Puro tlaxcalteca?: Ethnic Integrity and Consciousness in Late Seventeenth-Century Northern New Spain

"The pueblo of San Estevan de Tlaxcala is inhabited by pure blood Tlaxcaltecan Indians who founded it during the conquest of this country. … These Indians speak Spanish and are civilized."¹ So observed don Nicolás de Lafora, a military engineer accompanying the Marqués de Rubí's inspection tour of New Spain's northern presidios, as he approached San Esteban and the adjoining Spanish town of Saltillo, in present-day Coahuila, in June 1767. A decade later, fray Agustín de Morfi, chaplain to newly appointed commander general of the Provincias Internas don Teodoro de Croix, echoed Lafora's assessment, linking San Esteban's ability to preserve its privileges for the better part of two centuries to the community's pureza de sangre, preserved through the great care its residents took to avoid "mixing" with the castas (mixed races) that "infected" Saltillo.²

These comments from two mid-eighteenth century representatives of the Spanish crown suggest that, to outside observers at least, the Tlaxcalan community appeared ethnically "pure." Further, in Lafora and Morfi's eyes, ethnic purity was a marker of superiority that set San Esteban Tlaxcalans apart from both the malas castas (literally, "bad races") and the indios bárbaros ("barbarous" or "savage" Indians, here referencing the native populations living beyond Spanish control) of the frontier and Spaniards themselves.³ But was this ethnic purity imaginary? Had San Esteban in fact maintained its corporate limpieza de sangre (blood purity) over the nearly two centuries since its founding? Were these outside observers repeating a widely accepted truth, or were they simply naïve?

This article steps back in time from the era in which Lafora and Morfi offered their assessments to the earlier decades of San Esteban's existence to explore how over the course of more than two centuries San Esteban's Tlaxcalan citizens crafted an image of ethnic "purity" that allowed the community to sustain its municipal autonomy against great odds. This autonomy lasted until the years after independence, when the pueblo was absorbed by the neighboring Spanish town of Saltillo. I examine a number of factors that came together in the mid-to late seventeenth century to enable San Esteban to shape and refine the ethnically homogeneous image it presented to the world, one that Lafora and Morfi seemed to accept uncritically when they encountered the Indian town in the 1760s and 1770s. The examination has taken me through parish records from San Esteban's parish church; civil documents housed in Saltillo's municipal archive relating to San Esteban's foundation, its disputes with Saltillo's cabildo and its citizens, and its role in frontier defense; a number of late seventeenth-century testaments of San Esteban residents recorded in Nahuatl and housed in that same archive; and a range of scholarly studies that treat the colonial north. I look in particular at manifestations of the community's conciencia de sí, its "sense of self," evidenced at the corporate level as San Esteban took to court to defend the privileges secured at its founding. That conciencia is also apparent in the community's touting of its contributions to frontier defense, and in its provision of colonists for Tlaxcalan towns founded throughout northeastern New Spain between 1598 and the first years of the nineteenth century. I consider as well more mundane manifestations of San Esteban's conciencia de sí, visible in the daily interactions of San Esteban's citizens. In particular, I examine marriage choices and community affirmation at significant "life moments" that revealed how San Esteban's residents saw themselves as Tlaxcalans. San Esteban's conscious effort to deploy its vaunted ethnic integrity at critical points in its history was an essential part of its larger struggle to survive challenges—most notably those posed by Saltillo residents and officials—that threatened to compromise San Esteban's municipal independence, divest it of its resources, and ultimately erase both de facto and de jure the distinctly Tlaxcalan presence in the valley. The present study takes inspiration from the rich body of scholarship on the formation of...