif.: StanfordUniversity Press, 1978). 16. ArchivoGeneral de Indias (Seville), Patronato230B, Ramo 10. 17. D. A. Brading, Miners and Merchantsin BourbonMexico, 1763-1810 (London: Cam- bridgeUniversity Press, 1971), pp. 248-49. 18. ArchivoParroquial del Sagrario, Oaxaca, Librosde Casamientos,1693-1700. 19. These mattersare discussed at greaterlength in Chance, Raceand Class. 20. John K. Chance, "The Urban Indian in Colonial Oaxaca," AmericanEthnologist 3(1976):603-32. 21. Wolf,Shaking Earth, pp. 238-42. 22. ArchivoGeneral de Indias (Seville), Patronato230B, Ramo 10. 23. Technically,castizos were nonwhites who derived fromcreole-mestizo unions. Since in Oaxaca they were very small in numbers and did not constitutea significantele- ment in the social structure,they have been included with the mestizos in these figures. 24. ArchivoParroquial del Sagrario, Oaxaca, Librosde Casamientos,1793-97. 25. Wolf,Shaking Earth, p. 243. 26. Lyle McAlister, in "Social Structureand Social Change in New Spain," Hispanic AmericanHistorical Review 43 (1963):349-70 includes the mestizos in the casta stratum. Magnus Morner,in Race Mixturein theHistory of Latin America (Boston: Little,Brown, 1967), chapter5, regards the colonial mestizos as forminga distinctracial estate. For a more detailed critiqueof these positions see JohnK. Chance and William B. Taylor, "Estate and Class in a Colonial City: Oaxaca in 1792," ComparativeStudies in Society and History19 (1977):454-87; and Chance, Raceand Class. 27. H. Hoetink, CaribbeanRace Relations:A Studyof Two Variants(New York:Oxford Uni- versityPress, 1967), p. 21. 28. D. A. Brading and Celia Wu, "Population Growth and Crisis: Le6n, 1720-1860," Journalof Latin American Studies 5 (1973):8-9. 29. Brading and Wu ("Population Growth," pp. 9, 36) point out that by the end of the eighteenthcentury the Indian and mulattogroups of the Bajio region were fastlosing theirseparate ethnicidentities. In Oaxaca, by contrast,there was much less intermar- riage between Indians and non-Indians, and more Indian males marriedcreole than mulatto women in the late eighteenthcentury. Indian identityin Oaxaca remained strongin both ruraland urban settings.See Chance, "The Urban Indian," p. 628. 30. Moises Gonzalez Navarro, "Mestizajein Mexico during the National Period," in Race and Class in Latin America,ed. Magnus Morner (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), pp. 145-69. 31. AguirreBeltran, La poblaci6nnegra, pp. 226-27.
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32. Humboldt, EnsayoPolitico 2:120. 33. Navarro y Noriega, Memoria,p. 15. 34. Quoted in Humboldt, EnsayoPolitico 2:101. 35. Jose Joaquin Fernandez de Lizardi, PeriquilloSarniento (Madrid: Editora Nacional, 1976), 2 vols. 36. Wolf,Shaking Earth, pp. 241, 244, 246. 37. See Gonzalez Navarro, "Mestizaje" fora briefdiscussion. 38. AguirreBeltran, Obra polemica, p. 141. 39. See Martin S. Stabb, "Indigenism and Racism in Mexican Thought: 1857-1911," Journalof Interamerican Studies 1 (1959), p. 413. 40. AguirreBeltran, Obra polemica, p. 145. 41. Octavio Paz, The Labyrinthof Solitude (New York:Grove Press, 1961), p. 87.
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