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Chapter 4 • Political Transformations, 1450–1750 215

and distinct from Spain itself and deserving of a large measure of self-government.
Therefore, they chafed under the heavy bureaucratic restrictions imposed by the
Crown. “I obey but I do not enforce” was a slogan that reflected local authorities’
®
resistance to orders from Spain. AP
But the Spanish minority, never more than 20 percent of the population, was itself CLAIMS AND EVIDENCE
a divided community. Descendants of the original conquistadores sought to protect IN SOURCES
their privileges against immigrant newcomers; Spaniards born in the Americas (creoles) In what ways would the
husband and wife shown
resented the pretensions to superiority of those born in Spain (peninsulares); land- in this painting have
owning Spaniards felt threatened by the growing wealth of commercial and mercan- both benefited from their
tile groups practicing less prestigious occupations. Spanish missionaries and church marriage? What
evidence in the painting
authorities were often sharply critical of how these settlers treated native peoples. supports your argument?
While Spanish women shared the racial priv-
ileges of their husbands, they were clearly sub-
ordinate in gender terms, unable to hold public
office and viewed as weak and in need of male
protection. But they were also regarded as the
“bearers of civilization,” and through their capac-
ity to produce legitimate children, they were the
essential link for transmitting male wealth, honor,
and status to future generations. This required
strict control of their sexuality and a continuation
of the Iberian obsession with “purity of blood.”
In Spain, that concern had focused on potential
liaisons with Jews and Muslims; in the colonies,
the alleged threat to female virtue derived from
Native American and African men.
From a male viewpoint, the problem with
Spanish women was that there were very few
of them. This demographic fact led to the most
distinctive feature of these new colonial societ-
ies in Mexico and Peru — the emergence of a
mestizo (mehs-TEE-zoh), or multiracial, pop-
ulation, initially the product of unions between
Spanish men and Native American women.
Rooted in the sexual imbalance among Spanish
immigrants (seven men to one woman in early
colonial Peru, for example), the emergence of a
mestizo population was facilitated by the desire
of many surviving Indigenous women for the Interracial Marriage in Colonial Mexico This eighteenth-century
relative security of life in a Spanish household, painting by the famous Zapotec artist Miguel Cabrera shows a
where they and their children would not be Spanish man, a mestiza woman, and their child, who was labeled as
subject to the abuse and harsh demands made castiza. By the twentieth century, such multiracial people represented
the majority of the population of Mexico, and cultural blending had
on native peoples. Over the 300 years of the become a central feature of the country’s identity. (Bridgeman Images)
Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample.
Copyright © Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. For review purposes only. Not for redistribution.

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