This week’s readings were about Casta Paintings and the story of Lieutenant Nun. It was my first time to read the story where a female person had been living like a man, and I found this very interesting. This is because being transgender was a unique thing back in 15th century. Moreover, I was surprised the fact that the Spanish King, Philip IV seemed to accept her and allow her to dress like a man. In addition,  Pope Urban the Eighth said “Instead of chastising her, he gave her a papal dispensation to keep on dressing as a man—provided that she remained a virgin”, which shows that he did not have any problems with her. As the story continued, Catalina went to fight against the Indians in Peru, and I could understand from the text that she seemed to be very brave and took the lost flag back. However, at the end of her journal, I found it a bit sad that she killed her own brother in a dark fight, but overall, I do not think it was not bad reading this journal.

As for Casta Paintings, I did not really know about this until I took this course. I was interesting that the paintings were based on race hierarchy in Spanish colonies and the paintings were usually divided into 16 compartments. In addition, hierarchy based on race was explained by saying that white Spanish are on top and other races such as blacks and mestizo are inferior to white. This enabled me to understand the structure of the society in Spanish colonies which was interesting. From the reading, I could understand that they were popular among people and had lots of demand, but some people like Arce y Miranda did not appreciate them. This is because when he saw them, he felt that Creole were inferior to white Europeans.

Through the readings assigned, I was able to learn about race structure of Spanish colonies by looking at Casta paintings. Although it was popular, the evaluation of Casta paintings differed among English travelers.The English traveler Richard Phillips encouraged people to see them, but Richard Twiss showed skepticism expressing that he does not fully trust the detail of described racial mixture on the paintings. Finally, the journal of Catalina enabled me to understand the story of female person who was dressed like a man and fought bravely in Spanish colonies.