Mestiza Trajectory

Father Domingos Barboza in Maranhão in the 18th century

Abstract

On October 17, 1717, Domingos Barbosa, legitimate son of João Barbosa da Costa and Maria Ribeira, was baptized in the Cathedral of São Luís do Maranhão by General Vicar Agostinho Mouzinho Garro. In the baptismal register no classificatory term, related to the processes of mestizaje, was used to identify Domingos and his parents. However, in 1742, during the investigation of genere with the purpose of obtaining priestly orders, the witnesses of the process indicated that Domingos, on his father and mother’s side, had “blood of the people of the land”, having his great-grandfathers “mamaluco caste”. Despite the gentility of his ancestors, Domingos was ordained and later became a parish priest in two parishes in Maranhão. The aim of this article is to discuss the process of social mobility traced by this mestizo, considering the social relations built by him and his family and the variations in the conjuncture of the Maranhão’s Church during the eighteenth century. The weight of personal and political relationships in overcoming generational stigmas in societies with traces of the political culture of the Ancien Regime converge to this analysis, as well as the position of sectors of the ecclesiastical hierarchy favorable to the formation of a native clergy in response to the imperative of the Christianization of the people.