The Racial Discrimination In The Early Modern Era

Throughout history, societies have often divided their people into different social classes based on various factors. A person’s social standing in a social hierarchyoften determines his or her place in society and for many developing societies, it was a way to maintain order. However, over time, it allowed tensions to grow between different groups, creating social and racial barriers between them. Some of these racial and social issues managed to fade over time but some continue to plague various societies of the modern era. If the abolition of racist ideas is the ideal goal of Mexico then Mexico has been unsuccessful with removing racial tensions between several groups of people since the Spanish colonization in the early modern era such
During the early modern era, Mexico had a complex caste system that was enforced by the Spanish government. The system “defined three main categories of humans, and then further broke that down into 16 distinct racial subcategories” ("Las Castas - Spanish Racial Classifications.”). “The three main races were: Peninsulares, who were Europeans, Native Indians, and African Negros” (Tal). This was due to the Spanish Inquisition which promoted the idea of Limpeza de Sangre, or purity of blood. Spanish believe that the closer a person is to Christendom, the more pure his or her blood was (Sicroff). Since Native americans were early converts to Christianity, they were classified at the bottom of the social hierarchy. People who were mestizos, part Spanish and part Native Americans, did not receive full rights despite having Spanish lineage. They managed to rise higher on the social ladder but could never reach the top. Currently, Mexico has yet been
During the early modern era, Africans were brought over by the Spaniards as slaves and were often being forced into harsh labors to produce goods. Similar to Native Americans, they were grouped into the lower tiers of the caste system and “their low social status was enforced legally. They were prohibited by law from many positions, such as entering the priesthood, and their testimony in court was valued less than others” ("Las Castas - Spanish Racial Classifications.”). This is due to their slaves status, since it was not considered proper to own natives, many Africans Americans became slaves. Many Africans converted to Christianity later than most indigenous groups and in religious laws, Christians could not enslave each other so they turned to Africans as a source of labor. They justified the discrimination and injustice using religion as an excuse. Mexico would eventually abolish slavery, even before the United States, but the way they viewed free descendants of slaves remained the same. Mexico even “printed postage stamps that commemorated a well-known comic-book character from the 1950s, Memin Pinguin. The character is a black boy drawn with exaggerated features.” (Wilkinson). Some people claim that that the stamp represent Mexico’s culture but it continues to promote the idea of the use of black face and stereotyping. It represents that the country has not made very successful progress in removing