“A Bad Race of Infected Blood” The Atlantic Profile of Gaspar Riveros Vasconcelos and the Question of Race in 1650 New Spain

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-25
Author(s):  
Matteo Lazzari
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
New Spain ◽  
National Archive ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Local Context ◽  
Colonial Mexico ◽  
Infected Blood ◽  
Cartagena De Indias

Abstract Based on manuscripts from the Mexican National Archive recording a 1650 Inquisition trial for astrology, this article will present a reconstruction of the story of Gaspar Riveros Vasconcelos, a “mulatto” born in Tangier, a descendant of a Portuguese father and Angolan mother. He travelled the Atlantic commercial routes – visiting Angola, Pernambuco, Cartagena de Indias, La Havana – and got involved in political discussions with Spaniards residing in mid-seventeenth century Mexico City. This period was particularly tough for Portuguese people in Spanish America, given the 1640 breach of the dynastic union of Spain and Portugal, which had been formerly achieved in 1581 by King Philipp ii. Vasconcelos’ story allows us to reflect on identity formation in time, on the concept of race, as well as on the ways in which “a persona miserable de color pardo” could deploy his agency as Afro-Portuguese in colonial Mexico society. As such, this paper aims to reconsider the relevance of individual narratives which can generate a growing awareness of the importance that Afro-descendants had in the Ibero-American world and how they could influence the process of racialization in the local context of seventeenth century New Spain.

The Colonial City

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
D.A. BRADING
Keyword(s):  
Mexico City ◽  
New Spain ◽  
Cultural Influences ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Religious Orders ◽  
Clear Vision ◽  
The Social ◽  
The City ◽  
Political Decisions ◽  
Looking Back

This chapter demonstrates that while Spain had a clear vision of what the conquered Aztec city should be, the city of the conquistadors was relatively short for it was soon transformed by its Creole inhabitants who made their own identity pronounced on its building and culture. For 300 years, the city of Mexico was the capital of viceroyalty. It was the capital of New Spain and was the seat of the metropolitan archbishopric of Mexico. During the first decades of the seventeenth century, a generation of young Creoles entered the secular priesthood and the religious orders. They challenged the predominance of European Spaniards, affirmed their talents and identity, and started looking back to the glorious past the conquistadors had destroyed. However, the development of the city was constrained and limited by the city’s status as the viceregal capital of New Spain. Its status hence meant that the city depended on the political decisions and cultural influences emanating from the Spanish. Out of this tension, a creative process of change emerged in which different ethnic groups and cultures intermingled and conflicted to ensure that the social composition and character of Mexico City would be different from the other cities in Spanish America. However, these changes were not brought without due loss. Due to the conquest and the Old World diseases the Mexico population fell to the near brink of oblivion. These epidemics and natural calamities continued to afflict the city throughout the colonial period.

Portuguese Encomenderos de Negros and the Slave Trade within Mexico, 1600–1675

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 221-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pablo Miguel Sierra Silva
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
Tax Evasion ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Colonial Mexico ◽  
Puebla De Los Angeles

This article focuses on local slaving agents, encomenderos de negros, during the first half of the seventeenth century. Drawing on notarial documents, Inquisition cases and investigations on contraband and tax evasion, the study explains how Portuguese intermediaries sold and distributed African captives in colonial Mexico between 1616 and 1639. The ability to extend credit was key to the success of these agents-on-commission. The article also explains why agents of the Grillo and Lomelín slaving monopoly (asiento) failed to replicate the success of their Lusophone predecessors in Nueva Veracruz, Mexico City and Puebla de los Ángeles in the 1660s and 1670s.

African Diasporic Ethnicity in Mexico City to 1650

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank “Trey” Proctor
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
African Diaspora ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Ethnic Communities ◽  
Old World ◽  
Pan African ◽  
Catchment Areas ◽  
Race Ethnicity

This chapter examines the intersections of race, ethnicity, and slavery in Spanish America and the African Diaspora by focusing on the development of African Diasporic ethnicity in Mexico City to 1650. Drawing on marriage records from early seventeenth-century Mexico City, it considers how Africans constructed multiple new ethnic and community identities in Spanish America. Through an analysis of selection patterns of testigos (wedding witnesses) alongside marriage choice, the chapter highlights the networks of social relations formed by slaves. It shows that ethnic Africans tended to marry and form communities of association with Africans from the same general catchment areas. It argues that the foundations of the ethnic communities under formation were not intact African ethnicities, pan-African identities, or race-based identities. Rather, slave marriages in Mexico City point to the creation of African diasporic ethnicities that were spontaneously articulated in the Diaspora. Africans formed new ethnic identities based upon Old World backgrounds and commonalities while in Diaspora.

scholarly journals Adopted Pedagogies: Nahua Incorporation of European Music and Theater in Colonial Mexico City

2010 ◽  
Vol 66 (03) ◽  
pp. 311-330 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Truitt
Keyword(s):  
Mexico City ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
New Spain ◽  
Colonial Mexico ◽  
Franciscan Order ◽  
One Year

In 1519 Spanish conquistadors arrived on the shores of Mesoamerica under the leadership of Hernando Cortés. Following the defeat of Mexico-Tenochtidan, the Aztec capital, Cortés requested that members of the Franciscan order be sent from Spain to lead the conversion effort. In 1523 the first three Franciscans arrived, among them fray Pedro de Gante. One year later another 12 Franciscans made the journey. They established themselves in the southeastern portion of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, and under their direction Nahua laborers built the principal Franciscan religious compound, San Francisco, and the first indigenous chapel in New Spain, San Josef de los Naturales. Together this friary and chapel served as the main point of interaction for Franciscan conversion efforts within the altepetl, ethnic state, of Mexico-Tenochtidan. In the courtyard of San Francisco, next to the indigenous chapel, fray Pedro established an indigenous school aimed at the indoctrination of the Nahua peoples of Mexico-Tenochtitlan and other outlying altepetl. Although its students were primarily members of indigenous nobility, other promising Nahuas received an education there as well.

La Entrada Angelopolitana: Ritual and Myth in the Viceregal Entry in Puebla de Los Angeles

1996 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 283-320 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy H. Fee
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
New Spain ◽  
Puebla De Los Angeles ◽  
Hernan Cortes ◽  
The City

The celebration of the entry of the viceroy was the most lavish, costly civic ritual in seventeenth-century Puebla de los Angeles. Staged by Puebla elites to honor the viceroy, this ritual event was orchestrated to assert and display the religiosity and superiority of Angelópolis (the literary title for Puebla). Invoking the journey of Hernán Cortés, the routing of the viceregal entry through Puebla prior to Mexico City heightened the competitive spirit of the Puebla Cabildo. The Puebla Cathedral, erected on the main plaza largely under the influence of Bishop Juan de Palafox y Mendoza from 1640-49, functioned as the centerpiece and scenographie backdrop of this civic spectacle. Ephemeral, triumphal arches featuring allegorical, political emblems framed and gated the ritual entry. Designed by members of the oldest builders’ guild in New Spain, some of these arches were placed within the main portal of the Cathedral marking its role as the sanctum sanctorum of the city.

The Sound of Profession Ceremonies in Novohispanic Convents

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-170
Author(s):  
CESAR D. FAVILA
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Race Relations ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
New Spain ◽  
Main Subject ◽  
Valuable Source ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Immaculate Conception ◽  
Artistic Patronage

AbstractNuns in New Spain were celebrated with music and elaborate rituals when they took the habit and professed in a convent. These grandiose profession ceremonies drew in a host of urban citizens to the convent churches. Indeed, “more girls are smitten by the ceremony, than anything else,” remarked Fanny Calderón, wife of a Spanish ambassador who lived in Mexico City in the early 1840s, confirming that the iconic festivity endured well into the nineteenth century after Mexico's independence.This article on nuns’ professions is framed within the Order of the Immaculate Conception (Conceptionists). One of the largest extant collections of Novohispanic convent music comes from the Conceptionist community of the Santísima Trinidad, founded in seventeenth-century Puebla. The manuscripts are preserved at Centro Nacional de Investigación, Documentación e Información Musical “Carlos Chávez” in Mexico City, and they contain profession villancicos. My research on Conceptionist ritual books and biographies of noteworthy nuns allows me to place the villancicos within the wider context of Conceptionist devotion, convent race relations, and artistic patronage. The texts for the villancicos present women as the main subject of the compositions, which adorned a spectacular ritual also centered on women. The profession ceremony is, therefore, a valuable source to begin understanding Novohispanic women's contribution to music making.

scholarly journals Lady of the House: Augustina Meza (ca. 1758–1819), Print Publishing, and the Women of Mexican Late Colonial Art

Arts ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 12
Author(s):  
Kelly Donahue-Wallace
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
New Spain ◽  
Colonial Mexico ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Colonial Art ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Women's Lives

Using archival records of the Sagrario Metropolitano and material analysis of extant prints, the paper presents the life and work of the only known woman printmaker in viceregal New Spain, María Augustina Meza. It traces Meza and her work through two marriages to fellow engravers and a 50-year career as owner of an independent print publishing shop in Mexico City. In doing so, the paper places Meza’s print publishing business and its practices within the context of artists’ shops run by women in the mid- to late-eighteenth century. The article simultaneously extends the recognized role of women in printing and broadens our understanding of women within the business of both printmaking and painting in late colonial Mexico City. It furthermore joins the scholarship demonstrating with new empirical research that the lived realities of women in viceregal New Spain were more complex than traditional, stereotypical visions of women’s lives have previously allowed.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Ramírez
Keyword(s):  
Mexico City ◽  
New Spain ◽  
Healthcare Reform ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Colonial Mexico ◽  
Rural Regions ◽  
Corporate Sponsors ◽  
French Physician ◽  
Critical Moments

The introduction recounts the experiences of French physician Esteban Morel, who arrived in Mexico City in 1778 and immediately set about introducing inoculation among the upper classes during an epidemic of smallpox. Reluctant parents and rampant rumors of deformity and death stymied the inoculation campaign that year and suggest the critical role of nonprofessionals in colonial Mexico in healthcare reform. In an age when European monarchs looked to govern from above the health of populations, the perspectives and sensibilities of laypeople in the socially heterogeneous barrios, subdistricts, and rural regions of New Spain remained pivotal. Experiments with disease and its control were critical moments in which amateur scientists, physicians, corporate sponsors, and lay communities came together to assess the merits of reform and the relevance of Atlantic practices and projects for their own lives.

THE FIRST GREAT WAVES: AFRICAN PROVENANCE ZONES FOR THE TRANSATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE TO CARTAGENA DE INDIAS, 1570–1640

2011 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID WHEAT
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Relative Importance ◽  
Transatlantic Slave Trade ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
Forced Migrants ◽  
Cartagena De Indias

ABSTRACTDrawing on port entry records for 487 ships disembarking nearly 80,000 captives in Cartagena de Indias, the primary slaving port in early colonial Spanish America, this article provides a new assessment of the relative importance of major African provenance zones for the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century transatlantic slave trade. Upper Guinea and Angola furnished roughly equal shares of forced migrants to Cartagena between 1570 and 1640, with a smaller wave of captives from Lower Guinea. While Angola eventually replaced Upper Guinea as the main source of slave traffic to Cartagena, the shift was more gradual than scholars have previously believed.

The Codex Mexicanus: Time, Religion, History, and Health in Sixteenth-Century New Spain

2016 ◽  
Vol 73 (4) ◽  
pp. 427-458 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lori Boornazian Diel
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
New Spain ◽  
Colonial Mexico ◽  
New Name ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
Aztec Empire ◽  
Conquest Of Mexico

About 60 years after the Spanish invasion and conquest of Mexico, a group of Nahua intellectuals gathered in Tenochtitlan. On the very site of the heart of the Aztec empire stood a city of a new name: Mexico City, capital of New Spain. There the Nahuas set about compiling an extensive book of miscellanea, now known as the Codex Mexicanus. Owned by the Bibliothèque National de France, the codex includes records pertaining to the Christian and Aztec calendars, European medical astrology, a genealogy of the Tenochca royal house, and the annals of preconquest and early colonial Mexico City, among other intriguing topics.

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