Casta System: Racial Hierarchy in Colonial Latin America

Your skin color literally determined your entire life in colonial Latin America.

The Spanish created the Casta System, a legal racial hierarchy where being born white in Spain made

you elite, while mixed race or Indigenous ancestry pushed you to the bottom.

A Spanish person born in America had less status than one born in Spain,

even if they looked identical. Mestizos, mixed Spanish and Native,

were often called bastards and banned from high positions. Indigenous populations crashed from 25

million to under 1 million. Africans were enslaved as property with zero rights.

The wildest part is this wasn't just social preference, it was actual law enforced by the