The paper which I have been asked to comment on is by Clara Rodríguez, “Comparative Perspectives: Latinos, the Census and Race in the United States”. I have read this paper with great interest, trying to view it from a certain distance, as though it were a new subject for me - new in such a way as to allow certain impressions and associations, from my knowledge of the archives, to come to the surface. I have drawn on my historical knowledge of Colonial Spanish America, that is, from the maki...