![]() | The Limits of Racial Domination: Plebeian Society in Colonial Mexico City, 1660–1720 In this distinguished contribution to Latin American colonial history, Douglas Cope draws upon a wide variety of sources--including Inquisition and court cases, notarial records and parish registers--to challenge the traditional view of castas (members of the caste system created by Spanish overlords) as rootless, alienated, and dominated by a desire to improve their racial status. On the contrary, the castas, Cope shows, were neither passive nor ruled by feelings of racial inferiority; indeed, they often modified or even rejected elite racial ideology. Castas also sought ways to manipulate their social "superiors" through astute use of the legal system. Cope shows that social control by the Spaniards rested less on institutions than on patron-client networks linking individual patricians and plebeians, which enabled the elite class to co-opt the more successful castas. R. Douglas Cope is assistant professor of history at Brown University. |
![hidden image for function call](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/1x1.png)