In her study on the configuration of difference in colonial New Granada, Joanne Rappaport contends that many studies “tend to ignore how different practices of distinguishing one individual from another came into play in concrete situations,” and as a result they “end up labeling as ‘race’ something that was much more multifaceted.” Subsequently, she urges scholars to interpret colonial subjects and their identities on their own terms.Footnote 1 This study responds to Rappaport's call by analyzing the workings of the historical concept of calidad in colonial Spanish America.
The article addresses three interrelated points. First, it maintains that the concept of calidad is the appropriate framework to analyze the construction of difference and social hierarchies in colonial Spanish America. Second, in contrast with the most common trend of the scholarship that shows how calidad was expressed locally, this essay stresses the imperial significance of calidad as a means of governance by using a wide array of sources from across the Spanish world. Third, by analyzing disputes between Catholic brotherhoods in Guadalajara, the work demonstrates that the concept of calidad was pervasive throughout society. Even if people from the lower ends of society did not speak directly about their calidad, they understood the basic tenets of this concept, and used them as instruments of social advancement.
One might deem it unnecessary to stress the first point, considering the most recent scholarship on the subject.Footnote 2 Indeed, most scholars working on colonial Latin America would say that the construction of difference in that context was a complex process involving distinct social dynamics. Yet, in trying to convey their message to a specific audience, landmark works used race as a shorthand to analyze social difference in Spanish American societies. Despite their many strengths, works based on this concept resulted in imbuing historical analyses of Spanish America with North American notions of difference, such as equating being Spanish with whiteness.Footnote 3 Additionally, they made the argument that during the eighteenth century Spanish notions of difference shifted away from concerns regarding religion, to differentiation based on ideas closely resembling race.Footnote 4
To move forward in scholarly debates about difference in colonial Spanish America, and overcome misunderstandings created by an anachronistic use of the concept of race, this article proposes that we borrow from the Spanish historical vocabulary of difference, as we have on previous occasions with concepts that do not have an exact English translation, or whose translation evokes social dynamics or historical processes that do not quite correspond with those of Spanish America (for example cacique, caudillo, or mestizaje). The point, however, is not just to displace English words with Spanish ones. Indeed, it is one contention of this article that calidad and race are two different concepts that should remain analytically distinct. Using calidad as a category of analysis, then, this article sheds new light on the processes of construction of difference and complicates the narrative that the scholarship has presented about late-colonial Spanish America.Footnote 5
One could say that there is a gap between the historiographies on the Spanish imperial apparatus—characterized by macro-scale studies—and the historiography that has considered the social structure in Spanish America and examined the workings of society through mostly locally based microanalysis.Footnote 6 An example from the latter group: a focus on the local, and on the malleability of social categorization has led authors, including Rappaport, to downplay the imperial character of this process and the centrality of social difference for the Spanish empire. To be clear, imperial structure has factored in many studies, but the latter group of scholars is more concerned with how people on the ground managed to navigate colonial rule, and with stressing local differences in the processes of social classification, rather than viewing the construction of difference as a means of governance.Footnote 7 In doing so, they fail to see that individual or collective actions intended to get social recognition actually served instead to legitimize the empire. This essay is an attempt to bridge that gap by analyzing both the local and imperial implications of social differentiation in the Spanish world.
To show the workings of calidad on different scales, this study draws from a wide array of sources. It relies on judicial cases from the Archivo de la Real Audiencia de Guadalajara and the Archivo Histórico de la Arquidiócesis de Guadalajara. It also draws on printed primary sources and secondary literature from other Spanish dominions to illuminate the imperial character of the construction of difference. Following the elaboration of its conceptual and historiographical bases, the article is divided into two parts. The first part presents a broad look at the workings of calidad through several examples of the many political uses of this notion, and its pervasiveness throughout the Spanish empire across both time and space. Focusing on a micro-scale, the second section uses the case of confraternities (also known as sodalities or brotherhoods) in colonial Guadalajara to show how people within these associations employed the basic tenets of calidad in their construction of social hierarchies.
Throughout the colonial period, the Spanish crown based its control over the population of the New World on inequality. It built a legal apparatus that distributed privileges and obligations to people according to their calidad. This system was mutable, constructed through time, and even had specific legislation for particular regions, or groups of people. Moreover, the classifications used in Spain varied from those used in its domains, and classifications also varied between viceroyalties.Footnote 8 However, from the north of New Spain, to the south of Río de la Plata, calidad, in its abstract sense, was at the center of governance. A person's calidad determined whether the person would be taxed or not, and how. It determined whether one could hold office or have access to certain crafts. It also defined if one was subject to slavery or not.
Calidad is a historical concept used in the Spanish world to assign people a place in the social hierarchy for the distribution of privileges and obligations. The term translates directly as ‘quality,’ but some historians prefer to translate it as ‘rank’ or ‘status.’ The calidad of a person was expressed in phenotypical or “ethnic” terms, such as Spaniard, black, or Indian, but it also overflowed these classifications, combining multiple perceptions of difference. Calidad encompassed various aspects of people's lived experience, such as alleged inner qualities, as well as mutable things that could be gained or lost throughout one's life, like virtue and merit. It was also related to kinship and reputation, and linked to (and sometimes used interchangeably with) other notions of difference, such as condición, casta, and clase. Some authors have also argued that calidad had a class component.Footnote 9 In short, one might say that calidad brought together what we now call race, class, ethnicity, and gender into a single concept.
At the core of calidad were Iberian ideas of honor. Spaniards valued certain markers as the foremost signs of honor, namely descendance from an old Christian family, legitimacy of birth, or a title of nobility. People of the period considered honor both as an inherent quality and as something that could be gained or lost. For instance, performing menial tasks dishonored people, while conducting virtuous deeds in the name of the crown gave honor. In this sense, Spaniards were at the top of the hierarchy, for they saw themselves as the people with the most honor. Afro-descendants, in contrast, were thought of as inherently lacking honor because of the stain of slavery, and were consequently denied access to full participation into society. Moreover, people used slavery as a benchmark in legal processes of differentiation. Nonetheless, as will be shown, Afro-descendants could, and did, attenuate the stigma of slavery on the grounds of their merits.Footnote 10 With the implementation of the Bourbon reforms, in particular, the crown began to open more paths to honor, especially for Afro-descendants. This shift responded to the belief that all subjects could, and should, contribute to the aggrandizement of the monarchy.Footnote 11
As a result, in 1784 the king Carlos III declared that illegitimacy would no longer be an impediment to the practice of certain crafts.Footnote 12 In a royal decree of September 4, 1803, his successor, Carlos IV, declared that manual crafts would no longer be considered dishonoring, nor would participation in them prevent individuals from holding local offices.Footnote 13 Despite these changes, there is much evidence of common trends in the usage of calidad as a means of governance across time and space.
The most recent studies of the construction of difference and social hierarchies in Spanish America have called into question the idea of the sistema de castas by uncovering the lack of systematization in labeling.Footnote 14 This has led them to stress the situational and contextual character of social classification and its political uses. At the same time, these studies have highlighted the significance of labeling for people's social lives and their interactions with institutions.Footnote 15 Using the case of Afro-descendants in colonial Mexico, several authors have emphasized the ways in which this population could negotiate their place within the hierarchy.Footnote 16 Scholars have also begun to analyze not only how Afro-descendants’ engagement with legal processes at the ground level shaped notions of race and slavery, but also how the “legal regimes” framed the actions of these subjects.Footnote 17 This article joins this growing scholarship and proposes that a focus on calidad, and the historical terms that people on the ground used as distinctions markers, is paramount to understanding not only the construction of difference in the Spanish Empire, but also to situating the legal processes of differentiation as central to imperial formation.
Finally, the scholarship on black brotherhoods in the case of Mexico has a young but growing tradition. Now we know more about the role of these associations in different aspects of people's lives. Most of the works assert that confraternities helped Africans and their descendants to forge their identities.Footnote 18 However, just a few of these have analyzed how identity formation was tied to ideas about calidad and these in turn to ideas of empire and social order. Studying confraternities, then, reveals the complexity of Afro-descendants’ identities and demonstrates that they actively participated in the construction of social hierarchies. Ultimately, examining Mexican confraternities outside of the most studied contexts, such as Mexico City, provides new insights on the history of these subjects and on the structure of society in New Spain.
Calidad as an Imperial Tool of Governance
On January 23, 1809, José Francisco Osorio, second corporal of the Costa Sur militia of New Spain, petitioned Lieutenant don Juan Antonio Brizuela to be transferred from the fifth company of infantry to the second company of cavalry. In his petition, Osorio explained that the fifth company was comprised of pardos, that he was a Spaniard of “pure blood, commonly known and deemed as such,” thus, he asked for his transfer because he feared to be reputed as pardo from then on.Footnote 19 This case elicits several questions. Why would a Spaniard be afraid of being reputed as a pardo? What led Spanish authorities to assign a Spaniard to a pardo unit in the first place? How does this episode connect larger imperial dynamics with local processes? The answer to these questions lies in the distinctive character of the construction of difference in the Spanish world, and more specifically in the imperial usage of calidad.
Jose Francisco Osorio's case is far from unique, for between December 1808 and February 1809, some 50 other soldiers asked to be transferred from pardo units to Spanish ones, or to be released from their duties altogether.Footnote 20 The 51 petitions are a rich source of information about the construction of difference in the late colonial period. They also provide valuable evidence about the lives of Spanish soldiers, and their allegiance to the empire. Soldiers from four units petitioned their release or transfer between December 31, 1808, and January 29, 1809, on different grounds.Footnote 21 Most of them were simple soldiers, but two were first corporals, one was a second corporal, and one was a distinguished sergeant.
Just 11 of the 51 petitions received a response, most of them from the fifth company under the orders of lieutenant Juan Antonio Brizuela,thus, preventing us from knowing the broader repercussions of this measure. Of those who received a response, five were accepted and six were denied. Of the rejected petitions, two clearly stated the petitioner's dislike of being mixed with pardos.Footnote 22 They even cited Chapter 1, article 18, of the Costa Sur militia's rules to back their claims.Footnote 23 In three other petitions, in addition to mentioning that the company should be composed of individuals of “clase pardo,” militia men claimed to be poor and have a family to support.Footnote 24 The remaining petitioner stated only that he could not afford to be in the military, because of his obligations to his patron.Footnote 25 It is worth noting that in the six requests with a positive ruling, the soldiers tried to downplay their dislike of being mixed with pardos. Three of them mentioned the issue, but in addition, they remarked they were sick and could not serve well, and that they were poor.Footnote 26 The other two petitioners said only that they were poor and sick.Footnote 27
Of the petitions that did not get a response, 11 stated that the petitioner did not want to serve with pardos. Four of these even repeated Osorio's argument that they feared to be reputed as pardos from then on.Footnote 28 Five said that they were married or had a family to care for. Four argued that they were poor or had obligations to their patrons and could not afford to be in the militias. The remaining 20 presented some combination of these arguments. Again, it is important to highlight the centrality of honor in this episode. Many of the petitioners claimed to have been dishonored by their transfer to a pardo unit. Don José Lucas Sandoval, for instance, complained that he was enlisted without recognition of his status of distinguished soldier (“disregarding the honor with which I was born”), and with omission of the fact that his family was one of the most honorable.Footnote 29 Ultimately, careful not to appear unpatriotic, some of the soldiers stated that they did not have to be enlisted to be loyal vassals of their king, and that they would spill to the last drop of their blood to protect their “rey, patria y religión.”Footnote 30
Why, then, did Spanish soldiers fear to be reputed as pardos? How was social difference constructed and maintained in the Spanish world to lead Spaniards to make such a statement? The soldiers’ cases should be read against a long-standing tradition in the Spanish world, in which people tried to claim specific rights in high courts (audiencias) by asserting their calidad. Calidad as a concept is best captured in official records, wherein people contested how they were classified, or claimed their rights. As already mentioned, calidad encompassed various notions of difference—phenotype, kinship, personal merit, and honor—but sometimes one element overrode the others. The complexity of calidad, then, led authorities to rely on different criteria, and more prominently on reputation, on a case-by-case basis, to classify people.Footnote 31 To better illustrate these soldiers’ cases, the remainder of this section proceeds thematically rather than chronologically, and presents an array of examples to show how the components of calidad worked in different contexts.
A key element to understanding the cases brought by Osorio and his fellow soldiers is reputation, and how such a nebulous notion was managed in a corporate society. Military and religious corporations were a fundamental part of the social structure and reflections of social life, and as such, belonging to one or more of these entailed some social recognition. Honor and reputation in the Spanish world can be understood by attending to gendered behaviors. For example, in stating that they would spill their last drop of blood for their king, Spanish soldiers were asserting their masculinity while trying to keep their honor intact, even as they were requesting a discharge from the military. Similar dynamics involving honor and masculine behaviors are evident in the following cases.
In April 1798, Joaquín Trillo, vecino of Nochistlán and resident in León, proposed marriage to Bernarda Cervantes. Manuel Cervantes, Bernarda's father, noted that Joaquín was a mulato and did not want his daughter to marry him. Joaquín went immediately to his parish to get his baptismal record, and it was then he realized that he was indeed classified as a mulato. He then presented a complaint before the high court to clarify that he was a Spaniard, and not a mulato. As in analogous cases, Trillo presented witnesses that could attest that his parents and grandparents were reputed as Spaniards. Two of the witnesses were Spaniards, and the third was Indian. All declared they had known Trillo's grandparents, and that they were “reputed as Spaniards, descendants of old Christian Catholics, without any note of infamy.”Footnote 32 Eventually, the court ruled in Trillo's favor. A similar case is that of Juan Antonio Moreno de Ortega, vecino of Lagos, who asked the High Court of Guadalajara in 1772 to change his baptismal record to show his calidad of español, “en cuya reputación [ha] vivido” (having lived as such) all of his life. Within a few days, the court modified his baptismal record.Footnote 33
In a complex example, in 1759, Matheo Ruiz de Aumada, mayor of Colima, presented before the high court of Guadalajara some information against Juan Efigenio Solorsano, who had been alderman (regidor) of Colima since 1754. According to Ruiz, Solorsano was illegitimate, mestizo, and had practiced manual labor, for he was apprenticed to a tailor during his youth in Guadalajara. These accusations disqualified Solorsano for holding any office. To back his claims Ruiz summoned five witnesses. It is worth noting that the declarants could not agree on Solorsano's calidad. When asked about Solorsano's mother, one said that she looked like a coyota. Two more said that she was a mulata, and the last one that she was a mulata blanca. What they did agree on was that Solorsano was illegitimate, and that he had worked as a tailor under master Joseph Antonio Surita in Guadalajara. Therefore, he had to be removed from his office.Footnote 34 What is important to highlight from this case is that Solorsano's calidad was understood as a product of three different factors: not being a Spaniard, illegitimate birth, and having worked as a tailor. These elements were key in determining people's calidad, and thus in assigning privileges and obligations. Throughout the colonial period, and across the jurisdiction of the high court of Guadalajara, the same patterns appear repeatedly.Footnote 35
With these examples in mind, it is clear how malleable these classifications were, and that by assigning Spanish soldiers to pardo units, authorities were directly affecting their calidad. However, reputation cannot explain everything. After all, it sounds very counterintuitive that a Spaniard would suddenly be categorized as a pardo, just for joining a different corporation. What about the other elements that calidad encompassed? When we mention Spaniards, scholars typically think of white people. In fact, many authors in their works substitute the word “Spaniard” for the word “white,” even though the latter word rarely appears in the historical record.Footnote 36 Also, when we talk about pardos we often think of brown or colored people, the actual translation of the word. Unfortunately, we do not have physical descriptions of the soldiers who were assigned to pardo units. However, we do have the list of the first unit of the pardo militia of Guadalajara.
The list of the first company of infantry for pardos is a very detailed document that includes the names, ages, physical descriptions, and dates of enlistment and discharge of 176 men classified as pardos. It spans a period of approximately two decades, from the 1760s to the 1780s. A couple of points stand out in the physical descriptions. First, skin color is barely mentioned, and in all cases where it is alluded to, it is to remark specific nuances, mainly that a soldier was light-skinned (“color claro”) or “color moreno,” or “entreclaro.” These descriptions are also very attentive to beards. Phrases such as “full beard,” “a little beard,” or “beardless” can be found in nearly all of them.Footnote 37 The shape of the nose or lips and the presence of scars are also mentioned very frequently in these descriptions.Footnote 38
Three of these cases serve our purposes admirably. The first pertains to Bernardo Abarca, a second corporal in 1768. He was described as 19 years old, light-skinned, beardless, and pockmarked. The second deals with Ygnacio Gómez, 27 years old, “of calidad pardo, light skin, beardless, and with a mole to the right side of his mouth.” Finally, there is Joseph de la Torre, 21 years old, “cerrado de barba,” (thick beard) with an “hoyo de viruelas junto a la nariz del lado derecho (a smallpox scar next to the right side of his nose).” These descriptions were much like those of other men in this unit, but marginal notes add such things as, “This individual proved to be a Spaniard and he was transferred to another unit.”Footnote 39
Here we have three Spanish soldiers being portrayed with the same words used to describe pardo soldiers. How do we interpret their cases? Certainly, three examples do not offer a large sample, but they remain suggestive. First, the examples indicate that the categories of pardo and Spaniard encompassed a spectrum of physical traits, and that there could be some overlap between the two categories. Second, as Joanne Rappaport has stated, they show how the concept of calidad and phenotype existed in a fluid, dynamic relation.Footnote 40 These examples, should at least give us pause when equating Spanishness and whiteness, and even more so considering that in places like colonial Mexico people rarely claimed a white identity.Footnote 41
Other sources seem to support these claims. The tailors’ guild of Guadalajara sometimes recorded physical descriptions of those who took the exam to become masters. These records do not mention calidad explicitly, but the people who took the exam were usually Spaniards and held the title of “don.” Let us consider two examples. First, there is Salvador Morelos, “medium size, big eyes, and color cocho.” The second is Bernardo Escalante “forty years old, trigueño, tall, and robust.” Again, there is no mention of the word white, and although there is no mention of calidad, it is very likely that these men were reputed to be Spaniards, considering that they were masters of the guild. If so, the idea that ascriptions of calidad could encompass a spectrum of skin colors is also evident here.Footnote 42 These cases suggest that people regarded genealogy and lineage as more important than skin color in deciding one's identity. However, in the absence of more accurate methods of deciphering one's ancestry, the standard procedure was to call witnesses who could either confirm one's social reputation or testify to their ancestors’ calidad. It is also worthwhile to note that Spanishness was deeply associated with being an old Christian, and Catholic, but only rarely with whiteness.
Why, then, were Spanish soldiers assigned to pardo units in the first place? First, we should approach this episode in its particular historical context. In 1808, the Spanish monarchy entered a crisis that would ultimately lead to the independence of most of its vast empire. It was an “empire-wide crisis of coherence,” that set off discussions about the nature of the empire, and the inclusion of different subjects within it.Footnote 43 The abdication of Carlos IV and his son Fernando VII created a vacuum of power that polarized political factions in both the metropole and its overseas territories. News of the Napoleonic invasion of Spain arrived in New Spain a few months after the abdications, and one of the main concerns of the colonial authorities was to protect the territory from any threat of invasion. Some of the soldiers assigned to pardo units between December 1808 and January 1809 stated that the measure was not a direct order of the general captaincy, but rather of particular captains of the Costa Sur militia.Footnote 44 Some of them said they thought it was a superior order from the captaincy, and accepted it, but when they realized it was not they asked for their transfer.Footnote 45 Therefore, an acute crisis of political legitimacy provides the historical backdrop for this episode.
Second, calidad proved to be a very instrumental and malleable tool of governance that at times appeared arbitrary, because it depended on the king's will and allowed the Spanish crown to exert control over its domains and cope with local circumstances. Imperial authorities drew strategically on the different components of calidad to deny or grant individuals access to key positions.
Political rivals in eighteenth-century New Granada used the same arguments as Matheo Ruiz de Aumada -who, as we saw previously removed an alderman from office for being mestizo, illegitimate and having practiced manual work-, to remove their opponents from office.Footnote 46 Spaniards across the jurisdiction of Guadalajara were denied offices because of having practiced an “ejercicio vil.”Footnote 47 In 1687, Vicente Méndez from Panama, “de color moreno,” sent to the Royal Council of the Indies an account of his merits and services to obtain a governorship in that jurisdiction. In his response, the king granted him the governorship with a wage, “so in sight of this price others would be compelled to emulate him.”Footnote 48 In 1717, also in Panama, the Royal Council granted captains of the free colored militias royal appointments. In their decree, they noted “este género de gente, la cual es de tan raro genio, que el defecto que le dio la naturaleza, le desvanece enteramente con sus honradas operaciones, de calidad que no ha habido capitán ni soldado blanco alguno.”Footnote 49
Similarly, in 1760 the king granted Francisco Baez y Llerena, a free pardo from Havana, permission to practice surgery in the city, because of his services to the crown. In his royal decree the king stated “I command … that Joseph Francisco Baez y Llerena may exercise freely his faculty of surgery, keeping all exemptions, privileges, and prerogatives that correspond to him as such … and I exempt him from his birth defect and I leave him as able and capable, as if he did not have it.”Footnote 50 In 1707, the king allowed the archbishop of Santo Domingo to appoint mulato priests, as long as they had enough merits, because of the lack of candidates.Footnote 51 However, in 1709 he reprimanded the bishop of Caracas for accepting mulatos and illegitimates as priests.Footnote 52 In 1714 the king even recommended to the Lima cabildo that it not appoint poor Spaniards.Footnote 53 An event in December 1782 offers a perhaps more telling example: Bernardo Ramírez, vecino of Guatemala, presented a testimony of his merits and services to the crown, and petitioned the Royal Council of the Indies to change his status, and his children's, to Spaniard. Although his petition was denied in September 1783, the council's response is telling because it highlights one of the features that sets calidad apart from the concept of race. The council bluntly stated, “It is true that outstanding subjects should be rewarded for their actions, so they [will] be satisfied, and others compelled to take similar actions for the King and the patria … but in order to have a sensible transmutation there should be very singular and relevant motives, and Bernardo Ramirez's merits are not of such kind.”Footnote 54 What all of these examples tell us, then, is that calidad was not fixed. One's rank could change through merits and honorable deeds, and one's calidad also depended on royal favor.
The plasticity of calidad also allowed the crown to deal with larger historical processes and adapt to local demands. After several pardos and mulatos requested changes of status through gracias al sacar in the jurisdictions of Caracas and New Granada, local officials petitioned the Council of the Indies to prevent them from improving their position in the hierarchy.Footnote 55 However, they decided to keep open the paths of honor for Afro-descendants, so they could improve their status and thus, the council hoped, be discouraged from notions of uprising.Footnote 56 This path remained open in the Cadiz constitution, which granted Afro-descendants citizenship under the same conditions.Footnote 57 Finally, it is by taking into consideration the workings of differentiation in the Spanish world, the imperial dimension of calidad as a tool of governance, and the critical historical moment in which it was actively deployed that we can make sense of the soldiers’ cases.
Confraternities and the Construction of Hierarchies from Below
Thus far, we have seen that calidad was at the center of imperial governance. However, as scholars have argued, the concept was also expressed at the local level. Catholic brotherhoods present an opportunity to examine how people articulated notions of honor and slavery to form social hierarchies. This part of the article explores what confraternities’ activities and their conflicts and other interactions with colonial institutions reveal about calidad as a form of governance. It is important to state at the outset that although people in the sodalities of Guadalajara did not speak directly about their calidad, they understood the basic tenets of the concept, and deployed them to secure themselves a place within the social hierarchy. Moreover, evidence from other Mexican cities of the period, where people spoke explicitly about their calidad, further support the claim that these interactions were indeed related to calidad.Footnote 58
Sodalities were an integral part of religious life and fundamental for people's everyday experiences. Catholic brotherhoods can also be seen as platforms from which people could assert their identities and negotiate power relations.Footnote 59 The focus here is on three confraternities that accepted people of African descent among their members: San Antonio de Padua, Nuestra Señora del Tránsito, and Nuestra Señora de Zapopan. The analysis also considers other brotherhoods that interacted with these three, such as San José de Analco, and Santísima Trinidad. The documentation explored here spans the period from the 1660s to 1795, although the bulk of the information comes from the late seventeenth century.
The brotherhoods of Guadalajara fit into a long tradition of black and mulato confraternities in the Spanish world.Footnote 60 In many ways, the configuration of these associations reflected Guadalajara's social structure, a varied milieu with a considerable concentration of Indian and Afro-descendant residents. Guadalajara was founded in 1542 and in 1560 became the seat of the second royal court of colonial Mexico, and a bishopric. In the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it became an important center for commerce in the west of New Spain, and the seat of other institutions, such as the second university of colonial Mexico, a traders’ guild, and a mint. Despite housing such institutions, Guadalajara remained for most of the colonial period a small and somewhat peripheral city within the Spanish empire, at least in comparison to the viceregal capitals and the mining centers.Footnote 61 Nonetheless, the city provides a fair case study to refine our understanding of New Spain's social structure, because of the diversity of groups that inhabited it throughout the colonial period.
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Guadalajara brought together Spaniards, Indians of different origins (some from nearby native groups, and others brought to the region as colonizers) and Afro-descendants. Additionally, during the seventeenth century some Portuguese traders, a few Japanese merchants, and slaves of Asian origin, (mostly Filipinos) inhabited the city.Footnote 62 The African and Afro-descendant presence in Guadalajara can be dated to its foundation, when the first settlers brought their slaves and servants with them. By the beginning of the seventeenth century, the city and its surrounding Indian towns (Analco and Mexicaltzingo, which eventually became part of the city) had between 3,000 and 4,000 inhabitants, of which approximately 60 percent were Indians, 20 percent Spaniards, and 20 percent African or Afro-descendants. By the 1650s, the city and its surroundings had a maximum of 5,000 inhabitants, 3,357 of whom were registered in the main parish of the city. Of these, 54.7 percent were Spaniards, 7 percent mestizos, 9.2 percent free blacks and mulatos, 20.3 percent black and mulato slaves, and 8.7 percent Indians.Footnote 63
During the eighteenth century, Guadalajara grew to become one of the largest cities of New Spain, and Afro-descendants remained an important percentage of the city's population. By the beginning of the century, it had between 9,000 and 10,00 inhabitants. In the 1777 census, which counted 19,192 inhabitants of the city, 38.6 percent were Afro-descendants: 7,213 mulatos, 144 lobos, and 53 blacks. In a later census, from 1793, the count was 24,249 inhabitants, of whom 26.9 percent were mulatos, and 16.1 percent other castas. In contrast, the censuses of 1821 and 1822 show a decrease in this sector's population—about 2 percent were of African descent.Footnote 64
In colonial Guadalajara, the confraternities’ main activities were organizing processions during Holy Week and Corpus Christi, and celebrating the feast days of their respective patron saints. A series of charters established all the privileges and obligations of the confraternity members, and the charters are where we can see the most influence of calidad within these associations. Cofrades had to elect representatives who were in charge of managing the brotherhood and organizing festivities. Brothers also paid fees to enter sodalities. Charters regulated all of these aspects of confraternal life.Footnote 65
An analysis of the Nuestra Señora de Zapopan charters allows us to evaluate the influence of calidad in confraternities. Vecinos of Guadalajara founded the sodality on April 24, 1681, and its constitutions stated that persons of the four “gremios of the city and its surroundings, such as Spaniards, mestizos, Indians, and mulatos,” could enter as brothers.Footnote 66 Two mayordomos and eight deputies administered the cofradía. The brothers elected the mayordomos by secret ballot, on December 18 every year. One of the mayordomos had to be a clergyman and the other a layman. Members also chose deputies during the same election, two from each of the groups comprising the confraternity.
The brotherhood had license to collect alms in the city and its surroundings. For this purpose, each group had an assigned day of the week to collect: Spaniards on Tuesdays, mestizos on Thursdays, mulatos on Fridays, and Indians on Sundays. Each group kept a ledger, which they gave to the treasurer. The alms were kept in a chest of three keys (the two mayordomos and the treasurer kept the keys) that could be opened only once a year, during the festivity celebrated on the day of the election.Footnote 67
Members used the alms collected during the year to pay for dowries for “poor and virtuous” women. It is interesting how they distributed the alms among the four groups, because it shows hierarchies at work within these associations. The alms collected by each group belonged to that specific group; that is, the alms collected by Spaniards were distributed among Spanish women, the ones collected by mulatos were distributed among mulatas, and so on. The alms collected for masses and festivities, along with other profits, were divided in half; one half belonged to the Spaniards, and the other three groups distributed the rest in equal shares. A week before the festivity, the brothers selected a number of women from among their relatives who would receive money for a dowry. Finally, they distributed the money as follows: 300 pesos for each Spanish woman, 100 for mestizas, 50 for mulatas, and 40 for Indians. The treasurer had to deliver the money one day after the wedding or one day after a woman entered a convent, if she decided instead to become a nun.Footnote 68
The Zapopan confraternity lapsed and was re-founded a few times during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. A 1795 account, written at the request of Francisco Ramírez Morales, subdelegado of Zapopan, stated that the brotherhood was founded in 1696 and then again in 1757. Both times, new constitutions were signed, and the confraternity always accepted persons of different statuses of calidad. However, the two documents show some changes in the prerogatives and obligations of each group. For instance, the constitutions of 1696 specified that all persons who wanted to enter the sodality should pay two pesos, except for Indians, who paid what they could. Additionally, three deputies, elected from among all members, administered the confraternity. The 1757 constitutions, in contrast, stipulated that “all people of reason should pay two pesos, poor people one peso, persons of color four reales, and Indians two reales.”Footnote 69 Finally, in regard to governance of the brotherhood, the constitutions established that “in the elections of mayordomos and other representatives of this confraternity only Spaniards, considered or known as such, shall have a vote.”Footnote 70
These three documents show how the establishment of hierarchies within brotherhoods changed over time. Several issues stand out in these charters. First, the fact that the last constitutions used markers related to class, phenotype, and Christianity illustrates how deeply interwoven these markers were in regard to the construction of social boundaries. Second, there was a tightening in the hierarchy between the 1696 charter and that of 1757, in regard to the marginalization of Afro-descendants, and related to this, the distinction between “persons of color,” and “people of reason.” Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, blacks and mulatos were indeed considered as gente de razón, a concept that referred to those considered eligible to receive the Holy Scriptures, in opposition to those considered gente sin razón, or new Christians. It is beyond the scope of this work to elucidate the reasons for these changes. However, it is clear that the category “all Spaniards considered or known as such” relates to the importance of reputation for the construction of difference in the Spanish world.
Because of the instability of the confraternity, we do not know if these rules were ever enforced. Nonetheless, one could make the case that the charters, as official documents, do reflect people's concerns for establishing social boundaries, and perhaps suggest larger transformations within society. Moreover, the hierarchies drawn in charters were also expressed in social life, giving more relevance to calidad as the basis for structured difference in the Spanish world. An analysis of the constitutions of San Antonio de Padua and its interaction with other sodalities and government institutions provides further evidence of the influence of calidad in daily life and points to how honor and slavery were put into play.
The rules of San Antonio de Padua stated the prerogatives and obligations of the members, according to their calidad. The sodality included those born in Africa and those born in the New World, (criollos and mulatos), and accepted both men and women. The rules stipulated that new male members should pay one peso and four reales, while female inductees paid one peso. In addition, all the brothers paid half a real each week, one peso every two weeks and four pesos every year. All the cofrades had to participate in the confraternity's procession for Holy Week and the patron saint's day festivities, attend the funerals of the deceased brothers, and take care of members who became ill. Mulatos administered the alms collected in the city, blacks those collected outside the city, and those collected during Lent were shared equally by both. Finally, all expenses were also shared equally by both groups.Footnote 71
The black brothers, comprising negros criollos and bozales, carried the saint and the guión (a small cross that was carried during festivities) during processions, whereas mulatos hoisted the banner. The position of mayordomo alternated: one year the mayordomo had to be elected from among mulatos, and the next year from among blacks. In spite of the explicitness of the rules regarding the election of the confraternity's officials, they did not prevent the quarrel that was to come. In July 1667, only two years after the black and mulato parties signed the charter of the brotherhood, they began a dispute over the control of the association. We have record of each party's arguments, and these provide valuable information as to how people perceived themselves and the other members, and the distinction markers they used. First, bozales argued that their fathers were the founders of the brotherhood, and that mulatos already controlled the confraternity of Nuestra Señora del Tránsito:
We [bozales] appear before Your Grace in our right and best interest and we say that said confraternity was founded from its origin and commencement by bozales and creoles, and we have always had possession of it, and afterwards some mulatos began to enter as brothers. As a result, one year the bozales had the government and the next year the mulatos, provoking dissent, disrupting the peace, and causing disturbances to this day … and with regard that the mulatos already have the confraternity of Nuestra Señora del Tránsito, founded in the convent of Saint Augustine, we would ask Your Grace to declare that the government of our confraternity is ours and belongs to us bozales and not to mulatos.Footnote 72
For their part, mulatos also claimed that their fathers were the founders of the confraternity, and that bozales had had nothing to do with establishing it: “Firstly, that said confraternity in its commencement and first establishment was erected by negros criollos and mulato residents of this city, our forefathers, and they themselves made and carved the confraternity's chapel.” Next, they targeted the alleged incapacity of bozales for managing the association, for “not being capable or plenty to keep the confraternity for themselves.” Finally, they insisted on bozales’ condición and their lack of honor: “For they are people in whom we cannot trust the assets or the goods of the confraternity, as they are slaves and they might lose them because of villainy or carelessness, and they could not be admonished as we could be, because we are free and craftsmen, and that from our work have promoted said confraternity.”Footnote 73 The dispute ended on November 9, 1667, when the judge-provisor Baltazar de la Peña y Medina declared that the government of the confraternity belonged to bozales and that mulatos could not participate in its administration, but still could be members.
This episode illuminates how notions of honor and slavery were interwoven with calidad. It also reveals the different layers of identity that characterized blacks and mulatos. Each group appealed to a tradition or legacy to back its claims regarding the governance of the sodality (“Our forefathers founded … ”), an appeal that is surely related to the importance of custom in Spanish law. Mulatos’ claims are more contradictory, for they reproduce the idea of blacks’ lack of honor (“They are villains”), which relates to blacks’ status of slaves. The mulatos’ assertions of distinction are also multifaceted, because they merge their perceptions of occupation (“We are craftsmen”) and condición (“We are free”) with the importance of custom.
The confraternity of San Antonio de Padua also reveals interesting dynamics of New World Atlantic society. For example, the internal division between African-born and Mexican-born blacks is paralleled in some Brazilian confraternities. However, the case of Guadalajara is different from that of Brazil. In Brazil Africans spoke of themselves as members of specific naciones, but blacks from Guadalajara used the single term “bozal”—an otherwise derogatory word that Spaniards used for Africans—to refer to themselves. As to why blacks from Guadalajara did not preserved specific ethnonyms, it is likely that with the predominance of slaves classified as “Angola” in seventeenth-century Guadalajara, the terms “Angola” and “bozal” at some point became interchangeable. Then, over time, blacks appropriated the word, infusing it with new meanings.Footnote 74
This case also shows that within confraternities Afro-descendants occupied leading positions in what could be considered a parallel hierarchy. This claim is more significant considering that these brotherhoods brought together persons of different calidad. For example, in 1675 Diego Rodríguez, a black slave of Diego Gamboa, a merchant of the city, was the mayordomo of the San Antonio de Padua confraternity.Footnote 75 Also, in 1684, Francisco de la Cruz, a tailor, was chosen mayordomo of Nuestra Señora del Tránsito. The rector was a shoemaker with the same name; both were free mulatos.Footnote 76 Although mulatos controlled the confraternity of Nuestra Señora del Tránsito, its composition was varied, as the lists of masses devoted to deceased brothers show. In 1658, the sodality sponsored three masses for the soul of Simona de la Cruz, a deceased slave. In 1659, they did the same for Captain Pedro Vidarte y Pardo, and in 1660, for Hernando de Mujica, accountant of the royal treasury of Guadalajara. Another mass was held, in 1667, for Diego Pérez de Rivera, notary of the city council. All three of these men were Spanish elites.Footnote 77
The analysis of disputes over the place each confraternity was to occupy during processions sheds light on the processes of hierarchy formation. New Spain was a corporate society—that is, it was intended to be a society in which all members occupied a place according to a divine order that people were not to disrupt. However, in reality people constructed that order themselves, through their interactions with imperial institutions. For example, during the processions in which all the confraternities of a city participated, such as Corpus Christi, they did so in an orderly fashion, in compliance with the seniority of each brotherhood and the calidad of its members. This means that Spaniards’ confraternities always led processions, and behind them came the remaining sodalities. The selection of the days on which each confraternity was to organize its Holy Week procession was another way to draw lines of exclusion. While Spaniards preferred to organize theirs for Good Friday, other confraternities led theirs on Maundy Thursday.
An examination of one example where several confraternities fought over the place they would occupy in the processions reveals interesting dynamics about how these processes served the purposes of the empire. In May 1674, the confraternities of San Antonio de Padua, run by blacks, Nuestra Señora del Tránsito, led by mulatos, and San José de Analco, administered by Indians, began a dispute over which of them should lead the Maundy Thursday procession during the commemorations of Holy Week in Guadalajara. The Indian representatives of San José claimed that it was their right to lead the procession because of the seniority of their brotherhood, and that given their legal status as naturales, the crown had the obligation to protect them.Footnote 78
The black brothers of San Antonio de Padua argued that they had always led the procession, and that no other confraternity should have a claim on this matter:
Responding to the pretension of the brothers of said confraternity (Analco) on the preference, arguing that due to their seniority … they should have preference in the procession and activities conducted in the city, and the only thing in which they are right in their claims is that they should not get along with us, because the banner of our confraternity has always come in front of theirs … Spaniards and only Spaniards should have preference over us.Footnote 79
As in the case of the internal dispute over the control of San Antonio de Padua, Indians, blacks, and mulatos appealed to custom, in this case to the seniority of their respective brotherhoods. Although the exact dates of its foundation are unknown, some sources assert that San Antonio de Padua was founded during the bishopric of Alonso de la Mota y Escobar between 1598 and 1607. Nuestra Señora del Tránsito, according to an archival document, already existed in 1620. According to Indians, Bishop Pedro de Ayala, who presided over the diocese between 1560 and 1569, founded their confraternity.Footnote 80
The quarrel began when mulatos complained to the judge because the Indians had “usurped” their place in the procession by standing in front of the banner of San Antonio de Padua. They explained that the orders of Bishop Francisco Verdín de Molina stipulated that the confraternity of Nuestra Señora del Tránsito should walk in front of all the confraternities of Analco. Furthermore, they appealed to the legal status of their brotherhood, claiming that they had a foundation bull recorded in the Templo de San Agustín, while the Indians of San José de Analco did not, and thus could not prove the antiquity of their brotherhood.Footnote 81
The brothers of San Antonio de Padua defended a more privileged position, one that mulatos acknowledged, but Indians did not. Adding to their claim that “Spaniards and only Spaniards should have preference over us,” blacks pointed out that their patron saint, who was also the patron saint of “all blacks and mulatos of New Spain” was San Benito de Palermo, and that this fact earned them preference.Footnote 82 Here, the appeal was to recognize the cofrades’ devotion and embrace of Christianity as a justification to obtain privileges.Footnote 83 It is unfortunate that we do not have a ruling on this case. Regardless, this last claim clearly implies considerable complexity within Afro-descendants’ social identity. Disputes among sodalities over the precedence during festivities continued during most of the colonial period and evidenced similar patterns and rationales.Footnote 84
The example of confraternities, then, demonstrates that the basic tenets of calidad were pervasive enough to get people engaged with institutions and law to dispute their place within society. In this attempt, the various claims of Indians, blacks, and mulatos allow us to see the different layers of their identities, and how they perceived others. Moreover, in their quest for recognition, they actively participated in the construction of the very imperial order that framed their actions.
Conclusion
In comparing Douglas Cope's study on race in colonial Mexico, and Ariela Gross's book on race in the United States, Ann Twinam highlights the similar terms in which both authors portray the construction of difference in their respective contexts.Footnote 85 However, as much as these authors use analogous terminology in their analyses, Gross also shows how colonial officials in the seventeenth century and beyond increasingly established distinctions based on appearance, and how nineteenth-century US Americans thought that race was “recognizable at sight,” and came over time to rely on “science” and the practice of summoning experts to elucidate someone's racial identity in courts.Footnote 86 As this article demonstrates, this shift did not happen in colonial Spanish America. Therefore, diverging understandings of social difference must have been operating in each context. Recognizing this fact, should lead us to reconsider and redeploy historical vocabularies when analyzing the construction of difference in the two cultures.
The Spanish imperial apparatus and society were configured around the notion of calidad, a pervasive idea that operated at ground level, and also on an imperial scale. This concept presented similarities across time and space that scholars have overlooked in favor of local specificities. Even during the late eighteenth century, calidad was still based on religious notions that dated back to the period of the Reconquista (as Joaquín Trillo's case shows), and notions of royal favor. More important, the evidence presented here suggests that people of the period thought of calidad as something mutable, and that the biological bases that would characterize race in the nineteenth century were ambiguous at best in colonial Spanish America. The brotherhood's constitutions show some changes and a tightening in the hierarchies, but we do not know if those were ever enforced. Paradoxically, while the confraternities were hardening their rules, some Bourbon policies entailed an expansion of opportunities for Afro-descendants.
Finally, returning to calidad as an approach to studying power relations in the Spanish world also serves to permit some methodological reflections. Nowadays, it is accepted among scholars that human difference is not just biologically given, but also socially and culturally constructed. Thus, subsuming varying notions of difference, separated across time and space, under the concept of race results in downplaying the cultural character of these processes. Indeed, we as scholars should be more attentive to the language, and to other cultural aspects, that people used in processes of differentiation, for underlying the words they used there are distinct worldviews. Moreover, instead of asking how “race” worked in any given society, we should be open to more far-reaching questions: How was social difference constructed in a given epoch, and what concepts did people use to construct difference? Why did some societies have exclusionary practices based on difference but not a vocabulary about difference? When did people start to use the concept of race, and how did they use it?
To say that the concept of race is not applicable to every historical context is not to deny the stratified character of those societies, nor the exclusionary policies they produced. Instead, it is a challenge to shape and sharpen the analytical categories that we use to study the past.
