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These two examples of Morisca Casta
Paintings present interesting images of couplehood in the public and private
spheres.
In both paintings, the parents look straight ahead, not at one another,
while the child looks to the mother. This lack of eye contact between the
partners could suggest lack of intimacy or even shame at the intermarriage
of African and Spanish ancestry, yet such a negative reading is belied
by their close proximity to one another and the fact that they seem to
be sharing a public life. Once again, in both cases the family depicted
shows upper class features such as fine clothing, jewelry, and/or a well
furnished living space. This class assignment is somewhat believable given
that the male partner is Spanish and therefore would have access to positions
of power and prestige. |
Mestiso
Mulatto
ription
makes it nearly impossible to guess the ethno-racial makeup of the people
depicted. This lack of clarity in phenotype was certainly a cause for concern
within colonial culture since it made maintaining rigid class and racial
divisions nearly impossible. Most evidence suggests that priests and government
officials in charge of racial classification depended on people's self-identification
to help them create records. Though the paintings were used to help priests
recognize different ethno-racial groups, their educational value was probably
found more in the inscriptions than in the paintings themselves.