Casta paintings codified colonial Latin America’s ranked racial order

Evidence

Casta paintings were largely a phenomenon of Mexico, flourishing from roughly 1760 to 1790, before abolition set in, that is. They were a popularizing bourgeois extension of the Latin American colonial practice of retratos, of seeking social status through portraiture. But they served also as a reflection and cultural reification of the widespread practice among Spanish and Creole locals in the area to rank racially, to place people in the ranked order of caste according to their perceived or intuited percentage of white (Spanish), indigenous (Indian), and black (African) heritage (or “blood”). — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1088

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Casta paintings as a bourgeois visual taxonomy of racial ranking — useful framing for anyone studying visual culture as racial inscription.