Genealogical Fictions

by Martinez, Maria-elena

• ISBN13: 9780804756488
• ISBN10: 0804756481
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-07-17
• Publisher: Stanford Univ Pr

Summary

Maria Elena Martinez'sGenealogical Fictionsis the first in-depth study of the relationship between the Spanish concept oflimpieza de sangre(purity of blood) and colonial Mexico'ssistema de castas, a hierarchical system of social classification based primarily on ancestry. Specifically, it explains how this notion surfaced amid socio-religious tensions in early modern Spain, and was initially used against Jewish and Muslim converts to Christianity. It was then transplanted to the Americas, adapted to colonial conditions, and employed to create and reproduce identity categories according to descent. Martinez also examines how the state, church, Inquisition, and other institutions in colonial Mexico used the notion of purity of blood over time, arguing that the concept's enduring religious, genealogical, and gendered meanings and the archival practices it promoted came to shape the region's patriotic and racial ideologies.

Author Biography

María Elena Martínez is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Southern California.

Table of Contents

Iberian precedents
The emergence of the Spanish statutes of limpieza de sangre	p. 25
Race, purity, and gender in sixteenth-century Spain	p. 42
Juridical fictions : the certification of purity and the construction of communal memory	p. 61
Religion, genealogy, and caste in early colonial Mexico
Nobility and purity in the Republica de Indios	p. 91
Nobility and purity in the Republica de Espanoles	p. 123
The initial stages and socioreligious roots of the Sistema de Castas	p. 142
Purity, race, and Creolism in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century New Spain
The Probanza de limpieza de sangre in colonial and transatlantic space	p. 173
Religion, law, and race : the question of purity in seventeenth-century Mexico	p. 200
Changing contours : limpieza de sangre in the age of reason and reform	p. 227
Conclusion	p. 265
Questionnaire used by the Spanish Inquisition	p. 279
Glossary	p. 281
Abbreviations	p. 285
Notes	p. 287
Bibliography	p. 361
Index	p. 391
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