Sistema de Castas

The sistema de castas (casta system) was the social and racial classification framework used across Spanish colonial Latin America, particularly during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, to categorize the colonial population by mixed ancestry among three principal groups: Spaniards, Indigenous peoples, and Black Africans. Basic mixed-race categories included mestizo, generally the offspring of a Spaniard and an Indigenous person, and mulatto, generally the offspring of a Spaniard and a Black African, with numerous further subdivisions recorded in colonial documents and depicted in the era's casta paintings. Modern scholarship has revised the traditional view of the system as a rigid hierarchy with fixed places for individuals, showing instead that racial categorization was often fluid, with people shifting labels depending on context, documentation, or strategic advantage, including cases of individuals passing as a different casta to escape taxation or religious prosecution. Casta classification nonetheless carried real legal and social consequences, affecting tax obligations, eligibility for military service and the priesthood, and exposure to the Inquisition, with Spaniards and mestizos exempt from tribute but subject to the Inquisition while Indigenous people paid tribute but were exempt from it.