ABSTRACT
What happens when a transatlantic dimension is added to the mix of Mediterranean identities? What happens when Mediterranean values and ideologies are mapped onto the New World? I do not suggest that when Spaniards moved beyond the Pillars of Hercules, the Atlantic became an extension of the Mediterranean, but what can be said is that the New World became yet another site for the consolidation of established identities as well as for the creation of new identities. The transatlantic connection added another dimension to the Mediterranean’s cosmopolitan profile when the sexual encounters between Spaniards and the New World’s indigenous populations gave rise to the mestizos, whose hybridity challenged traditional categories and pointed up the racial component of a Spain ever more anxious to erase all traces of its Semitic past.
