Talk:Casta

This article is a candidate for the Mexico Collaboration. Please visit that page to support or comment on the nomination.

Need to explain the link between Race and purity of blood

Ultimately, the link is based on the division in Spain between Old Christians and New Christians. Those of Moorish, Jewish, Black, Indian background were lumped together not so much because of their racial background but because of their background as people who have not been Christian for various generations. This is hard to explain but is useful to disentangle the confused link between both concepts. When Spanish Americans began to become acquainted with the concept of race, the idea of purity of blood fit in well with that of race and there was a natural progression from one to the other. --Php2000 (talk) 18:19, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

Differences with Spanish language version of this article

This article seems to have some substantial differences in tone with the Spanish language version of this article. It opens by saying that in the Spanish Americas it is "a now discredited 20th century theoretical framework which postulated that colonial society operated under a hierarchical race-based 'caste system'". However, the Spanish version of this article, while mentioning this in the lead, does not make an assertion that this is a discredited framework, and instead calls it out as a controversy, all of which seems to be properly cited, unlike this article. Is it proper then, to call it discredited? If not, should the lead be fixed to reflect that? If it is, what is the Spanish version missing that makes it conclusively discredited, and not just something without sufficient evidence to determine in either direction? Rdelfin (talk) 17:14, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Responding to this: I'm reviewing both the Spanish and English language version of the article and checking sourcing. I'm not convinced the Spanish version of this article is as properly cited as you suggest. In fact, beyond the lead, the bulk of the es: article has rather poor sourcing including statements taken from newspaper articles and non-historians such as Carlos López Beltrán. This implies that someone has worked on the lead but not the article itself. I see no reference to the recent historical studies on the topic of the operation of a "Caste System" in Latin America in the body of the article.

The question is the following: Is there an academic debate on whether a colonial caste system existed or is it simply an outdated or discredited theoretical framework?

Looking at the bibliography of historians who have directly tackled this question it includes: Ben Vinson (2018), Jeanne Rappaport (2014), Berta Ares (2015) and Solange Alberro and Pilar Gonzalbo (2013).

Based on current state of scholarship, evidence weighs in favor of this being a discredited framework rather than a contemporary academic controversy.

The only serious historical study in the last 30 years of academic publications which seems to give credit to the notion of a Caste System in colonial Latin America is by US historian María Elena Martínez published in 2008 (Genealogical fictions). Meanwhile, the es: version of this article doesn't even cite Genealogical Fictions at all.

Meanwhile the Spanish language article lead frames it as a "debate" but provides no evidence of a historian directly challenging the findings of Vinson, Rappaport, Ares or Alberro/Gonzalbo. As a contrary view they provide Magnus Mortimer - a now deceased Swedish hispanist who published in the 1950s; and Edward Telles - a US sociologist specialized in critical race theory and migration - a tertiary source which is not sufficient to support the existence of an "academic controversy".

Sourcing can be improved in this article but I think that based on bibliography, the framing is correct and if anything, its the es version which requires updating. I see an emerging academic consensus among specialized historians that the Caste System as framed by Aguirre Beltrán in the 40s did not exist. Naideq (talk) 22:34, 23 October 2021 (UTC)