Corporeal Concerns: Eighteenth-Century Casta Paintings and Colonial Bodies in Spanish Texas

Abstract

Eighteenth-century casta paintings from northern New Spain depict the ethnic and racial combinations resulting from mestizaje, such as mulatto. Casta paintings offer rich insights on the quotidian practices of colonial individuals, including dress, diet, and household practices; this is information that archaeologists desire. Experiences, however, often differed drastically from the world represented in images as individuals reworked colonial categories in identity formation. These paintings represent a static image of a supposedly highly structured and regulated colonial world that was imposed on colonial peoples through their bodies. Visual and archaeological evidence provide different stories, drawn from official versions and lived experiences. Casta paintings, ethnohistorical documents, and material culture are used to explore how the imagined, ordered world depicted in casta paintings meshed with daily life in colonial communities in Spanish Texas and the place of the body in the Spanish colonial world.