section_path: History/Limpieza de sangre
section_name: Limpieza de sangre
paragraph_text: Limpieza de sangre
  
  With the Umayyad Caliphate's conquest of Hispania, Muslim Arabs and Berbers overthrew the previous Visigothic rulers and created Al-Andalus, which contributed to the Golden age of Jewish culture, and lasted for six centuries. It was followed by the centuries-long Reconquista, during which Christian Iberian kingdoms contested Al-Andalus and progressively conquered the divided Muslim kingdoms, culminating in the fall of the Nasrid kingdom of Granada in 1492 and the rise of Ferdinand V and Isabella I as Catholic monarchs of Spain. The legacy Catholic Spaniards then formulated the limpieza de sangre ("cleanliness of blood") doctrine. It was during this time in history that the Western concept of aristocratic " blue blood " emerged in a racialized, religious and feudal context, so as to stem the upward social mobility of the converted New Christians. Robert Lacey explains:
  
  It was the Spaniards who gave the world the notion that an aristocrat's blood is not red but blue. The Spanish nobility started taking shape around the ninth century in classic military fashion, occupying land as warriors on horseback. They were to continue the process for more than five hundred years, clawing back sections of the peninsula from its Moorish occupiers, and a nobleman demonstrated his pedigree by holding up his sword arm to display the filigree of blue-blooded veins beneath his pale skin—proof that his birth had not been contaminated by the dark-skinned enemy. Sangre azul, blue blood, was thus a euphemism for being a white man—Spain's own particular reminder that the refined footsteps of the aristocracy through history carry the rather less refined spoor of racism.
  
  Following the expulsion of the Arabic Moors and most of the Sephardic Jews from the Iberian peninsula, the remaining Jews and Muslims were forced to convert to Roman Catholicism, becoming " New Christians ", who were sometimes discriminated against by the " Old Christians " in some cities (including Toledo), despite condemnations by the Church and the State, which both welcomed the new flock. The Inquisition was carried out by members of the Dominican Order in order to weed out the converts who still practiced Judaism and Islam in secret. The system and ideology of the limpieza de sangre ostracized false Christian converts from society in order to protect it against treason. The remnants of such legislation persevered into the 19th century in military contexts.
  
  In Portugal, the legal distinction between New and Old Christian was only ended through a legal decree issued by the Marquis of Pombal in 1772, almost three centuries after the implementation of the racist discrimination. The limpieza de sangre legislation was common also during the colonization of the Americas, where it led to the racial and feudal separation of peoples and social strata in the colonies. It was however often ignored in practice, as the new colonies needed skilled people.
  
  At the end of the Renaissance, the Valladolid debate (1550–1551), concerning the treatment of the natives of the " New World " pitted the Dominican friar and Bishop of Chiapas, Bartolomé de Las Casas, to another Dominican and Humanist philosopher, Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda. The latter argued that the Indians practiced human sacrifice of innocents, cannibalism, and other such "crimes against nature"; they were unacceptable and should be suppressed by any means possible including war, thus reducing them to slavery or serfdom was in accordance with Catholic theology and natural law. To the contrary, Bartolomé de Las Casas argued that the Amerindians were free men in the natural order and deserved the same treatment as others, according to Catholic theology. It was one of the many controversies concerning racism, slavery, religion, and European morality that would arise in the following centuries and which resulted in the legislation protecting the natives.
  
  In the Spanish colonies, Spaniards developed a complex caste system based on race, which was used for social control, and which also determined a person's importance in society. While many Latin American countries have long since rendered the system officially illegal through legislation, usually at the time of their independence, prejudice based on degrees of perceived racial distance from European ancestry combined with one's socioeconomic status remain, an echo of the colonial caste system.