For over one-quarter of a century, social historians of colonial Latin
America have been concerned with issues of identity and difference,
especially race, yet few have paid attention to gender as an important
factor in social differentiation. This article provides such analysis,
exploring the relationships among gender and other identity categories
through examination of the construction of gendered ethnoracial categories
in a variety of colonial Mexican texts. Kellogg argues that depictions
of women of color helped creole elites embrace, however, ambivalently,
their mestizaje (mixed-race heritage) as a symbol of Mexican protonational
identity.
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