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Understanding the Development of Mestizaje Discourse(s) 

NEstor Medina
Emmanuel College, Toronto School of Theology

Draft only: please do not cite without permission

Introduction

1492 serves as the historical marking point for the initial encounter between the Spanish and indigenous peoples in what today we call the Americas. Such encounter gave birth to mixed children, and these later became the central protagonist in the articulation of mestizaje in Latin America.^[1] Contrary to other approaches, I am not revisiting here the incidents prior to 1492 only to prove that Spain, the African tribes and the native groups of what today we call America were already “mestizos.”^[2] The invention of mestizaje emerged out of a set of historical events that brought about the birth of a distinct new group that came to identify themselves as mestizos/as. Here, I will sketch some of the important historical markers that set the stage for the later construction, development, and articulation of mestizaje discourse. First, I will mention some of the historical, cultural, and ideological factors that collided in the initial encounter between Spanish and indigenous peoples. Second, I will discuss some of the sociopolitical circumstances in which the mestizo/a children were born, which later contributed to the social construction of the mestizo/a consciousness as a distinct people. And third, I will examine the work of Garcilaso de la Vega, as a representative first figure in articulating the psychological experience of the mestizo/a people.

The Social Conditions in Spain

Since the so-called “barbarian” invasions had occasioned a heightened process of biological and cultural intermixture throughout all of Europe. In the case of Spain, after eight centuries the Muslim occupation had also left a profound biological and cultural imprint. Diversity in Spain was such that not one ethnocultural group could be said to represent the Hispanic (pertaining to the Iberian Peninsula) people.^[3] The marriage of Isabel La Católica and Fernando de Aragón (1469) consolidated Spain into an empire under the banners of Catholic Christianity and the Spanish language. The Spanish rulers undertook to be the new champions of Catholicism, committing to remove all (Christian) unbelievers and/or destroy all pagan religions. During the Spanish Inquisition (1478-1834) this religious zeal came to its highest expression when Spain’s efforts were concentrated also on eradicating Protestantism from its territories. During this period, and with a renewed sense of Hispanic identity, “purity” of blood was construed as a key social, economic, and political factor in Spain. “Purity” of blood could not be taken for granted; it quickly served as the differentiating symbol between those contaminated with Muslim or Jewish blood and those with “pure” “sangre azul.”^[4]

At the same time Spain was lagging behind the rest of Europe in its industrial and cultural development, still trapped in its mediaeval past while its neighbours had already entered the Renaissance.^[5] The fortuitous stumbling of Columbus into the massive territories yet unknown to the Europeans provided the very funds and labour force that would turn Spain into a powerful empire.^[6] These elements combined to provide the necessary material out of which the Spanish self-perception was constituted, and that later was imposed upon the people and lands they would conquer. Their obsession for purity of blood, their deeply seated and intolerant religious zeal, the insistence on the use of Spanish, and their ambition for riches became the ingredients and standard for building the empire and their colonies.^[7] From Columbus through the long line of conquistadors and adventurers, the goal was to expand the Spanish territories, propagate Catholicism, counter all paganism, “civilise” all “savage” peoples, and enrich themselves. Nowhere else are these elements as conspicuous as in the conquest of the Caribbean and the Americas.

The Initial Clash: The Spanish Conquistadores and the Indigenous Tribes

There is no need to repeat what many other historians have recorded concerning the events, violence, and bloodshed that took place in the clash between indigenous peoples and the Spanish conquistadors.^[8] I want to point out that, when these two groups collided, both entered into a process of identity clash, de-construction and re-construction of the other. Believing himself divinely chosen, Columbus was convinced that he had arrived to the land of the Great Khan, when he thought—in his first voyage—that he had reached the island of Cipango, the name given to Japan by Marco Polo.^[9] This colossal mistake of navigation and judgment opened the door for the encounter of different groups of people, and, in turn, for the birth of the mixed peoples of the American continent. As to his initial encounter with the indigenous peoples, Columbus’ describes them as having

“no creed and they are not idolaters, but they are very gentle and do not know what it is to be wicked, or to kill others, or to steal, and are unwarlike and so timorous that a hundred of them would run from one of our people....…they are sure that we come from heaven.”^[10]

And although Columbus never met them, he wrote that some among them ate human flesh.

These prejudicial characterisations were repeated, among many other writers, by Vespucci in his famous letter The New World, where he narrates his own encounter with the peoples of the land.^[11] Other important writers of the time were the natural historian Fernández de Oviedo,^[12] and the Spanish Royal Court secretary Pietro Martyr.^[13] They provide us with invaluable information of the voyages the Spanish undertook and their experiences with the natives. They also provide us with extraordinary threads concerning the ideological lenses through which they saw, interpreted, and commenced the construction of mythological indigenous peoples of the “new” continent. What we find in their records, of course, is not what the natives thought of themselves, but what the Spaniards thought of the natives. The natives remained hidden behind the negative projection of them.^[14] The Spanish accounts offer racialized pictures of the indigenous peoples that downplayed the outstanding achievements expressed in their diverse civilisations, and that at the same time insisted on the generic and cultural superiority of the Spanish.^[15] This constructed self-image, in which they were superior, more advanced, courageous men, served as the filter through which they created a disfigured portrait of the natives, and that eventually contributed to the initial social constitution of the mestizo people.^[16] The Spaniards failed to see the indigenous people as equal to themselves. They only saw underdeveloped confused and primitive groups lagging behind in their development. They perceived people who needed their paternalistic help, and they were glad to grant it—so long as the indigenous groups acknowledged the dominion of Spain.^[17] The Spanish had superior weaponry, and the extraordinary size of the horses—animals the indigenous had never seen before—did contribute to winning many battles; along with the frequent epidemics that decimated the indigenous populations, these contributed to the Spaniard’s self-perceptions of superiority.^[18]

When the indigenous people saw the Spaniards they were also catapulted into a process of identity clash, deconstruction and reconstruction of their own, forming their own ideas of the Spaniards (and Portuguese)/ Europeans.^[19] But there are few written records providing insight into the manner in which the indigenous peoples perceived the Spaniards. This picture is further complicated when considering how little we know of the large numbers of indigenous tribes / groups that inhabited the continent and the islands of the Caribbean, and the diversity among them.^[20] The majority of records available were written by Spanish men, which, as I have pointed out, gave us their own construction of the indigenous peoples. Another part of the problem is that the material written by indigenous writers was generally concerned with portraying the natives in as good a light as possible, which eventually contributed to an uncritical ideological romanticisation of their own communities. A third element in this problematic is that self-conscious mestizo writers who, during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries wrote about the natives contributed to the myth that indigenous communities had disappeared long ago. Zambrana Fonseca, for example, argues that the indigenous people of Nicaragua died too prematurely, to leave a cultural legacy in his native Nicaragua.^[21] Thus, the writings of these scholars are but a eulogic tribute to such great but, in their minds, dead communities.

There is no question that some of the indigenous peoples of the land—in diverse degrees of technological development—had created complex civilisations: some of the cities displayed  sophisticated infrastructures, aqueducts, systems of agriculture, architecture, advanced mathematical skills, individual economies, and organised societies.^[22] Writers such as de la Vega, Guamán Poma de Ayala, in Peru, and works such as Los Memoriales de Sololá and the Popul Vuh in Guatemala, introduce to us very advanced indigenous societies, but it is difficult to distinguish fact from fiction. De la Vega, for example, romantically compares Cuzco to Rome, and Figueroa Anaya, in his romanticised adaptation of Guamán Poma’s Corónicas, constructs Inca society as having had no social problems.^[23] And although there are allusions to some of the tribal wars that took place, the information that we have of the indigenous peoples is rather sketchy, although this is changing in recent scholarship.^[24] It would not be until the time of independence and later efforts of nationalism that romanticised notions of the peaceful indigenous peoples were exploited and promoted out of antihispanic sentiments.

As to the way in which the indigenous peoples received the Spaniards, Columbus, Vespucci, Fernández de Oviedo, and others agree that the natives were very hospitable. The subsequent animosity of the indigenous peoples to the Spanish must be understood as a reaction to the initial hostility and deceit of the conquistadors. There were military confrontations, and the defeat of the thousands—in fact millions—of indigenous peoples, by a few hundred Spanish soldiers can only be explained by other factors besides superior weaponry and military skills. Three stand out: First, the numerous diseases, in different regions, that decimated the indigenous population, and therefore, limited their capacity to resist the Spaniards. Second, the indigenous peoples were divided amongst themselves, and some tribes helped the Spaniards, thinking the new outsiders would help them get rid of their enemies and then leave them alone. Third, and perhaps more important in this discussion, the religious beliefs and structures announcing an impending apocalyptic end of an era had already prepared the way for the Spanish victory.^[25] Although much debate surrounds these interpretations of those events today (as evidenced by the work of Todorov), the fact that they found their way into some of the earliest writings helps us understand the early development of notions of the Spaniards as superior divine beings or God-sent, possessing a superior religion. The myth only lasted a short period of time, and it appears to have played a role long enough to secure the victory for the Spaniards. Not long after, the natives became aware that the Spanish were not gods. They were robbing their lands, destroying their temples, palaces and traditions, enslaving them, stealing their riches, raping their wives, sisters, and daughters, and imposing their religion and society upon the indigenous peoples. The only alternative was to fight them and push them out of the land. It was in this tense and volatile context that the intermixing between these two groups took place. The offspring of this mixture would have a tremendous impact in the development and history of the colonies and later American independent nations.

The Social Construction of the Mestizo/a People

All the prejudices and misgivings the Spanish had against the natives, and all the hatred and resentment the natives had toward the Spanish, received concrete expressions in their mixed children. From the beginning they were singled out, marginalized, and stripped of social and political privileges on the basis of their mixed condition. In order to understand the complexity of the dynamics, mechanisms and developments, and to delineate some of the key features of this knotty development there are three currents worth probing: one, the construction of mestizos/as when viewed from the direction of the dominant Spanish (and Portuguese and other European immigrant) group; two, the construction of mestizos/as from the perspective of the native peoples; three, the construction of mestizos/as from themselves, the latter being our main concern. These three social, cultural, and ideological streams collided with each other in complex social processes creating the social, cultural, national, and identity imaginary spaces of mestizo/a people. With that in mind, then, let us enter the complicated maze of mestizaje.

Concerning the initial encounter between Spanish males and indigenous women, Esteva Fábregat tells us that the lack of Spanish women played a significant part.^[26] With a distorted view of the power differential at play during the Spanish invasion, he tells us that Spaniards were attractive to the indigenous females, who preferred them over their indigenous male counterparts.^[27] In this portrayal of indigenous women and Spanish men, Esteva Fábregat seems to suggest that intermixture between these two groups took place voluntarily. It is fascinating to note the aesthetics at play in Esteva Fábregat’s suggestion. On one hand, he claims that Spanish males were not rejected by the indigenous females. On the other hand, Spanish males were better looking than their indigenous counterparts. It seems that Esteva Fábregat himself is trapped in the ideological self-perception of the Spaniards as superior and correspondingly better looking than the indigenous, and as a result ends up distorting the records of abuse, rape and violence against indigenous women.^[28] Distortion of that reality of violence occurs when the Spaniards rape of the indigenous females is seen both as an expression of their superior masculinity which could only be desired by these women, and as the ultimate expression of their victory over the indigenous people. In this way the victory over the native peoples, and the power-dynamics at play in the conquest and colonisation is sexualized and gendered. The sexuality of the indigenous women, their bodies, became part of the spoils of war. In many cases, women were stolen from their native tribes and distributed among the Spanish conquistadors, some of whom ended up with several women as their personal property.^[29] As such, they were the reward for the Spanish victors. To say that the indigenous women preferred to be with the Spaniard males is tantamount to uncritically accepting the Spanish self-perception of their physical beauty and capacity to satisfy indigenous women sexually, the other side of the feminisation and emasculation of the conquered indigenous male.^[30]

When the opposite took place, that is, when indigenous male took Spanish females, this was seen as an affront against the manhood of the Spanish males. This type of mestizaje or mestizaje al revés (Salas), interpreted as an insult against the men of the house or the community, showed no particular regard for the experience of the woman.^[31] In fact, the woman was considered to be contaminated with the impurities of indigenous blood. She was spoiled and could no longer be part of Spanish society.^[32]

As far as indigenous women were concerned, the initial encounter with the Spanish males resulted in rape and sexual abuse.^[33] In addition to being members of the defeated indigenous masses, the deeper process of dehumanisation of the indigenous woman was of a sexual nature. We are told of the indigenous young woman whom Columbus gave to Michele de Cúneo, who recounts that only after whipping her intensely was she willing to satisfy his sexual needs as if she grew up in a “whore school.”^[34] Many Spaniards took on multiple indigenous sexual partners, and as a result many mixed children were born.^[35] These unions with indigenous women were despised by Spanish colonial societies in general, and specifically by the members of the Spanish clergy who came along with the Spanish conquistadors. Attempting to uphold a moral code, they condemned the Spanish libertine ways of cohabiting with indigenous women, and the offspring of such unions. A social stigma developed, in which mixed children were seen as the illegitimate fruit of immorality and sin. Eventually, this fed into notions of mixed children as inferior and degenerate, carrying the worst characteristics of both parental groups, notions still held at the turn of the twentieth century.^[36] It is true that the Spanish emperors did encourage Spanish nobles to marry indigenous noble women in order to create important political allegiances, but for the average Spanish male adventurer such interaction with indigenous women did not generally entail marriage.^[37] Even though the Spanish Crown had allowed the marriage between indigenous women and Spanish males since 1517, as they struggled to redefine themselves in a new and changing context, the Spanish elite appealed to the idea of purity of blood. This became the means through which people distinguished themselves in the racialized social hierarchy that developed as a result of intermixture.^[38]

The emphasis on purity of blood worked against mixed people, so that Spanish elites perceived them to be closer in “racial” nature to their indigenous parents. Soon, the Spanish “pure” elites used the same prejudicial stereotypical descriptions of the indigenous people to describe the mixed population, as inclined to vices like lust, lying, and laziness. For example, the priest Acosta argued that mixed males had inherited the bad tendencies of their indigenous parents, through their mother’s breast milk, from which they drank “the vices and lasciviousness of the indigenous men and women.”^[39] In other places, mixed males were considered by the elite Spaniards to have inherited the bad qualities of both parental groups. According to Queija, because the majority of mestizos/as were among the poor, and because of their (physical) characteristics, in some places mixed people came to be called “indianizados.”^[40]

Nevertheless, within the racialized politics of mestizaje, some of the mixed children of Spanish noble men entered the Spanish elite society like Francisca Pizarro, de la Vega, el Libertador San Martín, and Almagro Jr.^[41] Others were absorbed by the indigenous communities and led armed rebellions against the Spanish, like Túpac Amarú II (José Gabriel Condorcanqui) and Túpac Katari (Julián Apasa).^[42] For a number of mestizas, religious convents became their place for education and personal formation into “proper Spanish ladies,” according to the royal decree issued by Fernando II de San Miguel Escorial, determining that mixed girls be received in the convents for “proper training.”^[43] While there is not enough information to assume that this was a widespread practice, in her study of the convent of Santa Clara, Burns mentions other convents that functioned in similar ways in the areas of Cuzco, Peru.^[44]  The majority of the mestizo/a children, however, found themselves in the social-political and cultural “inbetweenness” created by the caste society, a new, unstable and contested space.

Many mixed male children often had a different upbringing from the males of both sides of their ancestry line. Often they were taught to ride horses, and shoot harquebus as Spanish males were, and they also learned to shoot arrows, and survive in the wilds as the natives did.^[45] As they began to multiply in number, they became the objects of greater suspicion from Spanish elite. Because of their distinct gifts, abilities, and training, and because of their connection to the indigenous peoples, the Spanish authorities prevented them from carrying weapons and owning horses; they feared that mixed children would join the indigenous and together rise against the Spaniards.^[46] In the complex, unstable, rapidly changing and racially charged colonial societies, the Spanish authorities sought to regulate every aspect of life and reserved positions of power for Spaniards.^[47] As a result, mestizos were also prevented from occupying public offices, enlisting in the army,^[48] being ordained as priests,^[49] and entering schools where only people with “pure” blood were allowed.^[50] They were discriminated against in many ways, and legislation was even passed by the Consejo de las Indias,  in which they could not own property, have encomiendas, or have indigenous people as servants. In some cases, the Spanish Crown did everything possible to prevent that mestizo/a children inherited the riches of their Spanish fathers, as was the case with Francisca Pizarro, Martín Cortéz, and de la Vega. To preserve the racialized hierarchies, and in a complex process of codification, laws were passed to prevent the growth in number and sociopolitical and economic influence of the mixed population. At first, Konetzke tells us, canon law allowed Spanish men to marry indigenous women.

“Canon Law required the freedom to enter into matrimony, and prohibited marriage with infidels and heretics; it did not put obstacles to the marriage between people of different races [sic]. In this way the Church in America has sanctioned and favoured the marriage between baptized Spaniards and Indians [sic].”^[51]

But later, with the proliferation of mixed children, such decisions were reversed by the Spanish Crown, mandating Spaniards to marry Spanish woman under the punishment of losing their newly-acquired properties. In the changing contexts and interests of social groups, and as a desperate attempt to preserve Spanish social control and the myth of purity of blood, the Real Pragmática was issued promoting social endogamy: People were ordered to marry within their “caste” group, and those who would marry below their “caste” group would be punished with loss of their social status.^[52]

Opposition to the Spanish powers was mounting. In the urban centres as well as in the mines and in the fields, the increase of population and high concentration of ownership had created an growing number of mestizo/a campesino people without land and without employment.^[53] While enlisting in the army and becoming a priest were seen as alternatives for social upward mobility, the disenchantment with the colonial social structures inspired uprisings in which many mestizos/as participated only to be crushed by the colonial powers. Afraid that the mestizos/as would join the indigenous and revolt against them, the Spanish colonial powers resorted to repression, which worsened the social conditions of mestizo people.^[54] But the boundaries between castes were porous; there was much permeability, although extremely ambiguous, among the social groups. For many indigenous peoples intermixture represented the opportunity to move up the caste ladder, which was being (re)configured.^[55] Some indigenous women married free African men so that their children would be declared free.^[56] Often, because of their appearance many mestizos/as and mulatos/as passed as Spaniards (whites). Some denied their condition of mixture to have access to some of the privileges reserved for “pure” Spaniards.^[57] As a result, the boundaries between the castes started to disappear as some mestizos and mulatos were able to buy their social status as “white,” and many others climbed up in the social ladder.^[58] Over time, unevenly, and not without struggles, the Spanish colonial society of castes ceased to exist. Unsuccessful in dissolving racialized differences, mestizaje as a social structural construction brought about the unsettling of the caste system. Mörner is partially correct in claiming that mestizaje had a levelling character; with the exception of the “whites,” all other ethnosocial groups were placed in the same plain field.^[59] Also, Rosenblat observes that with mestizaje the castes had to come to an end. To him, Mestizaje (read intermixture) was the phenomenon that provoked the creation of castes, and it was mestizaje (read its social construction) that eventually represented its demise.^[60] But here, the ambiguity in defining the term mestizaje becomes all the more obvious. The shift back-and-forth is between mestizaje as a biological descriptor of the phenomena of intermixture, and mestizaje as a socially constructed discourse and category to form collective identities and articulation of shared interests with direct sociopolitical, cultural, and religious implications. It is the latter that will concern the rest of this work.

The demise of the social castes system, and the fluidity between people groups contributed to setting the stage for the formation of racialized hierarchies based on peoples’ skin colour. In justifying their position of power, the Spanish elite resorted to emphasising their physical-phenotypical features, that is their “whiteness,” as the defining mark of their superiority.  In reality, the differences between ethnosocial groups were racialized expressions of re-configured prejudicial stereotypes along the lines of class, gender, clothing, physical characteristics, gestures and mannerisms, images which helped create an stereotypical-essentialised social image of people-groups in Latin America.^[61] Described by Lipschütz as pigmentocracia (pigmentocracy), the construction of this hierarchically-organised law of different skin tones and colours became the social mechanism that at the same time facilitated and impeded, the fluidity between the reconstructed categories and boundaries of “whites,” mestizos, mulatos, indigenous, etc.^[62] By the nineteenth century, the time of the wars and declarations of independence, pigmentocracia and mestizaje had become essential dynamics structuring Latin American societies. From the perspective of the Spanish in power, mestizo people were rejected for they represented a threat to the social networks and structures designed to preserve their power in society. But even the Spanish elite were penetrated and mixed. With the aid of an ideological pigmentocracia, many lighter skinned mestizos climbed the social ladder and quickly adopted the sociopolitical, economic, cultural and racialized principles that regulated society up to the present.

Overall, mestizaje did not represent good news for the indigenous peoples. Searching for lands to cultivate many mestizos/as invaded the indigenous regions and robbed them of their lands, and even others claimed to be indigenous to have access to their commonly held lands.^[63] Many mestizos males maintained a close relation with their Spanish fathers, with whom they eventually set out to continue the conquest. Some began imitating the sexual behaviour of their fathers, engaging in sexual abuse of indigenous women.^[64] This situation exacerbated the way mestizos were perceived by the natives, i.e., as the continuation of the predatory Spanish rule.

Doubly rejected by the indigenous and the Spanish, mestizos/as were set apart, differentiating them from both ancestry lines. In this way, in these everyday living situations, mestizos/as forged a collective consciousness. They began to (re)define themselves as people. Occupying ambiguous social and ideological spaces, mestizos/as constituted themselves in different ways in different countries as a different ethnocultural, and sociopolitical unit, carrying their Spanish and indigenous ancestral genealogies. The rest of this paper provides a brief snap shot of how this complex and confusing process of identity was initially articulated by Garcilazo de la Vega. To my knowledge, he is the earliest example of how mestizo/a descendants began to construct their mestizo/a identity, as they (re)claimed their legitimacy as people amidst uneven social structures that discriminated against them on the basis of their ethnocultural and racialized background.

1. What’s in a Name: Garcilaso Inca de La Vega

Known primarily for his Comentarios Reales and his Crónicas de la Florida, Garcilaso de la Vega embodies the birthing point in the development of mestizaje discourse(s). One cannot overestimate the impact of his literary work because it was he who, with daring creativity, first attempted to articulate the self-conscious description and definition of the people of mixed descent in Latin America. 

a) Political Landscape of Perú

Studying the work of Garcilaso de la Vega means entering the conflicted world of the conquista, the environment in which he was born and grew up. The Spanish invasion of Peru took place under Francisco Pizarro, who captured Atahualpa and executed him despite the steep ransom that Atahualpa had paid.^[65] In his stead, he put Huascar on the Inca throne, who was in fact his puppet.^[66] Hearing the news of abundant riches in Cuzco, many Spanish travelled long distances to claim their part of the bounty, which resulted in a civil war among the conquistadors.^[67] Concerned with the situation, Felipe II gave instructions to inquire about the reasons behind the civil war and to bring it to an end.^[68]

Meanwhile in Spain, the arduous work of Las Casas and others produced serious changes in the way the Spanish Crown saw the natives. These changes were reflected in Las Nuevas Leyes de las Indias (The New Laws of the Indies) issued on 1542. Initially Isabel la Católica and Fernando had declared the natives to be free; the Nuevas Leyes went further in making the indigenous people subjects of the Spanish Crown prohibiting that “no one should capture indians [sic] to take them to Spain or anywhere else, but the cannibals, that were required and avoided indoctrination, who attacked the Spaniards, who were idolaters and ate human flesh, they could be captured and sold to other lands, even Spain.”^[69] In theory, this meant that Spaniards could not own them as slaves, and it potentially promised that indigenous peoples would not be treated as personal servants of the Spanish population.^[70] In order to enforce these New Laws and have greater control of the affairs in the Americas, the Spanish Crown created the Viceroyalties of Peru and Nueva España (Mexico). Eager to enforce the Nuevas Leyes, the first Viceroy of Peru, Nuñez de Vela, arrived in Peru in 1544. Negatively, with the support of the Spanish Crown, Nuñez de Vela could have abolished the 48 encomiendas that were functioning in Tahuantinsuyo.^[71] Not content with the economic implications of the changes, the encomenderos of the region resorted to Gonzalo Pizarro, who, having vested interests on the matter, defied the Spanish instructions. After some negotiation, this led to the abrogation of some of the elements of the Nuevas Leyes, in 1545.^[72] Unsatisfied with the resolutions of the Spanish Crown, Pizarro rebelled and fought against the royal army and was defeated in the battle of Sacsaguana, which led to his execution in 1548.^[73]

After his arrival with Pedro de Alvarado, Sebastian Garcilaso de la Vega Vargas quickly earned the trust of the Pizarro brothers, and for his military gifts he was well-rewarded. After his arrival in Cuzco he took La Palla (young woman) Chimpu Ocllo, or Doña Isabel Ñusta Yupanqui, as his concubine.^[74] Making sure that mixed children would not inherit from their Spanish fathers, the Spanish Crown threatened Spaniards with losing their lands, properties and encomiendas, if they did not marry Spanish women. So Captain de la Vega Vargas abandoned Doña Isabel and married Doña Luisa Martel de Los Ríos; and he gave Doña Isabel to one of his lower ranking officers, Juan de Pedroche.^[75] But de la Vega Vargas and Doña Isabel had a son, Gómez Suárez de Figueroa, born in April 12, 1539.^[76] After the separation of his parents, the boy remained with his father, who resolved to give him a “good Spanish education.” And when his father died, in his will he stipulated that he be sent to Spain.^[77] 

In Spain, to secure the Crown’s recognition for his father’s military service, and to reclaim financial restitution owed to his mother for being a member of the royal Inca family, he went to the Consejo de las Indias.^[78] To his disappointment, one of the members of the Consejo alluded to the incident at the battle of Huarina, where his father had helped the rebel Gonzalo Pizarro. Although de la Vega insisted that the Consejo’s records of the incident were inaccurate,  this incident cost him the loss of any financial entitlement and recognition from the Spanish Crown because of his fathers military achievements and service.^[79] Disillusioned, Gómez Suárez de Figueroa requested permission to return to Peru, in June 27, 1563, but he never used it.^[80] Postponing his trip back to Peru, and encouraged by his uncle in Montilla, Gómez Suárez de Figueroa enlisted in the army, and under the command of Don Juan de Austria he was promoted to the rank of captain.^[81] When he returned to Montilla, he learned of his mother’s death. He also learned of the vanquishing of Túpac Amarú’s rebellion by Viceroy Toledo, who had unleashed a systematic persecution of the royal Inca family and the repression of mestizos.^[82] Discouraged from returning to Perú, Gómez Suárez de Figueroa immersed himself in his literary work until his death.

b) (Re)Naming and (Re)Claiming the Mestizo Condition

To the children of Spanish male and Indian [sic] woman, or Indian [sic] male and Spanish woman, they call us mestizos, because we are the mix of both nations; it was imposed by the first Spaniards who had children with the Indian [sic] women, and for being an imposed name by our fathers and because of its signification, I unashamedly use it for myself, and feel honoured by it. Although in the Indies, if anyone is told: “you are a mestizo”, they take it offensively.^[83]

This small quote reveals the ambiguity inherent in the experience of being mixed. First, the use of mestizo shows de la Vega’s understanding of the term, referring exclusively to the intermixture of Spanish and indigenous. The term was used in different ways by different people, which already speaks of the contested character of the term. Second, for people of mixed ancestry, the term mestizo/a points to the uneven power relations between the Spanish and indigenous people. Third, de la Vega’s appropriation of the term is a bold step at defining his own identity space subverting the original intention of discrimination for being mixed. Finally, although not present on the quote above, he wrote this at the end of his literary career and life, when he had already adopted the name Inca Garcilaso de la Vega.^[84] This represents his daring attempt at incorporating the elements of both his Spanish and Inca identities into one that reflected his own condition of being mixed.^[85]

Gómez Suárez de Figueroa did not write a treatise specifically concerning mestizaje. His importance in mestizaje discourse relates to his bold adoption of the term in order to carve a social-political space where mixed people could be constructed as a distinct people. Because of his strong commitment to preserving the historical memory of the Inca royal family and the indigenous peoples of Peru, his writings were listed in the Index Librorum Prohibitum, banishing them from the Americas by the commission that led to the Spanish Inquisition. It would not be until the time of the wars of Independence of the Latin American nations that his writings would be vindicated.^[86]

While in Montilla, Gómez Suárez de Figueroa lived a divided life. He maintained close contacts with the royal Inca family,^[87] and looked for ways to belong to Spanish society by becoming the noble captain of the Alpujarras fighting against the Moors—people mixed just like him.^[88] To make his acculturation complete, he immersed himself among priests and intellectuals, who encouraged him in his literary journey and priesthood.^[89]

At this juncture, in this tension between his indigenous and Spanish identities, Gómez Suárez de Figueroa became the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega. The battle ground of these identities would be his first literary work: the Spanish translation of the Dialoghi D’Amore by León Hebreo.^[90] His choice of book reveals much about this internal dilemma. Hebreo had opted for exile with his father and people during the expulsion of the Jews from Spain.^[91] The content of the book serves as unique platform for de la Vega’s personal questions. Using platonic categories the book affirms the superiority of the spirit over matter.^[92] Philon (knowledge) and Sophia (wisdom), the interlocutors in the dialogues, discuss the tension between love and desire. Their goal is not to obtain love, but to search for the union brought about by knowing love, that is, the kind of love expressed in all aspects of life. From the sun and the moon, the fauna and the flora, to the man and the woman, this love brings unity through intermixture.^[93] In this cosmic dichotomy between the superior-spiritual-heavenly and the inferior-material-earthly, Hebreo explains the relationship between the world and the divine, and between the man and the woman. The man (the principle of masculinity, spiritual-superior) loves out of his abundance and by his own perfection wishes to be united with the woman (the principle of femininity, material-inferior) in order to give her what she is lacking.^[94] 

This is not a subtle point that Hebreo makes. In his second dialogue, he interweaves the relation between heaven and earth and man and woman at the level of sexuality. Indeed, he asserts that the union between a man and a woman, as inspired by love, is perfected by its mutuality and reciprocity. The one (the man) seeks to love out of abundance and the other (the woman) seeks to join in love out of need. Thus, the coital intimacy between heaven and earth resulted in the creation of the world; by inference, when a man and a woman engage in sexual intercourse the result is also the creation of something new.^[95] From his vantage point of being mixed, this book provides de la Vega with a needed space for rethinking and redefining his experience and constructing his identity. Through this book the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega began to reinterpret the world being created in the Americas.^[96]

He began to see himself as a mestizo, and his later writings will reflect this change. He was well aware that reciprocity and mutuality were absent from the encounter between Spanish and indigenous peoples, and absent also from the relations of his Inca mother and Spanish father. In his diary he even wondered whether his mother ever loved his father.^[97] He arrived at a crossroad, which he had to painstakingly resolve in order to come to terms with his mixed condition. His interrogation of the issue provoked a rigorous self-examination: “Am I Indian? [sic] Am I mestizo? Am I Spanish? At the court some thought that I am a Spaniard-Indian; it might have been because they heard me speak Castilian as my father did. The majority murmured: “he is Indian”.”^[98] He was the object of discrimination; he carried the stigma of being mixed and illegitimate.^[99] Most importantly, since his childhood he had been trying to distance himself from his mother for being indigenous.^[100] But in the end, he cannot repudiate his Inca heritage. Out of his internal struggle, he came to the realisation that the natives of Peru were his relatives, and his mother was the all-important link that united him to his Inca ancestry.^[101] We find, then, that the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega’s bold adoption of mestizaje involved a radical reclaiming of his indigenous identity and an effort to keep their memory alive along with his Spanish identity. It was also a defiant posture of conceiving a different world with all of its contradictions.

Strongly influenced by the love-spirit dialectic of the Dialoghi D’Amore, and affected by his own admiration of the Spanish, he became convinced that the Spaniards had brought a superior religion; it was the divine will of the Christian God that brought the Spaniards to the continent. Along with their lust and greed for gold and power, they brought what the Inca people were missing: Christianity. In a hierarchy of indigenous groups where the Inca people were considered superior to others, he perceived that Inca teachings and society worked like a primer for evangelism, a praeparatio evangelica.^[102] They prepared the people to convert even “willingly” to La Santa Madre Iglesia Católica.^[103] His own mother, he wrote, was greater for her conversion to Christianity than for her Inca lineage.^[104] De la Vega found in Christianity the complementing ingredient “lacking,” as Hebreo did, in his native relatives, but nothing else. The Spaniards did not improve Inca culture and society, which was comparable to ancient Rome. For that reason, their memory deserved to be recorded in history. In fact, de la Vega’s writings are bold stances that challenged dominant Spanish-European historiography that recorded only the memory of the victors.^[105] Using the same Spanish categories of courage and bravery, he concluded that the natives of the Americas, because of their bravery and courage, deserved to be honoured in this fashion.^[106] Paying little attention to other indigenous groups, he intended the preservation of the Inca historical memory and in so doing offered a role model to the natives in the Americas.^[107] His writings were a political act of resistance against the established Spanish powers, epitomized by Viceroy Toledo, who sought to eradicate the Inca lineage.^[108]

Thus, his evolving sense of mestizaje obligated him to fight for his Inca relatives in order to give them the voice they deserved. He became proud to say that he was both a descendant of the Inca royal family and Spanish nobility. Aware of the Spanish self-perception of superiority, in his letters to Maximiliano de Austria, he assumed a posture of false modesty. Concerning the Diálogos, he stated that “he does not contribute anything to this translation, for it is but a mere daring act of an Indian [sic] simply intending to serve as an example to those in Peru.”^[109] And with regards to his Florida del Inca, with the same degree of clever wit, he remarked that his readers received it with enthusiasm, and, if they found any mistakes in it “forgive me for I am Indian [sic].”^[110]

As de la Vega embarked on the daunting task of preserving the historical memory of his Inca relatives, he inaugurated the first mestizo intellectual version of indigenismo—the ambiguous and uneven appropriation of the indigenous biological/cultural heritage to legitimate his mixed condition. Yes, his writings represent “the creation of a new interstice, intellectual-cultural and spiritual space” to locate those who are mixed like him.^[111] No doubt he saw himself as the representative of the Incas (which reveals the increasing powerlessness of the indigenous peoples in a society where mestizos/as are gaining power), and as such he was one of the victims.^[112] He was also a descendant of the conquistadors and as such he had killed “Indians” to protect the Spanish crown. He married a Moorish woman whom he despised, and was father to a child that unfortunately reminded him of his indigenous ancestry.^[113] With all the tensions and contradictions in this internal tug-of-war, he was compelled to ask: “how does God choose the soul given to mestizos?”^[114] His reply to the question can only be inferred by his actions. He was the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega; in him both traditions found a common ground. He represented—and so did the entire generation of mestizos/as—the utopian ideal of Spanish and indigenous peoples coexisting in peace; in the Inca, mestizos/as had become the generation of the future world being built in the Americas.

In Conclusion

Mestizo/a children enjoyed extreme discrimination in the early colonial societies of Latin America. But as they gained power and became a significant social force by the sheer size of the mestizo/a population, things started to change. Many climbed the social ladder and quickly assimilated into Spanish society as to denying their indigenous ancestry, and themselves continuing the conquest unfinished by their Spanish fathers.

As to de la Vega, a progression of thought can be detected in his work. As he saw it, through conquest the Incas had shared their advanced culture with other indigenous tribes. With their cultural and religious advance, the Spaniards were responsible for taking the indigenous tribes of the Americas to the next level of development. In de la Vega’s eyes, the Spaniards were the paradigm of the most perfect realisation of human existence.^[115] So in his temporal dialectic of what was and what is, the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega saw the end of the indigenous past era, and a greater future ushered in by the reality of intermixture. This is not to say that de la Vega wanted the extermination of his own relatives. It is that he saw the connection between their survival and intermixing with and embracing the culture and religion of the Spaniards.^[116]

In the end, de la Vega’s framing of mestizaje remains elusive, but it did advance his initial intention to carve out a sociocultural and political space for those who were mixed: of Spanish and indigenous parents. In his writings, however, this took place at the expense of assimilating the indigenous peoples, appropriating their traditions and symbols under the emerging mestizo consciousness. His construction of mestizaje would not find concrete expression until after the independence of the new American nations in the form of renewed mestizo/a indigenism in Latin America.

As to the Inca peoples to whom de La Vega felt so connected, those living in the (Tahuantinsuyo-Cuzco), were but the present vestiges of a great past civilization no longer extant. It is in this way that the indigenous peoples of the Americas were replaced by the mixed-mestizo/a people, many of whom denied their connection to indigenous ancestry. It is in this way that the indigenous people were silenced from the social and political social fabric of the vast regions of Latin America for the last five centuries, until very recently.    

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NOTES

^[1]I am not denying here the long standing history of the atrocities and abuses that African slaves and their descendants endured at the hands of the Spaniards (and Portuguese). It is well-known that not too long after arriving to the continent the Spaniards (and Portuguese) brought African slaves who later also mixed with both the Spaniards and the indigenous peoples. My intention in not mentioning the histories of the African peoples as they were brought to the continent is to point out that such cannot and should not be subsumed under the discourse of mestizaje, which has evolved historically to address other issues, without reference to Africans. Recently, scholars are elaborating a discourse of mulataje in addressing the specifics and many different expressions of Afro-Latino/a experience. Of course, indigenous, Spanish/Portuguese and African experiences mix and intermix in many points and in myriad ways in the history of the Americas. But this fuller history is beyond the scope of this work, as is the comparison of the discourses of mestizaje and mulataje. 

^[2]Ángel Rosenblat, El mestizaje y las castas coloniales, vol. II of La Población Indígena y el Mestizaje en América (Buenos Aires, Argentina: Editorial Nova, 1954); Claudio Esteva Fábregat, El mestizaje en Iberoamérica (Madrid, España: Editorial Alhambra, S.A., 1988); Manuel Zapata Olivella, La rebelión de los genes: El mestizaje americano en la sociedad futura (Bogotá, Colombia: Ediciones Altamir, 1997).

^[3]Jorge J.E. Gracia, Hispanic/Latino Identity: A Philosophical Perspective (Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 2000). According to Gracia, by 1492, Hispanics had undergone their own biological and cultural process of intermixture with Celts, Iberians, Basques, Greeks, Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Berbers, Romans, Vandals, Suevi, Visigoths, Moors and Jews. The Moors themselves were mixed with Arabs, Syrians, Egyptians, Nubians and Berbers (11-12). Similarly, adds Mörner, not only were the Spaniards mixed with Arabs during the occupation, but also the intermixing between these two groups was very common during the time of Spain’s Reconquista (Magnus Mörner, “El mestizaje en la historia de Ibero-América: Informe sobre el estado de la investigación,” in Coloquio dedicado al mestizaje en la historia de Ibero-América [1960: Estocolmo] [México D.F.: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia, Comisión de Historia, 1961], 13, 24–25).

^[4]Gracia, Hispanic/Latino Identity: A Philosophical Perspective, 95.

^[5]Juan Reyes Govea, El mestizo, la nación y el nacionalismo Mexicano (Chihuahua, México: Ediciones del Gobierno del Estado de Chihuahua, 1992), 57–67.

^[6]According to Wagner de Reyna, the Spanish financing of the Genovese sailor was seen by the Spanish rulers as an opportunity to move forward. Spain needed to conquer other territories to finance its own aspiration for progress (Alberto Wagner de Reyna, Destino y vocación de Iberoamérica, prologue by Gonzague de Reynold [Madrid: Ediciones Cultura Hispánica, 1954], 106).

^[7]Commissioned by the Roman See to evangelize the regions, and encouraged by the Spanish monarchs to subdue the peoples of the land, the Spanish conquistadors saw no obstacle or opposition to their greed for power and riches. After five different Bulls and two treatises the papacy finally settled the demarcation line dispute between Spain and Portugal through a ratification of the treaty of Tordesillas in June 7, 1494, previously created by the Inter Caetera of Pope Alexander VI (May 4, 1493). A portion of the actual treaty illustrates the commissioning of Spain to evangelize the people of the Land:

“...by the office which we beare on the earth in the steede of Jesu Christe, doo for ever by the tenoure of these preferences, gyve, graunte, assigne, unto yowe, yowre heyres, and successoures (the kynges of Castyle and Legion) all those landes and Ilandes, with theyr dominions, territories, cities, castels, towers, places, and villages, with all the right, and iurisdiccions thereunto perteynynge: constitutynge, assingnynge, and deputynge yowe, yowre heyres, and successours the lordes thereof, with full and free poure, autororitie, and iurisdiction....Furthermore, wee commaunde yowe in the vertue of holy obedience (as yowe have primised, and as wee doubte not you wyll do yppon mere deuotion and princely magnanimieite) to sende to the sayde firme landes and Ilands, honeste, virtuous, and lerned men, suche as fear God, and are able to instructe thinhabitantes on the Catholike fayth and good manners, applyinge all theyr possible diligence in the premises” (found in Pietro Martire d’Anghiera, The Decades of the Newe Worlde or West India, translated by Richard Eden, Great Americana [New York: Readex Microprint Corporation, 1966], 171–73).

^[8]While there is little agreement as to the population of the continent by the arrival of the Spaniards in 1492, and while recently, challenges have been made as to the historical reliability of Las Casas’ accounts, what is not questioned, however, is the fact that there were atrocities and murders perpetrated by the Spaniards. For further discussion on this issue see Rómulo D. Carbia, Historia de la Leyenda Negra Hispanoamericana, prologue by Rafael Gambra (Buenos Aires, Argentina: Ediciones Nueva Hispanidad, 2000).

^[9]In his initial speech to his crew, Columbus tells us that he has been entrusted with the Spanish Crown and by the (Catholic) Christian Church to bring Christianity to the Gran Khan, the prince of India. But he also tells us, that as a result of this endeavour, he had been promised the rank of admiral and substantial financial reward (see his The Journal of Christopher Columbus, translated by Cecil Jane, with an appendix by R.A. Skelton [New York: Bramhall House, 1970], 4). Reding Blase tells us that Columbus was convinced that he had been chosen by God to this task, that he dreamed of collecting enough gold in order to finance his own holy war and rescue the church of the Holy Sepulchre (Sofía Reding Blase, “El descubrimiento de América,” in De Colón a Martí: Discurso y Cultura en América Latina, edited by Olmedo España Calderón, Colección Fundamentos [Ciudad de Guatemala: Editorial Óscar de León Palacios, 1999], 47). Padgen also argues that part of the inner conviction of Columbus was his own name. He himself and even Las Casas thought of his being chosen to “bring the Gospel to the New World;” that was “the reason for which he was called christym ferens: bearer of Christ” (Anthony Padgen, “Introduction,” in A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, edited and translated by Nigel Griffin, with an introduction by Anthony Padgen [New York: Penguin Books, 1992], 15).

^[10]Columbus, The Journal of Christopher Columbus, Nov. 12.

^[11]Américo Vespucio, “El Nuevo Mundo: Américo Vespucio a Lorenzo Pier Francesco de Medici,” in El Nuevo Mundo: Viajes y documentos completos, translated by Ana María R. de Aznar, notes by Fernández Navarrete, et al. (Madrid, España: Ediciones Akal, S.A., 1985), 55–69. Although Columbus had already concluded that this was a “new” world, it was Vespucci’s historic letter that provided the material for calling the region a “New World.” See also Néstor Medina, “Lost in Translation: Amerigo Vespucci and the ‘New World,’” paper presented at the American Academy of Religion, Eastern International Regional Meeting (Quebec city, 2006).

^[12]Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, Sumario de la natural historia de las Indias, edited by José Miranda, Primera Edición en la Biblioteca Americana (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1950).

^[13]d’Anghiera, The Decades of the Newe Worlde or West India.

^[14]Negative characterization of the indigenous peoples quickly spread, illustrated by this statement by the Dominican Tomás Ortiz in 1524 before the Council of the Indies:

“The men [sic] of the Indian lands eat human flesh and are sodomites more than any other generation before. There is no kind of justice among them, they go about naked, they have no love nor shame, they are like donkeys, dumb, crazy and senseless; they are beast-like in vices, and the children have no courtesy nor obedience towards their parents; they are deceitful, cruel and vengeful, never forgive; they keep no order, nor is there any loyalty from husbands to wives nor wives to husbands; they practice sorcery, soothsaying, and necromancy; they are cowards as hares, dirty as pigs; they eat lice, spiders, and raw worms wherever they find them. In the end never has God created a people so immersed in vices and bestialities” (found in Benjamín Carrión, “El Mestizaje y lo mestizo,” in América Latina en sus ideas, edited by Leopoldo Zea, América Latina en su Cultura [México, D.F.: Siglo xxi editores, UNESCO, 1986], 396).

^[15]In his anthropological-cultural study, Esteva Fábregat calls this Heterosis. In his view, it was the superior vitality and strength of the Spaniards that provided mestizo children with the necessary resistance and adaptability to their environment. The superiority of the Spanish forces becomes evident as one sees the ease with which the Spanish adapted themselves to the new environment and by their superior intelligence expressed in the military fields resulting in the defeat of the indigenous peoples. The superiority of the Spaniards is also expressed in their success imposing their culture and social structures to the degree that mestizo children were more European-like (Esteva Fábregat, El mestizaje en Iberoamérica, 303–38).

^[16]Prior to the historical encounter with the indigenous peoples, people in Europe had many ideas as to what people in remote regions looked like, most of which entailed descriptions of monsters, humans with animal heads, etc. A key figure in the formation of these ideas was the Travels of John Mandeville, who told stories of places he had never visited. Mandeville mentioned people with human bodies and dog faces, and some tribes who practiced anthropophagi. These reemerged in the writings of Columbus. These legends, along with the influence of Greek Mythology, were also present among some of the Spanish conquistadors. They quickly used these mythological ideas to speak of the natives of the continent and Islands, as illustrated by the warning of Diego Velásquez to Fernando Cortéz, concerning the people of the Aztec countries who had: “flat ears and faces like dogs;” or Francisco de Orellana, who was certain that there were warrior women in the region that he named the Amazon river in 1540; or the many expeditions that were done in search for the mythological El Dorado (see Lewis Hanke, El prejuicio racial en el Nuevo Mundo: Aristóteles y los Indios de Hispanoamérica, translated by Marina Orellana [Santiago de Chile: Editorial Universitaria, S.A., 1958], 19–21; L. A. Vigneras, “Foreword,” in The Journal of Christopher Columbus, translated by Cecil Jane, with an appendix by R.A. Skelton [New York: Bramhall House, 1970], xx).

^[17]All these characteristics of the indigenous peoples, and the self-perceived “superiority” of the Spaniards, converged in the statement by Ginés de Sepulveda as he argued his case in Valladolid (1550) asserting the legitimacy of the “superior” Spanish invasion, use of force, and enslaving of the indigenous peoples, because it would ultimately result to their benefit (Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, Demócrates Segundo: De las justas causas de la guerra contra los Indios, edited and translated by Angel Losada [Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas: Instituto Francisco de Vitoria, 1951], 39).

^[18]De la Vega commented that the indigenous “preferred killing one horse than four Christians because of the advantage these gave them in battle. They shouted to the Spaniards ‘let us fight on foot, and we will see who are the better fighters’” (Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, La Florida del Inca: Historia del adelantado Hernando de Soto, governador y capitán general de la Florida, y de otros heroicos cavalleros españoles e indios. [Madrid, Spain: Alianza Editorial, S.A., 1988], II. IIa. XXIV). Summarizing the military encounter between the indigenous and the Spaniash, Figueroa Anaya writes: “[t]hus began this uneven battle. The Spanish conquistadors, invoking their gods and saints rushed against the Indians with their horses, dogs and their harquebus vomiting fire...The square of Cajamarca was full of Indians and over them, furious, the Spaniards in a hurry launched killing Indians as if they were ants...” (Nelson Figueroa Anaya, El mundo al revés: Adaptación de Nueva Crónica y Buen Gobierno [Lima, Perú: Editorial Escuela Nueva S.A., 1991], 37).

^[19]One good example of the perception the indigenous peoples had of the Spaniards is found in the Códice Florentino written by Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, who records Montezuma’s messengers telling him that their “‘deers’ carry them on their backs. They are as tall as the roof. [...] They are covered in all parts of their body, only their faces are exposed; they are white as if they were of lime. They have yellow hair, although some have it black. Long is their beard, also yellow; their moustache is also yellow. They have curly hair and fine, with curls” (found in Nadín Ospina, “La imagen híbrida,” in ¿Mestizo yo?: Diferencias, identidad e inconsciente, edited by Mario Bernardo Figueroa Muñoz and Pío Eduardo Sanmiguel A., Serie Jornadas sobre mestizaje y cultura en Colombia [Colombia: Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Facultad de Ciencias Humanas, Grupo de Psicoanálisis, 2000], 28).

^[20]I draw from the work of D’Orbigny as he lists more than 250 ethnic groups, tribes, nations and races in the precolombian composition of the population of the continent. For the comprehensive list of people groups see Alcide Dessalines D’Orbigny, El hombre americano: Atlas e índice alfabético (Buenos Aires: Editorial Futuro, 1944).

^[21]Armando Zambrana Fonseca, El ojo mestizo o la herencia cultural (Managua, Nicaragua: Ediciones PAVSA, 2002), 39.

^[22]I agree with Ávalos, that most times when we speak of great civilizations and refer only to the Aztec, Inca, and Maya groups. By elevating them, although Ávalos only refers to the Aztec people, as examples of civilized indigenous communities, one may be uncritically adopting Euro-centred standards. By making these three large groups the standard of civilization in the indigenous world of the American continent, which is a European construct of culture and civilization, all other cultures that do not measure up to such standards are undermined and removed from serious study. Thus, re-inscribing the traditional European understanding of cultural hierarchies (Héctor Ávalos, “Deconstructing ‘Nahualismo’ in Mexico-American Theology,” Journal of Hispanic/Latino Theology 10, no. 4 [2003]: 46).

^[23]De la Vega tells us that “in the churches of Madrid and Sevilla he had seen beggars, some meek other demanding. Most of them had crooked arms and legs; some were blind...or seemed blind looking toward the sky.” In an idealized contrasting with the Incas, “no-one begged for money at Tahuantinzuyo. In my last years in Cuzco, there was an Indian [sic] woman who asked for corn or cocoa to the Spaniards. The Indians [sic] insulted her. They spat on the floor when passing near her. In the city of the kings, I only saw one beggar who asked for money at the church, at the central square. He was a Spanish cripple, and not an Indian [sic]” (Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Diario del Inca Garcilaso [1562–1616], edited by Francisco Carrillo Espejo [Lima, Perú: Editorial Horizonte, 1996], 27–28). As to Figueroa Anaya, he provides a paraphrase of Guaman Poma’s utopic construction of Tahuantinsuyo stating: “[w]e are told early on that no-one suffered from hunger or any need be it a widow, sick, or elderly person and there was no need to ask for charity... The indigenous did not get drunk or killed each other for half a real. There was no robbery nor envy, avarice nor laziness. There were no lies only truth... There was no poverty” (Figueroa Anaya, El mundo al revés: Adaptación de Nueva Crónica y Buen Gobierno, 18–20).

^[24]De la Vega informs us of the rigid hierarchical social differences between the Inca royal family and the populace. He narrates the numerous battles the Incas underwent in order to consolidate their empire and lord over the other tribes of the land (see Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Comentarios Reales de los Incas, vol. I, edited by Ángel Rosenblat [Buenos Aires, Argentina: Emecé Editores, S.A., 1943], I.V-2.VII). Also, López de Gomara, despite his admiration for the Mexica people, mentions the numerous tribal tension between the Mexicas and other groups (see Francisco López de Gomara, Cortés: The Life of the Conqueror by His Secretary Francisco López de Gomara, edited and translated by Leslie Byrd Simpson [Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1964], chapter 28).

^[25]De la Vega provides us with a clear example of some of the fears invading the Inca people. He tells us about the dream that the Inca Viracocha, son of the Inca king Inca Yáhuar Huácac, had about a bearded being who called himself son of the sun, and who had appeared, so that the Inca Viracocha warned his father about bad things to come. Such was the impact of the apparition, of what de la Vega calls the “fantasma (ghost) Viracocha,” that the Inca built a temple to his name. The legend later reemerged as the Incas fought the different groups and, despite their numeric disadvantage, managed to defeat them. “While the battle between the Changas, more numerous, and the Incas took place, the Inca Viracocha affirmed that he saw bearded men helping them against the Changas, and who after the battle turned into stone” (de la Vega, Comentarios Reales de los Incas, Book IV-V). These, the Inca Viracocha asserted, had “been sent by the God Viracocha.” For this reason he adopted Viracocha as his last name in order to affirm his blood connection to his superior God. In other words, the Incas thought the Spaniards had come to help them against their enemies. As de la Vega puts it,

“[w]hen the Spaniards arrived, bearded, the Incas identified and called them Viracochas, because of this fable invented by the Inga Yupanqui or Inca Viracocha. But it was also because the Spaniards had beards and were dressed, and because they apprehended Atahualpa, that the Incas believed that the Spaniards were in fact children of their God, and they thought they had little defense against them. Also, the Spaniards told them they had come to freed them from the tiranny of the devil someone worse than Atahualpa. The Incas started to call them Viracochas not because they came from the sea, but because they believed they were children of the sun, to whom the god Viracocha sent  to make repairs for those of the same blood” (Ibid.). 

^[26]Esteva Fábregat, El mestizaje en Iberoamérica, 38. According to Esteva Fábregat, very few women came. And they were not strong enough for the kind of life (travels, hunger, battles, etc.) that the conquest demanded. As a result many opted for not going with their husbands and staying in Spain, and of those who went many returned to Spain. At the same time, Salas provides us with a list of outstanding women who even led groups of Spanish men in their fights against the indigenous peoples; some of whom were captured by the indigenous, and ended up having mestizo children (see Alberto M. Salas, Crónica florida del mestizaje de las Indias, siglo XVI [Buenos Aires, Argentina: Editorial Losada, S.A., 1960], 139–71).

^[27]Esteva Fábregat, El mestizaje en Iberoamérica, 127–32.

^[28]I am suspicious of the sources concerning the interrelationship between the indigenous peoples and the Spaniards. Part of the problem is that all of the authors cited are men, and all—with very few exceptions—saw women as sexual objects. Perhaps the crudest examples of this male centred construction of the indigenous woman and of the Spanish male are the natural historian Fernández de Oviedo and the mariner Amerigo Vespucci. The latter goes as far as saying that when they arrived to some of the villages the women liked them so much that they could not defend themselves. To him, the indigenous women were lustful, libidinous whose only concern was to be with the “beautiful” and “irresistible” Spaniards. In his own words:  “Guided by their lust, when the women could be with the Christians, they would stain and destroy their [the Christians] modesty.” And later he says: “Many people came to see us and they marvelled at our figure and our whiteness, and they asked us where we came from, and we signaled that we came from heaven and that we were wandering in the world” (Vespucio, “El Nuevo Mundo: Américo Vespucio a Lorenzo Pier Francesco de Medici,” 62, 89).

^[29]Salas, Crónica florida del mestizaje de las Indias, siglo XVI, 96–96. The seizing of indigenous women became very common from the beginning. In some cases this took place as part of their enslavement. “In opposition to the royal dispositions in which enslaving of Amerindians was prohibited, their trade was put in practice from the first days of the Antillen colonization, when, in order to satisfy the need of women from which the Spaniards suffered, [the Spaniards] would hunt young women from among the non-Caribbean communities, to dedicate them for concubinage” (Zapata Olivella, La rebelión de los genes: El mestizaje americano en la sociedad futura, 121).

^[30]In this process of sexualization and gendering of the indigenous woman, the feminization of the indigenous male also took place. In a male-centred environment where manhood is expressed by heroism, courage and the capacity to conquer women, the indigenous males were constructed as less-men than the Spaniards, as they were the vanquished ones. For the Spanish conquistadors, it followed that the indigenous women would want to be with those who display a superior manhood. Further, to exemplify this feminization process, Hanke cites one writer,  De Pauw, who “affirmed that the natives from both sexes were physically weak and that some of the males had milk in their breasts” (Hanke, El prejuicio racial en el Nuevo Mundo: Aristóteles y los Indios de Hispanoamérica, 96).

^[31]This type of mestizaje was localized in the Chilean highlands, being the Arauca people the most persistent tribes to resist the Spanish occupation. To my knowledge, Salas is the only author that deals at length with some of the events surrounding mestizaje al revés, even providing a list of women’s names that were abducted by the indigenous men and who for one reason or another chose not to come back to their Spanish families (see Salas, Crónica florida del mestizaje de las Indias, siglo XVI, 139–72).

^[32]Here we see hints of the gendering of mestizaje, which is illustrated by the novel about Alejo, the mestizo son whose Spanish mother was confined to a convent where she spent the rest of her life, and who seeks his redemption back into Spanish society by falling in love with a Spanish woman. See Víctor Domingo Silva, El mestizo Alejo: La maravillosa vida del primer Toqui chileno (Santiago, Chile: Editorial Zig-Zag, 1934); Víctor Domingo Silva, El mestizo Alejo y la criollita, 2d ed., Biblioteca de escritores chilenos (Santiago, Chile: Editorial Zig-Zag, 1947).

^[33]Las Casas makes sure not to leave in silence some of the atrocities done by the Spaniards just to satisfy their sexual appetite. He tells about a girl who was murdered because she refused to satisfy the lust of one of the Spaniards. The disregard for the Spanish laws were such that “even though these people were legally free,” they Spaniards seized 4500 and “branded them as common slaves” (Bartolomé de Las Casas, A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, edited and translated by Nigel Griffin, with an introduction by Anthony Padgen [New York: Penguin Books, 1992], 68).

^[34]Reding Blase, “El descubrimiento de América,” 68.

^[35]Some of the Spanish flaunted their predatory behaviour, while others boasted of the many children they had procreated. It attested, to their great “masculine” capacity to conceive children, which in turn fed the self-perception of being “superior men.” The rape and impregnation of the indigenous women was so customary that some, like Michel de Cúneo, boasted of raping an indigenous woman; and another, Álvaro, claimed to have 30 children with different indigenous women (Juan Gil, “Los primeros mestizos indios en España: Una voz ausente,” in Entre dos mundos: Fronteras culturales y agentes mediadores, edited by Ares Queija B. and S. Gruzinski [Sevilla: El Adalid Seráfrico S.A., 1997], 15).

^[36]Alcides Arguedas, Pueblo Enfermo (La Paz, Bolivia: Gisbert & Cía. S.A., 1975). Bunge tells us, for example, that while colour can be deceiving when it comes to determining people’s “racial” background, this becomes obvious by the way people behave (see Carlos Octavio Bunge, Nuestra América: Ensayo de Psicología social, with an introduction by José Ingenieros [Buenos Aires, Argentina: La Cultura Argentina, 1918], 148–52). More to the point, the belief that mixed progeny were inferior to both their parents would also find echo in the work of Carrión as he expresses that “the mixture of indigenous and European blood, the mestizo produced an ethnic type inferior to the mother and father” (see Carrión, “El Mestizaje y lo mestizo,” 383).

^[37]Gil, “Los primeros mestizos indios en España: Una voz ausente”. It is interesting to note that while Gil wants to argue that marriages did take place more often than usually thought, of the twelve examples of mixed couples that he lists, all but one is married; the others being slaves or concubines. At the same time, he clearly shows that the harshness of the social structures affected mestizo children indiscriminately. Of course the worst treatment went to those whose fathers were absent, who were the majority.

^[38]Richard Konetzke, “La legislación española y el mestizaje en América,” in Coloquio dedicado al mestizaje en la historia de Ibero-América (1960: Estocolmo) (México D.F.: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia, Comisión de Historia, 1961), 60.

^[39]Rosenblat, El mestizaje y las castas coloniales, 141.

^[40]Berta Ares Queija, “El papel de mediadores y la construcción de un discurso sobre la identidad de los mestizos peruanos,” in Entre dos mundos: Fronteras culturales y agentes mediadores, edited by Ares Queija B. and S. Gruzinski (Sevilla: El Adalid Seráfrico S.A., 1997), 37–59. According to Ares Queija, most mestizos had been relegated to inferior social levels along with poor Spanish people, African descendants, mulattoes, zambos and indigenous people. Their disenchantment was such that some opted for living among the indigenous peoples (44-45).

^[41]Álvaro Vargas Llosa, La mestiza de Pizarro: Una princesa entre dos mundos (Madrid: Santillana Ediciones Generales S.L., 2003).

^[42]This side of the story of mestizaje is also found in fiction in the story of Alejo, the mestizo who led the indigenous Aucas against the Spaniards of the region. See Silva, El mestizo Alejo: La maravillosa vida del primer Toqui chileno.

^[43] Rosenblat, El mestizaje y las castas coloniales, 153. This was the Cédula Real de Fernando II de San Lorenzo Escorial, issued on August 31 and September 28, 1588.

^[44]Kathryn Burns, “Gender and the Politics of Mestizaje: The Convent of Santa Clara in Cuzco, Peru,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 78, no. 1 (1998): 5–44.

^[45]A look at de la Vega’s Comentarios Reales (I. XV) shows us a bit about his own upbringing. He tells us that he maintained a very close connection with the indigenous family side of his mother Isabel Chimpu Ocllo. He admits that much of his writings he owes to those encounters with his indigenous relatives with whom he learned to speak the language and the value of the indigenous life style and traditions.  In his writings we are also privy to his Spanish training. We are told that he learned Latin, was instructed in the Christian faith and other subjects, and that he became an expert horseman and harquebusier. This is not to say that all mestizo males had a similar upbringing and elite education as de la Vega did. His is a unique case for his father was part of the Spanish nobility and who had every intention to turn his son into a noble Spanish man.

^[46]Cédula Real by Felipe II in December 19, 1568, later reiterated on December 1, 1573.

^[47]J. Jorge Klor de Alva, “Cipherspace: Latino Identity Past and Present,” in Race, Identity, and Citizenship: A Reader, Rodolfo D. Torres, Louis F. Mirón, and Jonathan Xavier Inda (Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, 1999), 169.

^[48] Rosenblat, El mestizaje y las castas coloniales, 153. Cédula Real by Felipe IV on July 23, 1643. It was  later reiterated four times until the last instance on March 23, 1654, stating that no postings be created for mestizos nor mulatos.

^[49] Rosenblat, El mestizaje y las castas coloniales, 152–53. There were a number of Royal Edicts (Cédulas Reales) issued in order to regulate the growth and influence of mestizos (and mulatos) in the Spanish colonial societies. With regards to candidacy to the priesthood, another Royal Edict had been issued in 1573, instructing the bishops against ordaining mestizos. The III Mexican council of 1585 also prohibited admitting mestizos into the priesthood without great consideration and caution, particularly those who descend directly from African (already considered as moors) or indigenous parents. There are also records of a mestizo named Pedro Rengifo who dared to challenge the Courts asking that such Edicts be abrogated. Finally, the Edict in August 31, 1588 permitted mestizos to be ordained as priests so long they were born from legitimate married couples. But, even as late as 1739, Pope Clement XII issued a Bull banning mestizos and mulatos from being accepted into the priesthood for “being individuals generally rejected by society, unworthy of occupying public offices and of directing people’s souls” (Ibid.). See also Ares Queija, “El papel de mediadores y la construcción de un discurso sobre la identidad de los mestizos peruanos,” 53–54.

^[50]The Spanish Crown had established that Moorish, Jewish or mestizos would not be allowed to enroll in the colleges. It was not until the Royal Edict of December 17, 1679, that they were finally allowed.

^[51] Konetzke, “La legislación española y el mestizaje en América,” 60. Here we already see a shift in the way mestizo people are discriminated against. La Real Cédula of February 27, 1549 states that it was mandated that “no mulato nor mestizo nor any man [sic] who is not legitimate could have indians [sic]...” (62). The issue is that the vast majority of these mestizo and mulato children were in fact “illegitimate.” What we see here is a piece of legislation deeply influenced by  a concept of morality that contributes to the perpetuation of the negative stigma of illegitimacy in mestizos.

^[52]Konetzke, “La legislación española y el mestizaje en América,” 61. Although limited to Central America, a more detailed discussion of the Real Pragmática and its implications is offered by Mauricio Meléndez Obando, “Estratificación socio-racial y matrimonio en la Intendencia de San Salvador y la Alcaldía mayor de Sonsonate,” in  Mestizaje, poder y sociedad, edited by Ana Margarita Gómez and Sajid Alfredo Herrera (San Salvador, El Salvador: FLACSO Programa El Salvador, 2003), 29–46.

^[53]Magnus Mörner, “El Inca Garcilaso, el mestizaje y el encuentro de culturas en Hispanoamérica,” in El Inca Garcilaso Entre Europa y América, edited, with an introduction by Antonio Garrido Aranda (Córdoba, España: Caja Provincial de Ahorros de Córdoba, 1994), 176.

^[54]This fear was not entirely unfounded as the mestizo Túpac Amarú did in fact join the indigenous forces and invited the mestizos to lead armed resistance against the Spanish. The fear of the mestizos/as was elevated to higher grounds as Spanish officials accused mixed children of teaching the indigenous people their “bad customs, their laziness and their tendency to be vagabonds, besides other v