Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Estrategias del mestizaje: Quito a finales del siglo XVIII

2006; Duke University Press; Volume: 86; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00182168-2006-067

1527-1900

Camilla Townsend,

History and Politics in Latin America

Alexia Ibarra has made a succinct and important statement about mestizaje in the Andes at the end of the colonial era: that mestizaje was not merely a “fiscal category” but was also used “as a strategy” by those calling themselves mestizos (p. 122). Two groups actively tried to gain exemption from tribute payments by claiming mestizo status: those who left their indigenous communities and attempted to establish new identities for themselves and those who had connections in the white world that they could use in building a convincing case.Other works have addressed the strategies of mixing employed by plebeians in the audiencia of Quito in this era, among them Martín Minchom’s The People of Quito, 1699 – 1815: Change and Unrest in the Underclass (Westview, 1994) and my own Tales of Two Cities: Race and Economic Culture in Early Republican North and South America (Univ. of Texas Press, 2000). Such works, however, have treated the subject in passing while in pursuit of another agenda, but here it receives the full attention it deserves. Ibarra analyzes 274 of the approximately 350 petitions for mestizo status housed in Ecuador’s National Archives — that is, all extant petitions from 1780 to 1815; her work on the subject must therefore be considered conclusive.The author renders the book accessible to all by giving a brief overview of the origins of what she calls a “multicolored society.” She then explains the nature of the Bourbon reforms and how they provided new impetus for residents to argue with fiscal authorities toward the end of the eighteenth century. She offers a full and very responsible discussion of the sources themselves: explaining the context in which they were produced, the kinds of people who were involved in such cases at all levels, and the types of information the documents do and do not include. Since the petitions were almost entirely submitted by male heads of household, and women’s voices are absent, she herself acknowledges that we can glean only part of the picture from them.Perhaps most importantly, the author reproduces in full a copy of the complete decree of 1764 governing judges’ responses to such petitions (known to us previously only through fragments found in other legal decisions), which she found folded into a 1791 case. This fascinating document is a must-read for anyone in the field, providing direct proof of what otherwise is to be inferred or guessed at. An illegitimate son of a known mestiza, for example, might be declared free from tribute, but if his mother had actually married his father, and the father was an Indian, then the son was to be called a mestizo tributario, since the fiscal status of children mirrored that of the father except in cases of children sired out of wedlock or fathered by a black man, in which cases tributary status followed that of the mother. The details are illuminating indeed and certainly prove what has before been inferred — that women had every reason to think carefully about whom they actually married, whatever their romantic interests may have been.Ibarra also treats the subject of the petitions submitted by expósitos, or abandoned children whose parentage was unknown. Her work thus becomes part of the burgeoning literature on the legal rights of children in the Andes; it complements recent studies by such scholars as Bianca Premo and Cynthia Milton.In general, the author does an excellent job of demonstrating ordinary people’s skillful manipulation of all available legal tools. As she herself implies, it is difficult to decide as readers of the texts they left us if we should feel more admiration for their savvy strategizing and creative capacity or ruefulness for the ways in which the legal and fiscal system encouraged them to reject their connections to the indigenous world.