Genealogical Fictions: Limpieza de Sangre, Religion, and Gender in Colonial Mexico

María Elena Martínez’s Genealogical Fictions deserves a place among the best of the recent literature that has been produced on race, caste, social hierarchy, and religion in colonial Latin America. The book is a significant work of archival research, historical synthesis, and interpretation, yielding one of the most comprehensive understandings to date on the wide-ranging significance of limpieza de sangre. In fact, while Martínez covers some well-known topics, she marshals her evidence in innovative ways that help bring into view a refreshingly new perspective on Latin America’s past.One of the book’s main tasks is to correlate limpieza de sangre (which had strong religious connotations in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries) with the evolution of more modern ideas surrounding caste and race. This is a contentious point for those who have viewed limpieza de sangre as primarily an Iberian phenomenon and for those who have argued for isolating it from conceptions of race, lest we erroneously fall into the trap of “characterizing all premodern societies . . . as racially structured” (p. 11). As Martínez’s argument unfolds, she traces how the very idiom of blood lineage experienced significant transformation over time, producing reciprocal shocks on the production of colonial racial discourse. She reveals a certain congruency between colonial racism and anti-Semitism. Additionally, she shows how gender and sexuality were integral to both the conceptualization of limpieza de sangre and caste, since ideas of masculinity and female sexuality served as discursive sites that managed blood purity and caste proliferation.A true work of Atlantic history, Genealogical Fictions moves seamlessly from Spain to Mexico and back again. Divided into three parts (with three chapters apiece), the book starts by evaluating the genesis of limpieza de sangre in Spain, uncovering the fragility of the system. Proving purity of blood and sustaining those claims too often fell to the whims of rumor or the wiles of officials who could be easily bribed. Nonetheless, limpieza certificates were vigorously pursued. In transitioning her analysis to New Spain (the crux of the book’s second section), Martínez explores the differences encountered in the New World environment. She proposes that the division of society into two “republics” (one for Spaniards and the other for indios) is basic to an understanding of how Spaniards and natives utilized and invoked blood purity claims to legitimate their heritages, bestow honor, and promote social advancement. Natives, being privileged to live under the rubric of a “republic” (even if loosely configured within the colonial legal and social mind-set), could partake of and create parallel discourses of limpieza de sangre that emphasized links to respected pre-Hispanic dynasties but that slightly sidestepped limpieza de sangre’s original intent. Indeed, as the concept of limpieza de sangre worked its way sinuously through the totality of the colonial world, its original form and purposes continually metamorphosed.Although primarily anchored in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Genealogical Fictions has much to say about the eighteenth century, much of it in the concluding three chapters. For instance, Martínez compels us to rethink processes of creolization and the development of creole identity, especially on the eve of the nineteenth century. She invites us to ponder the significance of the casta paintings (eighteenth-century artistic renditions of colonial racial mixture) in light of new arguments and evidence. Furthermore, she entices us to fathom what the legacy of tracing one’s “lineage” actually meant as it was enacted and routinized in the everyday lives of colonists. Obviously, the deep structures of social memory, social organization, and hierarchy in the New World must have been affected.Scholars may find particularly innovative Martínez’s use of probanza records (certificates of lineage and blood purity) as the main methodological tool to trace the history of limpieza de sangre. These documents prove to be remarkably useful, especially in understanding elite maneuverings. Into the eighteenth century, their tenor changed as probanza cases became far less concerned with establishing and ascertaining one’s unblemished, Christian origins. Much of this shift corresponded with a general move away from religious concerns toward secular ones. New debates produced by the Age of Reason, particularly regarding nature and its classification and evolution, were equally influential. With these changes, the complicated genealogical formulas and logic that had prevailed in probanza cases gave way to an emergent phenotypic knowledge that helped establish the “proofs” and “evidence” of one’s social station. In other words, the greater secularization of society emboldened the development of phenotypic logic as a rational means of “knowing,” despite the fact that in some instances (especially in native communities) the value of genealogically derived knowledge continued to enjoy primacy. Alas, for many in the eighteenth century, purity of blood became purity of phenotype.This is a book packed with insights. Page after page, Martínez displays an astute command of the literature on colonial Mexico, and she does not shy from using her evidence to rewrite portions of the master narrative of Mexican history. With a book of such scope, however, there are inevitably points that one would have liked to see addressed. For instance, Martínez covers only lightly the topic of gente de razón, which may have had more bearing on understanding limpieza de sangre and caste than she insinuates. Given the broadness of her topic, the theme of gender also periodically gets lost as she works through the details of other matters. Additionally, one wonders how limpieza de sangre fits (and complicates) the narrative of “honor-virtue” and “honor-status” that has been inherited from a previous generation of scholars. Finally, there is a distinct class bias in this study that leans toward the upper social strata (in part an inevitable consequence of her documents and evidence). Regardless of these small points, what readers will find here is a sage and learned discussion of the rise of limpieza de sangre and its transfer to the New World. This is an important book that will help steer future studies. Any scholar working in the field of colonial Latin American social history must certainly consult Genealogical Fictions. Undoubtedly, it will be widely read in graduate seminars.