The primary objective of this thesis is to identify patterns of appearance among the flora and fauna of selected eighteenth-century New Spanish casta paintings. The objectives of the thesis are to determine what types of flora and fauna are present within selected casta paintings, whether the flora and fauna's provenance is Spanish or Mexican and whether there are any potential associations of particular flora and fauna with the races being depicted in the same composition. I focus my flora and fauna research on three sets of casta paintings produced between 1750 and 1800: Miguel Cabrera's 1763 series, José Joaquín Magón's 1770 casta paintings, and Andrés de Islas' 1774 sequence. Although the paintings fall into the same genre and within a period of a little over a decade, they nevertheless offer different visions of New Spain's natural bounty and include objects designed to satisfy Europe's interest in the exotic.

This study is concerned with the Self/Other dichotomy, originally formulated by scholars of South Asian history in the context of European imperialistic treatments of the peoples whom they colonized for centuries, as applied to Mexican history. I have chosen some visual, cinematic, and literary representations of indigenous and other dispossessed peoples from both colonial and post-colonial Mexico in order to gain some insights into the vision of the powerless, (the 'Other'), held by the powerful (the colonizers, whether internal or external), especially, but not exclusively, in the context of race. Some public and private works of Mexican art from the 18th , 19th. and the 20th centuries are used to understand the perceptions of the Other in Colonial Mexico City, at the time of Independence, in state-sponsored pre and post-Revolutionary spectacles representing indigenous peoples, cinematic representations of the marginalized and the dispossessed from the Golden Age of Mexican cinema, and in the representation of the marginalized in the literary and photographic works of Juan Rulfo. I conclude that an ambivalent mixture co-existed in Mexican culture through the centuries, on the one hand, honoring the blending that is expressed in the word 'mestizaje', and on the other, adhering to a thoroughly Eurocentric world view. This ambivalence persisted from the 18th century through Independence and the Revolution and its aftermath, albeit in transformed ' / M. A. / Mexico presents an interesting contrast to the United States with respect to the history of race since colonization. The 16th century Spanish conquerors, and the colonizers who followed them, acknowledged the offspring of their unions with indigenous women, setting a tradition that resulted, by the 20th century, in mixed race peoples becoming the major component of the Mexican population. Despite this, there remained a sense in the culture that Europe and those of European descent were still the ideal towards which Mexico aspired, while from time to time, there were paradoxical displays, honoring the ethnic diversity that was New Spanish/Mexican reality. In light of this ambivalence, I have examined some literary and artistic examples of the perception of the colonizers, internal or external, of those whom they marginalized.

[pt] O trabalho com história da América colonial em sala de aula impõe a necessidade de ampliação das possibilidades de estudos e suportes para a consecução do processo de ensino-aprendizagem. Os espaços oferecidos nos contextos atuais para a exploração de diferentes perspectivas sobre os processos formativos das sociedades ibero-americanas durante o período colonial têm sofrido progressiva constrição. Seja por enviesamentos de materiais didáticos ou pela própria insuficiência curricular, o panorama dos estudos escolares desses recortes no Brasil não tem sido o mais favorável. Nesse sentido, a presente dissertação explora potenciais de mobilização didática de documentação imagética específica para o ensino de história da América. A partir da reflexão sobre prática docente em história, busca-se discutir possibilidades de trabalho com pinturas de castas (ou quadros de mestiçagem) e seu desenvolvimento através de abordagens didáticas para um desempenho conceitual no ensino de história da América colonial com turmas de sétimo ano do primeiro segmento do ensino fundamental. / [en] The work with the history of colonial America in the classroom imposes the necessity to expand the possibilities of studies and supports for the achievement of the teaching-learning process. The spaces offered in current contexts for exploring different perspectives on the formative processes of Ibero-American societies during the colonial period have been progressively constrained. Whether due to biases in teaching materials or due to the curricular insufficiency itself, the panorama of school studies of these sections in Brazil has not been the most favorable. In this sense, this dissertation explores potentials for didactic mobilization of specific image documentation for the teaching of American history. Based on the reflection on teaching practice in history, we seek to discuss possibilities for working with casta paintings (or mestizaje paintings) and their development through didactic approaches for conceptual performance in teaching colonial American history with 7th grade classes of the first segment of elementary school.