The Meaning of Mestizaje in the Early Colonial New Kingdom of Granada

FAIN: FA-55633-11

Joanne Rappaport
Georgetown University (Washington, DC 20057-0001)

I propose to inquire into the nature of the early colonial ethnoracial hierarchy in the New Kingdom of Granada (today Colombia). A highly fluid system in which individuals could move from one status to another, I will inquire into what, precisely, classificatory fluidity involved in the first two centuries of colonial rule in the Bogota-Tunja area, looking at the constraints on mobility: gender, location, social status. Studies of this hierarchy have been dominated by research on the caste system in Mexico; by looking at a region whose ethnoracial hierarchy was not defined by caste I hope to elucidate the variation that existed across colonial Latin America.

Associated Products

“Asi lo paresce por su aspeto": Physiognomy and the Construction of Difference in Colonial Bogotá (Article)
Title: “Asi lo paresce por su aspeto": Physiognomy and the Construction of Difference in Colonial Bogotá
Author: Joanne Rappaport
Abstract: My objective in this article is to examine the relationship between perception and classification in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Andes, focusing in particular on the Nuevo Reino de Granada (today, Colombia). During the first century of colonization, the visual identification of members of ethnoracial categories—indios, mestizos, mulattos, negros, and Spaniards—transformed over time and space in the Atlantic context. I argue in this article that we may be confining ourselves to a conceptual straitjacket if we limit our interpretation of terms like “indio” or “mulato” to their ethnic or racial dimensions as part of a self-enclosed system of classification, because such usages were embedded in broader schemes of perception and categorization that both antedated the Spanish invasion of the Americas and continued to be employed on the Iberian Peninsula. In particular, ethnoracial categories interacted in a complex relationship with the ways that observers reacted to the physiognomy of the individuals who bore these labels, so that the fluidity of classification can be seen as deriving in part from the interpretation of visual cues.
Year: 2011
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Hispanic American Historical Review

El mestizo que desaparece: El género en la construcción de redes sociales entre mestizos de élite en Santafé de Bogotá, siglos XVI y XVI (Book Section)
Title: El mestizo que desaparece: El género en la construcción de redes sociales entre mestizos de élite en Santafé de Bogotá, siglos XVI y XVI
Author: Joanne Rappaport
Abstract: This chapter focuses on what it means to be a male elite mestizo by tracing the parallel social networks (Spanish elite, indigenous or mestizo plebeians) along which mestizos traced their social interactions. While female elite mestizos were able to marry Spanish men, ensuring that their offspring were identified as Spaniards, their brothers could not, resulting in elite social networks in their public lives and plebeian networks in their private lives.
Year: 2011
Publisher: Editorial Pontificia Universidad Javeriana (Bogota, Colombia)
Book Title: Celebraciones y crisis: Procesos independentistas en Iberoamérica y la Nueva Granada

The Disappearing Mestizo: Configuring Difference in the Colonial Andes (Book)
Title: The Disappearing Mestizo: Configuring Difference in the Colonial Andes
Author: Joanne Rappaport
Abstract: Rappaport, Joanne, The Disappearing Mestizo: Configuring Difference in the Colonial Andes (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014).
Year: 2014
Publisher: Duke University Press
Type: Single author monograph
Copy sent to NEH?: No

El mestizo evanescente. Configuración de la diferencia en el Nuevo Reino de Granada (Book)
Title: El mestizo evanescente. Configuración de la diferencia en el Nuevo Reino de Granada
Author: Joanne Rappaport
Abstract: Spanish translation of The Disappearing Mestizo
Year: 2018
Primary URL: https://www.worldcat.org/title/mestizo-evanescente-configuracion-de-la-diferencia-en-el-nuevo-reino-de-granada/oclc/1090176557
Publisher: Editorial Universidad del Rosario
Type: Single author monograph
Type: Translation
Translator: Santiago Paredes Cisneros
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

Colombia and the Legal-Cultural Negotiation of Racial Categories (Book Section)
Title: Colombia and the Legal-Cultural Negotiation of Racial Categories
Author: Joanne Rappaport
Editor: William H. Beezley
Abstract: Appeared in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History
Year: 2020
Primary URL: https://oxfordre.com/latinamericanhistory/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199366439.001.0001/acrefore-9780199366439-e-532
Access Model: subscription
Publisher: Oxford University Press

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