Estate and Class in a Colonial City: Oaxaca in 1792

Abstract

Colonial Latin American societies have generally been presented as systems of estates following forms that were firmly entrenched in Europe before the Spanish conquest in America, an estate being “a legally defined segment of the population of a society which has distinctive rights and duties established by law” (Lenski 1966:77). Lyle McAlister suggests that the American equivalent of a threefold European system of noble—clergy—commoner estates was represented by broad racial classifications: Spaniards—Castas—Indians.