Depicting mestizaje: Gendered images of ethnorace in colonial Mexican texts

Fore over one-quarter of a century, social historians of colonial Latin Ame rica have been concerned with issues of identity and difference, especially race, yet few have paid attention to gender as an important factor in soci al differentiation. This article provides such analysis, exploring the rela tionships among gender and other identity categories through examination of the construction of gendered ethnoracial categories in a variety of coloni al Mexican texts. Kellogg argues that depictions of women of color helped c reole elites embrace, however ambivalently, their mestizaje (mixed-race her itage) as a symbol of Mexican protonational identity.