In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, a few artists created a series of “daily life” tableaus they called, “Casta Paintings.” Each frame showed a different coupling and the product of that coupling. For example, a Spaniard and an India would produce a Mestizo and so on. As you have read thus far, colonial Spanish and Portuguese societies were hierarchical and organized around ethnic differences which, thanks to the labor regimes in place, became racialized; class, free and non-free status; and gender. Historians and Art Historians have studied these Casta Paintings for years, trying to figure out their meanings. On the one hand, they are great records of the flor and fauna of the Americas, of dress and style as they differed by class, and living environments from urban to countryside. They also suggest that people identified as and/or were identified with caste categories and that there was general agreement about what comprised a caste. In other words, the Casta Paintings may represent popular ideas about caste and color at the time. On the other hand, however, it remains unclear if, in fact, caste status was so rigid. For example, if a mestizo had a child with a Spaniard, they may categorize as either mestizo or Spaniard and that depended on many factors, including location and time period. Were these categories so rigid?

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