I really enjoyed the readings this week, in particular I found Catalina de Erauso’s diary particularly engaging and surprising with it reading like a soap opera at times!
What struck me most about Catalina’s story was that she received no punishment when her identity was revealed but instead was honoured by both the Pope and the King. I found this so surprising as even in Europe today queer people are not always accepted by the Catholic Church – in Italy gay marriage is not legal due to the Catholic Church’s controversial influence over the country’s politics. The fact that she was so readily accepted would perhaps suggest that the Church and the King were not aware of her sexuality but only saw her as a woman who had dressed as a man for the sole purpose of serving her country and not as a way of expressing her own gender identity.
Furthermore, I was surprised that the highest powers at the time, the State and the Church, both recognised that a woman was capable of doing a “man’s” job to a high level. I had believed that the wide spread notion of women being capable of “men’s” work only came into fruition during World War One when women were forced to step into these types of jobs so it was interesting to see how in the patriarchal society of the time Catalina wasn’t criticised for her actions but praised for them.
The Casta Paintings also intrigued me as I would have presumed they would have written down this social hierarchy as a numbered list and not in the form of a painting. However, I can see how a painting may be more effective in portraying the nuances of this hierarchy with each category being dressed in different clothes and with a different background. In one notable example those with “purer” blood were depicted as closer to God.
I also noticed that some of the paintings differed on a “definition” for each of the groups with some paintings showing very different images for the same group. This would perhaps suggest that this was not a ‘clear-cut’ matter and that the lines between groups were very blurred, especially given that many people at the time managed to pass as another group.
Discussion questions
Can you think of any historical figures like Catalina that defied the gender norms of the time?
Do governments use a figurative Casta Painting to categorize citizens into a hierarchy today?
Posted in Blogs, Week 3 | Tagged with casta paintings, Catalina de Erauso, lieutenant nun
Casta Paintings are something I’ve never heard of/seen before but I can say I’m very intrigued. In a social justice class in high school, we touched upon caste systems around the world. I noticed it was typically based on religion, social groups, jobs but rarely race. We went into detail about the racial system in […]
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I found the readings for this week very thought provoking in terms of rebellion and gender roles. Upon reading the story of Catalina de Erauso, I was convinced that I had just read an amazing rebellion story. Girl, run away at 15, pretending to be a man, killing people including her own brother, and a classic womanizer, convinced me of her being a rebel. I then examined the story more closely, and came to realize that while part of her story was about a rebellious teenager, there’s the other part where she fights as a soldier to push colonialism. Her story is not as black and white as I initially thought, and this is a lesson that I’ve already learned a couple times in this class. While she spends her entire story lying and hiding her identity, she also spends that time serving the state, and perpetuating colonialism. She talks greatly about her battles against the “Indians”, and how she slaughtered many of them, bestowing such honour on her war stories. I’m curious about what she thought of her battles. Did she realize that she was rebelling by being an imposter, while genuinely serving, or did she not really care or notice the irony in her actions?
The introduction of casta paintings this week brought on a new insight for me about the racial, social hierarchy that was made up. The most interesting aspect of the paintings to me, was the assumptions that you see being depicted through the paintings. The assumptions made about different types of families based on their racial mix may include: relationships (how close the family is), wealth (what jobs they’re working, how nice their houses are etc.), how they like to express their culture (the clothes they’re wearing), and more. Today, this would be considered a backwards way of thinking for many reasons. First of all, we don’t judge how close a family is based on their race, we judge by how they would interact with each other. Wealth is also something not often judged by race these days, unless you’re looking at wealth from a socio-economic point of view. The casta paintings, so clearly organized in a highest to lowest type manner depict an old, outdated way of thinking about race and families. A question I have regarding this topic of categorization is what do we judge first about a person today? How do we categorize people?
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I found the readings for this week very thought provoking in terms of rebellion and gender roles. Upon reading the story of Catalina de Erauso, I was convinced that I had just read an amazing rebellion story. Girl, run away at 15, pretending to be a man, killing people including her own brother, and a classic womanizer, convinced me of her being a rebel. I then examined the story more closely, and came to realize that while part of her story was about a rebellious teenager, there’s the other part where she fights as a soldier to push colonialism. Her story is not as black and white as I initially thought, and this is a lesson that I’ve already learned a couple times in this class. While she spends her entire story lying and hiding her identity, she also spends that time serving the state, and perpetuating colonialism. She talks greatly about her battles against the “Indians”, and how she slaughtered many of them, bestowing such honour on her war stories. I’m curious about what she thought of her battles. Did she realize that she was rebelling by being an imposter, while genuinely serving, or did she not really care or notice the irony in her actions?
The introduction of casta paintings this week brought on a new insight for me about the racial, social hierarchy that was made up. The most interesting aspect of the paintings to me, was the assumptions that you see being depicted through the paintings. The assumptions made about different types of families based on their racial mix may include: relationships (how close the family is), wealth (what jobs they’re working, how nice their houses are etc.), how they like to express their culture (the clothes they’re wearing), and more. Today, this would be considered a backwards way of thinking for many reasons. First of all, we don’t judge how close a family is based on their race, we judge by how they would interact with each other. Wealth is also something not often judged by race these days, unless you’re looking at wealth from a socio-economic point of view. The casta paintings, so clearly organized in a highest to lowest type manner depict an old, outdated way of thinking about race and families. A question I have regarding this topic of categorization is what do we judge first about a person today? How do we categorize people?
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This weeks’ lesson topic “The Colonial Experience” covers a concept that I have been very interested and curious about for a while now: race classification. Last year, in my first term at UBC, I took a sociology course where at some point we covered the concept of race and race classification, using Brazil as ourContinue reading “The Colonial Experience”
This week has once again proven to provide fascinating insight to the colonial world. Firstly, I believe that Catalina De Erauso’s story should be more recognized within the educational system, that is, within the junior and high school curriculum, for its reference to gender identification. In these progressive times regarding gender, there needs to be more […]
Posted in Blogs, Week 3 | Tagged with Colonial, ethnogenensis, heteronomy, hierarchy, rebel, transgressive
In this week’s lecture we learned about how great of a year, 1942 was for Spain. It is explained that in January of that year, was the Fall of Granada, this being an end to the control of Moslem that lasted for eight hundred years. Then in March, ethnic cleansing of Jewish believers began. we […]
Posted in Blogs | Tagged with casta paintings, thoughts, Zoom class thoughts
This week I had lots to think about. There were 3 distinct topics that had me pondering many questions. The first was in regards to the population of Latin America. This was within the lecture video and really struck me. I guess I had always assumed that Latin America’s population was a little bit ofContinue reading “Week 3: The Colonial Experience”
Posted in Blogs, Week 3 | Tagged with casta painting, Christopher Columbus, lieutenant nun, Mexico, Spain
I absolutely enjoyed this week’s readings and lecture video. Particularly because I found Catalina De Erauso’s, Lieutenant Nun quite engaging,…
Posted in Blogs, Week 3 | Tagged with acceptance, casta paintings, Catalina de Erauso, colonial experience, deceit, Discrimination, mestizo, Mulatto
The inability of the European colonizers to communicate about the people and the diverse cultures that came to make up…
Posted in Blogs, Week 3 | Tagged with casta painting, discourse, Modesto Brocos, racial democracy, racial identity, skin colour
