{"id":21996,"date":"2012-03-27T19:34:04","date_gmt":"2012-03-27T19:34:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=21996"},"modified":"2012-03-27T19:34:04","modified_gmt":"2012-03-27T19:34:04","slug":"colonial-peru-the-caste-system-and-the-%e2%80%9cpurity%e2%80%9d-of-blood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=21996","title":{"rendered":"Colonial Peru, the Caste System, and the \u201cPurity\u201d of Blood"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/southamericana.com\/2012\/03\/20\/spain-peru-and-the-purity-of-blood\/\" target=\"_blank\">Colonial Peru, the Caste System, and the \u201cPurity\u201d of Blood<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/southamericana.com\" target=\"_blank\">South Americana: The History and Culture of the World&#8217;s Most Exotic Continent<\/a><br \/>\n2012-03-20<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/en.gravatar.com\/davidgaughran\" target=\"_blank\">David Gaughran<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It was the Spaniards who gave the world the notion that an aristocrat\u2019s blood is not red but blue. The Spanish nobility started taking shape around the ninth century in classic military fashion, occupying land as warriors on horseback. They were to continue the process for more than five hundred years, clawing back sections of the peninsula from its Moorish occupiers, and a nobleman demonstrated his pedigree by holding up his sword arm to display the filigree of blue-blooded veins beneath his pale skin\u2014proof that his birth had not been contaminated by the dark-skinned enemy\u2014Robert Lacey, Aristocrats<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nThe historical Spanish obsession with the purity of blood evolved into an elaborate caste system which reached its apogee with the colonization of South America and the subsequent intermingling of settlers with both South American Indians and imported African slaves, all of whose mixed offspring needed a separate classification, of course.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nIt was an intricate system\u2014designed to pit sections of society against each other and play on the subsequent fear of overthrow by the lower classes, so that Spain could continue to exert its top-down control. But it also signified the relative social importance of the caste members, usually in a pejorative sense, meaning that only certain rights, occupations, and institutions were open to them.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nIf you had been born in Spain, then you automatically qualified as a member of the elite. If you had been born in South America, but your bloodline was \u201cpure\u201d then you were accorded privileged status, but of the second order, and the most influential posts were out of reach. However, if your ancestors had the temerity to dally with the Indians or blacks, then a complicated algorithm was brought to bear&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;Caste membership didn\u2019t simply determine what occupation you could hold, but also whether you could bear arms, attend university, or even the clothes you were allowed wear&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/southamericana.com\/2012\/03\/20\/spain-peru-and-the-purity-of-blood\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Colonial Peru, the Caste System, and the \u201cPurity\u201d of Blood South Americana: The History and Culture of the World&#8217;s Most Exotic Continent 2012-03-20 David Gaughran It was the Spaniards who gave the world the notion that an aristocrat\u2019s blood is not red but blue. The Spanish nobility started taking shape around the ninth century in [&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],"tags":[10210,674,10209,10208,892],"class_list":["post-21996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-latincarib","category-history","category-media-archive","tag-david-gaughran","tag-peru","tag-south-americana","tag-south-americana-the-history-and-culture-of-the-worlds-most-exotic-continent","tag-spain"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21996","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=21996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21996\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}