ABSTRACT
The use of quantitative sources in studies of colonial Latin American societies has become increasingly sophisticated. Analyses of census data in particular have provided new insights into social structure and social change, especially in urban areas. This chapter provides new data on the residential patterns of racial and occupational groups in a late colonial Mexican city, applying to them some statistical indexes of segregation developed by North American sociologists for United States cities. The analysis of segregation is based on a total of 4,550 household heads for race and 3,246 adult males for class. For comparative purposes, the indexes for race have also been computed for the adult males. One final word of caution: the indexes of segregation and dissimilarity, like the concept of residential segregation itself, are sensitive to differences in size of the groups being measured.
