Racial Structure of the Spanish

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Racial Structure of the Spanish
After the Spaniards defeated the Aztec Empire in the year 1521, the Spanish people established the New Spain colony that had lasted for over three centuries. The indigenous people in Mexico could not resist the incoming Europeans because of the need for military tools like the gunpowder to be used in the war against Spaniards, and the Mexicans did not have immunity to the diseases that came with the Europeans such as smallpox that decimated a large population of the Mexicans substantially.
Before the invasion and colonization by the Spaniards, the Mexicans consisted of a homogenous cultural system because of the location of the country and the already well-set class structure. After the Mexican colonization, their population structure changed drastically, because it increased to about six million inhabitants in the New Spain (Vigil 75). Inevitably, the change in the population further led to significant changes in social structure, class structure, and the racial structures. Therefore, the imposed caste system by the Spanish people was differentiated certain levels of biological mixtures among the various ethnic groups that were residing in Mexico. The caste system potentially decided an individual’s wealth, social status, economic status and the quality of life.
The formation of the caste system in Mexico after its colonization was complex especially because of the formation of racial and biological hierarchies that highly restricted social mobility (Russell 95).

In the post-colonial Mexico period, most of the wealthy were notably white while the Mestizos occupied the middle class and working class positions and the indigenous descents were living in poverty conditions. Therefore, the Spanish colonial period had a significant impact on all aspects of the Mexicans lives particularly to the racial structure reality during that period up to the present.

Work Cited
Vigil, James Diego. From Indians to Chicanos: the dynamics of Mexican-American culture. Waveland Press, 2011.
Russell, James W. After the fifth sun: Class and race in North America. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1994.