Genealogical Fictions: Limpieza de Sangre, Religion, and Gender in Colonial Mexico. MARÍA ELENA MARTÍNEZ: Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008

Abstract

In her book Geneological Fictions: Limpieza de Sangre, Religion, and Gender in Colonial Mexico, María Elena Martínez traces the ideological and legal history of purity of blood categories from their initial appearance in the kingdom of Castile in the mid-fifteenth century, to their transatlantic circulation to colonial Mexico, and their transformation there until the early nineteenth century. This important and meticulously researched work takes on the historiography that argues that the modern Western conception of race had its origins in nineteenthcentury scientific constructions of race as a biological category. Martínez deftly and persuasively shows a much earlier and more complicated historical genesis, arguing for "no single, transhistorical racism but rather different types of racisms (her emphasis), each produced by specific and historical conditions" (11).