Daily Life In Colonial Latin America (4 page)

In the scenario envisioned by the Europeans, the native
peoples were to serve as workers, as indeed most of them had in the
pre-Columbian period, so the Europeans organized systems of labor to control
the population and employ their labor in the extraction of the natural
resources of the newly acquired territories. This is the origin of the racial
hierarchy that would play a fundamental role in structuring Latin America
during the colonial period, as the physical appearance of the native
populations and the laborers brought from Africa served to identify them and
tie them to their status as laborers. Anyone who looked like an Indian or an
African was therefore assumed to be part of the laboring population and tracked
accordingly. Given this assumption, the burden of proof fell on any person of
Indian or African appearance who was
not
a tribute-paying village
laborer or an enslaved worker to prove his status as a free person.

Nothing about daily life can be understood outside of the
racial and ethnic boundaries that defined everyone’s roles, responsibilities,
rights, and opportunities in colonial Latin America. Whether the discussion
focuses on material culture (i.e., clothing, personal possessions, houses and
their contents), choice of a marital partner, occupation, or social life, one’s
racial category was the key determinant. While individuals did sometimes escape
their category and rise in the social structure, the structure was set up to be
a rigid system that would have a place for everyone and keep everyone in his or
her place.

This race-based social structure made Latin America
paradoxically both the region of greatest mixing of peoples of diverse origins
in the world and a region in which a person’s color, or phenotype, defined his
or her life to an extremely high degree. This racialized social structure is
best seen as a construction by dominant groups determined to restrict access to
resources and political power in the face of challenges by subaltern groups.
The Europeans, both colonists and crowns, were organizing these newly
discovered territories for the extraction of wealth. In a period before the
invention of machines when work was performed by human energy, labor had to be
coerced or coaxed from people, lots of them. Race was the primary tool used to
distinguish those in control from those to be controlled. This is not to say
that those in the groups to be controlled meekly trooped off to meet their fate
. . . far from it. In fact, their rejection of the rules presents us with some
of the most interesting and inspiring stories in Latin American history. But
that comes later.

The Multiplication of Racial Categories

In the beginning, the racial division was clear and
straightforward because there were just two groups: those who came across the
ocean from Europe and the people who met them. While a few African servants
came with the Iberians, their numbers were small, and they were not
differentiated from the others who came from Europe. Unfortunately for the
neatness of this system, conditions on the ground soon changed. People lost no
time in muddling the categories by producing offspring that were the result of
sexual encounters across ethnic boundaries. There were several reasons for
this: women of the conquered peoples were treated as part of the booty of
conquest, taken by or given to the Christians. In Christian societies, where
sex was cast as sinful outside of marriage, men’s access to women was limited
by law and custom. So although women from Europe began to arrive in the
American colonies shortly after the first conquerors, their numbers were low,
and they were not necessarily available as sexual partners for European men.
The women of the conquered peoples were part of what was won in the wars of
conquest, as workers and sex objects or, in some cases, willing sexual partners
and, if not always legal wives, mothers of the next generation.

In addition, as recent research on the Puebloans of New
Mexico shows, some very different meanings could be attached to sexual
intercourse and its function in the universe. This Pueblo perspective sheds new
light on stories of indigenous women throwing themselves at the conquerors. It
suggests that while there was surely some, possibly substantial, degree of rape
and exploitation of women’s bodies against their will, as there is in any
military invasion, if we can step outside Christian teachings that associate
sex with sin and shame, we encounter the possibility, at least in the earliest
days of the colonial period, of women willingly engaging in sexual relations
with the new arrivals. According to one scholar, in some cultures of the First
Nations, this was done as a way for women to empower themselves and their
communities, and to divest the invaders of power to do harm.

The offspring of alliances between indigenous people and
those who had arrived from across the seas merged previously isolated
populations of Africans, Europeans, and native people and created a society of
castas,
a generic term applied by Spaniards to racially mixed peoples. These
mestizos,
mulatos,
and
zambos,
to give only the three most common labels
dreamed up by Spaniards to distinguish among various “types” of castas, began
to appear quite early in the colonial period, and their place in colonial
society was not as rigidly fixed as that of Indians and whites. Seeking to meet
their daily needs for food, shelter, clothing, love, and good times, these
racially mixed people challenged the rigidity of the social structure and found
ways to exploit its interstices, sometimes rising into the dominant groups.

Another factor that confused the racial hierarchy was that
some whites did not fall into the category of elites, either because they came
from marginalized economic groups in Europe and were not able to raise their
status in the New World, or because they lost status for reasons of luck,
health, or vice. Thus not all whites were at the top of the social structure,
although in general they had a better chance of getting there.

In any case, the Europeans found phenotype a useful tool in
their project of organizing a colonial society for the extraction of wealth
from what was to them a new world, and race would continue to play a crucial
role in the lives of Latin Americans long after the colonial period had ended.
Many would argue it still does.

During the 18th century,
artworks known as casta paintings, depicting family groupings, generally
father, mother, and one child, became popular collectors’ items in Europe. The
point of these paintings was to show and label the results of racial and ethnic
mixtures occurring in New Spain. In this casta family of fruit sellers, the
child is learning the family business.

THE PATRIARCHAL EXTENDED FAMILY

The other key to understanding Latin American history is
the patriarchal extended family. Even today, many, it might even be fair to say
most, Latin Americans gain access to resources, meaning a place to live,
employment, or a marriage partner, through exploiting family relationships.
What might be seen as nepotism in another region of the world is often viewed
in Latin America as simply the best way to get things done. When there is a job
opening, who is more to be trusted, a person who comes in off the street — even
if he has good credentials — or the relative of a long-term, reliable employee?
Many Latin Americans would choose the latter on the assumption that the older
worker will make sure the new worker, her relative, measures up to the
standards of the company. Often this assumption is born out, because of the
strength of reciprocal responsibilities within the extended family. Therefore,
this study will devote considerable attention to the formation of the extended
family structure in Latin America.

The Elite Family

Family structure among elites has been called patriarchal,
meaning dominated by a
patriarch,
the man of the household and official
holder/manager of the family property. This patriarch, whose income in colonial
Latin America was generally based on a hacienda, plantation, or mine,
established the social position of the family. His effectiveness in controlling
his dependents — meaning his children, whether born of his wife or of another
woman; the women of his household (i.e. wife, sisters, sisters-in-law, mother,
mother-in-law, and possibly granddaughters); poor relatives; and domestic servants,
slaves, or tributary Indians — was a matter of utmost importance since his
reputation as an
hombre de bien
(honorable member of the community) was
at stake. Frequently, the eldest son of the patriarch succeeded him in that
position, to reap the rewards and shoulder the responsibilities implied by this
position of chief executive officer of the family.

Non-elite Families

For families lower on the social scale, the family might
not be organized around the man of the house. Indeed, in the lower ranks of
society, the family could often be said to be matriarchal, led by a widow,
single mother, or eldest sister. This did not, however, diminish the strength
of family ties and may even have fostered greater reliance on the extended
family as a source of the necessary contacts that would lead to work, a home,
or a partner.

OUTLINE OF THE BOOK

What follows will show how colonial institutions structured
daily life and were in turn structured by people’s daily lives over 200 years
of Latin American history. The discussion is divided into chapters on marriage
and home life; sexual mores and affective life; childhood and education; the
material aspects of daily existence; work and economic relationships; popular
art, entertainment, and religious life; and political systems and resistance to
them. The conclusion will summarize the key features of colonial life since
1600 after briefly sketching the achievement of independence in most of Latin
America early in the 19th century. Perhaps not surprisingly, despite this
achievement the colonial period came to its official end without bringing much
change to the daily lives of the majority of Latin Americans.

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