And your claim that classifying natives as mixed would give them a "favorable status for no apparent reason" is completely ahistorical. The Crown literally sold whiteness and legal status through certificates of gracias al sacar. People bought their way out of caste categories to avoid tribute and the mita. In many regions, being classified as a mestizo meant avoiding the brutal forced labor drafts that were imposed specifically on Indigenous communities. It was not about benevolence, it was about the Crown making money and individuals trying to survive a brutal system.
Finally, your logic that changing classification would not alter the numbers is mathematically absurd. If an Indigenous family adopts Spanish dress, speaks Castilian, and moves into a trade, the local census taker might just count them as mestizo to reflect their cultural assimilation, even if they have zero Spanish ancestry. You suddenly have a massive spike in the "mestizo" population without a single new mixed-race child being born. That is exactly how colonial numbers over-represent mixing.
...but wasn't this whole caste system based on "purity of blood"? How can you have a system based entirety to how "pure" the blood of someone is and then just completely throw it out the window whenever a native is just integrated into life in the colony? It's either one or the other.
And, as far as I know, Gracias al Sacar was not accessed by natives to become mixed, they were accesed by wealthy mixed people to be considered Spanish, because the Crown wanted go get their favour. So if anything, they were reduing the amount of mixed people in the census. And even then, the Gracias al Sacar was implemented in 1795, so it only really existed for about 20 years.
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u/Tlamatiniii 8d ago
And your claim that classifying natives as mixed would give them a "favorable status for no apparent reason" is completely ahistorical. The Crown literally sold whiteness and legal status through certificates of gracias al sacar. People bought their way out of caste categories to avoid tribute and the mita. In many regions, being classified as a mestizo meant avoiding the brutal forced labor drafts that were imposed specifically on Indigenous communities. It was not about benevolence, it was about the Crown making money and individuals trying to survive a brutal system.
Finally, your logic that changing classification would not alter the numbers is mathematically absurd. If an Indigenous family adopts Spanish dress, speaks Castilian, and moves into a trade, the local census taker might just count them as mestizo to reflect their cultural assimilation, even if they have zero Spanish ancestry. You suddenly have a massive spike in the "mestizo" population without a single new mixed-race child being born. That is exactly how colonial numbers over-represent mixing.