I

Spaniard and Indian Produce a Mestizo

General Comments

If we assume that a traditional racial/ethnic hierarchy frames the public perception of hybridity, it becomes possible to sell hybridity as a way to raise social status. In the Spanish model, the combination of Indian and Spaniard represents a combination of the highest and the lowest. The product, a Mestizo, is of a higher social caste than his Indian parent. In this way, lower caste ethnicities could buy their way up the class scale.

The second option is to promote the specific type. Protoeugenicists claim that Mestizos can display a refinement worthy of the highest genetic orders. They are pleasant in temperament, and develop useful intellectual skills at a very early age. Using a positive assessment such as this one, we can make this typology a desirable commodity in and of itself. Using this model of hard core genetic determinism, we can then sell future parents a guarantee of temperament, and perhaps, if we can construct a grand enough illusion, even a guarantee for the full expression of the child's personality. A study on the legality of this strategy is forthcoming.