Casta

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 This article does not cite any references or sources. (April 2007)
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.
For other uses, see Casta (disambiguation).
Look up Casta in
Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Casta is a 17th century term used in Spanish America, and refers to the institutionalized system of racial and social stratification and segregation based on a person's heritage.

Contents

[edit] Etymology

The literal meaning of the word is "lineage", "breed" or "race", which also gave rise to the term "caste".[citation needed]

[edit] Castes

Castes were used to identify classes of people with specific racial or ethnic heritage. Each caste had its own set of privileges or restrictions, with the general descending order of precedence being:

persons of Spanish or Portuguese descent born in Spain or Portugal (i.e. from the Iberian Peninsula which led to the name). They were considered so much higher than other castas that many women went back to Spain or Portugal to give birth.[citation needed] They held important jobs in the government, the army, and the Catholic Church, and usually did not live permanently in Latin America. This system was intended to perpetuate the ties of the governing elite to the Spanish and Portuguese crowns.
People of Spanish ancestry, but born in Latin America. Many criollos owned mines, ranches, or haciendas and were very wealthy. They favored commerce with British America but had to endure the Seville and later Cádiz monopolies. They occasionally had government jobs, but they were not respected by the peninsulares. The 19th century independentists were mainly criollos rejecting European supremacy.
Persons with one mestizo parent and one criollo parent. The children of a castizo and a criollo were classified as criollo.[citation needed]
Persons with one peninsular parent and one indio parent.
Persons with one indio parent and one mestizo parent.
Persons of mixed peninsular and negro descent. They were sometimes made into slaves.
Amerindian inhabitants. Legally they were to be treated paternalistically, but were abused by the local elites. After the initial conquest, the elites of the Inca and Aztec empires were assimilated into the Spanish nobility.
Persons who were mixed indio and negro.
  • Negros
Blacks. They were treated the worst and frequently made slaves.

In contrast with the "one drop rule", a white with less than one eighth of Amerindian ancestry was considered white.[citation needed] However, even people with one sixteenth Black ancestry was still either a torna atrás in New Spain or a requinterón in Peru.

Eventually the system became too complex, and only the main mixes were taken into account.[citation needed] A series of pictures called pinturas de castas showed more than a hundred castes.

[edit] Pintura de castas

The interest of the Enlightenment about scientific description of the exotic lands led to the commission of series of pictures that document the racial combinations.

"De español e india, produce mestizo" (Of a Spanish man and an Amerindian woman, a Mestizo is produced).

"De negro y española, sale mulato" (Of a Negro man and a Spanish woman, a Mulatto is obtained).

"De mestizo e india, sale coiote" (From Mestizo man and Amerindian woman, begotten a Coyote).

"De negro e india, sale lobo" (Of a black and an Amerindian, produces a Lobo).

[edit] References

[edit] External links