Material meanings. Constructing identities through trades and things that matter. Indians, Mulatoes, and Mestizos in La Plata (Charcas), 1575-1635

ANA MARIA PRESTA

Río de Janeiro

Congreso; XXVIII International Congress; 2009

LASA Latin American Studies Association

Planned space and its gradual transformation due to colonization, new trades, and material culture offer a fruitful avenue to widen the approach to identity formation. Class, race, ethnicity, and gender add more engines to our understanding how, in early colonial times, negotiations, manipulation, and redefinition of identities were performed by new social actors in the urban milieu. This presentation addresses Indian, Mulato, and Mestizo women inhabitants of La Plata, the seat of the Royal Court of Charcas, where they performed new occupations related to the rapid commoditization process. Class, as a property marker and a sing of economic success, consumption of material goods and the adoption of certain western practices permitted the accomplishment of agencies and the negotiation of status and identity. Ethnic and race boundaries could be trespassed or pawned within a space that shows dramatic cultural, economic, and political changes after the Spanish conquest.