Racism - A Short History - George M Fredrickson.pdf - WNLibrary

ued to follow some Jewish customs, like refraining from
the eating of pork. An indeterminate number, after going
to Mass, secretly worshiped the Jehovah of the Old Testament
at home. But it was to their advantage to conform at
least outwardly to what was expected of them as Christian
converts. The Moriscos, on the other hand, were mostly
peasants and artisans who lived in their own villages or
quarters. Because many of them resisted even the appearance
of assimilation, it would be easier to characterize the
feeling against them as based more on cultural than on
racial difference. But it remains true that limpieza de sangre
proscribed Moorish as well as Jewish ancestry, and that to
be truly Spanish in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
one had to claim to be of pure Christian descent. 35
At the time that Spanish society was being purged of
Jews, Moors, and many of their genuinely or nominally
converted descendants, Spain was colonizing the New
World and encountering another kind of difference. Unlike
the Jews and the Moors, adherents to the great religions
that challenged Christianity in the Old World, the indigenous
inhabitants of the Americas represented either primal
innocence or subhumanity. In the great debate that ensued
on which was the case, two traditions of thought about
difference influenced European—and, more specifically,
Spanish—thinking about the Indians of the New World.
One was the medieval belief that “monstrous races” or subhuman
“wild men” inhabited the fringes of the known
world. Some early explorers brought back tales suggesting
that the Indians were such creatures. 36 The other relevant
tradition or precedent, at least for the Spanish, was the conquest
and colonization of the Canary Islands. The native
35