Caste, Church, and Conversion in Spanish America

Colonial Spanish American society developed a complex system of ethnic and social classification known as the sistema de castas. At the top stood the peninsulares (Spaniards born in the metropole), followed by criollos (descendants of Spaniards born in America), who enjoyed elevated status but limited access to the highest offices; mestizos, descended from Spanish and indigenous unions, formed one of the largest intermediate categories, while mulattoes (Spanish and African) and zambos (indigenous and African) rounded out the principal mixed groups, alongside numerous further subcategories documented in the eighteenth-century "pinturas de castas" of New Spain. Legal status determined access to public office, university education, priestly ordination, and other privileges, though mechanisms such as the "gracias al sacar" — the purchase of certificates of whiteness or legitimacy — and the informal practice of "pasar por blanco" allowed a degree of upward mobility, and the system was notably more rigid in New Spain and Peru than in less wealthy regions.