Shades of Mexican

In Kansas, federal officials are investigating an Indian tribe for allegedly selling tribal memberships to illegal immigrants, along with the promise that the documents will protect them from the threat of deportation. By their spokesman's own admission, the Kaweah Indian Nation has sold more than 10,000 memberships for prices starting at $50 and, according to some reports, as much as $1,200.

On one level, this is just one of many scams targeting society's most vulnerable consumers. Its success underscores how desperate many undocumented immigrants are to legitimize their status in the United States. On another, it is a powerful contemporary example of historical fact: Mexicans long have used and manipulated race to improve their social status.

Unlike in the United States, where race is understood as purely biological, in Mexico it's defined by culture and class as much as it is by DNA. An Indian, for example, is not simply someone with Indian blood, but an individual who behaves, dresses and speaks "like an Indian." Someone of wholly Indian heritage who speaks Spanish and lives according to Hispanic (as opposed to indigenous) customs would be considered mestizo, or mixed. Not surprisingly, when race is a question of culture, it is a fluid and even changeable category.

This isn't to say that race has had no social meaning in Mexican history. From the 16th to the 19th centuries, Spain imposed a hierarchical racial order in colonial Mexico, one that favored those with European heritage and lighter skin. Whites, blacks, mestizos and Indians were assigned different levels of access to property, power and prestige. But through the years, racial mixing eroded the categories and weakened that social order. As the categories loosened, upwardly mobile Mexicans gamed the system and climbed the racial ladder by creative categorization. This was most common on Mexico's northern frontier -- the contemporary American Southwest -- where government control was weak and most pioneers were mestizo. In California and Texas, settlers routinely reclassified themselves to improve their social standing. The first two census surveys of the pueblo of Los Angeles are full of instances of racial re-classification.

In 1781, a certain Jose Vanegas was classified as Indian. Nine years later, however, he is listed as a mestizo. Similarly, while the first census lists Jose Navarro as mestizo, in 1790, he has become a Spaniard instead.