The Sistema de Castas
The Spanish tried to impose not only their religion, but also a new social and economic order on the peoples of
the New World. When the fighting was over the almost total absence of Spanish women in America led some
conquistadors to seek unions with native women.
At first, there was no clear way to identify children born of these unions to a Spanish and a native parent. Then
the word "Mestizos," which is Spanish for "mixed," came into use.
As late as 1570, there were only 25,000 Spanish households in the entire New
World, facing a vastly greater native population that threatened to
demographically swallow them whole. To preserve their wealth, power, and
identity, the Spanish took a page from the way they had treated Muslims and
Jews in Spain and created a caste-like system in the Americas.
The "Sistema de Castas" was a complex system of ethnic classification that
placed pure blooded Spaniards (“Pennisulares”, those born on the Iberian
Peninsula) from Spain in the top group. Below them were the creoles, those of
Spanish ancestry born in the New World, and "Castizos," who had one Mestizo
parent and one Spanish parent and were three quarters Spanish. Then came the
"Mestizos," who were fifty percent Spanish.
African Branch of the Family Tree
The "Sistema de Castas" also had to
account for a group of people whose
ancestors came from an entirely different
branch of the Mestizo family tree: the
Africans. Not long after the Spanish arrived
in the New World, they began bringing
African slaves with them to work in the
ports and the mines.
Free blacks from North Africa participated
alongside the Spanish in the conquest of the
Americas, some as conquistadors
themselves, and Africans made vital
contributions in every sphere of life in the
New World. But as the Spanish imported
more slaves, they began associating all
people of African ancestry with slavery.
Thus, the Africans, together with the so-called "barbaric" or uncivilized Indians, were placed at the bottom of
the social system.
But Africans, too, began having children with Spaniards and Castizos, Mestizos, and indigenous Americans.
This mixing eventually made it impossible to keep track of who was who. The complexity of human
interactions ultimately doomed the Sistema de Castas.