What a Tangled Web We Weave: The Children of Colonization Colonial powers have often formed sexual relationships with colonized peoples in order to strengthen their domination of colonized lands. Colonization did not limit itself to occupation and settlement of land and physical space, but extended in varying forms to the subjection of cultures, languages, and peoples. Critical analysis of colonialism requires assessment of the degree to which settlers colonized the bodies of the peoples who occupied colonized spaces. Sexual relationships (whether consensual or not) between the colonizers and colonized were often constructed, restricted, and rendered in ways that propped up colonial hegemony and reinforced colonial systems. ‘Miscegenation’, or mixed-race relationships, affected those in the relationships and their communities, as well as the offspring of these relationships. The ‘mixed-race’ children of colonizers and colonized peoples were subject to unique and varying experiences that reflected the attitudes of a particular colonial society towards race and racial hierarchy. This is evident in the experiences of the children of Spanish, French, and British colonization in South America, Indochina, and Africa. Spanish America and the 1789 Court Case of Dona Margarita Castaneda Spanish America offers an interesting example of European settlers’ colonial categorization of space and people.1 The 1789 court case of Spanish woman, Dona Margarita Castaneda, reveals the place of mixed-race individuals in this colonial society.2 Castaneda’s birth was mistakenly recorded in the baptismal records of mixed-blooded people (libra de castas) instead of the book of Spaniards (libro de espanoles).3 When Castaneda married, her husband went to court to have her declared a ‘true’ Spaniard, so that her offspring would not be ‘tainted’ by racial impurity.4 This was important in New Spain in the late eighteenth century, because ancestry documents of parents and grandparents were required for entrance into universities, guilds, noble orders, and other social organizations, and legitimate inheritance.5 The court did not examine Castaneda’s physical characteristics, rather they used testimonies and interviews to assess her ‘social body’.6 These statements indicate that Spanish identity was neither fixed nor defined by physical characteristics, such as skin colour. None of the four witnesses in the case spoke of Castaneda’s physical traits, but they focused on her conduct as a Spaniard.7 Only full-blooded Spaniards had access to the clothing, jewelry, and associations Castaneda claimed.8 Further, her accent was interpreted as revealing no mixed heritage.9 Thus, categorization in the multiple castes of New Spain was not a function of skin colour.10 One’s caste was a function of one’s social body, occupation, wealth, purity of blood, integrity, and place of origin.11
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