The Complications of Assimilation

When the original Spaniards began to colonize their New World there was a clear distinction between the natives whom they encountered and their own colonial society. Yet, as Mexico City began to take form, Spanish attempts to create two wholly separate worlds between these groups reached almost instant failure as miscegenation spawned a plethora of new ethnicities. The intermingling of races became increasingly unavoidable, and the Spaniards were faced with the ensuing problem of maintaining their believed superiority. Throughout the centuries leading to their independence from Spain, the Mexican elite fought to control the assimilation of the plebians in a variety of manners. Ultimately though, each tactic shared the common goal of consistently ingraining the idea of divine rule by the elites, from the city council composed of Peninsulares to the distant Spanish monarch across the Atlantic.

In the beginning, it was the friars who commenced the process of acculturation, introducing Catholicism to the natives as they sought to fulfill their goals of evangelism. Acknowledging the natives as a backwards people, the religion that they imposed on them set the tone for the future, as it "focused more on training in correct external behavior than on the transference of knowledge" (Clendinnen, 47). In employing this method of rote behavior, they followed the European tradition of creating a group of essentially ignorant masses, a pattern that was carried well throughout the centuries in colonial Mexico. This blindness of the plebeians played a crucial role in separating the elite, as it created a clear distinction between the ruled versus the ruler, and allowed for fairly easy social manipulation. However, because of this it was also a direct cause of instability, as when the converted Mayans returned to the idolatry of their original religion. Despite the harsh punishments and torture that was inflicted upon the natives following this situation, they continued to mesh aspects of their Mayan culture with that of this new Spanish society. Complete acculturation of the natives into the Spanish lifestyle became nearly impossible as this medley of different cultures became commonplace among the plebeians in the later centuries. The Hapsburgs accepted this unfeasibility, and incorporated parts of their native culture into the festivals as a form of appeasement. When the Bourbons took over though, they attempted to bring together this diverse group under the Spanish culture. Each tackled the masses with different tactics, but ultimately, with identical intentions.

There was a fairly clear distinction between the rule of the Hapsburg and that of the Bourbon administrations. While the earlier Hapsburgs focused on consistently proving their own legitimacy and portraying the preordained role of each ethnic group, the Bourbons sought to modernize the castas and bring them under control. They had in mind essentially the same goal, though their attempts to accomplish it were vastly different, and the "Bourbon festival policy was about difference and exclusion as opposed to the Hapsburg emphasis on difference and inclusion" (Curcio-Nagy, 151). Both were centered on the idea of Spanish supremacy over the other ethnic groups, and on the concept of distinguishing themselves, the ruling class, from the plebeians in every way possible.

The Hapsburg's method included elaborate fanfares, and encouraged the participation of the lower castes in performances. Yet, each role only served to emphasize and reiterate what the elites believed to be their natural positions in society. Though officially intended to celebrate religion, each program contained a social agenda and "these presentations were designed to present the hierarchical nature of society and encourage Native Americans and Afro-Mexicans to recognize and accept their subordinate positions" (Curcio-Nagy, 42). Influenced heavily by the Enlightenment, the Bourbons "tended to emphasize education, religious instruction, moral living, and a queiet, modest form of religiosity" (Curcio-Nagy, 107-108). They removed the colorful festivals that had become a signature of the Hapsburg administration, and enforced strict laws attempting to banish what they considered improper. Despite this focus on educating the ignorant, they actually removed the castas from taking part in the festivals that remained, as the Bourbons fiscally remade the celebrations so that the participants funded the bulk. The idea of racial superiority was further advanced, so that in spite of the innumerable masses of mixed ethnicities, the increasingly smaller elite continued to maintain their position
on top.

Centuries into the colonization of Mexico, pure blood was increasingly rare among the elite, and the ruling class continually emphasized the importance of light skin. It had been simple in the beginning to view Mayan society "as a world apart," and though "there were few… who did not have one or more Indian girls tucked away in the recesses," there was no doubt among the settlers as to their ethnic supremacy (Clendinnen, 44). The distinctions between the two worlds were confused with the products of miscegenation, and suddenly, Spanish lineage became of utmost importance in maintaining some semblance of racial hierarchy. Darker skin was associated with evil, and their roles in festivals suggested that Afro-Americans "could compensate for their black skin by their love for the viceroy or loyalty to the Spanish ruling system" (Curcio-Nagy, 59). Reflecting these beliefs were the plebes themselves, using the caste system freely as a tool that to establish forms of social identity, as it "functioned as a system of social control… [creating] status difference between groups" (Cope, 4).

Marriage and relations between the groups was a common occurrence, and this constant miscegenation should have created a number of new racial types. Yet, race among the plebeians was not so much dependent on their parental lineage as their social standing, and much of the diversity that existed "was filtered out by the sieve of social perception" (Cope, 71). Such instances as the riots, though memorable, were scarce, and the plebeians lived with a constant desire to move up socially through this ever flexible ethnic hierarchy.

The plebeians shared in the egalitarianism of misery, and the proportion of wealth among the elite and the commoners was grossly inadequate. Those not among the fabulously wealthy, who accounted for only a very small percentage of the population, were forced to endure the battle of poverty together, and "an unclean, malodorous, disease-ridden environment was a fact of life" (Cope, 29). There existed an uneasy balance between the elite and the plebeians, and there was a constant tension between these two groups. Many of their rituals were "cultural constructions that sought to ignore and even hide the very real socioeconomic tensions that pervaded society, forestalling any attempt to resolve them" (Curcio-Nagy, 13). Fearing public opinion, the Spanish elite entertained with the idea that "a 'happy'… populace was less likely to rebel, less likely to question their right to rule, and the existing social order" (Curcio-Nagy 147). In this way, the elites controlled the castas, but as evidenced earlier with the relationship between the friars and the natives, Spanish power was in constant instability.

As Spain's new world progressed throughout the centuries, the relationship between the elites and the plebeians became increasingly complex. From nearly the beginning there was evidence of attempts to assimilate the natives, and later the castas, into Spanish society. However, there was a large problem that the Spanish elites had not anticipated, the mass miscegenation of the population. Instead of converting everybody to a Spanish lifestyle, they were forced to adapt many different aspects of different cultures as an overabundance of ethnicities popped into existence. By the time the Bourbons attempted to bring everybody together under the traditional Spanish culture, another sort of colonial Mexican society had already formed. The colonial elites began to identify less with the Spanish crown and more with this new society, with its mixture of races and traditions. Roots of this belief in racial superiority did indeed result in a hierarchy, but it is essential to realize that it was not by any means complete social control. More importantly, by the time Mexico fought for its independence, the colonial elites considered themselves people of Mexico, with only a vestige of loyalty to the crown.