Making Race in Latin America

Hey all--Didn't get this up in time!  Please use this post as the base for comments this week (other than the ones already up) so we can keep it all in one thread. Thanks!

This week's readings had many elements I feel we should discuss for this weeks class. The main topic we clearly have to discuss is the transition for the Spanish kingdom to become a colonial power and how they dealt with the indigenous peoples of Mexico and beyond, and also the labor force which would become slaves. So, ultimately our discussion should entail how the Spanish dealt with a multiethnic society in New Spain. The two readings were very interesting as both seemed to indicate the origins of the Spanish's depiction of the American Indian as "other" and also "barbaric" in comparison to Western Civilization. In the Pagden reading, I found it fascinating that in the beginning of chapter 2 he discusses that, Aristolean thinking which has impacted Western thought since the time of the Greeks, is the origin of the idea of the "barbarian" as interpreted by later Medieval thinker Thomas Aquinas. (15) From that point of the reading onward, it was...

In our first class, we were asked if race is always seen.   Most people seemed to agree that it is notM.   Reading Martinez and Nirenberg’s respective treatments of Jewishness in late medieval and early modern Spain only served to confirm this notion.   If we accept their arguments that the limpieza de sangre phenomenon was an early employment and incarnation of race, it becomes clear that race can, and often does, have little to do with appearance, including skin color or other physical markers most often associated with it in the popular imagination.   Although American constructions of Jewishness have often referenced (visible) physicalities, it seems safe to assume that the Spanish construction of Jewishness apparently had very little to do with any kind of visible physicality and more to do with religion, culture, and behaviors which were connected to biological reproduction.   Secondly, as Nirenberg points out, even when tying Jewishness to reproduction ...

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