Negotiating Calidad: The Everyday Struggle for Status in Mexico Author(s): Richard Boyer Source: Historical Archaeology, Vol.

31, No. 1, Diversity and Social Identity in Colonial Spanish America: Native American, African, and Hispanic Communities during the Middle Period (1997), pp. 64-73 Published by: Society for Historical Archaeology Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25616518 . Accessed: 23/06/2011 12:28
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64

HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY, VOLUME 31 (1)

RICHARD BOYER

Everyday Struggle forStatus Mexico

Introduction

Calidad: The Negotiating

in

not a single one. In doing this they were not to sketch "reality" accurately but were trying 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 theywere rela tive to the beholder. In this way, one's defini The historical literature mainly on 17th-century tion of another was always a kind of self-defi has stressed an apparent regularity of Mexico life and institutional routines as backdrop for nition. Self, in terms of the other, should there fore be viewed as negotiated, an impromptu, discussions of the period (Boyer 1977:457^59). have scholars noticed this as perhaps not even fully conscious, stocktaking of Seldom, however, one's status using the shorthand of racial labels. a rhetorical device. Given the colonial period, the 17th century stands in themiddle, bracketed These, more broadly as indicators of calidad, on one side by invasion, conquest, and devasta pulled together a composite judgment having to tion and on the other by 18th-century structural do with lineage, wealth, honor, and manliness? or for women, se associated virtuousness with changes in production, commerce, administration, and geopolitics. In relative terms, therefore, the clusion and controlled sexuality?work, and pa 17th century, "if not static," looks like a long tronage links. duree of slow incremental change, and mostly of Although historians have known this for a existence. long time, this article stresses it in the strongest orderly, predictable terms for our purposes here: individuals, to a And what could be more stable in thismiddle period
castas,

than the well-entrenched

an apparent "system"

regimen de
within which

people were graded hierarchically by racial or ethnic criteria? Over time, most scholars agree, the basis for status inMexico 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 view standard legal and customary vocabu get to that solid ground, the preceding period may has sometimes been skipped over as mere pre lary used to define or contest definitions of cursor to the more rational system of social or people, as more a discursive resource than re flective of a self-evident structure of society. dering, or, because the ordering categories were Some references to the historical literature begin applied in unpredictable ways, as an irrational this essay which then proceeds with a discussion system of racial determinism, but one difficult to of categorizing processes taken from Inquisition decipher. This essay assumes the continuing need to records of Mexico's middle period. think about caste, and nonclass criteria, as ma and the Historians: System or jor determinants of identity and status in the Terminology Discourse? It views the use of caste period before 1800.
terms, however, as situational more than sys

greater degree than normally assumed, arranged their own identities. How they did so is diffi cult to document, but hints of itmay be inferred from a close reading of some archival records that document commonplace exchanges and in teractions in colonial Mexico. In particular, this relies on bigamy files compiled by the essay In them, one Holy Office of the Inquisition.

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, temic.
Historical Permission 1997, 31(l):64-72. Archaeology, to reprint required.

But first the discursive resources. As is well came known, social identity in colonial Mexico as a composite judgment. It drew on legal (tributaryversus non-tributary?in effect a plebe

MEXICO NEGOTIATINGCALIDAD: THE EVERYDAYSTRUGGLE FOR STATUS IN 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

65

function and phenotype. If castas served as tizo,mulato, indio) placed people, therefore, they mostly unskilled workers (obreros), Euro-mesti stood for more than race. In this they were a zos served as skilled artisans who escaped casta kind of "inclusive impression reflecting one's identification and, to varying degrees, shaded strata of Europeans. into the white The reputation as a whole," or one's calidad (McCaa conflation of racial and functional categories thus 1984:477). Nuances of such labeling are there fore all themore difficult to decipher now. Just subsumes racial within functional racial catego as the sum of a small number can be the prod ries. It is almost a class analysis under the ru uct of many different combinations of numbers, bric of culture, the latter not concerned with lan so variables deciding calidad came together in guage, ethnic consciousness, or tradition, organiz different combinations to equal, for example, the ing beliefs, but with the castas' permanent as judgment mulato. Should students therefore de cription as an underclass with reference to white spair of sorting out what theymeant? 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
society.

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

label itself. Plebeians and others in colonial society were making complex and impromptu gotiability of status. Sherburne F. Cook and placements of each other, not as disinterested Woodrow Borah (1971-1979, 2:189-190) recog observers, but to flatter patrons and diminish ri nized the instability of racial categories-warning vals. This was an ordinary part of daily life, readers that racial designations mean littlemore and the labels the currency of an everyday Hob than "ranges of intergrading types,"-."predominant besian discourse of actors jockeying for position but not rigidly distinct racial character"-even as in the social struggle. they reified them into main types as they con these judgments are difficult to sort Because structed aggregate population profiles. The point out now, scholars have them to a "sys reduced matters because the terms constitute reality as
tem"-concentrating and on types rather than nuance, variation,

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

(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

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, Seed Patricia

apparent

contradiction

in usage.

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 in the categories Indian pattern of "coalescence" and mulatto (Brading and Wu In fact 1973:9). the pattern may show something quite different: that racial categories were assigned not dispas sionately to describe place them. people but politically to

much as they reflect it. The assigning of them, as noted above, came as a political rather than a descriptive process. Nevertheless historians

66 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

HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY, VOLUME 31 (1)

city, "there was no one 'correct'

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

se

reputational, subjective aspects of social identity. In this way the "looseness" of the categories, togetherwith the concern that theywere of "lim ited value for structural analysis," can be set aside in order to try to understand what they
meant as "a

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

18th-century

This temporary mind" (McAlister 1963:356). 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

contemporary

reality.

. .in the

con

place themselves and to contest their placements by others. Those usages can provide a number of glosses on the general problem of identity as one became of classes rather castes. than it relates to vocabularies of stratification. It Chance and Taylor (1977:485-486) say that this raises the possibility that so-called "loose" and "had clearly passed the 'incipient' stage by apparently contradictory uses of the categories 1792." Thus they differwith Lyle McAlister on make political if not descriptive sense as people the extent and timing of class stratification by placed each other in situations of everyday life. the late 18th century. McAlister (1963:362-363) thought "economic classes" a merely "incipient Racial Terms as a Discursive Resource situation" thatwould reach a more fully realized came more straightforwardlyeconomic as society form after the colonial period (author's empha
sis).

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

Studies of stratification acknowledge to some degree an unresolved problem: the degree to

which "outside observer"

McAlister's

point-of-view,

to use

term, should override (1963:362) "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 remind us in their study of a late (1977:464)

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

wieldy order of the world" (Morse 1964:134), but also, in our terms, the result of ordinary people in everyday life pushing, expanding, and

The nipulate (Chance and Taylor 1979:437). 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

NEGOTIATINGCALIDAD: THE EVERYDAYSTRUGGLE FOR STATUS IN MEXICO 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 former were 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

67

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

"beasts of burden" (Aguirre Beltran 1946:173). Chance and Taylor (1977:463), for example, cite examples of language that equate colloquial mulato with "inferior tribute payer or a danger
ous, provocative person." Mulato slaves, as

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

named Juan Lorenzo immediately began to pass as a "free mulatoT As a slave he had been married to a slave; as a freeman, 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

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

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 theMexican slave market than blacks (Valdes That blacks were presumed to 1987:177-178). 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 thereforebegged him to take her away (Archive General de la Nation, Inquisition The comment presumes that [AGNI] 1581). because she was not black, the beast-of-burden treatmentwas inappropriate, unjust, and reason
to run In away. to Afro-mestizos, Euro-mestizos contrast

mestizos and Euro-mestizos to draw ever closer to full European status. The statement assumes thatmulatos 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

to pass

as Euro

(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

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

68 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

HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY, VOLUME 31 (1)

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 a daughter. A self-confessed slave, therefore, ran away? A free person could quit one job and move to another, look for a lenient em constructed himself as free and lived as if he were. after about two years, because a Only ployer or an openhanded patron, more easily saw him married and from Guatemala draw support from a community of plebeians, paisano him of bigamy, did Juan abandon and perhaps overcome vileness. None of this accused Monica. presumes it common that escaped slaves made At about age 20, Sebastian de Moxica, a slave more thanminor jumps within the categories of social stratification. Most would have shunned born about 1665, made the transition to "free more ambitious aspirations. For one thing, in as provided for by his master's will mulato" 1702). When Sebastian gave his gene to the Inquisitors in 1702 he knew a few alogy 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 a merchant in both slaves of Domingo Moxica, (AGNI 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 over status motion a self-policing mechanism (Valdes 1987:193). An escaped slave passing as a "free" mulato risked an unmasking by a rival. Multiple Labels, One Person

the pueblo of Cocula (in the jurisdiction of now south central Jalisco). But some Sayula, 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 His mother's brother) a black (casta negro). mother and uncle therefore,may have been fa thered by two different men?one black, the other white or mulato. Or, other determinants of to the uncle, may have calidad, unavailable 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 Dennis N. Valdes ded in hispanic culture. (1987:193), summarizing five similar cases of that they "seldom runaway slaves, observes

intent. signed with no particular polemical to on-the-spot per These nevertheless amounted ceptions that in some way suited the situation and the purposes of a labeler. In 1617, for ex

As Chance and Taylor (1977:465) noted, indi viduals commonly enough shifted labels to gain A conventional moment for such advantage. 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

ample, Christobal de Toro, formerly of Seville but in the Indies since about 1600, referred to his compatriot Christobal de Castroverde in the "a mulato although white, and following way: of good body, round face, and light beard" (AGNI 1616). The "although" here is crucial. It signals that the categorization of Christobal as

MEXICO NEGOTIATINGCALIDAD: THE EVERYDAYSTRUGGLE FOR STATUS IN mulato, a reference to his calidad, overrides his in other Reality and appearance, phenotype. word, did not coincide. This glossing of categories happened all the time, as a few examples will illustrate. In 1615, described Juan Luis as "a Anton Martinez mulato, slender and of good body, and not very In mulato, [with] aquiline face" (AGNI 1616). a mestizo named Teresa de la Cruz labeled 1707, her husband Juan Lorenzo del Castillo as "lobo in caste, tending more to mulato than to mes

69

therwhen 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 Little is at stake in these extreme exaggeration of designations made in tizo" (AGNI 1707). two examples beyond shading the first Juan to anger and mainly with hostile intent, but they ward a more European status and clarifying the nevertheless are political in the sense that cat second Juan's intermediate category lobo toward egorizing people in a hierarchical arrangement was always about worth and precedence. One mulato-ness. case, that, in the second Beyond the description notes Juan's shortness, large would stand on firmer ground methodologically to examine instances of the use of terminology black eyes, straighthair, and the fact that he has when they can be placed in more detailed con six fingers on one hand. de Matias Martinez In another example, a Spanish immigrant who in 1663 had Torres, 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 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

in cultural judgment "very ladino"?meaning, into hispanic soci rough terms, fully integrated 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).

1600 said that the calidad of his wife Ines had been falsified when he was about to marry her Before the marriage, he com (AGNI 1600). told him she was a castiza, but plained, "they

she is only a mulata." The former, implying descent in a ration of three to Spanish-Indian 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
she was a castiza or a mulatal Most

whether

Here,

however, the labels surely characterize appearance only, differentiating her lobo from her mulatos, perhaps, by his straighthair or skin
tone.

likely because
a common

Juan and Ines were both serving

who patronized and encour

master

The master, to solidify his aged household, undoubtedly inflated Ines's calidad to the match. 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
approximate Juan's. Juan, a peninsular Spaniard

Sebastian's second wife, Michaela, 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" 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 The

Like

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.

70 Juan restored his identity fully to Spaniard by Calderon discarding a mulato wife; Marcos 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 as a suspected bigamist. Yet this of Merida assessment had earlier been challenged.
strumental witness to Marcos's second

HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY, VOLUME 31 (1)

importance of minor shifts to other plebeians, firmly excluded Juan from their own category of
Spaniards.

unworried about slight shiftswithin the plebeian rankings of the social order?notwithstanding the

From Indian toMestizo In the historical literature one routinely sees statements such as the following: "the demo [in the Guadalajara graphic crisis of 1726-1727 . .drove Indians in the north to cities region]. and haciendas, thus, in some cases, acculturating

An

in

don Francisco described Sarmiento, Lopez as a "man of average height, broad Marcos 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

marriage,

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 themilitia 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,

them away from the Indian village towards the non-Indian population" (MacLeod It 1983:43). be well, however, to think further about might 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

his second wife, as Spaniards. Don Diego's mention of Andrea's non-Spanish status in conjunction with Marcos's adds to It pre judgments based on physical appearance. 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 In this way, then, a criterion exclusion as well. of calidad played some part in don Diego's nor don Francisco at a precise racial label reveals that this mattered little to them. What did matter was that he was not; for the rest, he ranking of Marcos. That neither don Diego tempted to give Marcos

hacienda. But MacLeod (1983) qualifies this process of acculturation by saying that it hap pens "in some cases." Although he does not which cases, the notion that people had specify 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).
name him was Matias Cortes, in mid-career and as we learn about because, a mestizo,

His

could remain amorphously with the mestizos. pects of his appearance. "Although in his de meanor (en el porte de su persona)," he testified This fits with Edward Said's (1978:54) observa tion that societies tend "to derive their identities in 1706, "he has been considered a mestizo, he is an Indian and he contracted his second mar negatively." Hispanic society of early modern times, obsessed with proving lineages untainted riage as an Indian." Thus Matias distinguishes a con between and between appearance reality, by Jewish, Moorish, African, or Indian descent, structed identity and an inherent one. In the end fits this ethos. Don Francisco and don Diego,

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

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,

MEXICO NEGOTIATINGCALIDAD: THE EVERYDAYSTRUGGLE FOR STATUS IN

71

termed the Holy Office got him to admit that his father mestiza." Matias, however, Hypolita Matias clung was a mestizo, yet in spite of this, castiza, adding that she is "tall and with a fair to his Indian identity by insisting thatwhile he complexion, black eyes, [and was the] daughter castizo, master shoe had "always gone about as a mestizo in reality of Pedro de Alcantaro, maker" (AGNI 1706). he is not because his mother is Indian" (AGNI This optimistic version of his wife's calidad 1706). The argument, held so tenaciously, can hardly helped Matias solidify his own place in Hispanic society. That he did so mattered little to obser surprise; it is exactly the self presentation one vant Spaniards such as Cleto and Teresa, who, would expect given his situation. More impor as mestizo, had nothing tantly for our purposes, it demonstrates that in conceding his calidad to lose. Matias could "have" two identities at once. At They nevertheless retained a clear

least in this opportunistic way, for without the "accident" of an Inquisitorial proceeding, the direction of Matias's life, as a young man living inMexico City and practicing a trade, had been
to become mestizo. That process, moreover, can

awareness

it was

construct.

For

its part,

the

Mexico

Teresa Martinez observed this transition. She, a Spaniard, wife of the weaver Cleto Marzelino, and the madrina of Matias's marriage, knew a little as a neighbor in the area of Matias
Alameda, and then at closer range, when her

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.

file. be followed from testimony in Matias's 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

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

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 Elsewhere he calls Hypolita a they married."

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 As dependent on tacked to claim precedence.

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

"mestizo-ed Indian," although others consistently called her mestizo or, as in Teresa's case, "white

for the former, Pablo Escalante (1990), William Taylor (1979), Cheryl Martin (1990), and John Chasteen (1990) have shown what can be ac by looking closely at the exact complished

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

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HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY, VOLUME 31 (1)

soltera rather than doncella again that even tough identity attaches to indi did the same, for it re (Lavrin [1993]:2-5), viduals; it was maintained, adjusted, and de moved her, together with the man who should fended with reference to society. have protected her from such depreciation, from In a sense, theatrics such as the knifing inci the standards of orderly respectability. Women dent can be viewed as unimportant, trivial, and who called each other puta did so within the meaningless in the big picture. After all, slight shiftswithin plebeian rankings seem insignificant logic of male definitions of order in conflating illicit sexuality and dishonor. These insults now, for none of this behavior changed the sys struckwith so much force because they attacked tematic deprivations and brutishness of plebeian individuals, not as if they were isolated entities, existence. Moreover, with hindsight one also but as inextricably embedded in a social context. knows that the basis for themiddle-period strati fication would change as commercial capitalism Reputation mattered more than an imagined but hidden inner integrity. reshuffled the content of the old labels. Rodney Given the above?and this is the second ob Anderson (1988:241), following this tone of can explain why insults spoken servation?one thought, views Indians, castas, and poor Span as increasingly lumped to publicly, a kind of theater of contested identity, iards in Guadalajara as a proletariat by 1821. He asks why it their force tenfold. They amounted exaggerated gether or reconstruction to a "restatement" of another should thereforematter whether this constituted that if left uncontested stood as confirmed. If a move up for castas or one down for Span order was the goal, ordering was a process, an iards? It matters, this essay suggests, because it mattered to people at the time. They saw them everyday one dramatizing the degree to which "identity" was reputational, something prone to selves as different and as agents, even in a attack and necessary to defend. world changing rapidly around them. How they A final example oversteps the boundaries of adapted and adjusted to capitalism may also time and place (but not of mentality) marked out show that they adapted and adjusted capitalism for this essay. Following an account by John itself. Certainly they did not cease to adapt and one may recall the adjust to each other, to try to stand out, to seek Charles Chasteen (1990:48), case of Jose, a young Indian boy who in 1829 If their at order, and to engage in ordering. was drinking with his employer in a rural tempts to cling to old distinctions based on ra cial labels seems anachronistic, a kind of rem pulperia near Brazil's southern frontier. Without a woman puta or

attributed to one or another party in the master's verbal and physical abuse in the form of repeated blows with the flat of a sword and exchange of insults that sometimes led to assault and homicide. loud accusations that he had been too rough Two final observations conclude this essay. with a horse he had been ordered to break. At a certain point the boy refused to take this treat First, it is important that the verbal currency of insults is so often sexual in nature. Why this is ment any longer. Drawing his knife, he stabbed so has to do with order and ordering. Order his master in the heart and killed him. was the goal. Householders and communities The incident reflects Jose's sense of his place in that fragment of the social order present in wanted, above all, to live a settled and predict able existence. Metonymically, the principle that the pulperia. True, he was an Indian and a ple men controlled women, should be seen as beian laborer, but he was no less than a man equivalent to order itself. In application, a man among men. He affirmed this, stopping treat who failed to protect or control the sexuality of ment that implied that he was not, with his wives and daughters had no claim to an honor deadly knife thrust, clearly drawing the line at able place in society. Thus, to call a man (1990:48, 55) words, being, in Chasteen's cornudo or cabron (cuckold) defamed him in an The "whipped like a dog in a public place." essential way. And in a different way, to call public context for this drama demonstrates once

apparent warning Jose became

the target of his

nant of the soon-to-be-displaced

old order, that

NEGOTIATINGCALIDAD: THE EVERYDAY STRUGGLE FOR STATUS IN MEXICO view seems more

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the teleological overlay of stemmed from a kind of performative, not sub that configures what happened in the stantive, paternalism contrived, to use E. P. hindsight past as what had to happen. (1993:47) words, "to receive a re Thompson's turn in deference quite disproportionate to the the evidence is scattered and piece Although meal, the documentary record can be read to outlay." view the regime de castas as a discursive re It is not possible, of course, to overturn the source as much as a "system." People jockeyed conventional periodization of "the colonial pe for position and preference as they engaged in a riod" but it is important to remember that it has kind of "self fashioning" (Greenblatt 1980; Davis imposed a kind of rhetorical determinism on our of this posturing took view of the 17th century. Students would there More 1983, 1988:589). fore do well not to allow it to overdetermine place in the plebeian ranks than one might have And if social stratification in the 17th what they look for (and therefore find) in the thought. century can stand metaphorically for themiddle documentary record. The conveniences of sys as a whole, it suggests that the time has temic overlays must be balanced with the more period come to test systemic views against the day-to disparate and untidy words and behaviors of transactions of ordinary folk. One should day contemporaries whose horizons were limited and not prejudge these as unimportant because they open ended. The study of the 17th century did little to change their overall condition as a shows that the two approaches complement one another. people ruled by a small elite whose control