From “Indian” to “Spaniard”: Resolving Identities in Eighteenth-Century Chile

This paper identifies a last phase of a process by which the category “Spaniard” was reconceptualized to describe colonial subjects, who may have belonged to other ethnic groups, in the context of socio-racial stratification in eighteenth-century Chile. The word “Spaniard” experienced a notable transformation from being a national attribute in the sixteenth century, to containing other cultural attributes in the late eighteenth century, when it extended to include a large part of the population – members of which due to their ethnicity and station were at other times given different socio-racial classifications. The documentary database is drawn primarily from population censuses, parochial archives (baptismal, matrimonial, death records), and secondarily from wills and dowries. The paper also employs descriptive documents (royal reports and municipal proceedings) and traveler accounts. The investigation covers four geographical regions: La Serena, Valparaíso, Santiago y Colchagua. They contained most of the population in eighteenth-century Chile. The research combines quantitative and qualitative methodologies and focuses on three topics of analysis: matrimonial tendencies, variation in socio-racial classifications, and the relation between those classifications and occupations. The analysis of matrimonial tendencies in Chile during the second half of the eighteenth century, based on 30,000 registrations, reveals increased exogamy and two main groupings. The first constituted marriages between Spaniards and Mestizos, and the second between Indians and castas. The analysis of the relation between “quality” classifications and occupations suggests a rupture in the classic pigmentocratic ordering. The papers discusses these research findings in relation to sociological and cultural theoretical frameworks.