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.