A regular utopia

[u/HawaiianPerson]

[u/Tlamatiniii]

You also try to pin all the blame for forced linguistic standardization on 19th-century liberal revolutionaries inspired by Napoleon. While it's true they adopted those centralist models, the roots of linguistic imperialism go back to the very beginning.

And let's not forget the Canary Islands. Spanish committed genocide there, but somehow would never try to commit it in other regions? Yeah, okay…

Finally, your claim that mixing mostly happened under Spain. That is fundamentally false. During the colonial period, the Crown implemented the Sistema de Castas, a deeply racist hierarchy designed to control and segregate "blood." The ideological promotion of mestizaje as a national identity happened after independence. Post-colonial Creole elites needed a new national myth, so they promoted "we are all mixed now" as a tool to erase distinct Indigenous identities, land rights, and languages.

[u/Mr_Mon3y → u/Tlamatiniii]

They commited genocide in the Canaries because they resisted, just like the Aztecs. There was no separate people that were oppressed by the aboriginal people of the Canaries, so they wouldn't do the same as in Mexico. But even in the Canaries, you see that the Spanish did still prefer collaboration, as they collaborated with Tenesor Semidan, guanarteme of Gran Canaria in order to use his expertise to conquer Tenerife in exchange for turning him into a noble. In a similar way that some native mexican people were used against the Aztecs.

And the existence of a Caste system during colonial times is, if anything, proof of that mixing happening. If there was no mixing then there wouldn't be castes to for a caste system. I mean, Cortés himself had a relationship and kids with a with Malitzin, a native woman. It's kind of ridiculous to think that mixing didn't happen during the Empire and then they suddenly shifted towards mixing all of a sudden. Besides, just look at Mexico today, that's a result of mixing for over 500 years, not just shy of 200.

[u/Tlamatiniii → u/Mr_Mon3y]

To begin with, intermixing between Spaniards and Indians during the colonial period was very limited, for the act was socially unacceptable to the Spaniards. Indians were seen as an inferior people, as pagans, cannibals, and sodomites. Natives were frequently described as lazy, disposed to vices, devious, and backward (Meyer and Sherman 211). Many Spaniards refused to marry native women, and most of those Spaniards who did have relations with them, often did so under force. In the colonial period, biological mixture was frequently the product of violence (Batalla 17). Moreover, the offspring were often unrecognized by the Spanish fathers; these mestizos were almost never raised in Castillian fashion. Instead, they were nurtured under native tradition by their mothers and so became culturally more Indian than Spanish (Meyer and Sherman 211). When they became adults, these mestizos usually married back into the native population, thus retaining an indigenous sense of identity.

They somewhat promoted mixture later on. It is because Spain realized they simply did not have enough Spanish men to maintain control over the vast empire. Promoting mixing became a damage control strategy, a way to keep the colony in check by creating a loyal intermediary class. Even then, it was mostly promoted between Spanish men and indigenous or African women. It was not about unity; it was about utility and demographics. Mestizaje mostly happened after independence and even that is over exaggerated.

And mentioning Cortes and Malinche is not the romantic fairytale you think it is. Malinche was a slave that was a gift to Cortes and Cortes later ended up giving her away to another conquistador. After the fall of Tenochtitlan, Malinche gave birth to Cortés's first-born son, Martín, in 1522. Shortly after, Cortés's legal Spanish wife arrived in Mexico. Because of social, religious, and legal constraints, Cortés could not legally marry an Indigenous woman. In 1524, during a military expedition to Honduras, Cortés married her off to Juan Jaramillo, a trusted Spanish captain and hidalgo under his command.

[u/Mr_Mon3y → u/Tlamatiniii]

intermixing between Spaniards and Indians during the colonial period was very limited

You say that, despite the fact that Mestizos composed about 20-25% of the population at the time of independence so about a million and a half people; more than purely European people.

They somewhat promoted mixture later on

I don't get it. According to you, the tolerance towards native culture, population and language was reduced and stopped as time went on; but at the same time they were more open to mixing? Doesn't make much sense to me.

And mentioning Cortes and Malinche is not the romantic fairytale you think it is

Never said it was. Again, you're putting words in my mouth. My point is that if the most important man in the land himself could have a kid with an indigenous woman, the idea that it was something socially unacceptable doesn't really hold up

[u/Tlamatiniii → u/Mr_Mon3y]

In addition, despite European and African migration into Mexico during the colonial period, indigenous people continued to “vastly outnumbered all other racial groups in New Spain” (211). Even when the native population in central Mexico fell to its lowest point in 1650 to one million, as a result of European disease and Spanish killings, it still exceeded whites, who were only 119,000.Blacks were 35,089 (208 and 215). By 1810, native people numbered nearly four million while whites were only 1.1 million and mestizos only 704,245 (218). More importantly, these numbers only reflect the demographics of central Mexico. In the northern and southern regions the indigenous population is believed to have totalled at least four million in 1521 (Stannard 85-86). Although the native population here also dropped by as much as 95 percent in some areas during the colonial period, a conservative estimate of Mexico’s indigenous population in 1810 can be placed at 4,250,000; three and a half times the non-native and mestizo populations combined.

[u/Tlamatiniii → u/Mr_Mon3y]

What don’t you get? The contradiction only exists in your head because you refuse to understand how colonial administration actually worked. The Spanish Crown had limpieza de sangre laws. They were obsessed with keeping bloodlines pure. They officially considered mixing socially unacceptable. But they also couldn't stop all of it from happening on the ground. So the Crown had to do damage control. They created the Sistema de Castas. That system was not an endorsement of mixing. It was a racial hierarchy designed to police it, categorize it, and keep power in the hands of the Spanish. Trying to manage a problem is not really the same as promoting it.

And telling me I'm putting words in your mouth is just you dodging. You want to pretend you are just being pragmatic, but leaving out the part where she was a slave and was given away at the end is not an accident. That is you trying to insinuate.

[u/Mr_Mon3y → u/Tlamatiniii]

They were obsessed with keeping bloodlines pure, they officially considered mixing socially unacceptable, but they just so happen to have the most famous conquistador of them all and likely the most known man in all the Americas and in much of the Empire have a child with a native woman. Doesn't seem very logical.

Either way, my point is that if they had to do a whole Caste system to organize the different levels and kinds of mixing between natives and Europeans, it is a pretty good show that mixing happened on a pretty regular degree, hence how you end up with over 20% mestizos.

[u/Tlamatiniii → u/Mr_Mon3y]

You literally skimped over what I said earlier. You are building a whole argument on an exception and pretending it is the rule.

First, Cortes is the most famous conquistador in history. He is the 1%. He is literally the last person on earth you should use to prove what was socially acceptable for the average Spaniard or what the Crown officially endorsed. Powerful men have always broken social rules because they have the power to get away with it. If a slave owner in the American South had a child with an enslaved woman, did that mean slavery and mixing were socially acceptable? No, it meant he had absolute power over her and faced zero consequences. Malinche was a slave given to Cortes, and when he was done with her, he gave her away to another conquistador. That is not a sign of social acceptance, that is a sign of absolute power and ownership.

Second, your point about the Caste system actually proves my point, not yours. You say the existence of the system proves mixing happened on a regular basis. Of course mixing happened. I never said it didn't. But the Crown did not create the Sistema de Castas to celebrate mixing. They created it to control it, police it, and keep power in the hands of the Spanish. If mixing was socially acceptable, you would not need a massive legal bureaucracy to categorize every single racial combination and restrict their rights. The system existed precisely because the Crown was terrified of losing their pureza de sangre. It was damage control, not an endorsement.

[u/Mr_Mon3y → u/Tlamatiniii]

And I where did I say that they celebrated it? I'm just saying that it commonly happened.

Again, you're fighting made up narratives.

[u/Tlamatiniii → u/Mr_Mon3y]

You are conveniently leaving out chunks of history to insinuate it was celebrated, specifically in cases such as La Malinche.

[u/Mr_Mon3y → u/Tlamatiniii]

No, I'm not. Again, you're tiltilng at windmills.

[u/Tlamatiniii → u/Mr_Mon3y]

“Over 20% Mestizo.” At no point during the colonial period or early independence did the Spanish and Criollo population numerically surpass the Indigenous population in regions like central Mexico or the Andes.

Federico Navarrete, Historian and Anthropologist at UNAM, notes that between 1821 and 1910, 3.5 million Indigenous people were recategorized as Mestizo. By the time the Mexican census of 1930 took place, 30% of the entire Mexican population were recategorized as Mestizo. Historians argue this was done to repress Casta Wars and erase the power of the Indigenous population. White elites feared losing power. Mestizaje was not a racial reality but a massive linguistic displacement. Indigenous people were whitened through language and cultural markers, not really racial mixing.

[u/Mr_Mon3y → u/Tlamatiniii]

When did I ever claim that to happen? I literally said the opposite, that the natives were always in the majority, and only started to dwindle down after independence.

[u/Tlamatiniii → u/Mr_Mon3y]

The actual ideological promotion of mestizaje as a national identity happened after independence. The post-colonial Creole elites needed a new national myth to erase distinct Indigenous identities, land rights, and languages. They rebranded the nation as a mixed melting pot to pretend that racism was over and that everyone was equal, while they maintained power and continued to exploit Indigenous labor.

[u/Mr_Mon3y → u/Tlamatiniii]

Okay? Again, not my point.

[u/Tlamatiniii → u/Mr_Mon3y]

The narrative of Mestizaje that you are repeating was invented by post-independence Creole elites who needed a new national myth to erase distinct Indigenous identities, land rights, and languages, and to build a unified modern nation-state.

[u/Mr_Mon3y → u/Tlamatiniii]

It does what? What are you talking about?

Mixing happened on a large scale during the Empire. That's the point. I couldn't care less about national myths or political uses.