Plaçage

I remember once in class a term had been mentioned from one of our readings (incidentally, the one I had given a speech on). The word Plaçage showed up when explaining the marriage between two different races of people. More specifically, Plaçage was "recognized extralegal system in which white French and Spanish and later Creole men entered into the equivalent of common-law marriages with women of African, Indian and white (European) Creole descent. The term comes from the French placer meaning "to place with""(Wikipedia). It stuck out to me because the accounts say that even though these women called "placees" were not recognized as wives, they had - most of the time - complete support from the men. Some men even paid for complete education for the children they might have with their placees. This was quite weird for me because a similar situation occured in the colonization of Peru (where I'm from). Men of european descent would also have relationships with local, native women but they would show no type of support. The children they had they would not support, rarely even recognize them as their own. If I'm not mistaken, this was even illegal and punishment for the native women that entered relationships with the Españoles was very severe.