The Latin American Identity and the African Diaspora: Ethnogenesi ...

of an interracial union of that era, even though the language attempts to subterfuge the intent:

The context for these lines is as enlightening toward an understanding of twelfth-century racial aesthetics in Spain as the lines themselves, which delicately portray a pornographic image of a black man in sexual union with a white woman. The manuscript from which the lines are taken states that a black slave (Abdun Aswad), in order to file a complaint against his white wife, appeared before the twelfth-century Spanish jurisprudent Ibn Hamid. Cultural lacunae obscure the dimensions of implied racism in the cited lines, since it is not made clear that the husband and wife have an equal social status—they are both slaves. Southern Spain, at this historical moment ruled by the Almoravids (Moors), was under the jurisprudence of Malikite Islamic Law, which decreed that a slave man could only marry a slave woman. Within the social context, the jurist feels that the “ebony brush” is honored while “the ivory receptacle” is vilified. With the not-too-subtle appeal to racial differences, his meaning is all too apparent (Boyd and Abudu 288). Although they are both slaves, his black color vilifies her; her ivory color honors him. In the Latin world, recognized interracial unions and bi- or multiracial offspring enjoy a long but silent, hidden, and often embarrassing history that started even before the Americas were settled, as examples from “The Raven and the Lily”and Lazarillo de Tormes so clearly show.

In today's world, Latin America's vast array of almost-white or almost-black phenotypes—with cultural classifications such as jabao, grifo, indio-blanco, moreno claro, moreno oscuro, mulato claro, mulato oscuro, moro, chino (in the ethno-phenotypic sense “chino” does not refer to an Asian in some Latin American countries), morocho, trigueño,