An unframeable icon: coyote, casta and the mestizaje in colonial New Spanish art

This thesis discusses the significance of the casta naming process depicted in pinturas de casta or casta paintings created in eighteenth-century colonial New Spain. These paintings depicted family units, each member named by a racial label designated by the sistema de castas, the Imperial Spanish code of law associated with these paintings. In the genre, the labeled subjects were hierarchically ordered by racial lineage with pure Spanish genealogies ranked highest and all other racial categories following on a sliding scale of racial subjectivity. This study focuses on casta paintings' label coyote, which referred to colonial subjects of mestizo and indigenous heritage. Policies of the casta system, when matched with casta paintings' animal label created a framing of indigenous colonial subjectivity; those labeled coyote were visually positioned as one of the lowest members of the casta and of questionable quality as humans, given their comparison to wild canines. Beyond the general discussion of racial hegemony at work in these paintings this thesis exploration individually questions the meaning of the casta label coyote by analyzing how the colonial namer and the named colonial subject related to this word and title. Deep-seated beliefs about the undomesticated canine were at work in the imaginations of both the Imperial Spanish namer and the named colonial subject, evidenced in European/Spanish renderings of wolves and indigenous art depicting coyotes in Mesoamerica. To uncover the imaginations that informed the creation and reception of the coyote label this study examines the visual development of wolf as a symbol of wildness, evil, and racial impurity used to hail the human Other in both peninsular and New Spanish colonial arts. Additionally, images of coyotes will be considered from the position of the colonial named, vis à vis indigenous arts and beliefs that coyote acted as a sacred symbol of power through centuries of human development in the Mesoamerican world. Varied understandings of coyote were at work in the New Spanish colony, evidenced in eighteenth-century paintings of mestizo artist Miguel Cabrera. Analysis of his paintings of the La Divina Pastora and of his casta painting De mestizo y india nace coyote reveal the instability of coyote as symbol and human label amid the mestizaje mechanisms of New Spain.