Sistema or Sociedad de Castas
"A Description of The Kingdom of New Spain"
by Pedro Alonso O'Crouley, 1774

Plate 14, Espanol x Albina; Torna atras p. 81
Ilona Katzew, "New World Orders: Casta Painting and Colonial Latin America",
Americas Society Art Gallery, New York, 1996, Plate 14: Españ × Albina; Tornâtras, p. 81

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
Spaniard × Negro mulato
mulato × Indian chino grifo 2
Negro × Indian lobo, or sambayo
Spaniard × Indian mestizo
Spaniard × mestizo castizo or albino
Spaniard × castizo Spaniard
Spaniard × mulato morisco 3
Spaniard × morisco 3 or an albino salta atrás 4
Spaniard × salta atrás tente in el aire 5
Indian × lobo chino cambujo
Indian × mestizo coyote
Indian × coyote Indian
Indian × chino albarazado
Indian × mulato lobo
Spaniard × morsico 3 albino

1   Magnus Mörner, "Race Mixture in the History of Latin America", Little, Brown and Company, Boston, pp. 62-63.
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2   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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3   "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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4   "Salta atrás" means a "jump backward", away from from Spanish "blood". See Pedro Alonso O'Crouley (Sean Galvin, trans.), "A Description of The Kingdom of New Spain, 1774", John Howell, 1972, p. 19, footnote 2.
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5   "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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