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The Casta System: How Spain Decided What Your Mexican Family Would Be Called

Mexico Time Capsule

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For nearly three hundred years, the Spanish Crown governed New Spain through one of the most intricate, rigid, and obsession-driven racial hierarchies in human history. Known as the Casta System, this administrative framework attempted to categorize every human being in Mexico based on their exact racial mixture, dictating everything from the taxes they paid to the professions they could hold and the official names stamped on their birth certificates. 🇲🇽📜

This episode explores the complex and often strange history of colonial social classification. From terms like Mestizo, Castizo, and Mulato to absurd official categories like Tornatrás and No te entiendo, discover how imperial decrees, parish priests, and elaborate caste paintings defined social status, and how this colonial legacy laid the hidden foundations for modern Mexican society, family history, and identity. 🏛️🎨

20 Comments

@MexicoTimeCapsule Creator 2 months ago (edited) Pinned

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@Duquedecastro 1 month ago

After 20 years, this is one of the only videos that explains the African part vs the Indigenous part which people usually ignore. The Indigenous were not at the bottom.

@BoppieOledaartist 1 month ago

This system did not die - we are still asked what color we are!!!😮

@Archivist1492 1 month ago

I am half Puerto Rican and I have colonial Mexican ancestry. Solders from Mexico arrived in San Juan in 1649. They mainly Spanish ancestry. My DNA for Africa disapered. So that can be land borderes change

@dawnbrazell1037 1 month ago

Yea, I noticed this when doing my family tree

@HiAuntchovie 1 month ago

Having racially mixed ancestry is more common than people think. Not just in the Americas but worldwide. It was always common practice to fit in as much as possible and lie about your family background. This way a family would not be subject to mistreatment.

The Mediterranean "Southern Europe" is mixed with North Africans, Arabs and Persians. North Africa, Arabia and Persia have a lot of European ancestry going back to Ancient Greece and Imperial Rome. Turkey 🇹🇷 is predominantly Greek in it's DNA.

Many people in Central Asia look European but still have Asian ancestry and genetics.

Millions of people in Quebec Canada look entirely European but have Indigenous DNA. Many American Blacks have European DNA despite looking entirely African.

There are millions of 2nd and 3rd generation Hispanics who look entirely European because of their parents having babies with ethnically European Americans.

@community-q2w 1 month ago

To begin with Spaniards arrived in what was to become America identifying their claims as New Spain. What is today Mexico was New Spain back in the 1500s, population were not Mexican, be they indigenous, Spaniard, African. Except for the Mexica tribes in "Mexico City," named by Spain after the tribe. Mexico was not a nation until 1824, became Estados Unidos Mexicanos under the new Republic, population to become Mexican citizens. Taking the name of the mexica tribe. Had the English or French claimed it, today's Mexico would have been a totally different story. As where we are today, is by historical events..

@JPVillalobos27 2 months ago

Columbus landed on Española a year after Castillo and Aragon took over Andalucía from the Muslims. Limpieza de sangre started after that.

@ZZPAFF123 1 month ago

Whoever made this video has absolutely no idea about history. The video is riddled with errors and conjectures presented as truths. They don't even seem to understand what "purity of blood" meant in the Iberian Peninsula itself: it meant not having Moorish or Jewish ancestors, yes, but also not being descended from Old Christians who practiced trades considered lowly, such as tailor, farmer, merchant, carpenter, etc. Lacking proven purity of blood prevented access to certain professions. For example, the son of a servant, a blacksmith, or a bricklayer couldn't practice law. But the son of an indigenous chief could. It wasn't a matter of race, but of class. As in all of Europe, and I would venture to say as in the whole world, in those times.

@Mercenario90 4 days ago

“Criollo” did not simply mean “a white person born in the Americas” in every context. Strictly speaking, it generally referred to people of Spanish descent who were born in the Americas. In other words, they could have different skin tones. The term was primarily a category of origin, birthplace, and social identity, rather than a phenotypic description equivalent to “white skin.”

@UlisesUrdemals-lb8qm 1 month ago

This system was used in all the Spanish domain.

@brainchildguru 2 months ago

This is ai. The way it said “obsessed” ub-sess-sed

@sagrariomassingill5210 1 month ago

My Ancestors on both sides come from Spain and I am related to Hernan Cortes through my Great Grandmother.

@rubenperez-x4b 2 months ago

my family were Categorized as Castizo!

@Veronica2579 2 months ago

I recently did my family tree and found all sorts of ancestors. Some were labeled Español others were Indios, but none were labeled mestizo! In reality I’m sure most of them were mestizo. My family has been in the same three states for centuries, Zacatecas, Aguascalientes and northern Jalisco. I did find a Coyote somewhere, but I can’t remember on what branch, I just remember thinking what a peculiar last name!! Little did I know it was his race! I did find out about the coyotes a few days later!😂

@christianhunt8009 1 month ago

I have found Indio, Español and Mestizo. Mestizo and Español appear to be among the most on parish records. When I took a DNA test I was close to half on Indigenous, had some Spanish, Jewish and African and some other European ancestry

@OLMECS818Valle 2 months ago

Zaragoza

@intruzione 1 month ago

Proud mestizo, proud of my indigenous and hispanic roots 🇲🇽🇪🇸

@vanesaosorio5640 1 month ago

That's what the U.S. Does until these days! So backwards!

@mariagpeestrada6451 1 month ago

This system didn't work so as to catalogue. People mixed, the painting was created to show the diversity of New Spain. "Historia Mínima de México". Colegio de México.