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{{Short description|Mixed-race people of Spanish colonial regions in the 17th and 18th centuries}}
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[[File:Casta painting all.jpg|thumb|upright=1.3|{{lang|es|Las castas|italic=yes}}. Casta painting showing 16 racial groupings. Anonymous, 18th century, oil on canvas, 148×104 cm, {{lang|es|Museo Nacional del Virreinato|italic=no}}, {{lang|nah|[[Tepotzotlán]]|italic=no}}, Mexico]]
 
'''{{lang|es|Casta}}''' ({{IPA|es|ˈkasta|lang}}) is a term which means "[[Lineage (anthropology)|lineage]]" in Spanish and Portuguese and has historically been used as a racial and social identifier. In the context of the [[Spanish America|Spanish Empire in the Americas]], the term also refers to a theoretical framework which postulates that colonial society operated under a hierarchical race-based "[[caste system]]". From the outset, colonial Spanish America resulted in widespread intermarriage: [[Miscegenation|unions]] of [[Spaniards]] ({{lang|es|españoles}}), [[Indigenous peoples of the Americas|indigenous people]] ({{lang|es|indios}}), and [[List of ethnic groups of Africa|Africans]] ({{lang|es|[[negro]]s}}). Basic [[Multiracial people|mixed-race]] categories that appeared in official colonial documentation were {{lang|es|[[mestizo]]}}, generally offspring of a Spaniard and an Indigenous person; and {{lang|es|[[mulatto]]}}, offspring of a Spaniard and an African. A plethora of terms were used for people with mixed Spanish, Indigenous, and African ancestry in 18th-century casta paintings, but they are not known to have been widely used officially or unofficially in the [[Spanish Empire]].

== Etymology ==
{{lang|es|Casta}} is an Iberian word (existing in Spanish, Portuguese and other Iberian languages since the Middle Ages), meaning '[[lineage (anthropology)|lineage]]'. It was first documented in Spanish in 1417 and is linked to the [[Proto-Indo-European language|Proto-Indo-European]] ''{{PIE|ger}}''. The Portuguese {{lang|pt|casta}} gave rise to the English word ''[[caste]]'' during the [[early modern period]].<ref>"Caste", ''Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary'', 10th edition. (Springfield, 1999.)</ref><ref>"Caste", ''New Oxford American Dictionary'', 2nd edition. (Oxford, 2005).</ref>

==Use of Casta terminology==
In the historical literature, how racial distinction, hierarchy, and social status functioned over time in colonial Spanish America has been an evolving and contested discussion.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Giraudo |first1=Laura |title=Casta(s), 'sociedad de castas' e indigenismo: la interpretación del pasado colonial en el siglo XX |journal=Nuevo Mundo Mundos Nuevos |date=14 June 2018 |doi=10.4000/nuevomundo.72080 |doi-access=free |hdl=10261/167130 |hdl-access=free }}</ref><ref name="Vinson, Ben III 2018">Vinson, Ben III. ''Before Mestizaje: The Frontiers of Race and Caste in Colonial Mexico''. New York: [[Cambridge University Press]] 2018.</ref> Although the term {{lang|es|sistema de castas}} (system of castes) or {{lang|es|sociedad de castas}} ("society of castes") are utilized in modern historical analyses to describe the social hierarchy based on race, with Spaniards at the apex, archival research shows that there is not a rigid "system" with fixed places for individuals.<ref>{{cite book |last=Cope |first=R. Douglas |title=The Limits of Racial Domination: Plebeian Society in Colonial Mexico City, 1660–1720 |location=Madison |publisher=[[University of Wisconsin Press]] |date=1994}}</ref>{{page needed|date=January 2025}}<ref>{{cite thesis |last=Valdés |first=Dennis N. |title=Decline of the ''Sociedad de Castas'' in Eighteenth-Century Mexico |type=PhD |publisher=[[University of Michigan]] |date=1978}}</ref>{{page needed|date=January 2025}}{{sfn|Rappaport|2014|p=}}{{page needed|date=January 2025}} Rather, there existed a more fluid social structure where individuals could move from one category to another, or maintain or be given different labels depending on the context. In the 18th century, "casta paintings", imply a fixed racial hierarchy, but this genre may well have been an attempt to bring order into a system that was more fluid. "For colonial elites, casta paintings might well have been an attempt to fix in place rigid divisions based on race, even as they were disappearing in social reality."{{sfn|Cline|2015|p=}}{{page needed|date=January 2025}}
 
Examination of registers in colonial Mexico put in question other narratives held by certain academics, such as Spanish immigrants who arrived to Mexico being almost exclusively men or that "pure Spanish" people were all part of a small powerful elite. Spaniards were often the most numerous ethnic group in the colonial cities<ref name="EnsayospoblaciónMéxico">{{cite book |first1=Sherburne Friend |last1=Cook |first2=Woodrow |last2=Borah |title=Ensayos sobre historia de la población. México y el Caribe 2 |language=es |trans-title=Essays on population history. Mexico and the Caribbean 2 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DSCVztyTANcC&pg=PA223 |access-date=September 12, 2017 |date=1998 |publisher=Siglo XXI |isbn=9789682301063 |page=223}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Hardin |first1=Monica L. |title=Household Mobility and Persistence in Guadalajara, Mexico: 1811–1842 |date=2016 |publisher=Lexington Books |isbn=978-1-4985-4072-8 |page=62 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=t4SRDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA62 }}</ref> and there were menial workers and people in poverty who were of complete Spanish origin.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=San Miguel |first1=G. |title=Ser mestizo en la nueva España a fines del siglo XVIII: Acatzingo, 1792 |trans-title=To be 'mestizo' in New Spain at the end of the XVIIIth century. Acatzingo, 1792 |language=es |journal=Cuadernos de la Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales. Universidad Nacional de Jujuy |date=November 2000 |issue=13 |pages=325–342 |url=http://www.scielo.org.ar/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1668-81042000000100018 }}</ref>
 
In New Spain (colonial Mexico) during the [[Mexican War of Independence]], race and racial distinctions were an important issue and the end of imperial rule had strong appeal. [[José María Morelos]], who was registered as a Spaniard in his baptismal records, called for the abolition of the formal distinctions the imperial regime made between racial groups, advocating for "calling them one and all Americans."<ref>quoted in [[Enrique Krauze]], ''Mexico: Biography of Power''. New York: HarperCollins 1997, p. 112</ref> Morelos issued regulations in 1810 to prevent ethnic-based disturbances. "He who raises his voice should be immediately punished." In 1821 race was an issue in the negotiations resulting in the [[Plan of Iguala]].<ref>quoted in Krauze, ''Mexico'', p. 111.</ref>

=="Colonial Caste System" debate==
The degree to which racial category labels had legal and social consequences has been subject to academic debate since the idea of a "caste system" was first developed by Polish-Venezuelan philologist [[Ángel Rosenblat]] and Mexican anthropologist [[Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrán]] in the 1940s.{{citation needed|date=January 2025}} Both authors popularized the notion that racial status was the key organizing principle of Spanish colonial rule, a theory which became commonplace in the [[anglosphere]] during the latter half of the 20th century.{{citation needed|date=January 2025}} However, recent academic studies in Latin America have widely challenged this notion, considering it a flawed and ideologically based reinterpretation of the colonial period, as follows.
 
[[Pilar Gonzalbo]], in her study {{lang|es|La trampa de las castas}} (2013) discards the idea of the existence of a "caste system" or a "caste society" in New Spain, understood as a "social organization based on the race and supported by coercive power".<ref name="Gonzalbo Aizpuru 2013, p. 15">Gonzalbo Aizpuru, Pilar, "La trampa de las castas" in Alberro, Solange and Gonzalbo Aizpuru, Pilar, ''La sociedad novohispana. Estereotipos y realidades, México'', El Colegio de México, 2013, p. 15–193.</ref> She also affirms in her work that certain subliminal and derogatory messages in caste paintings were not a general phenomenon, and that they only began to be carried out in particular environments of the [[Criollo people|Criollo]] oligarchies after the [[Bourbon Reforms|Bourbon Reformism]] and the influx of ideas of [[scientific racism]] from the [[illustration]] within some encyclopedic environments of the colonial bourgeoisie.{{citation needed|date=January 2025}}
 
Joanne Rappaport, in her book on colonial [[New Kingdom of Granada|New Granada]], ''The Disappearing Mestizo'', rejects the caste system as an interpretative framework for that time, discussing both the legitimacy of a model valid for the entire colonial world and the usual association between "caste" and "race".{{sfn|Rappaport|2014|p=}}{{page needed|date=January 2025}}
 
Similarly, Berta Ares' 2015 study on the [[Viceroyalty of Peru]], notes that the term "casta" was barely used by colonial authorities which, according to her, casts doubt on the existence of a "caste system". Even by the 18th century, its use was rare and appeared in its plural form, "castas", characterized by its ambiguous meaning. The word did not specifically refer to sectors of the population who were of mixed race, but also included both Spaniards and indigenous people of lower socio-economic extraction, often used together with other terms such as plebe, vulgo, naciones, clases, calidades, otras gentes, etc.<ref>Ares, Berta, “Usos y abusos del concepto de casta en el Perú colonial”, ponencia presentada en el Congreso Internacional INTERINDI 2015. Categorías e indigenismo en América Latina, EEHA-CSIC, Sevilla, 10 de noviembre de 2015. Citado con la autorización de la autora.</ref>
 
Ben Vinson, in a study of the historical archives of Mexico carried out in 2018, addressing the issue of racial diversity in Mexico and its relationship with imperial Spain, ratified these conclusions.<ref name="Vinson, Ben III 20182">{{cite book |title=Before Mestizaje: The Frontiers of Race and Caste in Colonial Mexico |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |year=2018 |isbn=9781107026438}}</ref>{{page needed|date=January 2025}}
 
Often called the {{lang|es|sistema de castas}} or the {{lang|es|sociedad de castas}}, there was, in fact, no fixed system of classification for individuals, as careful archival research has shown.{{citation needed|date=January 2025}} There was considerable fluidity in society, with the same individuals being identified by different categories simultaneously or over time. Individuals self-identified by particular terms, often to shift their status from one category to another to their advantage.{{citation needed|date=January 2025}} For example, both {{lang|es|mestizos}} and Spaniards were exempt from tribute obligations, but were both equally subject to the [[Spanish Inquisition|Inquisition]]. {{lang|es|Indios}}, on the other hand, paid tribute yet were exempt from the Inquisition. In certain cases, a {{lang|es|mestizo}} might try to "[[passing (racial identity)|pass]]" as an {{lang|es|indio}} to escape the Inquisition. An {{lang|es|indio}} might try to pass as a {{lang|es|Mestizo}} to escape tribute obligations.<ref name="Gonzalbo Aizpuru 2013, p. 15"/>
 
Casta paintings produced largely in 18th-century Mexico have influenced modern understandings of race in Spanish America, a concept which began infiltrating [[House of Bourbon|Bourbon]] Spain from France and Northern Europe during this time.{{citation needed|date=January 2025}} They purport to show a fixed "system" of racial hierarchy which has been disputed by modern academia.{{citation needed|date=January 2025}} These paintings should be evaluated as the production by elites in [[New Spain]] for an elite viewership in both Spanish territories and abroad portrayals of mixtures of Spaniards with other ethnicities, some of which have been interpreted as being pejorative in nature or seeking social outrage. They are thus useful for understanding elites and their attitudes toward non-elites, and quite valuable as illustrations of aspects of material culture in the late colonial era.{{sfn|Katzew|2004|p=}}{{page needed|date=January 2024}}
 
The process of mixing ancestries by the union of people of different races is known in the modern era as ''{{lang|es|mestizaje}}'' ({{langx|pt|mestiçagem}} {{IPA|pt|mestʃiˈsaʒẽj|}}, {{IPA|pt|mɨʃtiˈsaʒɐ̃j|}}). In Spanish colonial law, mixed-race castas were classified as part of the {{lang|es|república de españoles}} and not the {{lang|es|república de indios}}, which set indigenous people outside the Hispanic sphere with different duties and rights to those of Spaniards and Mestizos.{{citation needed|date=January 2025}}
 
The caste system for these historians would have been misconstrued as being analogous to the castes of India.{{citation needed|date=January 2025}} Given that in viceregal Spanish America there was never a closed system based on birth rights, where the birth rate and, therefore, wealth, created a "caste system" difficult to penetrate; but, rather, the statute of {{lang|es|Limpieza de sangre}} (a concept of religious root and not biological or racial) was given, in which the Indian and the mestizo, as a [[new Christian]], had limitations on access to certain trades until assimilation full of his conversion to Catholicism; but that did not prevent his social ascent, and he would even receive protections that would benefit his social mobilization, protections that the [[old Christian]] of the {{lang|es|Republica de españoles}} would not enjoy (such as being free from all the taxes of the whites, with the exception of the indigenous tribute, or be exempt from the Holy Inquisition).{{citation needed|date=January 2025}} Then, those conceptions of a "caste society" or a "caste system" as characteristic of colonial society would be completely anachronistic formulations and could be part of the Spanish Black Legend.{{citation needed|date=January 2025}} Given this, in works prior to those of Rosenblat and Beltrán, one would not find references to the notion that the Spanish empire was a society founded on racial segregation. Neither in [[:es:Nicolás León Calderón|Nicolás León]], [[:es:Gregorio Torres Quintero|Gregorio Torres Quintero]], [[Raphaël Blanchard|Blanchard]], nor in the Catalog of Herrera and Cicero (1895), nor in the article "Castas" of the Dictionary of History and Geography (1855), nor in [[Alexander von Humboldt]]'s Political Essay on the Spanish-American territories that he visited on his scientific expeditions.{{citation needed|date=January 2025}} Among other works that refer to the existence of castes and caste paintings, without implying connotations with modern racism, which would come to America after the [[Age of Enlightenment|French Enlightenment]].<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Giraudo |first=Laura |date=2018-06-14 |title=Casta(s), "sociedad de castas" e indigenismo: la interpretación del pasado colonial en el siglo XX |trans-title=Caste(s), “caste society” and indigenism: the interpretation of the colonial past in the 20th century |url=https://journals.openedition.org/nuevomundo/72080 |journal=Nuevo Mundo Mundos Nuevos. Nouveaux Mondes Mondes Nouveaux - Novo Mundo Mundos Novos - New World New Worlds |language=es |doi=10.4000/nuevomundo.72080 |s2cid=165569000 |issn=1626-0252 |hdl=10261/167130 |hdl-access=free}}</ref>
 
This would make these critics conclude that those colonial societies were rather of the class type, that although there was a relationship between class and race through castes, that was not in a cause relationship, but in a consequence relationship (not being an end in itself the race, which was understood in the Hispanic tradition as something purely spiritual, not so much biological).{{citation needed|date=January 2025}} The purpose of the castas was to register the identity of lineages to register them in the republic of Spaniards, the republic of Indians, with the services and privileges acquired, which would not disturb the economic potential of the individual of the caste, nor would they have the purpose of to formally segregate them from positions of power, but to hierarchize them in feudal society (not equivalent to the same thing, as long as they were not prevented from ascending to the nobility or being part of the commercial petty bourgeoisie).{{citation needed|date=January 2025}} Then, the viceroyalty society would be a society of "quality", estate, corporate, patronage and trade union, where each social group was not conditioned by their race, and neither did this establish the labor relations of its inhabitants. In the parish registers there would never have been the tendency to classify in so many innumerable mixtures as seen in the caste charts, which would be an artistic phenomenon typical of the Age of Enlightenment.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2014-10-18 |title=Castas y corporaciones {{!}} Víctor R. Nomberto, Doctor en Ciencias Sociales |trans-title= Castes and corporations {{!}} Víctor R. Nomberto, Doctor in Social Sciences |url=http://blog.pucp.edu.pe/blog/victornomberto/2014/10/18/castas-y-corporaciones/ |access-date=2023-06-20 |language=es-ES}}</ref><ref>Santiago Paúl Yépez</ref>
 
Some examples of blacks, mulattoes and mestizos who climbed socially would be used as evidence against these misrepresentations, such as: [[Juan Latino]], [[Juan Valiente]], [[Juan Garrido]], Juan García, Juan Bardales, Sebastián Toral, Antonio Pérez, Miguel Ruíz, Gómez de León,<ref>{{Cite web |last=Ferro |first=Redes Desperta |date=2019-05-22 |title=Los conquistadores negros. El papel africano en la conquista de América |trans-title=The black conquistadors. The African role in the conquest of America |url=https://www.despertaferro-ediciones.com/2019/conquistadores-negros-africanos-conquista-america/ |access-date=2023-06-20 |website=Desperta Ferro Ediciones |language=es}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Álvarez |first=Jorge |date=2016-04-23 |title=Los conquistadores españoles de 'raza' negra |url=https://www.labrujulaverde.com/2016/04/los-conquistadores-espanoles-de-raza-negra |access-date=2023-06-20 |website=La Brújula Verde |language=es-es}}</ref> Fran Dearobe, José Manuel Valdés, Teresa Juliana de Santo Domingo.{{citation needed|date=January 2025}} Names of indigenous chiefs and noble mestizos are also mentioned: Carlos Inca, Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Manuela Taurichumbi Saba Cápac Inca, Alonso de Castilla Titu Atauchi Inga, Alonso de Areanas Florencia Inca, Gonzalo Tlaxhuexolotzin, Vicente Xicohténcatl, Bartolomé Zitlalpopoca, Lorenzo Nahxixcalzin, Doña Luisa Xicotencatl, Nicolás de San Luis Montañez, Fernando de Tapia, Isabel Moctezuma Tecuichpo Ixcaxochitzin, Pedro de Moctezuma.{{citation needed|date=January 2025}} The [[Royal Decree-Law (Spain)|Royal Decree]] of [[Philip II of Spain|Philip II]] on 1559 is also often mentioned, in which it is prescribed that "the mestizos who come to these kingdoms to study, or for other things of their use (...) do not need another license to return." The document is important, because laws are not made for particular cases and it shows that the existence of multiple castes did not impede social mobilization within the Hispanic monarchy, the same mobilization that must have been significant to require the attention of a royal edict of the person of the Spanish king.<ref>{{Cite book |last=García |first=Juan Andreo |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sLYxdYzCJxkC&dq=los+mestizos+que+vinieren+a+estos+reinos+a+estudiar%2C+o+a+otras+cosas+de+su+aprovechamiento+%28%E2%80%A6%29+no+necesiten+de+otra+licencia+para+regresar&pg=PA31 |title=Familia, tradición y grupos sociales en América Latina |date=1994 |publisher=EDITUM |isbn=978-84-7564-151-5 |language=es}}</ref>

=="Purity of blood" and the evolution of racial classification==
Certain authors have sought to link the castas in Latin America to the older Spanish concept of "purity of blood", {{lang|es|[[limpieza de sangre]]}}, which developed in Christian Spain to denote those without recent Jewish or Muslim heritage or, more widely, heritage from individuals convicted by the Spanish inquisition for heresy.{{citation needed|date=January 2025}}
 
It was directly linked to religion and notions of legitimacy, lineage and honor following Spain's reconquest of Moorish territory and the degree to which it can be considered a precursor to the modern concept of race has been the subject of academic debate.{{sfn|Martinez|2008|p=265}} The Inquisition only allowed those Spaniards who could demonstrate not to have Jewish and Moorish blood to emigrate to Latin America, although this prohibition was frequently ignored and a number of Spanish Conquistadors were Jewish [[Conversos]].{{citation needed|date=January 2025}} Others, such as Juan Valiente, were Black Africans or had recent Moorish ancestry.{{citation needed|date=January 2025}}
 
Both in Spain and in the New World, Conversos who continued to practice Judaism in secret were aggressively prosecuted. Of the roughly 40 people executed by the Spanish Inquisition in Mexico, a significant number were convicted of being "Judaizers" ({{lang|es|judaizantes}}) .<ref>{{cite book |first=Jonathan I. |last=Israel |title=Race, Class, and Politics in Colonial Mexico, 1610-1670 |location=Oxford |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |date=1975 |pages=245–246}}</ref> Spanish Conquistador Luis de Carvajal y de la Cueva was prosecuted by the Inquisition for secretly practising Judaism and eventually died in prison.{{citation needed|date=January 2025}}
 
In Spanish America, the idea of purity of blood also applied to Black Africans and indigenous peoples since, as Spaniards of Moorish and Jewish descent, they had not been Christian for various generations and were inherently suspect of engaging in religious heresy.{{citation needed|date=January 2025}} In all Spanish territories, including Spain itself, evidence of lack of purity of blood had consequences for eligibility for office, entrance into the priesthood, and emigration to Spain's overseas territories. Having to produce genealogical records to prove one's pure ancestry gave rise to a trade in the creation of false genealogies, a practice which was already widespread in Spain itself.{{sfn|Martinez|2008|pp=266–267}}
 
This was no impediment for intermarriage between Spaniards and indigenous people, just as it had not been between Old and New Christians or different racial groups coexisting in late medieval and early modern Spain.{{citation needed|date=January 2025}}
 
However, starting in the late 16th century, some investigations of ancestry classified as "stains" any connection with Black Africans ("negros", which resulted in "mulatos") and sometimes mixtures with indigenous that produced mestizos.{{sfn|Martinez|2008|p=267}} While some illustrations from the period show men of African descent dressed in fashionable clothing and as aristocrats in upper-class surroundings, the idea that any hint of black ancestry was a stain developed by the end of the colonial period, a time in which biological racism began to emerge throughout the western world.{{citation needed|date=January 2025}} This trend was illustrated in 18th-century paintings of racial hierarchy, known as casta paintings which led to 20th-century emergence of theories on a "Caste System" existing in Colonial Spanish America.{{citation needed|date=January 2025}}
 
The idea in New Spain that native or "Indian" ({{lang|es|indio}}) blood in a lineage was an impurity may well have come about as the optimism of the early [[Order of Friars Minor|Franciscans]] faded about creating Indian priests trained at the [[Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco]], which ceased that function in the mid-16th century. In addition, the Indian nobility, which was recognized by the Spanish colonists, had declined in importance, and there were fewer formal marriages between Spaniards and indigenous women than during the early decades of the colonial era.{{sfn|Martinez|2008|p=267}} In the 17th century in New Spain, the ideas of purity of blood became associated with "Spanishness and whiteness, but it came to work together with socio-economic categories", such that a lineage with someone engaged in work with their hands was tainted by that connection.{{sfn|Martinez|2008|p=269}}
 
Indians in Central Mexico were affected by ideas of purity of blood from the other side. Crown decrees on purity of blood were affirmed by indigenous communities, which barred Indians from holding office who had any non-Indians (Spaniards and/or Black peoples) in their lineage. In indigenous communities "local [[caciques]] [rulers] and principales were granted a set of privileges and rights on the basis of their pre-Hispanic noble bloodlines and acceptance of the Catholic faith."{{sfn|Martinez|2008|p=270}} Indigenous nobles submitted proofs ({{lang|es|probanzas}}) of their purity of blood to affirm their rights and privileges that were extended to themselves and their communities. This supported the {{lang|es|república de indios}}, a legal division of society that separated indigenous from non-Indians ({{lang|es|república de españoles}}).{{sfn|Martinez|2008|p=273}}

==Casta classifications and legal consequences==
[[File:Castas 01mestiza max.jpg|thumb|upright|From Spaniard and Indian woman, Mestiza. [[Miguel Cabrera (painter)|Miguel Cabrera]], 1763]]
[[File:De_español_y_mestiza,_castiza.jpg|thumb|left|upright|Spanish (español) father, Mestiza (mixed Spanish-Indian) mother, and their Castiza daughter. Miguel Cabrera]]
 
In Spanish America racial categories were registered at local parishes upon baptism as required by the Spanish Crown. In Spanish America there were four ethnic categories. They generally referred to the multiplicity of indigenous American peoples as "Indians" ({{lang|es|indios}}). Those from Spain called themselves {{lang|es|españoles}}.{{citation needed|date=January 2025}} The third group were "{{lang|es|mestizos}}" (mixed blood from Spaniards and Indians". The fourth group were black Africans, called {{lang|es|negros}} (lit. "blacks"), brought as slaves from the earliest days of Spanish Empire.{{citation needed|date=January 2025}}
 
Although the number of Spanish women emigrating to New Spain was far higher than is often portrayed, they were fewer in number than men, as well as fewer black women than men, so the mixed-race offspring of Spaniards and of Black people were often the product of liaisons with indigenous women. The process of race mixture is now termed {{lang|es|mestizaje}}, a term coined in the modern era.{{Citation needed|date=October 2022}}
 
In the 16th century, the term {{lang|es|casta}}, a collective category for mixed-race individuals, came into existence as the numbers grew, particularly in urban areas.{{citation needed|date=January 2025}}
 
The crown had divided the population of its overseas empire into two categories, separating Indians from non-Indians. Indigenous were the {{lang|es|República de Indios}}, the other the {{lang|es|República de Españoles}}, essentially the Hispanic sphere, so that Spaniards, Black people, and mixed-race castas were lumped into this category.{{citation needed|date=January 2025}} Official censuses and ecclesiastical records noted an individual's racial category, so that these sources can be used to chart socio-economic standard, residence patterns, and other important data.{{citation needed|date=January 2025}}
 
General racial groupings had their own set of privileges and restrictions, both legal and customary. So, for example, only Spaniards and indigenous people, who were deemed to be the original societies of the Spanish dominions, had recognized aristocracies.<ref>{{cite book |last1=MacLachlan |first1=Colin |first2=Jaime E. |last2=Rodríguez O. |title=The Forging of the Cosmic Race: A Reinterprretation of Colonial Mexico |publisher=[[University of California Press]] |edition=Expanded |year=1990 |location=Berkeley |pages=199, 208 |isbn=978-0-520-04280-3 |quote=[I]n the New World all Spaniards, no matter how poor, claimed hidalgo status. This unprecedented expansion of the privileged segment of society could be tolerated by the Crown because in Mexico the indigenous population assumed the burden of personal tribute.}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Gibson |first=Charles |author-link=Charles Gibson (historian) |title=The Aztecs Under Spanish Rule |url=https://archive.org/details/aztecsunderspani00gibs |url-access=registration | publisher=[[Stanford University]] |year=1964 |location=Stanford |pages=[https://archive.org/details/aztecsunderspani00gibs/page/154 154–165] |isbn=978-0-8047-0912-5}}</ref> In the population at large, access to social privileges and even at times a person's perceived and accepted racial classification, were predominantly determined by that person's [[Socioeconomics|socioeconomic]] standing in society.<ref>See [[Passing (racial identity)]] for a discussion of a related phenomenon, although in a later and very different cultural and legal context.</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Seed |first=Patricia |author-link=Patricia Seed |title=To Love, Honor, and Obey in Colonial Mexico: Conflicts over Marriage Choice, 1574-1821 |publisher=[[Stanford University Press]] |year=1988 |location=Stanford |pages=21–23 |isbn=978-0-8047-2159-2}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Bakewell |first=Peter |title=A History of Latin America |publisher=Blackwell |year=1997 |location=Malden, Mass. |pages=[https://archive.org/details/historyoflatinam0000bake/page/160 160–163] |isbn=978-0-631-16791-4 |quote=The Spaniards generally regarded [local Indian lords/''caciques''] as ''hidalgos'', and used the honorific 'don' with the more eminent of them. […] Broadly speaking, Spaniards in the Indies in the 16th century arranged themselves socially less and less by Iberian criteria or frank, and increasingly by new American standards. […] simple wealth gained from using America's human and natural resources soon became a strong influence on social standing. |url=https://archive.org/details/historyoflatinam0000bake/page/160 }}</ref>
 
Official censuses and ecclesiastical records noted an individual's racial category, so that these sources can be used to chart socio-economic standards, residence patterns, and other important data. Parish registers, where baptism, marriage, and burial were recorded, had three basic categories: español (Spaniards), {{lang|es|indio}}, and {{lang|es|color quebrado}} ("broken color", indicating a mixed-race person). In some parishes in colonial Mexico, {{lang|es|indios}} were recorded with other non-Spaniards in the {{lang|es|color quebrado}} register.<ref>Vinson, ''Before Mestizaje'', p. 49.</ref> Españoles and mestizos could be ordained as priests and were exempt from payment of tribute to the crown. Free black people, indigenous people, and mixed-race castas were required to pay tribute and barred from the priesthood. Being designated as an español or mestizo conferred social and financial advantages. Black men began to apply to the [[Royal and Pontifical University of Mexico]], but in 1688 Bishop [[Juan de Palafox y Mendoza]] attempted to prevent their entrance by drafting new regulations barring black peoples and mulattoes.<ref>{{cite book |last=Ramos-Kittrell |first=Jesús |title=Playing in the Cathedral: Music, Race, and Status in New Spain |location=New York |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |date=2016 |pages=39–40}}</ref> In 1776, the crown issued the [[Royal Pragmatic on Marriage]], taking approval of marriages away from the couple and placing it in their parents' hands. The marriage between Luisa de Abrego, a free black domestic servant from Seville and Miguel Rodríguez, a white Segovian conquistador in 1565 in St. Augustine (Spanish Florida), is the first known and recorded Christian marriage anywhere in the continental United States.<ref>{{citation|url=http://laflorida.org/florida-stories/|title=Luisa de Abrego: Marriage, Bigamy, and the Spanish Inquisition|publisher=University of South Florida|author=J. Michael Francis|author1-link=J. Michael Francis|access-date=2019-08-31|archive-date=2021-02-04|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210204110350/http://laflorida.org/florida-stories/|url-status=dead}}</ref>
 
Long lists of different terms found in casta paintings do not appear in official documentation or anywhere outside these paintings. Only counts of Spaniards, mestizos, black peoples and mulattoes, and indigenes ({{lang|es|indios}}), were recorded in censuses.<ref name="Almanac">{{Citation |editor-first=Sonia G. |editor-last=Benson |title=The Hispanic American Almanac: A Reference Work on Hispanics in the United States. |edition=Third |year=2003 |publisher=Thomson Gale |isbn=978-0-7876-2518-4 |page=[https://archive.org/details/hispanicamerican0000unse/page/14 14] |url=https://archive.org/details/hispanicamerican0000unse/page/14}}</ref>

==Casta paintings of the 18th century==
[[File:Casta_Painting_by_Luis_de_Mena.jpg|thumb|upright|Luis de Mena, [[Virgin of Guadalupe]] and castas, 1750. Museo de América, Madrid]]
[[File:Ignacio María Barreda - Las castas mexicanas.jpg|thumb|upright|left|Casta painting showing 16 hierarchically arranged, mixed-race groupings, with ''indios mecos'' set outside of the orderly set of "civilized" society. [[Ignacio Maria Barreda]], 1777. Real Academia Española de la Lengua, Madrid]]
[[File:Castas 07tornatras max.jpg|thumb|upright|Spanish father and ''Albina'' mother, [[Torna atrás]]. [[Miguel Cabrera (painter)|Miguel Cabrera]], 18th-century Mexico]]
[[File:José Joaquín Magón - El Mestizo.jpg|thumb|left|[[José Joaquín Magón]], Spaniard + India = Mestizo. I. "Born of the Spaniard and the India is a Mestizo, who is generally humble, tranquil, and straightforward." Museo de Antropología, Madrid. 115 x 141 cm]]
[[File:X. De espanol y torna atras, tente en el aire (Casta painting) LACMA M.2011.20.3 (1 of 6).jpg|thumb|left|Spanish father, Torna atrás mother, ''Tente en el aire'' ("floating in mid air") offspring]]
[[File:Castas 16indios max.jpg|thumb|upright|''Indios Gentiles''. Miguel Cabrera]]
 
Artwork created mainly in 18th-century Mexico purports to show race mixture as a hierarchy. These paintings have had tremendous influence in how scholars have approached difference in the colonial era, but should not be taken as definitive description of racial difference. For approximately a century, casta paintings were by elite artists for an elite viewership.{{citation needed|date=January 2025}} They ceased to be produced following Mexico's independence in 1821 when casta designations were abolished. The vast majority of casta paintings were produced in Mexico, by a variety of artists, with a single group of canvases clearly identified for 18th-century Peru. In the colonial era, artists primarily created religious art and portraits, but in the 18th century, casta paintings emerged as a completely secular genre of art. An exception to that is the painting by [[Luis de Mena]], a single canvas that has the central figure of the Virgin of Guadalupe and a set of casta groupings.{{sfn|Cline|2015|pp=222–223}} Most sets of casta paintings have 16 separate canvases, but a few, such as Mena's, Ignacio María Barreda, and the anonymous painting in the Museo de Virreinato in Tepozotlan, Mexico, are frequently reproduced as examples of the genre, likely because their composition gives a single, tidy image of the racial classification (from the elite viewpoint).{{citation needed|date=January 2025}}
 
It is unclear why casta paintings emerged as a genre, why they became such a popular genre of artwork, who commissioned them, and who collected them. One scholar suggests they can be seen as "proud renditions of the local,"<ref>Katzew, Ilona, "Casta Painting: Identity and Social Stratification in Colonial Mexico," in ''New World Orders: Casta Painting and Colonial Latin America'', ed. Ilona Katzew. New York: Americas Society Art Gallery 1996, 22</ref> at a point when American-born Spaniards began forming a clearer identification with their place of birth rather than metropolitan Spain.<ref>[[David Brading|Brading, D.A.]] ''The First America: The Spanish Monarchy, Creole Patriots, and the Liberal State, 1492-1867''. New York: Cambridge University Press 1991.</ref> The single-canvas casta artwork could well have been as a curiosity or souvenir for Spaniards to take home to Spain; two frequently reproduced casta paintings are Mena's and Barreda's, both of which are in Madrid museums.<ref>García Sáiz, María Concepción. ''Las castas mexicanas''. Milan: Olivetti 1989, 20.</ref> There is only one set of casta paintings definitively done in Peru, commissioned by Viceroy Manuel Amat y Junyent (1770), and sent to Spain for the Cabinet of Natural History of the Prince of Asturias.<ref>{{harvnb|Donahue-Wallace|2008|p=221}}, She reproduces a letter from Amat concerning the paintings.</ref>
 
The influence of the European [[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment]] on the Spanish empire led to an interest in organizing knowledge and scientific description might have resulted in the commission of many series of pictures that document the racial combinations that existed in Spanish territories in the Americas. Many sets of these paintings still exist (around one hundred complete sets in museums and private collections and many more individual paintings), of varying artistic quality, usually consisting of sixteen paintings representing as many racial combinations. It must be emphasized that these paintings reflected the views of the economically established Criollo society and officialdom, but not all Criollos were pleased with casta paintings. One remarked that they show "what harms us, not what benefits us, what dishonors us, not what ennobles us."<ref>quoted in Katzew, Ilona, "Casta Painting: Identity and Social Stratification in Colonial Mexico, in ''New World Orders: Casta Painting and Colonial Latin America''. exhib. cat. New York: Americas Society Art Gallery 1996, 14.</ref> Many paintings are in Spain in major museums, but many remain in private collections in Mexico, perhaps commissioned and kept because they show the character of late colonial Mexico and a source of pride.{{sfn|Donahue-Wallace|2008|p=220}}
 
Some of the earliest identified {{lang|es|casta}} paintings were painted {{circa|1715}} by [[Juan Rodríguez Juárez]] under a commission from the viceroy of New Spain, [[Fernando de Alencastre, 1st Duke of Linares]], who was interested in delineating racial categories.<ref name=ZabiadelaMalta>{{Cite book |last=Zabía de la Mata |first=Ana |url=https://jaimeeguiguren.com/publications/3-five-casta-paintings-by-buenaventura-jose-guiol-a-new-discovery/ |title=Five ''Casta'' Paintings by Buenaventura José Guiol: A New Discovery |date=2018 |publisher=Jaime Eguiguren Art & Antiques |isbn=978-84-09-05068-0 |location=Buenos Aires, Argentina |issue=4}}</ref>{{RP|28}} These are predated by four 1711 paintings by Manuel de Arellano of an unidentified mixed-race young woman and of [[Chichimeca]] indigenous men and women that may be considered precursors to the {{lang|es|casta}} painting genre.<ref name=ZabiadelaMalta/>{{RP|94 ''fn''24}}
 
[[File:Casta - de Negra y Español sale Mulato, s. XVIII - Anónimo.jpg|thumb|Black and Spanish, comes out mulatto]]
Some of the finer sets were done by prominent Mexican artists, such as [[José de Alcíbar]], [[Miguel Cabrera (painter)|Miguel Cabrera]], [[José de Ibarra]], [[José Joaquín Magón]], (who painted two sets); [[Juan Patricio Morlete Ruiz]], [[José de Páez]], and [[Juan Rodríguez Juárez]].{{citation needed|date=January 2025}} One of Magón's sets includes descriptions of the "character and moral standing" of his subjects. These artists worked together in the painting guilds of New Spain. They were important transitional artists in 18th-century casta painting. At least one Spaniard, [[Francisco Clapera]], also contributed to the casta genre. In general, little is known of most artists who did sign their work; most casta paintings are unsigned.{{citation needed|date=January 2025}}
 
Certain authors have interpreted the overall theme of these paintings as representing the "supremacy of the Spaniards", the possibility that mixtures of Spaniards and Spanish-Indian offspring could return to the status of Spaniards through marriage to Spaniards over generations, what can be considered "restoration of racial purity,"{{sfn|Cline|2015|p=229}} or "racial mending"{{sfn|Katzew|2004|pp=48–51}} was seen visually in many sets of casta paintings. It was also articulated by a visitor to Mexico, Don Pedro Alonso O'Crouley, in 1774. "If the mixed-blood is the offspring of a Spaniard and an Indian, the stigma [of race mixture] disappears at the third step in descent because it is held as systematic that a Spaniard and an Indian produce a mestizo; a mestizo and a Spaniard, a castizo; and a castizo and a Spaniard, a Spaniard. The admixture of Indian blood should not indeed be regarded as a blemish, since the provisions of law give the Indian all that he could wish for, and Philip II granted to mestizos the privilege of becoming priests. On this consideration is based the common estimation of descent from a union of Indian and European or creole Spaniard."<ref>Sr. Don Pedro Alonso O’Crouley, ''A Description of the Kingdom of New Spain'' (1774), trans. and ed. Sean Galvin. San Francisco: John Howell Books, 1972, 20</ref>
 
O'Crouley says that the same process of restoration of racial purity does not occur over generations for European-African offspring marrying whites. “From the union of a Spaniard and a Negro the mixed-blood retains the stigma for generations without losing the original quality of a mulato."<ref>O’Crouley, “A Description of the Kingdom of New Spain’’, p. 20</ref> Casta paintings show increasing whitening over generations with the mixes of Spaniards and Africans. The sequence is the offspring of a Spaniard + ''Negra'', [[Mulatto]]; Spaniard with a Mulatta, [[Morisco]]; Spaniard with a Morisca, ''Albino'' (a racial category, derived from ''Alba'', "white"); Spaniard with an ''Albina'', ''[[Torna atrás]]'', or "throw back" black. ''Negro'', ''Mulatto'', and ''Morisco'' were labels found in colonial-era documentation, but ''Albino'' and ''Torna atrás'' exist only as fairly standard categories in casta paintings.{{citation needed|date=January 2025}}
 
In contrast, mixtures with Black people, both by Indians and Spaniards, led to a bewildering number of combinations, with "fanciful terms" to describe them. Instead of leading to a new racial type or equilibrium, they led to apparent disorder. Terms such as the above-mentioned ''tente en el aire'' ("floating in midair") and ''no te entiendo'' ("I don't understand you")—and others based on terms used for animals: ''[[coyote (racial category)|coyote]]'' and ''[[lobo (racial category)|lobo]]'' (wolf).<ref name="Cuervas">{{cite journal |first1=Marco Polo Hernández |last1=Cuevas |title=The Mexican Colonial Term 'Chino' Is a Referent of Afrodescendant |journal=The Journal of Pan African Studies |volume=5 |issue=5 |date=June 2012 |pages=124–143 |s2cid=142322782}}</ref>{{sfn|Katzew|2004|p=}}{{page needed|date=August 2019}}
 
{{lang|es|Castas}} defined themselves in different ways, and how they were recorded in official records was a process of negotiation between the {{lang|es|casta}} and the person creating the document, whether it was a birth certificate, a marriage certificate or a court deposition. In real life, many {{lang|es|casta}} individuals were assigned different racial categories in different documents, revealing the malleable nature of racial identity in colonial, [[Hispanic America|Spanish America]]n society.<ref>Cope, ''The Limits of Racial Domination'' and Seed, ''To Love, Honor, and Obey'', in passim.</ref>
 
Some paintings depicted the supposed "innate" character and quality of people because of their birth and ethnic origin. For example, according to one painting by José Joaquín Magón, a mestizo (mixed Indian + Spanish) was considered ''generally humble, tranquil, and straightforward''; while another painting claims "from Lobo and Indian woman is born the Cambujo, one usually slow, lazy, and cumbersome." Ultimately, the casta paintings are reminders of the colonial biases in modern human history that linked a caste/ethnic society based on descent, skin color, social status, and one's birth.<ref>{{cite thesis |last1=Martínez López |first1=María Elena |author1-link=Maria Elena Martinez |title=The Spanish concept of ''limpieza de sangre'' and the emergence of the 'race/caste' system in the Viceroyalty of New Spain |date=2002 |id={{ProQuest|305466668}} |oclc=62284377}}</ref><ref name="María Elena Martínez 2010">{{cite web |title=Social Order in the Spanish New World |first1=María Elena |last1=Martínez |author1-link=Maria Elena Martinez |year=2010 |url=http://inside.sfuhs.org/dept/history/Mexicoreader/Chapter3/Social%20Order%20in%20the%20Spanish%20New%20World.pdf }}</ref>
 
Often, casta paintings depicted commodity items from Latin America like pulque, the fermented alcohol drink of the lower classes. Painters depicted [[Pulque|interpretations of pulque]] that were attributed to specific castas.{{citation needed|date=January 2025}}
 
The {{lang|es|Indias}} in casta paintings depict them as partners to Spaniards, Black people, and castas, and thus part of Hispanic society. But in a number of casta paintings, they are also shown apart from "civilized society," such as Miguel Cabrera's {{lang|es|Indios Gentiles}}, or {{lang|es|indios bárbaros}} or ''Chichimecas'' barely clothed indigenous in a wild, setting.<ref>Estrada de Gerlero, Elena Isabel. "The Representation of 'Heathen Indians' in Mexican Casta Painting," in ''New World Orders: Casta Painting and Colonial Latin America'', ed. Ilona Katzew. Exh.cat. New York: Americas Society Art Gallery 1996.</ref> In the single-canvas casta painting by José María Barreda, there are a canonical 16 casta groupings and then in a separate cell below are "Mecos". Although the so-called "barbarian Indians" ({{lang|es|indios bárbaros}}) were fierce warriors on horseback, indios in casta paintings are not shown as bellicose, but as weak, a trope that developed in the colonial era.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Lewis |first1=Laura A. |title=The 'Weakness' of Women and the feminization of the Indian in colonial Mexico |journal=Colonial Latin American Review |date=June 1996 |volume=5 |issue=1 |pages=73–94 |doi=10.1080/10609169608569878 }}</ref> A casta painting by Luis de Mena that is often reproduced as an example of the genre shows an unusual couple with a pale, well-dressed Spanish woman paired with a nearly naked indio, producing a Mestizo offspring. "The aberrant combination not only mocks social protocol but also seems to underscore the very artificiality of a casta system that pretends to circumscribe social fluidity and economic mobility."<ref>Peterson, Jeanette Favrot, ''Visualizing Guadalulpe''. p. 258</ref> The image "would have seemed frankly bizarre and offensive by eighteenth-century Creole elites, if taken literally", but if the pair were considered allegorical figures, the Spanish woman represents "Europe" and the indio "America."{{sfn|Cline|2015|p=225}} The image "functions as an allegory for the 'civilizing' and Christianizing process."{{sfn|Martinez|2008|p=256}}

===Sample sets of casta paintings===
Presented here are casta lists from three sets of paintings. Note that they only agree on the first five combinations, which are essentially the Indian-White ones. There is no agreement on the Black mixtures, however. Also, no one list should be taken as "authoritative". These terms would have varied from region to region and across time periods. The lists here probably reflect the names that the artist knew or preferred, the ones the patron requested to be painted, or a combination of both.
 
{|
|- valign="top"
| align="center" | '''Miguel Cabrera, 1763'''<ref>Katzew (2004), ''Casta Painting'', 101-106. Paintings 1 and 3-8 private collections; 2 and 9-16 [[Museum of the Americas (Madrid)|Museo de América, Madrid]]; 15 Elisabeth Waldo-Dentzel, Multicultural Music and Art Center (Northridge California).</ref>
| align="center" | '''Andrés de Islas, 1774'''<ref>Katzew, Ilona. Program for ''Inventing Race: Casta Painting and Eighteenth-Century Mexico'', April 4-August 8, 2004. [[Los Angeles County Museum of Art|LACMA]]</ref>
| align="center" | '''Anonymous''' (Museo del Virreinato)<ref>Gracia, J. E. and Pablo De Greiff, eds. ''Hispanics/Latinos in the United States: Ethnicity, Race and Rights.'' New York, Routledge, 2000, 53. {{ISBN|978-0-415-92620-1}}</ref>
|- valign="top"
|
#De Español y d'India; Mestiza
#De español y Mestiza, Castiza
#De Español y Castiza, Español
#De Español y Negra, Mulata
#De Español y Mulata; Morisca
#De Español y Morisca; Albina<ref>Christopher Knight, "A Most Rare Couch Find: LACMA acquires a recently unrolled masterpiece." ''Los Angeles Times'', April 1, 2015, A1.</ref> 
#De Español y Albina; Torna atrás
#De Español y Torna atrás; Tente en el aire
#De Negro y d'India, China cambuja.
#De Chino cambujo y d'India; Loba
#De Lobo y d'India, Albarazado
#De Albarazado y Mestiza, Barcino
#De Indio y Barcina; Zambuigua
#De Castizo y Mestiza; Chamizo
#De Mestizo y d'India; Coyote
#Indios gentiles (Heathen Indians)
|
#De Español e India, nace Mestizo
#De Español y Mestiza, nace Castizo
#De Castizo y Española, nace Española
#De Español y Negra, nace Mulata
#De Español y Mulata, nace Morisco
#De Español y Morisca, nace Albino
#De Español y Albina, nace Torna atrás
#De Indio y Negra, nace Lobo
#De Indio y Mestiza, nace Coyote
#De Lobo y Negra, nace Chino
#De Chino e India, nace Cambujo
#De Cambujo e India, nace Tente en el aire
#De Tente en el aire y Mulata, nace Albarazado
#De Albarazado e India, nace Barcino
#De Barcino y Cambuja, nace Calpamulato
#Indios Mecos bárbaros (Barbarian [[Chichimeca|Meco Indians]])
|
#Español con India, Mestizo
#Mestizo con Española, Castizo
#Castiza con Español, Española
#Español con Negra, Mulato
#Mulato con Española, Morisca
#Morisco con Española, Chino
#Chino con India, Salta atrás
#Salta atras con Mulata, Lobo
#Lobo con China, Gíbaro (Jíbaro)
#Gíbaro con Mulata, Albarazado
#Albarazado con Negra, Cambujo
#Cambujo con India, Sambiaga (Zambiaga)
#Sambiago con Loba, Calpamulato
#Calpamulto con Cambuja, Tente en el aire
#Tente en el aire con Mulata, No te entiendo
#No te entiendo con India, Torna atrás
|
|}

===Casta paintings===
<gallery>
File:IX. From Spaniard and Albino, Return Backwards (De espanol y albina, torna atras) LACMA M.2011.20.2 (5 of 5).jpg|''De español, Alvina, Torna atrás'' (cropped), {{circa|1760}}. [[Juan Patricio Morlete Ruiz]].
File:De Albina y Español, Torna atrás (Juan Patricio Morlete).jpg|''De Albina y Español, Torna atrás'', {{circa|1750}}. Juan Patricio Morlete Ruiz (attributed).
File:Mestizo.jpg|''De español e india, produce mestizo'' (From a Spanish man and an indigenous woman, a Mestizo is produced), {{circa|1780}}. Unknown.
File:Castas 08tentenelaire max.jpg|''Spaniard and Torna atrás, Tente en el aire'', 1763. [[Miguel Cabrera (painter)|Miguel Cabrera]].
File:Coiote.jpg|''De mestizo e india, sale coiote'' (From a Mestizo man and an indigenous woman, a [[Cholo]] is begotten), {{circa|1780}}. Unknown.
File:Castas 04mulata max.jpg|''Spaniard + ''Negra'', Mulatto'', 1763. Miguel Cabrera.
File:Cabrera Pintura de Castas.jpg|''De español y mulata, morisca'', 1763. Miguel Cabrera.
File:José Joaquín Magón - La Mulata.jpg|''La Mulata'' "The pride and ease of the mulatta come from the white and the black that originate her." {{circa|1780}}, [[José Joaquín Magón]].
File:Luis berrueco-castas.JPG|''Canbujo con Yndia sale Albaracado / Notentiendo con Yndia sale China'', {{circa|1775}}. {{ill|Luis Berrueco|es}}
File:BMVB - anònim - "12 De Mestizo y Alba razada, Barsina" - 9349.jpg|''De Mestizo y Albarazada, Barsina'', {{circa|1799}}. Unknown.
File:BMVB - anònim - "11. De Chino y Mulata, Alvarrazada" - 9352.jpg|''De Chino y Mulata, Alvarazada'', {{circa|1799}}. Unknown.
File:Francisco_Clapera_-_De_Chino,_e_India,_Genizara.jpg|''De Chino, e India. Genizara'', {{circa|1775}}. [[Francisco Clapera]]
File:Diceño de Mulata (1711) Arellano.jpg|''Diceño de Mulata'' (1711). Manuel de Arellano
</gallery>

==See also==
{{Portal|Indigenous peoples of the Americas|Latin America}}
* [[Caste system]]
* [[Castizo]]
* [[Dominant minority]]
* [[Filipino Mestizos]]
* [[Mexican art]]
* [[Ordenanzas del Baratillo de México]]
* [[Race and ethnicity in Latin America]]
* [[La Raza]]
* [[Zambo]]

==References==
{{Reflist}}

=== Works cited ===
{{refbegin}}
* {{cite journal |last1=Cline |first1=Sarah |title=Guadalupe and the Castas |journal=Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos |date=1 August 2015 |volume=31 |issue=2 |pages=218–247 |doi=10.1525/mex.2015.31.2.218 |s2cid=7995543}} 
* {{cite book |last=Donahue-Wallace |first=Kelly |title=Art and Architecture of Viceregal Latin America, 1521-1821 |location=Albuquerque |publisher=[[University of New Mexico Press]] |date=2008}}
* {{cite book |last=Katzew |first=Ilona |title=Casta Painting: Images of Race in Eighteenth-Century Mexico |location=New Haven |publisher=[[Yale University Press]] |date=2004 |isbn=978-0-300-10971-9}} 
* {{cite book |last=Martinez |first=María Elena |author-link=Maria Elena Martinez |title=Genealogical Fictions: Limpieza de Sangre, Religion, and Gender in Colonial Mexico |location=Stanford |publisher=[[Stanford University Press]] |date=2008}} 
* {{Cite book |last=Rappaport |first=Joanne |title=The Disappearing Mestizo: Configuring Difference in the Colonial Kingdom of New Granada |location=Durham |publisher=[[Duke University Press]] |date=4 April 2014 |isbn=978-0822356363}}
{{refend}}

==Further reading==
===Race and race mixture===
{{div col|colwidth=30em}}
*{{cite journal |last1=Althouse |first1=Aaron P. |title=Contested Mestizos, Alleged Mulattos: Racial Identity and Caste Hierarchy in Eighteenth Century Pátzcuaro, Mexico |journal=The Americas |date=October 2005 |volume=62 |issue=2 |pages=151–175 |doi=10.1353/tam.2005.0155 |s2cid=143688536 }}
*{{cite journal |last1=Anderson |first1=Rodney D. |title=Race and Social Stratification: A Comparison of Working-Class Spaniards, Indians, and Castas in Guadalajara, Mexico in 1821 |journal=Hispanic American Historical Review |date=1 May 1988 |volume=68 |issue=2 |pages=209–243 |doi=10.1215/00182168-68.2.209 |doi-access=free }}
*{{cite journal |last1=Andrews |first1=Norah |title=Calidad , Genealogy, and Disputed Free-colored Tributary Status in New Spain |journal=The Americas |date=April 2016 |volume=73 |issue=2 |pages=139–170 |doi=10.1017/tam.2016.35 |s2cid=147913805 }}
*Burns, Kathryn. "Unfixing Race," in ''Rereading the Black Legend: The Discourses of Religious and Racial Difference in the Renaissance Empires'', ed. Margaret Greer et al. Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2007.
*{{cite journal |last1=Castleman |first1=Bruce A |title=Social Climbers in a Colonial Mexican City: Individual Mobility within the Sistema de Castas in Orizaba, 1777-1791 |journal=Colonial Latin American Review |date=December 2001 |volume=10 |issue=2 |pages=229–249 |doi=10.1080/10609160120093796 |s2cid=161154873}}
*Chance, John K. ''Race and class in Colonial Oaxaca'', Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1978.
*Cope, R. Douglas. ''The Limits of Racial Domination: Plebeian Society in Colonial Mexico City, 1660-1720''. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994. {{ISBN|978-0-299-14044-1}}
*Fisher, Andrew B. and Matthew D. O'Hara, eds. ''Imperial Subjects: Race and Identity in Colonial Latin America''. Durham: Duke University Press 2009.
*{{cite journal |last1=Garofalo |first1=Leo J. |last2=O'Toole |first2=Rachel Sarah |title=Introduction: Constructing Difference in Colonial Latin America |journal=Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History |date=2006 |volume=7 |issue=1 |doi=10.1353/cch.2006.0027 |s2cid=161860137 }}
*{{cite journal |last1=Giraudo |first1=Laura |title=Casta(s), 'sociedad de castas' e indigenismo: la interpretación del pasado colonial en el siglo XX |journal=Nuevo Mundo Mundos Nuevos |date=14 June 2018 |doi=10.4000/nuevomundo.72080 |doi-access=free |hdl=10261/167130 |hdl-access=free }}
*Gonzalbo Aizpuru, Pilar, "La trampa de las castas," in Alberro, Solange y Gonzalbo Aizpuru, Pilar, ''La sociedad novohispana. Estereotipos y realidades, México'', El Colegio de México, 2013, p.&nbsp;15-193.
*Hill, Ruth. "Casta as Culture and the Sociedad de Castas a Literature," in ''Interpreting Colonialism''. ed. Byron Wells and Philip Stewart. New York: Oxford University Press 2004.
*Jackson, Robert H. ''Race, Caste, and Status: Indians in Colonial Spanish America''. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press 1999.
*Leibsohn, Dana, and Barbara E. Mundy, "Reckoning with Mestizaje," ''Vistas: Visual Culture in Spanish America, 1520-1820'' (2015). [https://vistas.ace.fordham.edu/themes/mestizaje-surveying/ http://www.fordham.edu/vistas].
*MacLachlan, Colin M. and Jaime E. Rodríguez O. ''The Forging of the Cosmic Race: A Reinterpretation of Colonial Mexico'', expanded edition. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. {{ISBN|0-520-04280-8}}
*{{cite journal |last1=McCaa |first1=Robert |title=Calidad, Clase, and Marriage in Colonial Mexico: The Case of Parral, 1788-90 |journal=Hispanic American Historical Review |date=1 August 1984 |volume=64 |issue=3 |pages=477–501 |doi=10.1215/00182168-64.3.477 |doi-access=free }}
*Mörner, Magnus. ''Race Mixture in the History of Latin America''. Boston: Little Brown, 1967.
*[[Pedro Alonso O'Crouley|O'Crouley, Pedro Alonso]]. ''A Description of the Kingdom of New Spain.'' Translated and edited by Sean Galvin. John Howell Books 1972.
*O'Toole, Rachel Sarah. ''Bound Lives: Africans, Indians, and the Making of Race in Colonial Peru''. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press 2012. {{ISBN|978-0-8229-6193-2}}
*Pitt-Rivers, Julian, "Sobre la palabra casta", ''América Indígena'', 36–3, 1976, pp.&nbsp;559–586.
*Ramos-Kittrell, Jesús. ''Playing in the Cathedral: Music, Race, and Status in New Spain''. New York: Oxford University Press 2016.
*Rosenblat, Angel. ''El mestizaje y las castas coloniales: La población indígena y el mestizaje en América''. buenos Aires, Editorial Nova 1954.
*Seed, Patricia. ''To Love, Honor, and Obey in Colonial Mexico: Conflicts Over Marriage Choice, 1574-1821''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988. {{ISBN|978-0-8047-1457-0}}
*{{cite journal |last1=Seed |first1=Patricia |title=Social Dimensions of Race: Mexico City, 1753 |journal=Hispanic American Historical Review |date=1 November 1982 |volume=62 |issue=4 |pages=569–606 |doi=10.1215/00182168-62.4.569 |doi-access=free }}
*[[Ann Twinam|Twinam, Ann]]. ''Purchasing Whiteness: Pardos, Mulatos, and the Quest for Social Mobility in the Spanish Indies''. Stanford: Stanford University Press 2015.
*{{cite thesis |last1=Valdés |first1=Dennis Nodín |title=The decline of the sociedad de castas in Mexico City. |date=1978 |publisher=University of Michigan |oclc=760496135 }}
*Vinson, Ben III. ''Before Mestizaje: The Frontiers of Race and Caste in Colonial Mexico''. New York: Cambridge University Press 2018 {{ISBN|978-1-107-67081-5}}
*{{cite journal |last1=Wade |first1=Peter |title=Rethinking Mestizaje : Ideology and Lived Experience |journal=Journal of Latin American Studies |date=May 2005 |volume=37 |issue=2 |pages=239–257 |doi=10.1017/S0022216X05008990 |s2cid=96437271 |url=https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/rethinking-mestizaje-ideology-and-lived-experience(6dd681d7-afa7-44f4-bfed-d99a10e99063).html }}
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===Casta painting===
{{div col|colwidth=30em}}
*Carrera, Magali M. ''Imagining Identity in New Spain: Race, Lineage, and the Colonial Body in Portraiture and Casta Paintings''. Austin, University of Texas Press, 2003. {{ISBN|978-0-292-71245-4}}
*{{cite journal |last1=Cummins |first1=Thomas B. F. |title=Review of Casta Paintings: Images of Race in Eighteenth-Century Mexico, ; Imagining Identity in New Spain: Race, Lineage, and the Colonial Body in Portraiture and Casta Paintings |journal=The Art Bulletin |date=2006 |volume=88 |issue=1 |pages=185–189 |jstor=25067234 }}
*{{cite journal |last1=Dean |first1=Carolyn |last2=Leibsohn |first2=Dana |title=Hybridity and Its Discontents: Considering Visual Culture in Colonial Spanish America |journal=Colonial Latin American Review |date=June 2003 |volume=12 |issue=1 |pages=5–35 |doi=10.1080/10609160302341 |s2cid=162937582}}
*{{cite journal |last1=Earle |first1=Rebecca |title=The Pleasures of Taxonomy: Casta Paintings, Classification, and Colonialism |journal=The William and Mary Quarterly |date=2016 |volume=73 |issue=3 |pages=427–466 |doi=10.5309/willmaryquar.73.3.0427 |s2cid=147847406 |url=http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/79184/7/WRAP_REVISED%20to%20reflect%20new%20images%20-%20Earle%20The%20Pleasures%20of%20Taxonomy%20in%20Word.pdf }}
*Estrada de Gerlero, Elena Isabel. "Representations of 'Heathen Indians' in Mexican Casta Painting," in ''New World Orders'', Ilona Katzew, ed. New York: Americas Society Art Gallery 1996.
*García Sáiz, María Concepción. ''Las castas mexicanas: Un género pictórico americano''. Milan: Olivetti 1989.
*García Sáiz, María Concepción, "The Artistic Development of Casta Painting," in ''New World Orders'', Ilona Katzew, ed. New York: Americas Society Art Gallery, 1996.
*Katzew, Ilona. [https://web.archive.org/web/20071102062356/http://www.gc.maricopa.edu/laberinto/fall1997/casta1997.htm "Casta Painting: Identity and Social Stratification in Colonial Mexico,"] New York University, 1996.
*Katzew, Ilona, ed. ''New World Orders: Casta Painting and Colonial Latin America''. New York: Americas Society Art Gallery 1996.
{{div col end|2}}

==External links==
{{commons category|Casta paintings}}
{{Wiktionary}}
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20090528012802/http://www.spanglefish.com/Breamore/index.asp?pageid=23841 "Casta Paintings"] An example of one of the many things that can be found in Breamore House that has attracted a lot of interest over the years. This collection of Casta paintings is believed to be the only one in United Kingdom. The collection of fourteen paintings, was commissioned for the King of Spain in 1715 and painted by Mexican artist Juan Rodríguez Juárez.
*[http://www.nuestrosranchos.com/en/castas Castas paintings and discussion] on Nuestros Ranchos Genealogy of Mexico website
*Safo, Nova. [https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=3043790 "Casta Paintings: Inventing Race Through Art/Mexican Art Genre Reveals 18th-Century Attitudes on Racial Mixing."] The Tavis Smiley Show. June 30, 2004.
*Soong, Roland. [http://www.zonalatina.com/Zldata55.htm Racial Classifications in Latin America]. 1999.
 
{{Spanish Empire}}
{{Miscegenation in Spanish colonies}}
{{Segregation by type}}
{{Racism topics}}
{{Native American topics}}
{{Historiography}}
{{White people}}

[[Category:Former peoples of the African diaspora]]
[[Category:African–Native American relations]]
[[Category:Historiography of the Americas]]
[[Category:Spanish colonization of the Americas]]
[[Category:New Spain]]
[[Category:Colonial Mexico]]
[[Category:Colonial Peru]]
[[Category:Latin American caste system| ]]
[[Category:Spanish language in the Americas]]
[[Category:Racism in Latin America]]
[[Category:Racial segregation]]
[[Category:Interracial relationships]]