Title: Genealogical fictions : limpieza de sangre, religion, and gender in colonial Mexico /
Authors: Martínez, María Elena, 1966-
Publisher: Stanford University Press,
Year: 2008
Subjects: Racism Mexico History.; Social classes Mexico History.; Social classes Religious aspects Catholic Church.; Mexico Race relations.
Abstract: "Maria Elena Martinez's Genealogical Fictions is the first in-depth study of the relationship between the Spanish concept of limpieza de sangre (purity of blood) and colonial Mexico's sistema 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."--BOOK JACKET.
Contents: The emergence of the Spanish statutes of limpieza de sangre -- Race, purity, and gender in sixteenth-century Spain -- Juridical fictions : the certification of purity and the construction of communal memory -- Nobility and purity in the República de Indios -- Nobility and purity in the República de Españoles -- The initial stages and socioreligious roots of the sistema de castas -- The probanza de limpieza de sangre in colonial and transatlantic space -- Religion, law, and race : the question of purity in seventeenth-century Mexico -- Changing contours : limpieza de sangre in the age of reason and reform.