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216 PERIOD 2 • The Early Modern World, 1450–1750

colonial era, mestizo numbers grew substantially, becoming the majority of the
population in Mexico sometime during the nineteenth century. Such multiracial
people were divided into dozens of separate groups known as castas (castes), based
on their precise racial heritage and skin color.
®
AP EXAM TIP Mestizos were largely Hispanic in culture, but Spaniards looked down on them
Look back at other during much of the colonial era, regarding them as illegitimate, for many were not
empires in history. How born of “proper” marriages. Despite this attitude, their growing numbers and the
were nonelites treated? economic usefulness of their men as artisans, clerks, supervisors of labor gangs, and
Compare these examples
from earlier empires to lower-level officials in both church and state bureaucracies led to their recognition
the treatment of as a distinct social group. Mestizas, women of various racial backgrounds, worked as
nonelites in Latin domestic servants or in their husbands’ shops, wove cloth, and manufactured candles
America.
and cigars, in addition to performing domestic duties. A few became quite wealthy.
An illiterate mestiza named Mencia Perez successively married two reasonably
well-to-do Spanish men and, upon their deaths, took over their businesses, becom-
ing in her own right a very rich woman by the 1590s. At that point, no one would
have referred to her as a mestiza. Particularly in Mexico, mestizo identity blurred
the sense of sharp racial difference between Spanish and Native American peoples
and became a major element in the identity of modern Mexico. More recently,
however, the use of the term “mestizo” has been criticized for being associated with
colonialism, for privileging lighter-skinned people, and for distancing individuals
from those of African background.
At the bottom of Mexican and Peruvian colonial societies were the Indigenous
peoples, known to Europeans as “Indians.” Traumatized by the Great Dying, they
were subject to gross abuse and exploitation as the primary labor force for the
mines and estates of the Spanish Empire and were required to render tribute
payments to their Spanish overlords. Their empires dismantled by Spanish conquest,
their religions attacked by Spanish missionaries, and their diminished numbers forc-
ibly relocated into larger settlements, many Indians gravitated toward the world
of their conquerors. Many learned Spanish; converted to Christianity; moved to
cities to work for wages; ate the meat of cows, chickens, and pigs; used plows and
draft animals rather than traditional digging sticks; and took their many grievances
to Spanish courts. Indian women endured some distinctive conditions because
Spanish legal codes generally defined them as minors rather than responsible adults.
As those codes took hold, Indian women were increasingly excluded from the
courts or represented by their menfolk. This made it more difficult to maintain
female property rights. In 1804, for example, a Maya legal petition identified eight
men and ten women from a particular family as owners of a piece of land, but the
Spanish translation omitted the women’s names altogether.
But much that was Indigenous persisted. At the local level, Indian male
authorities retained a measure of autonomy, and traditional markets operated
regularly. Both Andean and Maya women continued to leave personal property to
their female descendants. Maize, beans, and squash persisted as the major elements
of Indian diets in Mexico. Christian saints in many places blended easily with
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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