{"id":17166,"date":"2011-10-21T17:42:41","date_gmt":"2011-10-21T17:42:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=17166"},"modified":"2012-03-14T00:51:36","modified_gmt":"2012-03-14T00:51:36","slug":"%e2%80%9cpure-and-noble-indians-untainted-by-inferior-idolatrous-races%e2%80%9d-native-elites-and-the-discourse-of-blood-purity-in-late-colonial-mexico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=17166","title":{"rendered":"\u201cPure and Noble Indians, Untainted by Inferior Idolatrous Races\u201d: Native Elites and the Discourse of Blood Purity in Late Colonial Mexico"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1215\/00182168-1416657\" target=\"_blank\">\u201cPure and Noble Indians, Untainted by Inferior Idolatrous Races\u201d: Native Elites and the Discourse of Blood Purity in Late Colonial Mexico<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/hahr.dukejournals.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Hispanic American Historical Review<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/hahr.dukejournals.org\/content\/91\/4.toc\" target=\"_blank\">Volume 91, Number 4<\/a> (2011)<br \/>\npages 633-663<br \/>\nDOI: <a href=\"http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1215\/00182168-1416657\" target=\"_blank\">10.1215\/00182168-1416657<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.uncg.edu\/his\/docs\/Villella_index.html\" target=\"_blank\">Peter B. Villella<\/a><\/strong>, Assistant Professor of History<br \/>\n<em>University of North Carolina, Greensboro<\/em><\/p>\n<p>As sixteenth-century Spaniards constructed their global empire, they carried with them the racial-religious concept of \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Limpieza_de_sangre\" target=\"_blank\">limpieza de sangre<\/a>,\u201d or blood purity, which restricted marginalized communities from exercising prestige and authority. However, the complex demographic arena of early modern America, so different from the late medieval <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Iberian_Peninsula\" target=\"_blank\">Iberia<\/a> that gave rise to the discourse, necessarily destabilized and complicated limpieza&#8217;s meanings and modes of expression. This article explores a variety of ways by which indigenous elites in late <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/New_Spain#New_Mexico\" target=\"_blank\">colonial Mexico<\/a> sought to take advantage of these ambiguities and describe themselves as \u201cpure-blooded,\u201d thereby reframing their local authority in terms recognized and respected by Spanish authorities. Specifically, savvy native lords naturalized the concept by portraying their own ancestors as the originators of \u201cpure\u201d bloodlines in America. <strong>In doing so, they reoriented the imagined metrics of purity so as to distinguish themselves from native commoners, mestizos, and the descendants of Africans. However, applying limpieza in native communities could backfire: after two centuries of extensive race mixing, many native lords found themselves vulnerable to accusations of uncleanliness and ancestral shame.<\/strong> Yet successful or not, indigenous participation in the discourse of limpieza helped influence what it meant in <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/New_Spain\" target=\"_blank\">New Spain<\/a> to be \u201chonorable\u201d and \u201cpure,\u201d and therefore eligible for social mobility.<\/p>\n<p>Read or purchase the article <a href=\"http:\/\/hahr.dukejournals.org\/content\/91\/4\/633.full.pdf+html\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cPure and Noble Indians, Untainted by Inferior Idolatrous Races\u201d: Native Elites and the Discourse of Blood Purity in Late Colonial Mexico Hispanic American Historical Review Volume 91, Number 4 (2011) pages 633-663 DOI: 10.1215\/00182168-1416657 Peter B. Villella, Assistant Professor of History University of North Carolina, Greensboro As sixteenth-century Spaniards constructed their global empire, they carried [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,21,459,8,103,3015],"tags":[3025,20753,7964,7965],"class_list":["post-17166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-latincarib","category-history","category-media-archive","category-mexico","category-native-americans","tag-hispanic-american-historical-review","tag-mexico","tag-peter-b-villella","tag-peter-villella"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17166\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}