After delivering a condensed history of some of the concepts we’ve seen in previous readings, I think Martinez introduces new concepts into the mix, which I’m hoping others found equally interesting.
Throughout her explanation of the development of the casta system in colonial Mexico and how it compared to that of race in Spain, Martinez makes clear that the former “was influenced by political and economic factors, including the government’s interest in dividing the colonial population and in creating a free wage-labor force” (31). Although we have seen that racialized thinking had been used to funnel power into certain groups in Spain, what made the casta system different, according to Martinez, was that it began to move away from the religious and towards the secular. For instance, Dr. Tembra’s argument that “the crown, not the church, was to assume the main role in controlling...the social body in general” (38).
Martinez points to the emergence of class distinctions in New Spain as indicative of this shift, where “the ancient regime’s lexicon of blood essentially merged with ‘bourgeois’ concepts of diligence, work, integrity, education, and utility to the public good“ (37). While the religion remained integral to how power flowed in colonial Mexico, there was a general trend (found in Inquisition transcripts) which indicated that racialized thought among colonial subjects became “more related to a visual discourse about the body, and particularly about skin color” (39)--which sounds a lot like racialized thought in the present.
Something which I’m still trying to parse out is that Martinez (and Silverblatt, if I understanding the prologue to Modern Inquisitions) seem to suggest that when societies adopt “secular” government institutions, racialized thinking comes with the package.
Am I understanding that correctly? Did anyone else have a different take?
I agree with you Ricardo that Martinez's overall argument seems to suggest that "secular" government institutions created a society with radicalized thinking, as you stated Dr. Tembra being an example of this. in Martinez's conclusion she also states that, "notions of purity and race became increasingly secularized, gradually detached from religion, kinship and lineage and insured more into pseudoscientific and visual discourses of the body" (42), which reiterates this argument.
Both readings were very interesting and brought in very important ideas that I felt will contribute to our discussion this week. I felt the most important aspect we should analyze was the usage of blood to show that one is more "Spanish" then one with more native lineage. Martinez uses this a lot in her reading, she says, “Including the notions that reproduction between different castas produced new castas, that black blood was more damaging to Spanish lineages than native blood.” (41)
The Martinez and Silverblatt reading both indicate that Spanish "blood" was venerated in colonial government, this would confirm that "castas" at this point would be a great description than "race".
Silverblatt went into detail about how the Spanish colonial government jobs would ask for documentation going back to Spain to recognize the person as being almost fully, Spanish. It says, "“Having absorbed Spanish civic lessons, he had a healthy respect for documents in general, and for lineage certificates in particular" (131) These "lineage certificates" confirm both readings argument about the creation of the "castas" in place of race. So for this weeks discussion I feel we should explain what exactly "castas" is and how it was used.
Are you suggesting those two aren't related, Roberto? It seemed to me that the crux of Silverblatt's book was that discussions of "blood purity" (in Spain and its colonies, at least) were inherently political.
I would agree with Ricardo, that "blood purity" does seem inherently political. I would contribute, though, the sexual economy that Martinez mentions and the gendered aspect of "blood purity;" "by implication the mother of a castizo would have been a casta, virginal before marriage and faithful as a wife." While there is lots that goes into the historical politics of marriage, the "gendered notion of familial honor" also contributes to the maintenance of the cultural status quo and power structure that the "castas" aimed to protect.
In Modern Inquisitions, Weber is quoted as identifying bureaucracies as professional, rationally organized, impartial and impersonal. Furthermore, that they divided societies into the modern and not modern, the progressive and the backward. Silverblatt believes that Weber would categorize the Spanish bureaucracy as "not modern" I think that he may have been wrong. What do you all think?
Silverblatt quotes Weber's definition of modern society as a "professional, rationally organized, impartial, and impersonal. Bureaucracy, then, become a line in the social sand" (pg. 9). Characterizing the Inquisition as not modern or backward, especially after spending an entire chapter discussing the bureaucracy of it (Inquisition as Bureaucracy), is contradictory. This chapter characterizes the Inquisition as incredibly protocol oriented especially regarding record keeping and rules that guided the quest for the truth (torture). I agree with Roberto, that Silverblatt may have been incorrect in her analysis of Weber's definition of modern society in respect to the Inquisition, I would definitely characterize it as a modern society.
I would agree in a sense that is modern, but not without reservations. Weber's definition creates problem. As Melanie points out, Weber's definition is "...rationally organized, impartial and impersonal.." (pg. 9). However, in several chapters (mainly Three Accused Heretics) we follow the stories of men and women both accused - even those high on the social rungs in Lima. There is no doubt that some cases the Inquisition is far from impartial, in judging the accused or torturing or even procedures. Silverblatt describes how Spain and Lima were in deadlock (pg. 65), and that Lima Inquisition broke protocol requiring a condemnation from Spain. If memory serves, Lima wanted to look good to Headquarters. It is clear that Lima thought they were organized, professional, impartial and impersonal but occasionally slipped. A clear example of Mile's Law, "Where you stand depends on where you sit".
However, because the Inquisition as a whole kept protocol and even Lima for the most part, as well. It can be ruled modern, but one needs to look beyond Weber's definition for modern and traditional society.
Martinez’s piece really correlated to last weeks class when we talked about how the African began to be seen as “impure” even when compared to the Native American. We can see this when Martinez says, “Spanish religious cosmologies, the early modern obsession with genealogy, and the transatlantic slave trade thus colluded to extend notions of “impurity” and “race” to black ancestry (34). The fact that some Native Americans can take up to three or four generations to become “Old Chistians” while the African does not have this chance, really begins to show a escalating discourse on race, “the black blood was more damaging to Spanish lineages than native blood, and that the descendants of Spanish0Indian unions could, if they continued to reproduce with Spaniards, claim Limpieza de Sangre (41).
Although i’m not entirely convinced of Martinez’s argument that a growing secular society causes the rise of racial thought, I can see how Martinez derived to that conclusion. What do you guys think about this argument?
How do the classifications that Martinez refers to begin to align with modern understandings of race?
I agree with you that the secular society argument is a bit problematic, but her argument about "blood" is well noted and concise. I feel as though the idea of "blood" was by far the most important.
I thought that what Martinez was doing here was demonstrating the ways in which racial thinking and racial constructs were changing as Spanish and Mexican society transitioned from a religious societies to more secular ones. I felt this was constructive and that it brought out one of the shortcomings of Silverblatt's project. In attempting to locate the origins of the modern state in the 15th and 16th centuries and to show how the Inquisition functioned much like a modern state apparatus, I felt that she obscured the religious zealotry that seemed so intrinsic to both the Inquisition and to the formation of race.
At some point early on, I seem to remember Silverblatt stating that her intent *was* to counter the perception of the Inquisition as a zealous religious enterprise, because that image allows contemporary readers (i.e., us) to distance ourselves from recognizing parallels between racialized thinking in that era and our own.
I was also struck by the point made the no matter how many years passed black blood would always be considered impure and they used the passing of genes showing up in later generations to prove their point not necessarily outright appearance.
Thinking back to our discussion of Pagden last week, I am really rethinking my position on whether or not Vitoria's detailed deliberations were a form of race making. Silverblatt's chapter "Globalization and Guinea Pigs" made me think more about this. I think that this chapter begins where Pagden leaves off and shows how the racialization of indigineous people in many ways came to look much more like what we would think constitutes race, namely the attachment of biology to character and the use of race to justify systems of oppression and exploitation. That being said, I also appreciated the way that Silverblatt further problematized the issue of race by introducing the term "cultural race thinking" (112). The issue of culture and environment and the contradictions they raise are worth exploring further.
I agree with you Mike "the use of race to justify systems of oppression and exploitation." After reading, Martinez supports my hypothesis that Spaniards exploited and abused the Indians and blacks during the colonization. Nevertheless, it is also crucial to point out that Silverblatt considers the Inquisition as a state institution that fulfills a civilizing objective, but particular entities do not recognize a higher authority than the Pope.
This was a huge stand out for me as well while reading Silverblatt. The use of a racial caste system was implemented to enforce the new form of global empire and secure its economic power. She does a good job of linking these two together in association where Id say she argues that due to this new form of power, it must be maintained with a clear line of supremacy and inferiority. (which is exactly what the Spaniards tried to implement despite the increasing difficulties such as the mixture of mestizos, mulattos and sambos).
These readings of this week make me wonder if the origin of racism, discrimination, and segregation began during the colonization. “By the mid-eighteenth century, the notion that three generations had to pass before new converts became Old Christians had been replaced by the idea that it took three generations for the descendants of an Indian-Spanish union (provide they continued to produce with Spaniards), to become 'Spaniards'" (pg. 42). Moreover, Silverblatt argued that this kind of mentality began with Castile to establish colonies in the New World. Therefore, I consider that racism, discrimination, and segregation against Indians and blacks came to play the role of support for the domination/colonization of the colonial and Creole elite. In the oligarchical order that is implanted after the colony, racist discourses, discriminators, and segregationists served to legitimize social and economic domination, in the same way before as the heirs of the conquerors/colonizers, whose privileges they inherited from their descendants.
I can be wrong, but could not be possible that these factors would be the origin of racism, discrimination, and segregation against Indians and blacks in Mexico and Peru?
Martinez quotes Thomas Holt that race is “chameleon-like because of its ability to transmute, ‘parasitic’ because of its tendency to attach itself to other social phenomena.” To me, this is a great characterization of race because of our first class and all our trouble trying to pinpoint what exactly race is. Martinez claims that the emergence of race as an identifying factor rises with the rise of imperialism and the discovery of different types of people. The caste system, no matter what other implications it may have, is a structure aimed at maintaining the power status quo; “more generally, the classifications were part of the establishment of the institutional and ideological mechanism intended to reproduce colonial hierarchies of rule, among which lineage would play a prominent role” (pg. 31). This is reinforced through the zoology terminology to define mixed-race individuals, mestizo and mulatto, much like the discussion last week of livestock terminology for slaves to differentiate them from humans. Martinez also brings up an interesting point on page 31 writing “the emergence of this consciousness is perhaps what compelled Spanish thinkers to equate the perpetuity of the stain of slavery with the intractability of the ‘blemishes’ of Jewish and Muslim ancestry.” The consciousness she refers to here is a “Christian, European, or ‘white’ racial consciousness.” I was both confused and intrigued by the possibility of attempting to cleanse their sins of participating in slavery by creating a social hierarchy that would place those in power at the top to then justify their participation in something they already seem to have some moral confusion about. I also found the bureaucracy the system of racial classifications an interesting parallel to Silverblatt’s comments about the bureaucracy of the Inquisition and state on page 9, “while the state constructed bureaucracies to administer populations, bureaucracies constructed the state by ordaining its format, its categories of order.” While the state was trying to categorize others, it in effect was also categorizing itself and creating its “modern” form.
I found an interesting chain of ideas in Silverblatt that I wanted to share. Early on she does a good job of describing the time, the new ideas that came to be (whether it be of state, religion, govt., etc.) . A common theme I found was of modernity vs traditional and how modernity can be seen as interconnected with the idea of "state". Some theorized this idea of state as a lone entity with a conceived reality to it, but she breaks this down in analysis as it is not a physical thing but a "politically organized subjection" by institutions of governing to monitor systems of economic and political domination. I want to use this analysis to link it to the idea of the power structure associated in race building and the domination and suppression that comes with such institutions such as slavery, for example. Is this an intrinsic link?
As a rebuttal to myself, on page 9 she says "Thus, structure of inequality - of race, gender, religion, class - articulated through state systems, can become as natural and as invisible as the air we breath. Abrams' 'idea of state,' Corrigan and Sayer warn, is found inside of us."
So what I get from this is that this racialization comes from an individual level, not a state level. What do you think?
Martinez, whose focus on definitions of race during this era provided a wealth of insight albeit limited in scope. The idea of different races being parasitic in nature offers us some early inklings of racism. Imply that those of impure blood are parasites, viruses furthering the argument is the origin of the actual terms, mestizo and mulatto, being zoological in nature almost drags these people down to an animal level in the eyes of the so called 'purebloods". Silverblatt offers us a bit more to chew on but what was in the back of my mind were the numbers she provided of the new colonies. The slaves and the natives made up more than half the population there. The amount of control imposed on them through this caste system was deep and it's almost baffling how they were able to keep this number of people under this system for the period of time that they did.
Hi all,
ReplyDeleteAfter delivering a condensed history of some of the concepts we’ve seen in previous readings, I think Martinez introduces new concepts into the mix, which I’m hoping others found equally interesting.
Throughout her explanation of the development of the casta system in colonial Mexico and how it compared to that of race in Spain, Martinez makes clear that the former “was influenced by political and economic factors, including the government’s interest in dividing the colonial population and in creating a free wage-labor force” (31). Although we have seen that racialized thinking had been used to funnel power into certain groups in Spain, what made the casta system different, according to Martinez, was that it began to move away from the religious and towards the secular. For instance, Dr. Tembra’s argument that “the crown, not the church, was to assume the main role in controlling...the social body in general” (38).
Martinez points to the emergence of class distinctions in New Spain as indicative of this shift, where “the ancient regime’s lexicon of blood essentially merged with ‘bourgeois’ concepts of diligence, work, integrity, education, and utility to the public good“ (37). While the religion remained integral to how power flowed in colonial Mexico, there was a general trend (found in Inquisition transcripts) which indicated that racialized thought among colonial subjects became “more related to a visual discourse about the body, and particularly about skin color” (39)--which sounds a lot like racialized thought in the present.
Something which I’m still trying to parse out is that Martinez (and Silverblatt, if I understanding the prologue to Modern Inquisitions) seem to suggest that when societies adopt “secular” government institutions, racialized thinking comes with the package.
Am I understanding that correctly? Did anyone else have a different take?
I agree with you Ricardo that Martinez's overall argument seems to suggest that "secular" government institutions created a society with radicalized thinking, as you stated Dr. Tembra being an example of this. in Martinez's conclusion she also states that, "notions of purity and race became increasingly secularized, gradually detached from religion, kinship and lineage and insured more into pseudoscientific and visual discourses of the body" (42), which reiterates this argument.
DeleteBoth readings were very interesting and brought in very important ideas that I felt will contribute to our discussion this week. I felt the most important aspect we should analyze was the usage of blood to show that one is more "Spanish" then one with more native lineage. Martinez uses this a lot in her reading, she says, “Including the notions that reproduction between different castas produced new castas, that black blood was more damaging to Spanish lineages than native blood.” (41)
ReplyDeleteThe Martinez and Silverblatt reading both indicate that Spanish "blood" was venerated in colonial government, this would confirm that "castas" at this point would be a great description than "race".
Silverblatt went into detail about how the Spanish colonial government jobs would ask for documentation going back to Spain to recognize the person as being almost fully, Spanish. It says, "“Having absorbed Spanish civic lessons, he had a healthy respect for documents in general, and for lineage certificates in particular" (131) These "lineage certificates" confirm both readings argument about the creation of the "castas" in place of race. So for this weeks discussion I feel we should explain what exactly "castas" is and how it was used.
Good point. I would also want to discuss the differences...where they political, or matters of blood purity?
DeleteAre you suggesting those two aren't related, Roberto? It seemed to me that the crux of Silverblatt's book was that discussions of "blood purity" (in Spain and its colonies, at least) were inherently political.
DeleteI would agree with Ricardo, that "blood purity" does seem inherently political. I would contribute, though, the sexual economy that Martinez mentions and the gendered aspect of "blood purity;" "by implication the mother of a castizo would have been a casta, virginal before marriage and faithful as a wife." While there is lots that goes into the historical politics of marriage, the "gendered notion of familial honor" also contributes to the maintenance of the cultural status quo and power structure that the "castas" aimed to protect.
DeleteIn Modern Inquisitions, Weber is quoted as identifying bureaucracies as professional, rationally organized, impartial and impersonal. Furthermore, that they divided societies into the modern and not modern, the progressive and the backward. Silverblatt believes that Weber would categorize the Spanish bureaucracy as "not modern" I think that he may have been wrong. What do you all think?
ReplyDeleteSilverblatt quotes Weber's definition of modern society as a "professional, rationally organized, impartial, and impersonal. Bureaucracy, then, become a line in the social sand" (pg. 9). Characterizing the Inquisition as not modern or backward, especially after spending an entire chapter discussing the bureaucracy of it (Inquisition as Bureaucracy), is contradictory. This chapter characterizes the Inquisition as incredibly protocol oriented especially regarding record keeping and rules that guided the quest for the truth (torture). I agree with Roberto, that Silverblatt may have been incorrect in her analysis of Weber's definition of modern society in respect to the Inquisition, I would definitely characterize it as a modern society.
DeleteI would agree in a sense that is modern, but not without reservations. Weber's definition creates problem. As Melanie points out, Weber's definition is "...rationally organized, impartial and impersonal.." (pg. 9). However, in several chapters (mainly Three Accused Heretics) we follow the stories of men and women both accused - even those high on the social rungs in Lima. There is no doubt that some cases the Inquisition is far from impartial, in judging the accused or torturing or even procedures. Silverblatt describes how Spain and Lima were in deadlock (pg. 65), and that Lima Inquisition broke protocol requiring a condemnation from Spain. If memory serves, Lima wanted to look good to Headquarters. It is clear that Lima thought they were organized, professional, impartial and impersonal but occasionally slipped. A clear example of Mile's Law, "Where you stand depends on where you sit".
DeleteHowever, because the Inquisition as a whole kept protocol and even Lima for the most part, as well. It can be ruled modern, but one needs to look beyond Weber's definition for modern and traditional society.
Martinez’s piece really correlated to last weeks class when we talked about how the African began to be seen as “impure” even when compared to the Native American. We can see this when Martinez says, “Spanish religious cosmologies, the early modern obsession with genealogy, and the transatlantic slave trade thus colluded to extend notions of “impurity” and “race” to black ancestry (34). The fact that some Native Americans can take up to three or four generations to become “Old Chistians” while the African does not have this chance, really begins to show a escalating discourse on race, “the black blood was more damaging to Spanish lineages than native blood, and that the descendants of Spanish0Indian unions could, if they continued to reproduce with Spaniards, claim Limpieza de Sangre (41).
ReplyDeleteAlthough i’m not entirely convinced of Martinez’s argument that a growing secular society causes the rise of racial thought, I can see how Martinez derived to that conclusion. What do you guys think about this argument?
How do the classifications that Martinez refers to begin to align with modern understandings of race?
I agree with you that the secular society argument is a bit problematic, but her argument about "blood" is well noted and concise. I feel as though the idea of "blood" was by far the most important.
DeleteI thought that what Martinez was doing here was demonstrating the ways in which racial thinking and racial constructs were changing as Spanish and Mexican society transitioned from a religious societies to more secular ones. I felt this was constructive and that it brought out one of the shortcomings of Silverblatt's project. In attempting to locate the origins of the modern state in the 15th and 16th centuries and to show how the Inquisition functioned much like a modern state apparatus, I felt that she obscured the religious zealotry that seemed so intrinsic to both the Inquisition and to the formation of race.
DeleteAt some point early on, I seem to remember Silverblatt stating that her intent *was* to counter the perception of the Inquisition as a zealous religious enterprise, because that image allows contemporary readers (i.e., us) to distance ourselves from recognizing parallels between racialized thinking in that era and our own.
DeleteI was also struck by the point made the no matter how many years passed black blood would always be considered impure and they used the passing of genes showing up in later generations to prove their point not necessarily outright appearance.
DeleteThinking back to our discussion of Pagden last week, I am really rethinking my position on whether or not Vitoria's detailed deliberations were a form of race making. Silverblatt's chapter "Globalization and Guinea Pigs" made me think more about this. I think that this chapter begins where Pagden leaves off and shows how the racialization of indigineous people in many ways came to look much more like what we would think constitutes race, namely the attachment of biology to character and the use of race to justify systems of oppression and exploitation. That being said, I also appreciated the way that Silverblatt further problematized the issue of race by introducing the term "cultural race thinking" (112). The issue of culture and environment and the contradictions they raise are worth exploring further.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you Mike "the use of race to justify systems of oppression and exploitation." After reading, Martinez supports my hypothesis that Spaniards exploited and abused the Indians and blacks during the colonization. Nevertheless, it is also crucial to point out that Silverblatt considers the Inquisition as a state institution that fulfills a civilizing objective, but particular entities do not recognize a higher authority than the Pope.
DeleteThis was a huge stand out for me as well while reading Silverblatt. The use of a racial caste system was implemented to enforce the new form of global empire and secure its economic power. She does a good job of linking these two together in association where Id say she argues that due to this new form of power, it must be maintained with a clear line of supremacy and inferiority. (which is exactly what the Spaniards tried to implement despite the increasing difficulties such as the mixture of mestizos, mulattos and sambos).
DeleteThese readings of this week make me wonder if the origin of racism, discrimination, and segregation began during the colonization. “By the mid-eighteenth century, the notion that three generations had to pass before new converts became Old Christians had been replaced by the idea that it took three generations for the descendants of an Indian-Spanish union (provide they continued to produce with Spaniards), to become 'Spaniards'" (pg. 42). Moreover, Silverblatt argued that this kind of mentality began with Castile to establish colonies in the New World. Therefore, I consider that racism, discrimination, and segregation against Indians and blacks came to play the role of support for the domination/colonization of the colonial and Creole elite. In the oligarchical order that is implanted after the colony, racist discourses, discriminators, and segregationists served to legitimize social and economic domination, in the same way before as the heirs of the conquerors/colonizers, whose privileges they inherited from their descendants.
ReplyDeleteI can be wrong, but could not be possible that these factors would be the origin of racism, discrimination, and segregation against Indians and blacks in Mexico and Peru?
Martinez quotes Thomas Holt that race is “chameleon-like because of its ability to transmute, ‘parasitic’ because of its tendency to attach itself to other social phenomena.” To me, this is a great characterization of race because of our first class and all our trouble trying to pinpoint what exactly race is. Martinez claims that the emergence of race as an identifying factor rises with the rise of imperialism and the discovery of different types of people. The caste system, no matter what other implications it may have, is a structure aimed at maintaining the power status quo; “more generally, the classifications were part of the establishment of the institutional and ideological mechanism intended to reproduce colonial hierarchies of rule, among which lineage would play a prominent role” (pg. 31). This is reinforced through the zoology terminology to define mixed-race individuals, mestizo and mulatto, much like the discussion last week of livestock terminology for slaves to differentiate them from humans. Martinez also brings up an interesting point on page 31 writing “the emergence of this consciousness is perhaps what compelled Spanish thinkers to equate the perpetuity of the stain of slavery with the intractability of the ‘blemishes’ of Jewish and Muslim ancestry.” The consciousness she refers to here is a “Christian, European, or ‘white’ racial consciousness.” I was both confused and intrigued by the possibility of attempting to cleanse their sins of participating in slavery by creating a social hierarchy that would place those in power at the top to then justify their participation in something they already seem to have some moral confusion about.
ReplyDeleteI also found the bureaucracy the system of racial classifications an interesting parallel to Silverblatt’s comments about the bureaucracy of the Inquisition and state on page 9, “while the state constructed bureaucracies to administer populations, bureaucracies constructed the state by ordaining its format, its categories of order.” While the state was trying to categorize others, it in effect was also categorizing itself and creating its “modern” form.
I found an interesting chain of ideas in Silverblatt that I wanted to share. Early on she does a good job of describing the time, the new ideas that came to be (whether it be of state, religion, govt., etc.) . A common theme I found was of modernity vs traditional and how modernity can be seen as interconnected with the idea of "state". Some theorized this idea of state as a lone entity with a conceived reality to it, but she breaks this down in analysis as it is not a physical thing but a "politically organized subjection" by institutions of governing to monitor systems of economic and political domination. I want to use this analysis to link it to the idea of the power structure associated in race building and the domination and suppression that comes with such institutions such as slavery, for example. Is this an intrinsic link?
ReplyDeleteAs a rebuttal to myself, on page 9 she says "Thus, structure of inequality - of race, gender, religion, class - articulated through state systems, can become as natural and as invisible as the air we breath. Abrams' 'idea of state,' Corrigan and Sayer warn, is found inside of us."
So what I get from this is that this racialization comes from an individual level, not a state level. What do you think?
Martinez, whose focus on definitions of race during this era provided a wealth of insight albeit limited in scope. The idea of different races being parasitic in nature offers us some early inklings of racism. Imply that those of impure blood are parasites, viruses furthering the argument is the origin of the actual terms, mestizo and mulatto, being zoological in nature almost drags these people down to an animal level in the eyes of the so called 'purebloods". Silverblatt offers us a bit more to chew on but what was in the back of my mind were the numbers she provided of the new colonies. The slaves and the natives made up more than half the population there. The amount of control imposed on them through this caste system was deep and it's almost baffling how they were able to keep this number of people under this system for the period of time that they did.
ReplyDelete