Casta

For other uses, see Casta (disambiguation).

Las castas. A casta painting showing 16 racial groupings. Anonymous, 18th century, oil on canvas, 148×104 cm, Museo Nacional del Virreinato, Tepotzotlán, Mexico

Casta (Spanish: [ˈkasta]) is a term which means "lineage" in Spanish and Portuguese and has historically been used as a racial and social identifier. From the outset, colonial Spanish America resulted in widespread intermarriage: unions of Spaniards (españoles), Amerindians (indios), and black Africans (negros). Basic mixed-race categories that appeared in official colonial documentation were mestizo, generally offspring of a Spaniard and an Indian; and mulatto, offspring of a Spaniard and a black African.

A plethora of terms were used for people with mixed Spanish, Indian, and African ancestry in 18th-century casta paintings, but they are not known to have been widely used officially or unofficially in the Spanish Empire.