casta
Sign in to savethumb|upright=1.3|. A casta painting showing 16 racial groupings. Anonymous, 18th century, oil on canvas, 148×104 cm, , , Mexico
~39 min read
Encyclopedic overview
14 sectionsContents
- Use of Casta terminology
- "Colonial Caste System" debate
- "Purity of blood" and the evolution of racial classification
- Casta classifications and legal consequences
- Casta paintings of the 18th century
- Sample sets of casta paintings
- Casta paintings
- See also
- References
- Works cited
- Further reading
- Race and race mixture
- Casta painting
- External links
thumb|upright=1.3|. A casta painting showing 16 racial groupings. Anonymous, 18th century, oil on canvas, 148×104 cm, , , Mexico
'''' () is a term which means "lineage" in Spanish and Portuguese and has historically been used as a racial and social identifier. In the context of the Spanish Empire in the Americas, the term also refers to a now-discredited 20th-century theoretical framework which postulated that colonial society operated under a hierarchical race-based "caste system". From the outset, colonial Spanish America resulted in widespread intermarriage: unions of Spaniards (), indigenous people (), and Africans ().
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “casta” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.