NOTES

I wish to thank my friend and colleague John A. Farmer for his suggestions in writing this essay.



 



 

  1. Francisco Antonio Lorenzana, Historia de la Nueva España escrita por su esclarecido conquistador Hernán Cortés (Mexico City: Imprenta de Hogal, 1770), introduction, n.p. All translations are my own unless otherwise indicated.
  2. A small number of casta paintings are also painted on copper plates.
  3. For the vast corpus of casta painting see María Concepción García Sáiz, Las castas mexicanas: Un género pictórico americano (Milan: Olivetti, 1989). This book is the first attempt to assemble the large body of casta paintings. Since its publication, numerous other series have been identified in public and private collections throughout the world; a number of these are published for the first time in this catalogue. Casta series to date number well over one hundred.
  4. For a more thorough and nuanced discussion of the much debated subject of the social composition of Mexico, see Magnus Mörner, Race Mixture in the History of Latin America (Boston: Little Brown, 1967); John Chance, Race and Class in Colonial Oaxaca (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1978); Claudio Lomnitz-Adler, Exits from the Labyrinth: Culture and Ideology in the Mexican National Space (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), chap. 6.
  5. Alexander von Humboldt, Ensayo político sobre el reino de la Nueva España (1807-11) (Mexico City: Porrúa, 1966), bk. 2, chap. 7, p. 90.
  6. Lomnitz-Adler, pp. 260-270. For the Black population in Mexico, see Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrán, La población negra de México, 1519 - 1810: Estudio etnohistórico (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1972).
  7. Patricia Seed, To Love, Honor, and Obey in Colonial Mexico: Conflicts over Marriage Choice, 1574 -1821 (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1988), p. 24.
  8. Ibid., p. 25.
  9. For the etymology of these words, see Manuel Alvar, Léxico del mestizaje en Hispanoamérica (Madrid: Instituto de Cooperación lberoamericana, 1987).
  10. Patricia Seed, "Social Dimensions of Race: Mexico City, 1753," Hispanic American Historical Review 62, no. 4 (November 1982), pp. 572-573.
  11. This hitherto unpublished original manuscript consists of two volumes-one devoted to text, the other to illustrations. Hispanic Society of America, New York, MS. HC: 363-940-1, 2.
  12. The anthological nature of this manuscript is akin to the one by the native of Cádiz, Pedro Alonso O'Crouley, A Description of the Kingdom of New Spain (1774), trans. and ed. Seán Galvin (Dublin: Allen Figgs, 1972).
    While O'Crouley's manuscript appears to be the result of the author's own initiative, the way Bafarás presents his information, often as answers to specific questions, suggests that he responded to a specific request. From the sixteenth century on the Spanish Crown issued numerous questionnaires requesting detailed information about the colony to govern it better. See Cuestionarios para la formación de Relaciones Geográficas de Indias: Siglos XVI/XIX, ed. Francisco de Solano (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1988). Bafarás's manuscript might be the response to one of these questionnaires. However, the emphasis on the nature of the Indians, whom Bafarás viewed unsympathetically, and the illustrations of the military guilds of Mexico, also suggest that this manuscript was produced at the request of a military official in Spain who perhaps intended to travel to the colony.
  13. Joachin Antonio de Bafarás, Origen, costumbres, y estado presente de mexicanos y philipinos (1763), vol. 2, p. B50.
  14. O'Crouley, p. 20.
  15. Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather. Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (New York: Routledge, 1995), p. 46.
  16. Ibid.
  17. Lyle N. McAlister, "Social Structure and Social Change in New Spain," Hispanic American Historical Review 43, no. 3 (August 1963), p. 355.
  18. Stuart B. Schwartz, "Colonial Identities and the Sociedad de Castas," Colonial Latin American Review 4, no. 1 (1995), p. 186.
  19. Solange Alberro, Del gachupin al criollo o de cómo los españoles de México dejaron de serlo (Mexico City: Jornadas 122/El Colegio de México, 1992), pp. 170-171.
  20. Seed, To Love, Honor, and Obey, p. 25.
  21. Carlos Sigüenza y Góngora, "Alboroto y Motín de los indios de México" (1692), in Seis obras, ed. William G. Bryant (Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1984), p. 123.
  22. Ibid., p. 113. Also cited in David A. Brading, The First America: The Spanish Monarchy, Creole Patriots, and the Liberal State, I492-1867 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, (1993), p. 371.
  23. Sigüenza y Góngora, pp. 119-120.
  24. Juan Pedro Viqueira Albán, ¿Relajados o reprimidos? Diversiones públicas y vida social en la ciudad de México durante el siglo de las Luces (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1987), p. 32.
  25. This idea was first suggested in reference to Victorian Britain by McClintock, p. 45.
  26. Most casta paintings have surfaced in Spain.
  27. Cited in Efraín Castro Morales, "Los cuadros de castas de la Nueva España," Jahrbuch für Geschichte von Staat, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft Lateinamerikas, no. 20 (1983), pp. 679-680.
  28. The set is reproduced in its entirety in María Concepción García Sáiz, "Nuevas precisiones sobre la pintura de castas," Cuadernos de arte colonial (Madrid), no. 8 (May 1992), pp. 77-104.
  29. Castro Morales, p. 680.
  30. For the emergence of creole patriotism in Latin America, see Brading.
  31. This series now belongs to the Museo Nacional de Antropologia, Madrid. It is published in its entirety in García Sáiz, Las castas mexicanas, pp. 90-101.
  32. Francisco de Solano, Antonio de Ulloa y la Nueva España (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1979), p. 370.
  33. See Paz Cabello, "Coleccionismo americans y expediciones cientificas del siglo XVIII en la museología española," Archivo per l'antropologia e la etnologia (Florence), no. 113 (1983), pp. 115-135; María Angeles Calatayud, Pedro Franco Dávila: Primer Director del Real Gabinete de Historia Natural fundado por Carlos III (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1988); Historia de las colecciones americanas del Museo de América (Madrid: Ministerio de Cultura, 1994).
  34. Cited in Francisco de las Barras de Aragón, "Documentos referentes al envio de cuadros representando mestizajes humanos y varios productos naturales del Perú, hallados en el Archivo de Indias de Sevilla," Actas y memorias de la Sociedad de Antropología, Etnografía y Prehistoria, (Madrid) 9 (1930), pp. 78-81.
  35. The set is reproduced in its entirety in García Sáiz, Las castas mexicanas, pp. 114-121, although the author does not ascertain its origin.
  36. See Cuestionarios para la formación de las Relaciones Geográficas de Indias.>
  37. Calatayud, p. 95.
  38. For the European tradition of representing America, see Hugh Honour, The New Golden Land. European Images Of America from the Discoveries to the Present Time (New York: Pantheon, 1975); William C. Sturtevant, "First Visual Images of Native America," in First Images of America: The Impact of the New World on the Old, ed. Fredi Chiappelli, vol. 1 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), pp. 417-454. For the representation of America in maps, see Walter D. Mignolo, "Putting the Americas on the Map (Geography and the Colonization of Space)," Colonial Latin American Review 1, nos. 1-2 (1992), pp. 25-63.
  39. "Siriaco natural de Cotinginba donde passou a Bahia edahi o mandou depresente ao Princepe N.S. o Governador e Captaõ General q entaõ era D. Rodrigo Jose de Menezes e Noronha Tem 12 anos deidade echegou aesta corte en Julho de 1786 os varos e celebres accidentes deste preto se descobrem no seu retrato."
  40. Francisco de las Barras de Aragón, "Una historia del Perú contenida en un cuadro al óleo de 1799," Boletín de la Real Sociedad Española (Madrid) 12, no. 5 (1912), pp. 224-284. In this article the author transcribes all of the painting's inscriptions.
  41. Ibid., pp. 259-260.
  42. For a discussion of classification during the Enlightenment, see Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Vintage, 1994), chap. 5.
  43. Three members of this family who often sign their work only with their surname have been identified. The first two are Manuel and Antonio Arellano; the third signs his works as "el mudo Arellano." See Manuel Toussaint, Pintura colonial en México, vol. 1 (Mexico City: lmprenta Universitaría, 1965), p. 145; México en el mundo de las colecciones de arte. Nueva España, vol. 1 (Mexico City: Grupo Azabache, 1994), pp. 236-237.
  44. Reproduced in México en el mundo de las colecciones del arte, vol. 1, pp. 236-237.
  45. There is almost no information on this artist. He is mentioned in Historia de la pintura en Puebla (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, 1963) by Francisco Pérez Salazar as working in Puebla around 1724 and is again listed in Abelardo Carrillo y Gariel, Autógrafos de pintores coloniales (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1972), p. 151, and in Toussaint, p. 150. He has also been identified as the possible author of an apostolate in the Altar de la Divina Providencia (altar of the Holy Providence) in the tabernacle of Mexico City's Cathedral. See Nelly Sigaut, "Altar de la Divina Providencia," in Catedral de México: Patrimonio artístico y cultural (Mexico City: Seeretaría de Desarrollo Urbano y Ecología y Fomento Cultural Banamex, 1986), pp. 45-55.
  46. Fray Agustín de Ventacourt, "Tratado de la Ciudad de México y las grandezas que la ilustran despues que la fundaron los españoles (1698)," in La ciudad de México en el siglo XVIII (169o-I780): Tres crónicas (Mexico City: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 1990), pp. 46-47.
  47. Solange Alberro, p. 179.
  48. For other reproductions of this set, see García Sáiz, Las castas mexicanas, pp. 81-87.
  49. Viqueira, p. 30.
  50. Juan de Viera, "Breve compendiossa narración de la ciudad de México, corte y cabeza de toda la América septentrional (1777)," in La ciudad de México, p. 257.
  51. Cited in Juan Semepere y Guarinos, Historia del luxo, y de las leyes suntuarias en España (Madrid: Imprenta Real, 1788), pp. 159-161.
  52. Honour, p. 46.
  53. Ibid., p. 35.
  54. Viera, p. 189.
  55. See Brading, chap. 14.
  56. McClintock, p. 47.
  57. Sigüenza y Góngora.
  58. For drinking in the colony, see William B. Taylor, Drinking, Homicide, and Rebellion in Colonial Mexican Villages (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1979), and Viqueira, pp. 169-219.
  59. Very little is known about Francisco Clapera. He was born in Barcelona in 1746. On March 6, 1768, he became "Académico Supernumerario" at the Academía de San Fernando in Madrid. While the exact date of Clapera's arrival in Mexico, via Peru, is unknown, by 1790 he was already teaching at the Academia de San Carlos in Mexico City. See Clara Bargellini, "Dos series de pinturas de Francisco Clapera," Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas (Mexico City), no. 65 (1994), pp. 159-178.
  60. Cited in Viqueira, pp. 207-208.
  61. Bafarás, vol. 1, p. 75.
  62. Vicente De P. Andrade, Compilación de datos históricos sobre algunas advocaciones con que es venerada la Sma. Virgen Maria en la Iglesia Mexicana (Mexico City: El Tiempo, 1904). This advocation was recorded in 1746 in a novena by Fray Felipe Montalvo.
  63. Francisco Antonio Lorenzana, "Avisos para la acertada conducta de un párraco en América," in Concilios Provinciales primero y segundo celebrados en la muy noble y muy leal ciudad de México (1555 y 1565) (Mexico City: Imprenta de Hogal, 1769), p. 394.