The Disappearing Mestizo Book Review

In this book review, it will consist in analyzing the book called “The disappearing Mestizo” by the author Joanne Rappaport. The structure of the book, each chapter follow to narrate the stories of sixteenth and seventeenth century mestizos and mulattos. Actually, Joanne Rappaport is a professor of Spanish and Race and Mestizaje at Georgetown University. She tries to examine with this book what it meant to be mestizo in the early colonial era. In general, the central question is not “Who is a mestizo?” or “What is a mestizo?”. This focus in different points such as when someone is a mestizo, the category of the mestizo, and the meaning of mixture. So, Rappaport focus on when, where, and for whom was the mestizo category activated? In addition, …show more content…
In the first chapter, she talks about making sense of the mixing of American, African, and European of diverse populations in the colonial world and try to understand the race as a lineage. In the second chapter, Rappaport tries to interpret how the classification of rural mestizos and mulattos emerged out of social networks in which they participated influenced, and how they were represented by others. In the third chapter, she is focusing on the relationship between being Spanish and being mestizo through a reading of the quandaries faced by a series of elite mestizos who strove to be accepted in Spanish social circles, and interpreting mestizo as a gendered social process. In the next chapter, Rappaport gave an example of two mestizo caciques of Muisca pueblos called don Alonso de Silva and don Diego de Torres. In chapter 5, she examines what early modern bureaucrats thought people of different qualities. Also, detailing aspects by recourse to skin color and the presence or absence of facial hair. Basically, this chapter tries to understand 16th and 17th century physical descriptions of Indians, mestizos, and mulattos. Also, the notion of a “caste system” has become a dominant trope in the colonial period. In the final chapter of this book, explain about the problem of applying caste as an imperial model. She added that she explores the literature of the 18th century Nueva Granada; in that century was the …show more content…
One of the mestizos called don Alonso de Silva was the illegitimate son of the Portuguese conquistador Francisco Gonzales de Silva and Doña Juana Sirita, the eldest sister of the cacique of Tibasosa. Don Diego de Torres was the son of the conquistador Juan de Torres and of doña Catalina de Moyachoque, the eldest sister of the cacique of Tumerque, pueblo de indios in the Province of Tunja. Don Diego de Torres, cacique of the muisca pueblo de Tumerque, and don Alonso de Silva, cacique of Tibasosa, men who in 1570s aspired to positions in the indigenous political hierarchy, present a significant contrast to that of their mestizo brethren. Comparing with don Alonso de Silva, who is his ally, Diego de Torres is associated with powerholders in the Audencia in Santafe, who are locked in struggle with the encomenderos de Tunja. Both men had conquistador fathers and descended on the maternal side from chiefly lines, permitting them to vie for cacicazgo, which were matrilineal among the Muisca. Torres and Silva were vociferous opponents of the encomienda system and decried the numerous abuses committed by the encomenderos of Tunja. In addition, Don Alonso and don Diego were not the only mestizo caciques of indigenous communities in the early colonial Nuevo Reino. These men play role as chiefly positions authorities because cacicazgo were matrilineally among the Muisca. The challenge faced by the two caciques