Sistema or Sociedad de Castas
Miguel Cabrera, 1763

Plate 6, India x Lobo, Torna atras, p. 77
Ilona Katzew, "New World Orders: Casta Painting and Colonial Latin America",
Americas Society Art Gallery, New York, 1996, Plate 6, India x Lobo, Torna atras, p. 77

To the reader: please do not take offense at the terminology below. This terminology is clearly racist, and should be insulting to many, many people. This terminology is here as it is a record of how people were viewed.

Aside from terminology, members of each "casta" were more or less distinguishable by their dress. Sumptuary laws specified dress that would be illigal for members of specific castas to wear. Other ways in which the castas were distinguished were as follows: 1

  Parents   Offspring
Español × India Mestiza
Español × Mestiza Castiza
Español × Castiza Español
Español × Negra Mulata
Español × Mulata Morisca 2
Español × Morisca 2 Albina
Español × Albina Torna atrás 3
Español × Torna atrás 3 Tente en el aire 4
Negro × India China 5 cambuja
Chino 5 cambujo × India Loba
Lobo × India Albarazado
Albarazado × Mestiza Barcino
Indio × Barcina Zambuigua
Castizo × Mestiza Chamizo
Mestizo × India Coyote
Indio (gentiles) × India Indios (Heathens)

1   Magnus Mörner, "Race Mixture in the History of Latin America", Little, Brown and Company, Boston, pp. 62-63.
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2   "A royal decree in 1700 prohibited the use of this term [morisco] to avoid confusion with the identical Spanish word for 'converted Moor'." See Magnus Mörner, "Race Mixture in the History of Latin America", Little, Brown and Company, Boston, p. 58, footnote 21.
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3   "Torna atrás" means "return backwards".
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4   "Tente en el aire" means "very much in the air" or of dubious standing. See Pedro Alonso O'Crouley (Sean Galvin, trans.), "A Description of The Kingdom of New Spain, 1774", John Howell, 1972, p. 19, footnote 3.
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5   While "Chino" was often used as a simple casta label, since Nueva Espana included the Phillipines, it was sometimes also used for people who had derived from the Phillipines or even China, especially when Chinese were brought in to create the beginnings of a silk industry using the support of the Jesuit galleon trade between Manila and San Blás and Acapulco. Also, see María Elena Martínez, "Genealogical Fictions: Limpieza de Sangre, Religion, and Gender in Colonial Mexico", Stanford U. P., 2008, p. 342, footnote 97. Also, a chino grifo is a frizzly-headed chino; a chino cambujo means a very swarthy (dark-complexioned) chino. See See Pedro Alonso O'Crouley (Sean Galvin, trans.), "A Description of The Kingdom of New Spain, 1774", John Howell, 1972, p. 19, footnote 1. Also, the term "Japoneses" and "Indios chinos" were used (Magnus Mörner, "Race Mixture in the History of Latin America", Little, Brown and Company, Boston, p. 66, footnote 50).

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