Abstract

HERING TORRES, Max S. PURITY OF BLOOD. PROBLEMS OF INTERPRETATION: HISTORICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL APPROACHES. hist.crit. [online]. 2011, n.45, pp.32-55. ISSN 0121-1617.

This article provides both an historical basis as well as a theoretical-methodological proposal with which to analyze processes of racialization before the modern period. To do so, the proposal is framed within the debate about the possible racial-ized character of the purity of blood laws, taking into account the power of discourse and everyday practices. After an historical overview both in Spain and in the New Kingdom of Granada (fifteenth to eighteenth centuries), the article argues that, starting from a racial antisemitism in the Iberian peninsula, the purity of blood became, in Hispanic America, a strategy of colonial racialization because it codified social relations hierarchially through corporeal and cultural symbols.

Keywords : Race; blood; quality; color; Spain; New Kingdom of Granada; fifteenth to eighteenth centuries.

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