Casta was a Portuguese and Spanish term used during the colonization period to depict as a whole the mixed-race people who arose from the post-conquest period. This system was established on the principle that the quality and the character of the person varied according largely to their birth, color, race and origin of ethnic types. This was not only a system of social-racial classification, but rather it impacted every aspect of a person’s life, even to include economics and taxation. In Latin America,  a person’s socio-economic status usually correlated with their race or racial mix in the know family background, or simply on phenotype if the family background was unknown. In other words, many high government officials and wealthy people were of ‘Iberian’ background, while indigenous or african ancestry, or even just darker skin, was usually relates with poverty and inferiority. So in that time, the ‘whiter’ the heritage a person could claim, the higher status they could claim, contrarily, darker features meant less opportunities. Unfortunately, this is still something that shows itself relevant in the present day. The Casta Paintings depicts images of of mixed-race families; Meztizos, Castizos, Cholos, Pardos, Mulatos, Zambos etc. At the beginning of the spanish colonial period, there were four primary categories of races: Spaniards, Criollo (a person of European descent born in the Americas), Indio and Negro. And with this the spaniards developed a very complex caste system, which they used for social control and which also determined a person’s importance in society, so for some (especially the spanish elite) it caused them great angst to see a disruption of their clear social-racial hierarchy in colonial society, which privilege them. So for them the Casta Paintings in a sort of way represent the end of the ‘white supremacy’. While on the other hand the Casta Paintings show as Deans-Smith put it a “colonial life and mixed-race people in idealized terms”. At the time this paintings were made it conveyed a lot of controversial views, and each viewer responded to them according to their own contexts and points of reference. I personally really loved the Casta Paintings, and the images and the purpose behind the provocative genre. Coming from a family that has an immense diverse background, I believe that that to a certain extent we are all mixed-races.