PASSING COUNTERFEIT WHITENESS AND MULATTA WEALTH IN LOS MISTERIOS DE BARCELONA

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. I would like to thank Ed Vermue of the Special Collections at the Oberlin College Library for his crucial assistance in making available to me a copy of this rare book. Elisa Martí-López provides a full summary of all the subplots in the appendix to her book Borrowed Words. See pp. 139–42. 2. For example, when discussing probable fathers for Carolina, the novel's characters disqualify the deceased Juan Bardisa because he believed that (Spanish) men should marry the black and mulatta women in Cuba with whom they have children. That is, it is clear to these characters that Carolina's father is white and her mother is not. 3. This reading of the novel does not imply that in historical terms Spain was or is free from “racist” sentiments—dehumanizing attitudes, words and actions—towards others whose bodies are seen as physically different. 4. See The King's Two Bodies for an analysis the medieval foundation of this idea. For a list of legal cases regarding “passing counterfeit coin” in the USA during the nineteenth century see McKinney McKinney , William M. The Federal Statutes Annotated: Containing All the Laws of the United States of a General and Permanent Nature in Force on the First Day of January . Northport, NY : E. Thompson , 1903–1906, 1918. [Google Scholar] VII, 722–6. 5. See Schmidt-Nowara, Chapter 3 “Free Trade and Protectionism”. 6. Although it is obviously a stereotype, the 1852 Real Academia Española .. Diccionario de la lengua castellana . 10th ed . Madrid : Imprenta Nacional , 1852 . [Google Scholar] Diccionario de la Real Academia Española Real Academia Española . Diccionario de la lengua castellana . 9th ed. Madrid : Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández , 1843 . [Google Scholar] includes ‘‘avaro, usurero’’ as an acceptable use of the word ‘‘judío’’. Up to and including the previous edition of 1843, metaphorical use of the word is limited to a ‘‘voz injuriosa y de desprecio de que suele usarse en casos de cólera y enojo’’. 7. For example, in Gloria, the narrator speaks of the ‘decaimiento de la raza española” (35) but also the difficulty arising from the fact that it cannot be regenerated via Catholicism but from within Spaniards themselves. Here we see the beginning of the idea that Spanish race is something other than wholly based on religion. Donoso Cortés Cortés , Juan Donoso . “Discurso sobre Europa.” Obras completas. Recopiladas y anotadas, con la aportación de nuevos escritos . Dr. don Juan Juretschke . Vol. 2 . Madrid : Editorial Católica , 1946 . 299 – 315 . [Google Scholar] identifies the source of contemporary crises in the race of Spanish statesmen to be the conflict between the “raza borbónica” and the “raza austríaca” (“España” 328); similarly, he defines “razas eslavas” according to their religion. In both examples he bases his theories of race on “civilization”. (See also Colas Colas , Dominique . Races et racismes de Platon à Derrida: Anthologie critique . Paris : Plon , 2004 . [Google Scholar] 344.) 8. Among the best-known examples are La Regenta by Leopoldo Alas, Llibertad! by Santiago Rusiñol, El amigo Manso by Benito Pérez Galdós, the aforementioned La febre d'or and, from the early twentieth century, Alberto Insúa's El negro que tenía el alma blanca. The anxiety of whiteness in Misterios is a wholly modern one, but the idea that Spaniards may not recognize their African heritage dates to the era of extensive peninsular slavery. In the Tratado Primero of Lazarillo de Tormes, the narrator recalls his mother's “Moreno” friend who would spend the night at their house and his stepbrother, born soon after: a “negrito muy bonito”. This young boy, accustomed to seeing only his white mother and brother, shrank from his father's blackness without knowing that he, too, was what he most feared (5–6). 9. See Vindication of the Rights of Women, especially Chapter 9, and Sab. Not coincidentally, many years later, the founder of the Sociedad abolicionista, Rafael María de Labra, would also found the Sociedad para la Abolición de la Prostitución Legal o Tolerada to criminalize prostitution in Spain (Fernández Fernández , Pura. Mujer pública y vida privada: Del arte eunuco a la novela lupanaria . Woodbridge : Tamesis , 2000 . [Google Scholar] 233).