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Christiana Garretson
Dr. Arguello
150 History Latin America to 1824
13 December 2011
Life in Colonial Spanish America
Colonial expansion of the Americas was initiated by Spanish conquistadores and,
through its administrators and missionaries, was developed by the monarchy of Spain.
Trade and the spread of the Christian faith were what motivated the colonial expansion,
which lasted over four hundred years (beginning in 1492 and ending in 1898).
Christopher Columbus was the man who arrived and began the immense expansion of the
Spanish Empire.
Over almost four centuries, Columbus expanded the Spanish Empire across most
of present-day Central America, the Caribbean Islands, Mexico, most of North America
including the Southwestern, Southern, and Pacific coastal regions of what is today the
United States. Although they were inactive, the Spanish also claimed territory in present
day British Columbia as well as Alaska, Washington, and Oregon. Revolutionary
movements in the early 19th century resulted in most Spanish colonies choosing to be
independent from the others colonies. The only colonies that did not decide to do so
were Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines, due to the fact that these colonies
were given up in 1898 after the Spanish-American war. The loss of these remaining
territories was what politically ended Spanish colonization in America. However, the
cultural influences are far from gone.

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Beginning with the voyages of Columbus, the Kingdom of Spain wished to start
up missions to convert the pagans in New Spain to Roman Catholicism. Spain wanted to
convert the pagans in order to promote the colonization of the lands that were awarded to
Spain by the Catholic Church. In 1741, King Philip V felt that these conversions were
necessary in upper California. The whole idea of the mission system was put in place in
order to control Spain‟s tremendously expanding holdings in America, or “the New
World” as it was referred to. The Kingdom of Spain knew that if they were to
successfully run their colonies, that they would need a literate population of people. The
goal of the Spanish government was to turn the indigenous people of the New World into
tax-paying citizens and Christians. These Native Americans were inevitably required to
learn to speak Spanish as well as learn the Christian ways and job skills. Estimates for
the population in California at the time are as high as 300,000 indigenous peoples,
possibly divided into over 100 separate tribes/nations. In 1769, the King decided to
relinquish power over the Baja California missions and give said power to the priests of
the Dominican Order. This was done so that the Franciscans could focus on founding
brand new missions in Alta California.
In the early 16th century, very few Spanish men brought women with them when
they traveled to the Caribbean as well as to Mesoamerica. This fact quickly formed
social conditions that would favor the intermixing of European people and the indigenous
people. When these Spanish men came to these places, they began living with and
having indigenous women as their mistresses and sometimes later on as their wives. The
Kingdom of Spain made an attempt to steer social policy toward protecting marriage
between Spaniards. This attempt was made by banning Spanish men who were married

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from traveling without their wives, or returning to Spain or sending for their wives within
a two year time frame. However, since the King simply had no way of enforcing said
policies, they quickly failed. There was also a time when the Crown prohibited Spanish
women who were unmarried from traveling to the colonies, unless they were traveling
with their family or they were emigrating as servants. These such policies left Spanish
men in the New World with very few available Spanish women as possible wives.
Despite the Crown‟s desire to preserve Spanish marriages, it also had much interest in
colonizing the New World. The Crown realized that, if Spanish men were to marry the
indigenous women, that they might then be moved to settle down and create ties to
certain areas of the New World. The Catholic Church generally did not oppose such
marriages in hopes that the marriages would end up converting the indigenous women to
Catholicism.
In the late 1500s, the number of Spanish households that were present in the New
World was only at 25,000. Obviously, these households were surrounded by the native
population, which was much greater than the Spaniards. The Spaniards were aware of
this fact, and consequently created a caste-like system in order to „preserve their wealth,
power, and privileges.‟ This caste-like system consisted of multiple ranks, with
Spaniards being in the top group. The ranks of this system were based on a person‟s
percentage of Spanish blood. The child of a Spaniard and an indigenous person was
called a mestizo, and the child of a Spaniard and a mestizo was a castizo. This
classifications system not only accounted for Spaniards, but also for African people.
Most of the Africans in the New World were brought their by the Spanish, as their slaves.
By the end of the 16th century, Africans began having children with the indigenous

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people as well as the Spaniards, which then required the production of more categories in
the classification system that was put in place. The child of an African person and a
Spaniard was called a mulatto, and the child of a mulatto and a Spaniard was morisco,
and the system eventually had many categories.
The caste-like system, which ended up being very complex, inspired the creation
of 18th century casta paintings that showed where each person ranked in the New World.
These paintings were popular in Spain and other European regions as well as in the local
areas. This fact was an indication that, in the modern Atlantic world, there was some sort
of increasing enchantment with interracial mating. Despite the Crown‟s desire to keep
this system in order and enforce it, the system was not as powerful and enforced as it was
intended to be. This was partially due to the fact that some of the classifications in the
system were easily manipulated or changed. The classifications could be done so by a
person moving to a town where his or her family‟s origins were not known, by wearing
certain types of clothing that were indicative of a certain culture, by “marrying up”, or
simply by speaking Spanish.
Inevitably, the Crown‟s precious system of cultural classification ended up not
being as solid as it was intended to be. Their system was more flexible and malleable
than the Crown desired, and it became even more difficult to manage as time went on,
partially due to the difficulty of distinguishing a person‟s ancestry. By the time 1650
came around, there were more people of mixed ancestries than there were Spanish
people. These numbers of people with mixed ancestries only increase more in the 18th
century. The caste system that was established was then abolished in the early 19th
century.

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It took the people of Spanish America until around the 1930s to start fighting back
the racist ideas that were put in place by colonialism. Writers, political leaders, and more
began to start movements that would upset the colonial racism and ideas and thus support
the indigenous foundations and heritages. Although these movements did help and did
make some people think differently, they did not eliminate racist ideas and attitudes
entirely. Those who led the movements, those who supported the movements, and others
who were aware of the situation were criticizing those who did not appreciate the fact
that people of African (and other) descents had a great effect on Latin America.

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Sources Used in Chronological Order
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_colonization_of_the_Americas#The_Caribbean:_Fi
rst_settlements_in_America
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_missions_in_California
http://www.pbs.org/kcet/when-worlds-collide/essays/social-order-in-the-spanish-new-
world.html