The Mexican Castes (Las castas mexicanas)

In the painting "Las castas mexicanas", from 1777 by Spanish Ignacio María Barreda, depicts a complete series of sixteen scenes showing various combinations of Spaniards, Indigenous people, Black people, and people of mixed descent, which were called the "Castas" during the time of the New Spain. Unlike many caste paintings, which were executed on separate canvases, Barreda’s decision brings the sixteen scenes together in a single composition, creating a complete representation of the social and racial diversity of the New Spain. The figures can be found arranged in pairs and family groups, which consisted in the depiction a man and a woman alongside their child. In this way, the artist intention to represent in each scene the relationship between the parents origins and the classification or name given to their son or daughter, from which their status in the new order of the country would be defined. In addition, the painting creates the narrative of these family relationships into a visual sequence in which the racial mixing is presented as a series of combinations that can be named and classified. Furthermore, the people depicted do not appear as individuals, but as examples of certain qualities of their "given race or mix" a concept that linked lineage, or the so-called “purity of blood" to a person’s social status, in which the closer the blood were a Spanish person, the higher the status given. Not only the arrangement of the figures indicates to the viewer the representation of a hierarchy, but also shows the diversity of the New Spain population. According to studies on the genre of caste paintings, the repetition of these associations between bodies, origins, and social positions helped to reinforce stereotypes about Indigenous, Black, and mestizo populations.