Limpieza de sangre

Limpieza de sangre is also a novel in the Captain Alatriste series by Arturo Pérez-Reverte.

Limpieza de sangre (in Spanish), Limpeza de sangue (in Portuguese), both meaning "cleanliness of blood" was a concept of Iberian Modern History. It referred to being ethnically pure "Old Christian", without Jewish or Muslim ancestors.

The Reconquista

After the end of the Reconquista and the expulsion of Sephardic Jews, the population of Portugal and Spain was all nominally Christian. However, the descendants of the Christian conquerors despised the New Christians, descendants of baptized Jews (Conversos or Marranos) or Mudejars (Moriscos). Besides social and economic causes, the accusation was that the New Christians were false converts, keeping their former religion in their homes (Crypto-Jews). This was sometimes true, but even people later declared to be saints by the Church could be suspected. Cleanliness of blood was an issue of ancestry, not of personal religion. The first statute of purity of blood appears in Toledo, 1449, where an anti-Converso riot bans Conversos from most official positions. Initially these statutes were condemned by the monarchy and the Church. In 1496, Alexander VI approves a purity statute for the Hieronym Order.

This stratification meant that the Old Christian commoners could assert a right to honor even if they were not in the nobility. The religious and military orders, guilds and other organizations incorporated in their bylaws clauses demanding proof of cleanliness of blood. Upwardly mobile New Christian families had to either contend with their plight, or bribe and falsify documents attesting generations of good Christian ancestry. The Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions was more concerned with repressing the New Christians and heresy than chasing witches, which was considered to be more a psychological than a religious issue, or Protestantism, which was promptly suffocated.

The claim to universal hidalguía (lowest nobility) of the Basques was justified by erudites like Manuel de Larramendi (1690-1766) because the Arab invasion hadn't reached the Basque territories, so it was believed that Basques had maintained their original purity, while the rest of Spain was suspect of miscegenation. In fact, the Arab invasion also reached the Basque country and there had been a significant Jewish minority in Navarre, but the hidalguía helped many Basques to official positions in the administration. Only a small territory in present-day Asturias managed to be always independent. Even in the 19th century, the Basque nationalism of Sabino Arana demanded a list of original Basque surnames to rule out mixes with Spaniards. In this case the motivation was to create a Basque identity to claim independence from Spain, depicting often other Spaniards as imperialistic invaders and oppressors of the Basque people.

In spite of the abolition of the rules with the demise of the Ancien Regime, the discrimination was still present into the twentieth century in some places like Majorca. No Xueta (descendant of the Majorcan Conversos) priest was allowed to say Mass in the cathedral until the 1960s.

Spanish colonies

Limpieza de sangre was a very important concept among Spaniards who settled in the Americas. The Laws of the Indies repeatedly banned descendants of Conversos and those reconciliated with the Inquisition of settling in the Americas (the reiteration suggests that the laws were often ineffectual). It led to the separation of the various peoples in the colonies and created a very intricate list of nomenclature to describe one's precise race and, by consequence, one's place in society. To illustrate how complex this nomenclature became the following list was in use in New Spain (Mexico) during the eighteenth century:

• Spaniard and Indian = Mestizo (50% European and 50% Native American)
• Mestizo and Spanish woman = Castizo (75% European and 25% Native American)
• Castizo woman and Spaniard = Spaniard (87.5% European and 12.5% Native American)
• Spanish woman and black man = Mulatto (50% European and 50% African)
• Spaniard and Mulatto = Morisco (75% European and 25% African)
• Morisco woman and Spaniard = Albino (87.5% European and 12.5% African)
• Spaniard and Albino woman = Torna atrás (lit. "turn back") (75% European and 25% African)
• Indian man and Torna atrás woman = Lobo (50% Native American, 37.5% European, and 12.5% African)
• Lobo and Indian woman = Zambaigo (75% Native American, 18.75% European, and 6.25% African)
• Zambaigo and Indian woman = Cambujo (87.5% Native America, 9.375% European, and 3.125% African)
• Cambujo and mulatto woman = Albarazado (43.75% Native American, 29.6875% European, and 26.5625% African)
• Albarazado and Mulatto woman = Barcino (40.43% European, 21.87% Native American, and 37.7% African)
• Barcino and Mulatto woman = Coyote
• Coyote woman and Indian man = Chamiso
• Chamiso woman and Mestizo = Coyote mestizo
• Coyote mestizo and Mulatto woman = Ahí te estás ("there you are")

This list represents only some of the existing social and legal terms put in place by the colonizing Spaniards to firmly establish how far away one is from pure European blood. Every Spanish colony had its own, equally complex, system of determining one's racial genealogy. They did not block intermixing but placed the result of interracial relations in the caste system.

See also

• Caste system
• Racism
• Apartheid
• Nuremberg laws
• Black Legend

References

• Douglass, William A. 2004. ‘Sabino’s sin: racism and the founding of Basque nationalism’ in Daniele Conversi (ed.), Ethnonationalism in the Contemporary World. London: Routledge, pp. 95–112.

External link

• Attestment of the purity of blood of Justo Rufino de San Martín (brother of José) in Paredes de Nava, 1794.