Upload
monica-perez-navarro
View
216
Download
0
Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
7/25/2019 Boyer Richard - Negotiating Calidad
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/boyer-richard-negotiating-calidad 1/11
Negotiating Calidad: The Everyday Struggle for Status in MexicoAuthor(s): Richard BoyerSource: Historical Archaeology, Vol. 31, No. 1, Diversity and Social Identity in ColonialSpanish America: Native American, African, and Hispanic Communities during the MiddlePeriod (1997), pp. 64-73
Published by: Society for Historical ArchaeologyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25616518 .
Accessed: 23/12/2013 13:35
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
.
Society for Historical Archaeology is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
Historical Archaeology.
http://www.jstor.org
7/25/2019 Boyer Richard - Negotiating Calidad
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/boyer-richard-negotiating-calidad 2/11
64
HISTORICAL
ARCHAEOLOGY,
VOLUME
31
(1)
RICHARD
BOYER
Negotiating
alidad:
The
Everyday
Struggle
for
tatus
in
Mexico
Introduction
The
historical
literature
mainly
on
17th-century
Mexico
has
stressed
an
apparent
regularity
of
life
and
institutional routines
as
backdrop
for
discussions
of the
period (Boyer
1977:457^59).
Seldom,
however,
have
scholars
noticed this
as
a
rhetorical
device.
Given
the
colonial
period,
the 17th
century
stands
in
the
middle,
bracketed
on one side by invasion, conquest, and devasta
tion
and
on
the other
by
18th-century
structural
changes
in
production,
commerce,
administration,
and
geopolitics.
In
relative
terms,
therefore,
the
17th
century,
if
not
static,
looks
like
a
long
duree of
slow
incremental
change,
and
mostly
of
orderly,
predictable
existence.
And
what could be
more
stable
in
this
middle
period
than the
well-entrenched
regimen
de
castas,
an
apparent
system
within which
people
were
graded hierarchically by
racial
or
ethnic criteria?
Over
time,
most
scholars
agree,
the basis for
status
in
Mexico shifted
from
caste
to
class.
Thus,
by
ca.
1800,
social
structure
seems more
evidently
linked
to
the solid
footing
of economic
determinism.
Yet,
in
the rush
to
get
to
that solid
ground,
the
preceding period
has sometimes been
skipped
over as mere
pre
cursor
to
the
more
rational
system
of social
or
dering,
or,
because the
ordering categories
were
applied
in
unpredictable
ways,
as an
irrational
system of racial determinism, but one difficult to
decipher.
This
essay
assumes
the
continuing
need
to
think
about
caste,
and nonclass
criteria,
as ma
jor
determinants of
identity
and
status
in
the
period
before 1800. It views the
use
of
caste
terms,
however,
as
situational
more
than
sys
temic. Its
starting point
is the
now
standard
postmodern
view
that
historical
actors
are con
structs
rather than
essences.
They placed
them
selves and others within a range of categories,
not
a
single
one.
In
doing
this
they
were
not
trying
to
sketch
reality
accurately
but
were
staking
out
place
relative
to
others. If
catego
ries
deriving
from
class
and
caste
remain
useful
for
certain
purposes?most
obviously
to
charac
terize
social
organization
in
broad
terms?they
hide much as well.
Who-I-am
and
who-you-are
came
wrapped
in
a
standard
vocabulary
of
strati
fication,
but
one
must not
forget
they
were
rela
tive
to
the
beholder.
In
this
way,
one's defini
tion
of
another
was
always
a
kind
of
self-defi
nition.
Self,
in
terms
of
the
other,
should
there
fore
be viewed
as
negotiated,
an
impromptu,
perhaps
not
even
fully
conscious,
stocktaking
of
one's
status
using
the
shorthand
of
racial
labels.
These,
more
broadly
as
indicators
of
calidad,
pulled together a composite judgment having to
do
with
lineage,
wealth,
honor,
and
manliness?
or
for
women,
virtuousness
associated
with
se
clusion
and
controlled
sexuality?work,
and
pa
tronage
links.
Although
historians have known
this for
a
long
time,
this
article
stresses
it in
the
strongest
terms
for
our
purposes
here:
individuals,
to
a
greater
degree
than
normally
assumed,
arranged
their
own
identities. How
they
did
so
is
diffi
cult
to
document,
but
hints of it
may
be inferred
from
a
close
reading
of
some
archival records
that
document
commonplace exchanges
and in
teractions
in
colonial
Mexico.
In
particular,
this
essay
relies
on
bigamy
files
compiled by
the
Holy
Office of the
Inquisition.
In
them,
one
may
view
standard
legal
and
customary
vocabu
lary
used
to
define
or
contest
definitions of
people,
as more a
discursive
resource
than
re
flective
of
a
self-evident
structure
of
society.
Some references
to
the
historical
literature
begin
this essay which then proceeds with a discussion
of
categorizing
processes
taken
from
Inquisition
records of
Mexico's middle
period.
Terminology
and the
Historians:
System
or
Discourse?
But first the discursive
resources.
As is well
known,
social
identity
in colonial
Mexico
came
as a
composite judgment.
It drew
on
legal
(tributaryversus non-tributary?in effect a plebe
Historical
Archaeology,
1997,
31(l):64-72.
Permission
to
reprint required.
This content downloaded from 148.206.159.132 on Mon, 23 Dec 2013 13:35:14 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
7/25/2019 Boyer Richard - Negotiating Calidad
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/boyer-richard-negotiating-calidad 3/11
NEGOTIATING
CALIDAD:
THE EVERYDAY
STRUGGLE
FOR STATUS
IN
MEXICO
65
ian-noble
distinction
based
on
who
was
liable
for
a
head
tax),
cultural
(Hispanic
versus
Indian),
economic
(work,
wealth,
property),
and
physical
or
racial
distinctions
(regimen
de
castas)
as
they
could
be
used
to
categorize people
and,
more
importantly
for our
purposes,
to
categorize
themselves
and their
acquaintances
(Cook
and
Borah
1971-1979,
2:188;
Chance
and
Taylor
1977:460).
As racial
terms
(e.
g.,
espanol,
mes
tizo,
mulato,
indio)
placed
people,
therefore,
they
stood
for
more
than
race.
In
this
they
were a
kind of inclusive
impression
reflecting
one's
reputation
as a
whole,
or
one's
calidad
(McCaa
1984:477).
Nuances
of such
labeling
are
there
fore
all
the
more
difficult
to
decipher
now.
Just
as the sum of a small number can be the prod
uct
of
many
different combinations of
numbers,
so
variables
deciding
calidad
came
together
in
different combinations
to
equal,
for
example,
the
judgment
mulato. Should students therefore de
spair
of
sorting
out
what
they
meant?
No,
but
it
should be
kept
in mind
that labels varied with
time,
place,
and circumstance which
means
that
the
process
of
labeling
mattered
as
much
as
the
label
itself.
Plebeians
and
others in
colonial
society
were
making complex
and
impromptu
placements
of each
other,
not
as
disinterested
observers,
but
to
flatter
patrons
and diminish ri
vals. This
was
an
ordinary
part
of
daily
life,
and the
labels
the
currency
of
an
everyday
Hob
besian
discourse of
actors
jockeying
for
position
in the
social
struggle.
Because
these
judgments
are
difficult
to
sort
out
now,
scholars have
reduced
them
to
a
sys
tem -concentrating
on
types
rather than
nuance,
variation,
and
apparent
contradiction
in
usage.
Partly this reflects the nature of the sources tra
ditionally
used
to
study
stratification:
parish
registers
and
census
listings.
In
a
study
based
on
the
latter,
for
example,
Patricia
Seed
(1982:573)
speaks
of
the five
basic
[emphasis
added]
terms
in
use
in
colonial
Mexico
by
the
middle
of
the
eigteenth
century.
.[:]
Spanish,
Black,
Indian,
mestizo,
and
mulatto.
Her
catego
ries
seem
to
follow
the
respected
reductionism
of
Gonzalo
Aguirre
Beltran
who
divided
theMexi
can
population
into
the three
unmixed groups
of
European,
African,
and
Indian,
and the three
dominant
cultural/phenotypic
combinations of
Euro-,
Afro-,
and
Indo-mestizo
(Aguirre
Beltran
1946:153-196, 270-271;
Cook and Borah 1971
1979:188-189).
Aguirre
glosses
his
biological
categories
with what
he
calls
a
cultural
observa
tion,
saying
that Afro- and Indo-me stizos were
united
(unidos)
by
a common
culture under
the
term castas
.
He
therefore
posits
an
overlap
of
function and
phenotype.
If
castas
served
as
mostly
unskilled workers
(obreros),
Euro-mesti
zos
served
as
skilled artisans who
escaped
casta
identification
and,
to
varying degrees,
shaded
into the white
strata
of
Europeans.
The
conflation
of
racial and
functional
categories
thus
subsumes racial within
functional racial
catego
ries. It is almost a class analysis under the ru
bric
of
culture,
the latter
not
concerned with lan
guage,
ethnic
consciousness, tradition,
or
organiz
ing
beliefs,
but with the
castas'
permanent
as
cription
as
an
underclass with reference
to
white
society.
However
well-taken
these
points,
they
under
state
the
nature
of
status
and
identity
as a con
struct
by
an
essentialist
and,
except
for Euro
mestizos,
static
ordering
that blocks
out
the
ne
gotiability
of
status.
Sherburne
F.
Cook and
Woodrow Borah
(1971-1979, 2:189-190)
recog
nized
the
instability
of
racial
categories-warning
readers that
racial
designations
mean
little
more
than
ranges
of
intergrading types, -. predominant
but
not
rigidly
distinct racial
character -even
as
they
reified them
into main
types
as
they
con
structed
aggregate
population profiles.
The
point
matters
because
the
terms
constitute
reality
as
much
as
they
reflect it. The
assigning
of
them,
as
noted
above,
came
as a
political
rather than
a
descriptive
process.
Nevertheless
historians
have been
willing
to
claim,
for
example,
that
men
and
women
about
to
marry
in
18th-century
Leon,
frequently
were
mistaken
about each
other's
racial
label,
although
the errors
show
a
pattern
of coalescence in
the
categories
Indian
and
mulatto
(Brading
and
Wu
1973:9).
In
fact
the
pattern
may
show
something
quite
different:
that
racial
categories
were
assigned
not
dispas
sionately
to
describe
people
but
politically
to
place
them.
This content downloaded from 148.206.159.132 on Mon, 23 Dec 2013 13:35:14 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
7/25/2019 Boyer Richard - Negotiating Calidad
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/boyer-richard-negotiating-calidad 4/11
66
HISTORICAL
ARCHAEOLOGY,
VOLUME 31
(1)
Another
historian,
observing
that
racial
catego
ries
did
not
mean
what
they
literally
said,
called
them
irrational
(Carmagnani
1972:426,
445).
He
set
out,
therefore,
to
extract
[.
.
.]
the
se
mantic
and
cultural content
hidden
behind
the
terms and concluded that the terms espanol and
mestizo
refer
to
a
social
and
economic
reality
rather
than
one
of
ethnicity
or
color ;
that
mulato
or
negro
classifies
mostly
color;
and
that
indio
mainly
points
to
culture. His
work
sug
gests
that in
some
aspects
calidad
may
have
determined
caste
categories
in
a
differentiating
but
somewhat
patterned
way.
But if
true,
one
still
wonders
why,
how,
by
whom,
and for
how
long.
The age of complex criteria for determining
stratification,
let
us
remember,
was
the
17th
cen
tury
or,
more
loosely,
the
middle
period.
Eco
nomically
determined
by
the
rise of
capitalism,
criteria
for
status
by
the late
18th
century
be
came
more
straightforwardly
conomic
as
society
became
one
of
classes rather
than
castes.
Chance and
Taylor
(1977:485-486)
say
that
this
had
clearly
passed
the
'incipient'
stage
by
1792.
Thus
they
differ
with
Lyle
McAlister
on
the extent and timing of class stratification by
the late
18th
century.
McAlister
(1963:362-363)
thought
economic classes
a
merely
incipient
situation
thatwould
reach
a more
fully
realized
form
after
the
colonial
period
(author's
empha
sis).
Studies of
stratification
acknowledge
to
some
degree
an
unresolved
problem:
the
degree
to
which
outside
observer
point-of-view,
to
use
McAlister's
(1963:362)
term,
should
override
the
way
people
of
the time
conceived
of
and
defined
their
own
and
others' role
and status.
Historians,
as
noted
above,
judged
the
terms
mistaken
or
irrational
and considered
the
categories
ambiguous
and
unstable.
Yet
histori
ans
have
to
use
whatever
sources
have survived
as
best
they
can.
And
to
do
this
they
have
to
aggregate
records
of
casta
labels
as
if
they
con
stituted
a
system
when,
as
Chance and
Taylor
(1977:464)
remind
us
in their
study
of
a
late
18th-century
city,
there
was no
one
'correct'
folk model of
the
social structure
of
Antequera,
neither
was
there
always
one
correct
racial
iden
tity
for
many
of
its
inhabitants.
The
rest
of
this
essay
will
be concerned
with
reputational,
subjective
aspects
of social
identity.
In
this
way
the
looseness
of
the
categories,
together
with
the
concern
that
they
were
of
lim
ited
value
for
structural
analysis,
can
be
set
aside
in
order
to
try
to
understand what
they
meant
as
a
contemporary
reality.
.
.in
the
con
temporary
mind
(McAlister
1963:356).
This
bypasses
the
debate
about
structures
and,
in
this
brief
discussion,
does
not
try
to
fix
with
any
particular
precision
which,
and
in
what
propor
tions, extra ethno-racial factors informed the cat
egories
in
given
times
and
places.
That
may
be
unknowable. One
can,
however,
focus
on
the
nomenclature
as
people
used it in
the street
to
place
themselves and
to
contest
their
placements
by
others.
Those
usages
can
provide
a
number
of
glosses
on
the
general
problem
of
identity
as
it
relates
to
vocabularies
of
stratification.
It
raises
the
possibility
that
so-called loose
and
apparently
contradictory
uses
of
the
categories
make
political
if not
descriptive
sense as
people
placed
each
other
in
situations
of
everyday
life.
Racial
Terms
as a
Discursive
Resource
Racial,
ascriptive
vocabulary,
like
all
language,
could
not
be
controlled
from
above. At
one
level,
it
can
be
viewed
as an
elite-defined
scheme
to
systematize
subordination.
And
they
must
have
thought
it
worked,
for the
lower
or
ders
adopted
the
vocabulary,
but
not
passively.
In
the hands
of
ordinary
people,
the
language
of
stratification
provided
a
set
of
categories
to
ma
nipulate
(Chance
and
Taylor
1979:437).
The
very
proliferation
of
caste
designations
over
time
points
to
this
process,
in
part,
perhaps,
reflecting
a
mentality
able
to
live with
a
diverse
and
un
wieldy
order of the
world
(Morse
1964:134),
but
also,
in
our
terms,
the
result of
ordinary
people
in
everyday
life
pushing, expanding,
and
This content downloaded from 148.206.159.132 on Mon, 23 Dec 2013 13:35:14 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
7/25/2019 Boyer Richard - Negotiating Calidad
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/boyer-richard-negotiating-calidad 5/11
NEGOTIATINGCALIDAD: THE EVERYDAY
STRUGGLE FOR STATUS
IN
MEXICO
67
testing
the
categories
by
grading
themselves
up
and others down. In
this,
they
reordered their
world
as
much
as
conformed
to
it.
New
Spain's vocabulary
of
caste
begins
with
a
basic
separation
of
Indian and
Hispanic.
The
formerwere
subject
to tribute and under
special
jurisdiction.
The
latter,
at
first
Spaniards
and
increasingly
one or
another
racial
combinations,
were
gente
de
razon,
fully
accountable for their
orthodoxy
and behavior
under
Spanish
law.
As
African
slaves
joined
with the
two
other
racial
stocks,
the
Afro-mestizo
emerged,
usually
called
mulato
even
though
the
proportion
of
African
stock in
individuals
might
be small.
As free
persons,
mulatos and blacks
were
by
definition
scoundrels and vagabonds, the cancer of New
Spain ;
as
slaves,
they
were
little
more
than
beasts of burden
(Aguirre
Beltran
1946:173).
Chance
and
Taylor
(1977:463),
for
example,
cite
colloquial
examples
of
language
that
equate
mulato
with inferior tribute
payer
or a
danger
ous,
provocative
person.
Mulato
slaves,
as
opposed
to
black
slaves,
were
tarnished with
the
same
reputation
for
troublemaking,
partly,
per
haps,
because
more
easily
than
blacks
they
could
run
away,
and
as
ladinos
(fluent
in
Spanish,
culturally
adept)
blend
in
with
a
diverse
plebe
ian
population.
For
these
reasons
mulatos
could
be
purchased
at
prices
20-25
percent
lower
on
the Mexican
slave
market
than
blacks
(Valdes
1987:177-178).
That blacks
were
presumed
to
be
more
docile
and less
troublesome
than
mulatos
( beasts
of
burden
rather
than
tricky
scoundrels ),
helps
to
explain
a
brief comment
Francisco
de
Aguilar
made
about
Petronila Ruiz
in
a
letter of
1581.
So
mistreated
as a
house
servant (he said) that she was serving like a
black,
she has
therefore
begged
him
to
take
her
away
(Archive
General
de la
Nation,
Inquisition
[AGNI]
1581).
The comment
presumes
that
because
she
was
not
black,
the
beast-of-burden
treatment
was
inappropriate, unjust,
and
reason
to
run
away.
In contrast
to
Afro-mestizos,
Euro-mestizos
(combinations
of
European plus
Indian,
known
simply
as
mestizos)
were
not
infamous
by
defi
nition.
They
could
emphasize
their
European
side
by
dressing,
speaking,
and
behaving
as
Spaniards,
as
in
varying degrees they
did.
And
Indians,
like
mestizos,
could
also sometimes ben
efit from
their classification
to
take
refuge
under
the umbrella of
their
special jurisdiction
in colo
nial
law. Blacks
or
mulatos,
on
the
other
hand,
never benefited from their
categorization.
But within
the
categories
based
on
African
descent
they
could
at
lest
present
themselves
as
free
rather than
slave,
as
did
so
many runaway
slaves.
On
running
away
from
his
master
early
in the
18th
century,
for
example,
a
black
slave
named
Juan Lorenzo
immediately began
to
pass
as a
free mulatoT As
a
slave
he had been
married
to
a
slave;
as a
free
man,
he
married
an
Indian.
Changing
his
civil
status
also
advanced
his calidad (AGNI 1707). As a broad tendency,
the
following
generalization
may
be
proposed:
Afro-mestizos
had
every
reason
to
pass
as
Euro
mestizos
and
Euro-mestizos
to
draw
ever
closer
to
full
European
status.
The
statement
assumes
that
mulatos retained little
of
African,
and
mes
tizos,
little
of
Indian,
culture.
Instead,
interme
diate
groups
tended
to
integrate
ever
more
tightly
into the
Hispanic
world,
hierarchically
graded
into
subgroups
but
not
mainly
according
to
a
logic
of
ethnic
identification.
(Mestizos
who
were
reabsorbed
into the
Indian
population
are
diffi
cult
to
track;
in
effect
they
no
longer
were
mes
tizos
but
Indians. )
Aboriginal
peoples,
who
had the
best
chance
to
retain
an
ethnic
identifi
cation,
sometimes
tried
to
pass
as
mestizos
and
sometimes did
not.
That
they
often
did
not,
reflects
the
presence
of
the
cultural
resources
of
a
sizable
population
base,
in
spite
of
the
ravages
of
epidemic
disease,
in
communities,
towns,
and
the
barrios
of
large
cities where
they
spoke
their
own languages and adhered to their customs.
They
also
had
an
opportunistic
incentive
to
iden
tify
themselves
as
Indians:
their
special
status
under
Spanish
law.
From
Slave
to
Free
A
fundamental
aspect
of
calidad
was
whether
one
was
slave
or
free.
About
1725,
Juan
Bautista
Aleman,
slender,
almost
black,
with
tightly waved black hair (de pasa apretada),
more
Negro
than
mulato,
ran
away
from
his
This content downloaded from 148.206.159.132 on Mon, 23 Dec 2013 13:35:14 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
7/25/2019 Boyer Richard - Negotiating Calidad
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/boyer-richard-negotiating-calidad 6/11
68
HISTORICAL
ARCHAEOLOGY,
VOLUME
31
(1)
Dominican
masters
in
Guatemala
(AGNI 1746).
To
the
Inquisitors
he testified that in his 10
years
as a
fugitive
he
always
has
passed
as a
free man. In
fact,
he settled
in
the
town
of
San Christobal
Tacotalpan
(in
the district of
Vera
Cruz)
and,
using
the alias
Alegria,
married
Monica de la
Cruz,
a
free
mulata,
and
fathered
a
daughter.
A
self-confessed
slave, therefore,
constructed
himself
as
free and lived
as
if he
were.
Only
after
about
two
years,
because
a
paisano
from
Guatemala
saw
him married and
accused
him of
bigamy,
did
Juan abandon
Monica.
At about
age
20,
Sebastian
de
Moxica,
a
slave
born about
1665,
made the transition
to
free
mulato as provided for by his master's will
(AGNI
1702).
When Sebastian
gave
his
gene
alogy
to
the
Inquisitors
in
1702
he knew
a
few
facts about his deceased
Spanish
father,
that his
name was
Diego
de
Castaneda,
native of the
mountains of
Spain,
formerly
a
merchant
in
Sayula
(probably
with
a
small
retail
store).
Yet,
he had
no
actual
contact
with his father's side of
the
family.
His mother and
grandmother
were
both slaves
of
Domingo
Moxica,
a
merchant
in
the
pueblo
of
Cocula
(in
the
jurisdiction
of
Sayula,
now
south
central
Jalisco).
But
some
gradations
may
be noted
within this
family:
Sebastian
termed
his
grandmother
a
bozal
(with
out
doubt
to
designate
that she had been
born
in
Africa),
his mother
a
mulata,
and his
uncle
(his
mother's
brother)
a
black
(casta
negro).
His
mother and uncle
therefore,
may
have been fa
thered
by
two
different
men?one
black,
the
other
white
or
mulato.
Or,
other determinants
of
calidad,
unavailable
to
the
uncle,
may
have
graded his mother up. Sebastian himself had
been
removed
further
from his
African forebears
with
a
Spanish
father.
The
shift from slave
to
free
was
both
an
event
and
a
process,
for free blacks
had
to
act
the
part
as
well
as
make the
claim.
Substantively they
had
to
overcome
their
vileness,
without
a
doubt
the dominant
perception
of them
embed
ded
in
hispanic
culture.
Dennis N.
Valdes
(1987:193), summarizing
five
similar
cases
of
runaway slaves, observes that they seldom
achieved
significant
upward
mobility
because
they
almost
invariably
assumed the
same
jobs
that
they
had
performed
as
slaves.
Yet
doing
the
same
job
as a
slave
or a
free
person
could
make
considerable difference
in
status,
dignity,
and
quality
of life.
How else
can one
explain why
so
many
slaves
ran
away?
A
free
person
could
quit
one
job
and
move
to
another,
look for
a
lenient
em
ployer
or an
openhanded
patron,
more
easily
draw
support
from
a
community
of
plebeians,
and
perhaps
overcome
vileness. None of
this
presumes
it
common
that
escaped
slaves
made
more
than minor
jumps
within
the
categories
of
social stratification.
Most would
have
shunned
more ambitious aspirations. For one thing, in
flating
their
calidad,
which
usually
meant
claim
ing
precedence
over
peers,
would have
called
attention
to
themselves
by
creating
friction,
in
vited others
to contest
their
claims,
and
set
in
motion
a
self-policing
mechanism
over
status
(Valdes
1987:193).
An
escaped
slave
passing
as
a
free
mulato risked
an
unmasking
by
a
rival.
Multiple
Labels,
One
Person
As Chance
and
Taylor
(1977:465)
noted,
indi
viduals
commonly enough
shifted labels
to
gain
advantage.
A conventional
moment
for such
shifts
came
at
marriage
when the
calidades
of
prospective
spouses
were
often
made
to
corre
spond.
But
this is
only
one
kind of
event,
a
formal occasion
that left
a
documentary
trail.
It
is
important
to
remember
that countless
informal
incidents
also took
place
when labels
were
as
signed with no particular polemical intent.
These
nevertheless
amounted
to
on-the-spot
per
ceptions
that
in
some
way
suited
the situation
and
the
purposes
of
a
labeler.
In
1617,
for
ex
ample,
Christobal
de
Toro,
formerly
of Seville
but
in the
Indies since
about
1600,
referred
to
his
compatriot
Christobal
de
Castroverde
in the
following
way:
a mulato
although
white,
and
of
good
body,
round
face,
and
light
beard
(AGNI
1616).
The
although
here
is crucial.
It
signals that the categorization of Christobal as
This content downloaded from 148.206.159.132 on Mon, 23 Dec 2013 13:35:14 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
7/25/2019 Boyer Richard - Negotiating Calidad
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/boyer-richard-negotiating-calidad 7/11
NEGOTIATING
CALIDAD:
THE EVERYDAYSTRUGGLE
FOR STATUS
IN
MEXICO
69
mulato,
a
reference
to
his
calidad,
overrides
his
phenotype.
Reality
and
appearance,
in other
word,
did
not
coincide.
This
glossing
of
categories
happened
all the
time,
as a
few
examples
will illustrate.
In
1615,
Anton Martinez described Juan Luis as a
mulato,
slender
and
of
good
body,
and
not
very
mulato,
[with]
aquiline
face
(AGNI
1616).
In
1707,
a
mestizo
named
Teresa de la Cruz
labeled
her
husband Juan
Lorenzo
del Castillo
as
lobo
in
caste,
tending
more
to
mulato
than
to
mes
tizo
(AGNI
1707).
Little
is
at
stake
in
these
two
examples
beyond shading
the
first Juan
to
ward
a
more
European
status
and
clarifying
the
second Juan's
intermediate
category
lobo
toward
mulato-ness. Beyond that, in the second case,
the
description
notes
Juan's
shortness,
large
black
eyes,
straight
hair,
and the fact
that he has
six
fingers
on one
hand.
In another
example,
Matias
Martinez de
Torres,
a
Spanish
immigrant
who in 1663 had
been
in
New
Spain
for three
years,
placed
Sebastian
de
Loaysa
as
a mulato
bianco,
very
ladino
(AGNI
1663).
Here white
as a
gloss
on
the
category
mulato,
seems
to
come
from the
cultural
judgment
very
ladino ?meaning,
in
rough
terms,
fully integrated
into
hispanic
soci
ety.
Sebastian's
wife,
Michaela
de
San
Joseph,
was
classified
as a
mulata
with the additional
notation that
she had been
a
slave but
was now
free. She referred
to
three
of
her
four
children,
apparently
all fathered
by
Sebastian,
in racial
terms: two
as
mulatos and the other
as
lobo
(the
last
usually
implying
an
Indian
component).
Here,
however,
the labels
surely
characterize
appearance
only,
differentiating
her lobo
from
her mulatos, perhaps, by his straighthair or skin
tone.
Like
Michaela,
Sebastian's second
wife,
Tomasa,
also
bordered
on
two caste
categories.
In
1671,
when she first
appeared
before
the
Holy
Office,
the
court
identified
her
as a
mes
tiza, but,
as
elaborated
by
the
notary,
she is
a
woman
who
goes
about
dressed
as a
mestiza
The
classification
thus
derives from
dress,
an
indication that
cultural rather than
phenotypic
criteria
dominate the
assigning
of
it. Tomasa
was
able
to
push
her
cultural
persona
even
fur
ther
when
she married Sebastian
in
1659,
for
the
officiating priest
entered her
into the
register
as
Spaniard,
single,
natural
daughter
of
Diego
de
Orduna.
From such
designations,
however
briefly
noted,
it is possible to tease out some clues to identity.
On
the
whole,
however,
they
remain
too
frag
mentary
to
yield
very
solid
judgments
without
the
cross-referencing
of situations and
other
in
formation
on
the
perceiver
and the
perceived.
Their
flat matter-of-factness
may
minimize the
extreme
exaggeration
of
designations
made
in
anger
and
mainly
with
hostile
intent,
but
they
nevertheless
are
political
in the
sense
that
cat
egorizing
people
in
a
hierarchical
arrangement
was always about worth and precedence. One
would stand
on
firmer
ground
methodologically
to
examine instances of the
use
of
terminology
when
they
can
be
placed
in
more
detailed
con
texts
and have
a
dialogic
dimension
showing
the
contestation
as
well
as
the
assigning
of labels.
As
an
example,
one
may
consider the
case
of
Juan Gutierrez de
Estrada,
a
Spaniard
who
in
1600
said that the calidad of his wife Ines
had
been falsified when he
was
about
to
marry
her
(AGNI
1600).
Before the
marriage,
he
com
plained, they
told him she was a
castiza,
but
she is
only
a
mulata. The
former,
implying
Spanish-Indian
descent
in
a
ration
of three
to
one,
made
Ines
nearly
a
Spaniard.
So
why,
pre
suming
that
Juan
had observed Ines and her
demeanor,
had he failed
to
judge
for himself
whether she
was a
castiza
or
a
mulatal
Most
likely
because
Juan
and Ines
were
both
serving
a
common
master
who
patronized
and
encour
aged
the match. The
master,
to
solidify
his
household, undoubtedly inflated Ines's calidad to
approximate
Juan's.
Juan,
a
peninsular Spaniard
but
a
no-account
and
marginal figure
who had
worked
only
as a
sailor and
soldier,
accepted
this fiction in
anticipation
of
receiving
other
benefits
later.
This situation
made
for
a
rough
parity,
but
an
unstable
one
dependent
on
patron
age.
When
Juan determined the latter
too
little,
he
cast
Ines
as a
mulata
to
show that his worth
had
been
depreciated by
his wife's low
calidad.
With the
marriage
confirmed
as
beneath
him,
Juan effected
a
self-divorce
by
deserting
Ines.
This content downloaded from 148.206.159.132 on Mon, 23 Dec 2013 13:35:14 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
7/25/2019 Boyer Richard - Negotiating Calidad
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/boyer-richard-negotiating-calidad 8/11
70
HISTORICAL
ARCHAEOLOGY,
VOLUME
31
(1)
Juan
restored his
identity
fully
to
Spaniard
by
discarding
a
mulato
wife;
Marcos
Calderon
stretched his
to
Spaniard
by
denying
his
place
ment
as
mestizo
(AGNI
1751).
Marcos
can
be
seen
in
1751
(pushing
the
middle
period
here
to the
limit)
presenting
himself as a
Spaniard
when he
was
arrested
and
put
in
the
public
jail
of
Merida
as
a
suspected
bigamist.
Yet this
assessment
had
earlier
been
challenged.
An in
strumental
witness
to
Marcos's
second
marriage,
don
Francisco
Lopez
Sarmiento,
described
Marcos
as a
man of
average
height,
broad
shouldered,
with the
coloration
of
a
mestizo,
black hair like
an
Indian,
a narrow
face,
about
40,
and
I
don't
take him
for
a
Spaniard.
The
statement deflates Marcos more emphatically
than it
might
at
first
appear,
associating
him
both with Indians
(hair)
and
mestizos
(skin
col
oration).
And,
to
spell
out
such
inferences
even
more
directly,
don
Francisco
concludes that such
characteristics
do
not
amount to
being
a
Span
iard. A
second
witness,
don
Diego
de la Cruz
Rosado,
captain
of the
militia in
Espita
(Hondu
ras),
also
struckMarcos from
the
category
Span
iard because
he had black
hair like
an
Indian
and
regarded
neitherMarcos
nor
Andrea
Novelo,
his second
wife,
as
Spaniards.
Don
Diego's
mention of
Andrea's
non-Spanish
status
in
conjunction
with
Marcos's adds
to
judgments
based
on
physical
appearance.
It
pre
sumes
that like married
like,
and that
categories
of
spouses
(especially
for
purposes
of
registration
in
parish
records)
matched.
That Andrea failed
to
rank
as a
Spaniard helped
confirm
Marcos's
exclusion
as
well.
In
this
way,
then,
a
criterion
of calidad
played
some
part
in
don
Diego's
ranking ofMarcos.
That neither don
Diego
nor
don Francisco
at
tempted
to
give
Marcos
a
precise
racial label
reveals that this mattered little
to
them. What
did
matter
was
that he
was
not;
for the
rest,
he
could
remain
amorphously
with
the
mestizos.
This fits
with
Edward
Said's
(1978:54)
observa
tion that
societies tend to
derive their
identities
negatively.
Hispanic
society
of
early
modern
times,
obsessed with
proving lineages
untainted
by Jewish, Moorish, African, or Indian descent,
fits
this ethos.
Don Francisco and don
Diego,
unworried about
slight
shiftswithin
the
plebeian
rankings
of
the social
order?notwithstanding
the
importance
of
minor
shifts
to
other
plebeians,
firmly
excluded
Juan
from
their
own
category
of
Spaniards.
From
Indian
to
Mestizo
In
the
historical
literature
one
routinely
sees
statements
such
as
the
following:
the demo
graphic
crisis
of
1726-1727
[in
the
Guadalajara
region].
.
.drove
Indians in
the north
to
cities
and
haciendas,
thus,
in
some
cases,
acculturating
them
away
from
the
Indian
village
towards
the
non-Indian
population
(MacLeod
1983:43).
It
might be well, however, to think further about
the
meaning
of
a
phrase
such
as
acculturating
them
away.
It
implies
a
kind of
environmen
tal
determinism in
the
shaping
of
culture,
here
formulated
as a
polarity:
on
the
one
hand the
Indian
village,
on
the
other,
the
Spanish city
or
hacienda. But
MacLeod
(1983)
qualifies
this
process
of
acculturation
by
saying
that it
hap
pens
in
some
cases.
Although
he
does
not
specify
which
cases,
the notion
that
people
had
several
identities,
not
a
single
fixed
one,
and the
fact
that
individuals
chose and
shifted identities
situationally
can
help
to
explore
the
question.
One
may
consider,
for
example,
an
instance of
an
Indian
becoming
a
mestizo
(AGNI
1706).
His
name was
Matias
Cortes,
and
we
learn
about
him
because,
in
mid-career
as a
mestizo,
he
hastily
backtracked and
declared himself In
dian
to
escape
the
jurisdiction
of the
Holy
Of
fice of the
Inquisition.
The
Holy
Office,
there
fore,
had
to
decide:
was
he
mestizo
(and
under
its jurisdiction) or Indian (and not under it)?
His
history
of
representing
himself
as
ladino,
officials
thought,
put
the burden of
proof
on
him
to
establish that he
was
not
a
mestizo.
At first
Matias asked them
to
overlook
superficial
as
pects
of
his
appearance.
Although
in his de
meanor
(en
el
porte
de
su
persona),
he testified
in
1706,
he has been considered
a
mestizo,
he
is
an
Indian
and he contracted
his
second
mar
riage
as an
Indian. Thus
Matias
distinguishes
between appearance and reality, between
a con
structed
identity
and
an
inherent
one.
In the end
This content downloaded from 148.206.159.132 on Mon, 23 Dec 2013 13:35:14 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
7/25/2019 Boyer Richard - Negotiating Calidad
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/boyer-richard-negotiating-calidad 9/11
NEGOTIATING
CALIDAD:
THE
EVERYDAY STRUGGLE
FOR
STATUS
INMEXICO
71
the
Holy
Office
got
him
to
admit
that
his
father
was a
mestizo,
yet
in
spite
of
this,
Matias
clung
to
his
Indian
identity
by insisting
that
while
he
had
always
gone
about
as
a
mestizo
in
reality
he is
not
because
his mother
is Indian
(AGNI
1706).
The
argument,
held
so
tenaciously,
can
hardly
surprise;
it
is
exactly
the
self
presentation
one
would
expect
given
his situation.
More
impor
tantly
for
our
purposes,
it demonstrates
that
Matias
could
have
two
identities
at
once.
At
least
in this
opportunistic
way,
for
without
the
accident
of
an
Inquisitorial
proceeding,
the
direction
of
Matias's
life,
as a
young
man
living
in
Mexico
City
and
practicing
a
trade,
had been
to become mestizo. That process, moreover, can
be followed
from
testimony
in Matias's file.
Born
in
1665,
Matias
declared
that
his
parents
and
grandparents
were
Indians,
on
his
mother's
side
from
Tacuba,
on
his
father's
side
from
Toluca.
He
grew
up
in
Toluca,
learned
to
read
but
not
to
write,
and
at
age
eight
went
to
Mexico
City
to
live
with
his
padrino
of
confir
mation,
Pedro
Lopez
Guerrero,
a
lawyer.
As
a
servant
in Mexico
City
and
then
a
lacemaker
(bordador),
Matias
shed his Indianness
and took
on
the
ways
of
the
Hispanic
world.
Teresa
Martinez
observed
this
transition.
She,
a
Spaniard,
wife
of the
weaver
Cleto
Marzelino,
and
the
madrina
of
Matias's
marriage,
knew
Matias
a
little
as a
neighbor
in the
area
of
Alameda,
and then
at
closer
range,
when her
husband
Cleto hired
Matias
to
make
some
lace
for
a
dress,
and he
worked
in
her
house.
Here
is
how
he described
him: Matias
is
more
Indian
than
mestizo
although
he
spoke
fluent
Spanish.
When she first knew him he went around in
coarse
cotton
(mantas)
and
barefoot
like
the
other
Indians;
but
after
he
became
a
lacemaker
he
dressed
in
a
cape
(capote)
and
wore
shoes
and
stockings
as
mestizos
do. Teresa's
husband
Cleto
remembered Matias
and his
betrothed
wife
Hypolita
as
reputed
to
be Indians
and
as
such
they
married. Elsewhere he
calls
Hypolita
a
mestizo-ed
Indian,
although
others
consistently
called
her
mestizo or,
as
in Teresa's
case,
white
mestiza.
Matias,
however,
termed
Hypolita
castiza,
adding
that she
is
tall
and
with
a
fair
complexion,
black
eyes,
[and
was
the]
daughter
of
Pedro
de
Alcantaro,
castizo,
master
shoe
maker
(AGNI
1706).
This
optimistic
version of his wife's calidad
helped
Matias
solidify
his
own
place
in
Hispanic
society.
That
he did
so
mattered
little
to
obser
vant
Spaniards
such
as
Cleto and
Teresa, who,
in
conceding
his calidad
as
mestizo,
had
nothing
to
lose.
They
nevertheless
retained
a
clear
awareness
it
was a
construct. For
its
part,
the
Inquisition
strictly
used
the
criterion
of
biologi
cal
descent,
rejecting
Matias's
plea
for
Indian
status
because
of
his
mestizo
father.
They
there
fore tried and punished him for bigamy.
The
Self
as a
Social and
Individual
Construct
Although
the evidence
is
spotty,
students
can
find
ways
to
read
the
documentary
record
to
see
people
struggling
for
position
and
preference.
Their
behaviors,
existential
in
the
root
sense
of
that
term,
to
stand
out,
were
profoundly
social
in
that
one
might only
stand
out
with
reference
to
another.
The
complex
differs
little
from
be
haviors
associated
with
hidalgma:
the
drive
to
be
a
somebody.
Put
in
slightly
different
terms,
one
might
view the
drama
of
identity
in
daily
life
as,
in
Stephen
Greenblatt's
(1980:159)
phrase,
a
schema
of
communication.
By
this he
seems
to
mean
that
relative
status
among
individuals,
although
roughly agreed
on,
was
not
fixed
abso
lutely. People
had
to
be
ever
vigilant:
they
de
fended
against
slights
and
insults,
and
they
at
tacked
to
claim
precedence.
As
dependent
on
situations and a social context, then, identity
played
out
as a
drama
of
daily
existence,
espe
cially
for
plebeians
who
enjoyed
no
automatic
deference
from their
peers,
no
unassailable
place
in
the social
landscape,
as can
be
documented
in
criminal
as
well
as
in
Inquisition
records.
As
for
the
former,
Pablo
Escalante
(1990),
William
Taylor
(1979),
Cheryl
Martin
(1990),
and
John
Chasteen
(1990)
have
shown
what
can
be
ac
complished
by
looking closely
at
the
exact
This content downloaded from 148.206.159.132 on Mon, 23 Dec 2013 13:35:14 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
7/25/2019 Boyer Richard - Negotiating Calidad
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/boyer-richard-negotiating-calidad 10/11
72
HISTORICAL
ARCHAEOLOGY,
VOLUME
31
(1)
words
attributed
to
one
or
another
party
in
the
exchange
of
insults
that
sometimes
led
to
assault
and
homicide.
Two
final
observations
conclude
this
essay.
First,
it is
important
that
the
verbal
currency
of
insults is so often sexual in nature.
Why
this is
so
has
to
do with
order
and
ordering.
Order
was
the
goal.
Householders
and
communities
wanted,
above
all,
to
live
a
settled
and
predict
able
existence.
Metonymically,
the
principle
that
men
controlled
women,
should
be
seen as
equivalent
to
order
itself. In
application,
a man
who
failed
to
protect
or
control
the
sexuality
of
wives and
daughters
had
no
claim
to
an
honor
able
place
in
society.
Thus,
to
call
a
man
cornudo or cabron (cuckold) defamed him in an
essential
way.
And in
a
different
way,
to
call
a
woman
puta
or
soltera
rather
than
doncella
(Lavrin
[1993]:2-5),
did the
same,
for
it
re
moved
her,
together
with
the
man
who
should
have
protected
her from
such
depreciation,
from
the
standards
of
orderly
respectability.
Women
who
called
each other
puta
did
so
within
the
logic
of
male
definitions
of
order
in
conflating
illicit
sexuality
and
dishonor. These
insults
struck with
so
much
force because
they
attacked
individuals,
not
as
if
they
were
isolated
entities,
but
as
inextricably
embedded
in
a
social
context.
Reputation
mattered
more
than
an
imagined
but
hidden
inner
integrity.
Given the
above?and this is
the
second
ob
servation?one
can
explain
why
insults
spoken
publicly,
a
kind of
theater
of
contested
identity,
exaggerated
their force
tenfold.
They
amounted
to
a
restatement
or
reconstruction of
another
that if
left
uncontested
stood
as
confirmed.
If
order was the goal, ordering was a process, an
everyday
one
dramatizing
the
degree
to
which
identity
was
reputational, something
prone
to
attack
and
necessary
to
defend.
A final
example
oversteps
the
boundaries of
time
and
place
(but
not
of
mentality)
marked
out
for this
essay.
Following
an
account
by
John
Charles
Chasteen
(1990:48),
one
may
recall the
case
of
Jose,
a
young
Indian
boy
who
in
1829
was
drinking
with his
employer
in
a
rural
pulperia near Brazil's southern frontier.Without
apparent
warning
Jose
became
the
target
of his
master's
verbal
and
physical
abuse
in
the
form
of
repeated
blows
with
the
flat of
a
sword and
loud
accusations
that
he had
been
too
rough
with
a
horse
he had
been
ordered
to
break.
At
a
certain
point
the
boy
refused
to
take
this
treat
ment
any
longer. Drawing
his
knife,
he stabbed
his
master
in
the
heart and
killed
him.
The
incident
reflects
Jose's
sense
of
his
place
in
that
fragment
of
the
social
order
present
in
the
pulperia.
True,
he
was an
Indian
and
a
ple
beian
laborer,
but he
was no
less
than
a
man
among
men.
He
affirmed
this,
stopping
treat
ment
that
implied
that he
was
not,
with
his
deadly
knife
thrust,
clearly
drawing
the
line
at
being,
in
Chasteen's
(1990:48,
55)
words,
whipped like a dog in a public place. The
public
context
for
this
drama
demonstrates
once
again
that
even
tough
identity
attaches
to
indi
viduals;
it
was
maintained,
adjusted,
and de
fended
with
reference
to
society.
In
a
sense,
theatrics
such
as
the
knifing
inci
dent
can
be viewed
as
unimportant,
trivial,
and
meaningless
in
the
big
picture.
After
all,
slight
shifts
within
plebeian
rankings
seem
insignificant
now,
for
none
of this
behavior
changed
the
sys
tematic
deprivations
and
brutishness of
plebeian
existence.
Moreover,
with
hindsight
one
also
knows that
the basis
for the
middle-period
strati
fication
would
change
as
commercial
capitalism
reshuffled the
content
of
the
old labels.
Rodney
Anderson
(1988:241),
following
this
tone
of
thought,
views
Indians,
castas,
and
poor
Span
iards in
Guadalajara
as
increasingly
lumped
to
gether
as
a
proletariat
by
1821. He asks
why
it
should
therefore
matter
whether this
constituted
a
move
up
for
castas
or
one
down
for
Span
iards? Itmatters, this essay suggests, because it
mattered
to
people
at
the time.
They
saw
them
selves
as
different
and
as
agents,
even
in
a
world
changing rapidly
around
them. How
they
adapted
and
adjusted
to
capitalism
may
also
show
that
they
adapted
and
adjusted capitalism
itself.
Certainly
they
did
not
cease
to
adapt
and
adjust
to
each
other,
to
try
to
stand
out,
to
seek
order,
and
to
engage
in
ordering.
If
their
at
tempts
to
cling
to
old
distinctions based
on ra
cial labels seems anachronistic, a kind of rem
nant
of
the
soon-to-be-displaced
old
order,
that
This content downloaded from 148.206.159.132 on Mon, 23 Dec 2013 13:35:14 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
7/25/2019 Boyer Richard - Negotiating Calidad
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/boyer-richard-negotiating-calidad 11/11
NEGOTIATING
CALIDAD: THE EVERYDAY
STRUGGLE FOR
STATUS
IN
MEXICO
73
view
seems
more
the
teleological
overlay
of
hindsight
that
configures
what
happened
in
the
past
as
what had
to
happen.
Although
the evidence is
scattered
and
piece
meal,
the
documentary
record
can
be
read
to
view the
regime
de castas as a discursive re
source as
much
as
a
system.
People
jockeyed
for
position
and
preference
as
they
engaged
in
a
kind
of self
fashioning
(Greenblatt
1980;
Davis
1983,
1988:589).
More
of
this
posturing
took
place
in
the
plebeian
ranks
than
one
might
have
thought.
And if
social
stratification
in
the 17th
century
can
stand
metaphorically
for
the middle
period
as a
whole,
it
suggests
that
the time
has
come
to
test
systemic
views
against
the
day-to
day transactions of ordinary folk. One should
not
prejudge
these
as
unimportant
because
they
did
little
to
change
their
overall
condition
as
a
people
ruled
by
a
small
elite whose
control
stemmed
from
a
kind
of
performative,
not
sub
stantive,
paternalism
contrived,
to
use
E.
P.
Thompson's
(1993:47)
words,
to
receive
a
re
turn
in
deference
quite
disproportionate
to
the
outlay.
It is not
possible,
of course, to overturn the
conventional
periodization
of
the
colonial
pe
riod
but it is
important
to
remember
that it
has
imposed
a
kind
of
rhetorical
determinism
on
our
view of
the
17th
century.
Students
would
there
fore
do
well
not to
allow it
to
overdetermine
what
they
look
for
(and
therefore
find)
in
the
documentary
record.
The
conveniences
of
sys
temic
overlays
must
be
balanced
with
the
more
disparate
and
untidy
words and
behaviors
of
contemporaries whose horizons were limited and
open
ended.
The
study
of
the
17th
century
shows
that
the
two
approaches
complement
one
another.