Race and Nation in Modern Latin America

Nancy P. Appelbaum,Anne S. Macpherson,Karin Alejandra Rosemblatt

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2003
• ISBN:
  9780807862315
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Latin American & Caribbean History
• Index: History

This collection brings together innovative historical work on race and national identity in Latin America and the Caribbean and places this scholarship in the context of interdisciplinary and transnational discussions regarding race and nation in the Americas. Moving beyond debates about whether ideologies of racial democracy have actually served to obscure discrimination, the book shows how notions of race and nationhood have varied over time across Latin America's political landscapes. Framing the themes and questions explored in the volume, the editors' introduction also provides an overview of the current state of the interdisciplinary literature on race and nation-state formation. Essays on the postindependence period in Belize, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Panama, and Peru consider how popular and elite racial constructs have developed in relation to one another and to processes of nation building. Contributors also examine how ideas regarding racial and national identities have been gendered and ask how racialized constructions of nationhood have shaped and limited the citizenship rights of subordinated groups.
The contributors are Sueann Caulfield, Sarah C. Chambers, Lillian Guerra, Anne S. Macpherson, Aims McGuinness, Gerardo Renique, James Sanders, Alexandra Minna Stern, and Barbara Weinstein.

CHAPTER ONE

LITTLE MIDDLE
GROUND
The Instability of
a Mestizo Identity in
the Andes, Eighteenth
and Nineteenth
Centuries

Sarah C. Chambers

In contrast to Mesoamerican nations, in the Andes positive discourses of mestizaje have been relatively weak and received official state sanction only in the middle of the twentieth century, if at all.¹ Instead, for much of the region’s colonial and republican history, racial ideologies have recognized diversity but emphasized the division between Spanish and indigenous cultures, usually depicting the latter as uncivilized and backward. Even the elite defenders of Indians similarly highlighted a cultural dichotomy by criticizing racial mixing. This chapter will explore how systems of racial categorization created by the colonial state were negotiated by subalterns during the formative period of nation building in Peru. The distinction between Indians and all others was rooted in the colonial tribute system, which was continued even after independence from Spain in the 1820s. Although elites recognized an intermediate category of mestizos, which they often associated with illegitimacy and deviancy, tax structures and dominant racial ideologies discouraged subalterns from publicly embracing this label until the twentieth century.

This essay, like the others in this volume, begins from the assumption that there are no essential races. Rather, categories based upon both cultural and physical characteristics were defined by state policies and frequently contested by those to whom they were applied. Although colonial officials emphasized the superiority of “pure blood,” they considered dress, language, and occupation as well as phenotype when assigning subalterns to racial categories. In the nineteenth century, ideologies of scientific racism became dominant in Latin America, but intellectuals continued to associate essential cultural attributes with various races, such as the assumption that Indians were uneducated. This blending of culture and genealogy is also reflected in the use of the terms “Spanish” and “white.” For most of the colonial period, Americans of European descent were simply referred to as “Spaniards” beginning in the late eighteenth century, the term “blanco” (white) came into increasing but not exclusive use. Even those of presumably mixed ancestry may have felt justified in claiming to be Spanish (and later white) if they participated in the dominant culture by, for example, speaking Spanish and wearing European clothing.

Of course, determining self-identification in the past is difficult. Especially for the illiterate majority, there remains a record only of how they defined themselves to state or ecclesiastical officials. Nonetheless, it would be difficult to maintain a cohesive shared identity without some public manifestations, so we can safely assume that the virtual absence of claims to mestizaje was not merely a screen. Since the emphasis was on tax-paying status, most of the examples from the documents used for this study are men; the racial identity of women came into question only when establishing one’s genealogy. Following the lead of the editors’ Introduction, ascriptive labels based upon presumed genealogy, such as “mestizo,” will be referred to as racial categories; the term “ethnicity,” by contrast, implies a shared group identity. I will argue that until recently there were mestizos, but no mestizo ethnicity, in the Andes.

The historiography of the Andes, like that for Latin America more broadly, emphasizes the multiplicity and fluidity of racial categories, in contrast to the dominant binary division between black and white in the United States. Increasing miscegenation throughout the centuries complicated the conquest-era dichotomy of two separates “republics”—Spanish and Indian—leading instead to a caste system with multiple categories for various race mixtures.² Unlike their colonizing counterparts in North America, Spaniards recognized the potentially infinite shades of the colonial population and in practice regularly referred at least to mulattos, zambos, moriscos, and castizos, as well as mestizos.³ In their analyses of parish registers, censuses, and lawsuits, historians have emphasized the relative ability of individuals to move across these boundaries.⁴ The figure of the Indian who became a mestizo by donning European clothing and moving to the city was a familiar one in colonial chronicles and literature. Much less is known, however, about what later became of this figure in his new urban life (the example was rarely female). Did he identify himself as a mestizo, and if so what did this identity mean to him and his fellows? Did he share common interests as well as traits with other mestizos?

This essay will question that striking distinction between North American and Andean systems of racial classification, arguing that the original binary definition of race established with conquest continued to shape the caste system even as new categories proliferated and it became possible to move among them. Moreover, the continuing legal separation of Indians during the formative period of nation-state formation militated against the construction of universal notions of citizenship or homogenized national identity. Those identified as Indians, whether by themselves or others, occupied a clear legal and fiscal position in colonial and early republican society: they owed tribute, had access rights to communal land, were under the authority at the local level of ethnic chiefs (caciques or kurakas), and held a subordinate but protected legal status similar to minors. In the eighteenth century, the Bourbon royal family reinforced this racial boundary in an attempt to reduce the number of alleged Indians who were evading the head tax. Moreover, one need not ascribe to ideas of cultural authenticity to recognize that Indians could call upon language and custom in asserting a shared identity. The only group attribute uniting mestizos (and others of mixed race), by contrast, was that they were not Indians and were therefore exempt from all these legal rights and obligations.⁵ Culturally, they were distinguished from Indians by their adoption of European, not hybrid, attributes. A second, more exclusive, boundary did separate off a colonial elite who could sufficiently demonstrate its purity of blood to attend universities and hold offices. Nevertheless, few of those recognized as white had the resources to claim these privileges, and such restrictions were eliminated with independence.

At either boundary, the definition of a mixed status was in purely negative terms: those so defined were excluded from various rights but held none in common. It is, therefore, difficult to speak of a mestizo identity in the colonial or nineteenth-century Andes, and self-conscious movements of mestizos were similarly rare.⁶ Indeed, the dominant discourse attributing illegitimacy, moral laxity, and vagrancy to mestizos and other mixed-race peoples made it unlikely that any group would embrace and appropriate the term. Instead, when forced to identify themselves in court, many small farmers and artisans simply called themselves Spanish. Only when such claims were rejected by officials might they content themselves with the label of mestizo to escape the obligations imposed upon Indians.

This analysis is based on the case study of Arequipa, Peru, between 1780 and 1854.⁷ The rich agricultural land immediately surrounding this midsized provincial city in the south supported many small and medium-sized landholders who grew food crops. While the city’s elites also owned estates near the city, their wealth was based in the colonial period on coastal vineyards and, after independence, on the export of highland wool. The city’s position between the coast and highlands thus allowed them to play the role of commercial middlemen. As the region came to play an important role in national political movements of the nineteenth century, the economic and professional elite propagated an image of the local population as similarly in between the colonial aristocrats of the coastal capital of Lima and the backward Indians of the highlands. Some native sons claimed the mantle of authentic peruanidad, implying a level of cultural synthesis, but, significantly, they did not use the racialized term “mestizaje.”⁸ On the contrary, Arequipa came to be known as the “White City,” a racial double entendre building upon its architecture of white volcanic stone as well as the color of its Hispanic inhabitants. The 1792 census officially classified the urban population of Arequipa as 66.8 percent Spanish, 17.5 percent mestizo, 6.4 percent Indian, and 9.1 percent mulatto and black. Of course, such ethnic identities were not based on precise biological categories, but census takers recognized as white a higher proportion of inhabitants of Arequipa than of any other Peruvian city.⁹

This essay will trace the popular acceptance of an ideology of whitening in the efforts of common folk in Arequipa to gain at least tacit acceptance as Spanish. It begins by examining the important distinction between Indians and others established by colonial law and continued for decades after independence. As long as Indians received land in exchange for paying a head tax, there was an incentive for some villagers of even admittedly mixed race to claim an indigenous identity; as non-Indians increasingly appropriated the farmland around the city, however, the number of self-proclaimed Indians dramatically declined. Those trying to escape the burden of tribute usually asserted that they were Spanish even if they might be identified by officials, and even by their own neighbors, as mixed-race. Given the large proportion of the population of ambiguous genealogy, including members of the local elite, according to travelers, officials often avoided the use of racial labels in the interests of social peace. Arequipa was not unique in its development of a whitened identity, but it was not representative of a region where the majority of the population was identified as indigenous. The final section will discuss racial classification in the Andes more broadly (Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia), arguing that even in regions with large indigenous populations and where elites were more sparing in whom they would recognize as Spanish, subalterns did not develop a collective identity as mestizos that could be used as a basis for political mobilization.

THE BOUNDARY BETWEEN INDIANS AND OTHERS

The 1792 census identified about 17 percent of the population in the valley of Arequipa as indigenous, the majority in the villages surrounding the city. Although Indians made up a large and distinct minority, various dynamics worked against the formation of cohesive indigenous communities with a politicized ethnic identity, in contrast to other Andean regions or the case of Cauca, Colombia, analyzed by James Sanders in this volume. The royal governor sent to Arequipa in the 1780s, Intendant Antonio Alvarez y Jiménez, noted that Indians in the villages around the city were very acculturated, and that the priests did not need to know Quechua.¹⁰ Within the city, where 6 to 8 percent of the population was identified as indigenous, the cultural difference between Indians and others was even more blurred. As early as 1788, Alvarez y Jiménez noted that it was difficult to distinguish the Indians in their parish of Santa Marta from Spaniards.¹¹ By 1834 the prefect proposed dividing the parishes by neighborhood rather than race, because the Indians had mixed with Spaniards throughout the city.¹² Nevertheless, Indians were aware of their special status under Spanish law, and they made every effort to use it to their greatest advantage. As those advantages declined from the eighteenth into the nineteenth century, however, so too did the number willing to publicly embrace an indigenous identity.

In a region and period where sustained contact between Indians and Spaniards had resulted in significant acculturation, the strongest common denominator among the former was their right to a plot of land in exchange for paying tribute to the king.¹³ Most Indians who lived in the villages earned their livelihood in agriculture, and their most secure access to land was through the periodic distributions of communal holdings. This right to land in exchange for paying tribute was attractive enough during the colonial period that even persons of apparently mixed race might claim an indigenous identity. After the tribute census of 1786, there was not enough community land for each Indian in the village of Tiabaya to get a plot. Agustín Alpaca, the cacique of Cayma who had jurisdiction there, protested that land had been assigned wrongfully to the mestizo sons of Bernardo Pucho. The Puchos initially were expelled from the land in question but subsequently were reinstated by the intendant. According to local interpretations of the law, children acquired their caste from the maternal line; the dispute in this case, therefore, centered on the identity of the Puchos’ mother. Alpaca insisted that she was reputed as Spanish or mestiza. The Puchos’ lawyer admitted that she was mestiza but argued that as the daughter of a Spanish man and an Indian woman she (and her children) were legally Indian.¹⁴ Nine years later the protector of natives still asserted that mestizos should be included as Indians on the tribute rolls so as not to defraud the state of tax revenue.¹⁵

The rare instances when state officials in Arequipa feared that rebellion was brewing among the native population were during changes in land distribution and tribute collection. Conflict over land brought to the surface the potential tensions between Indians and those they identified as mestizos and, therefore, without legitimate access rights to communal property. Such tensions were exacerbated at the end of the colonial period by the appointment of tribute collectors, often identified as Spanish or mestizo, in place of the ethnic caciques.¹⁶

In 1811, with the abolition of tribute by the liberal Spanish Parliament, the simmering discontent boiled over in one of the rare instances of indigenous unrest in the valley. The Indian council of Pocsi accused the “cacique” Pedro Rodríguez, the local tribute collector who also happened to be the Spanish mayor, of usurping land, which the council ordered to be distributed among community members. The council argued in court that with the abolition of tribute, Rodríguez lost any authority and land rights he might have had. The subdelegate authorized the council to oversee the distribution of lands but specifically prohibited it from taking land from any individual “on the pretext that he is Spanish.”¹⁷ Nevertheless, the fears of non-Indians apparently were not assuaged. In 1812 Rodríguez charged that Pedro Quispe, a member of the Indian council, had tried to foment a riot against the local Spaniards and mestizos.¹⁸ Rodríguez reported that discontent over the land distribution had erupted in a riot, citing rumors that “more blood than water would flow and no mestizo would be left alive in the Village.”¹⁹ Because racial category defined access to land in a context of growing scarcity, conflict emerged over who really should be considered “Indian.” A potential crisis was averted by higher Spanish officials through the judicious reaffirmation of the respective rights of both indigenous and Spanish local authorities and a new dis...