| Summary: | Using categories such as "ethnicity" or "race", sixteenth century New Spain historiography has sought to account for an alleged "social reality" of the period, which would be characterized by the opposition of two groups "essentially" different: Indians and Spaniards. Regardless of the criteria by which social classifications worked it out in the sixteenth century, many historians have used analysis tools that are only valid for the Western world today, so their use for sixteenth century New Spain is anachronistic, because they impose a world view designed for very different locations and historical contexts. This paper proposes to question the place from which this past is observed. Given that the way to know a social reality depends on the observer's social place, the challenge is finding another place of observation, different from what traditionally has been taken to study the New Spain society of the sixteenth century.
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