Patterns of changing categorizations in seventeenth-century PeruCharcas and northern Lima in comparison

GIL MONTERO, RAQUEL; ALBIEZ-WIECK, SARAH

Colonia

Taller; Negociating legal categories in inequal contexts. Latin America 16 to 19 centuries; 2019

Federal Ministry of Education and Research, MECILA, Universidad de Colonia

Since several decades, historiography on Spanish America has shown how the categorizations put forward by the officials of the Spanish crown were situational, porous and allowed considerable mobility across groups. However, there were certainly moments at which these socio-racialized classifications severely affected people?s everyday lives, especially regarding two aspects: the organization of labor and the payment of tribute. Since some time ago we are observing that furthermore situations differed across different regions in the Viceroyalty of Peru. Putting together these two affirmations we propose a question that initially guided our work: ¿Can we find a general pattern in the changes of categorizations? ¿Were there regionalized patterns? An initial processing of our sources permitted to specify our research question since we effectively found some patterns. The question guiding the presentation, then, is if the patterns found allow us to understand some characteristics of these colonial societies, especially regarding the forms domination acquired