Editing Caste (section)

==== Latin America ====
{{Main|Casta}}
{{See also|Mestizaje}}
[[File:Casta painting all.jpg|thumb|150px|Casta painting showing 16 racial groupings. Anonymous, 18th century]]
In colonial Spanish America (16th-early 19th centuries), there were legal divisions of society, the Republic of Spaniards ({{lang|es|República de Españoles}}), comprising European whites, African slaves ({{lang|es|negros}}), and mixed-race {{lang|es|[[casta]]s}}, the offspring of unions between whites, blacks, and indigenous. The Republic of Indians ({{lang|es|República de Indios}}) comprised all the various indigenous peoples, now classified in a single category, {{lang|es|indio}}, by their colonial rulers. In the social and racial hierarchy, European Spaniards were at the apex, with legal rights and privileges. Lower racial groups (Africans, mixed-race castas, and pure indigenous), had fewer legal rights and lower social status. Unlike the rigid caste system in India, in colonial Spanish America there was some fluidity within the social order.<ref>{{cite book |last=Cope |first=R. Douglas |title=The Limits of Racial Domination: Plebeian Society in Colonial Mexico City, 1660–1720 |location=Madison |publisher=[[University of Wisconsin Press]] |date=1994}}</ref>