How did the spanish impose racial hierarchies in the regions of the americas that they controlled during the 1500s and 1600s?

Once the Spanish gained control over large territories in the Americas, they immediately started to implement Spanish culture, religion, laws, and hierarchy. The hierarchy was based mostly on race and in one instance on place of birth. The top level of the hierarchy was occupied by the pure blood Spanish that were born in Spain. The second level was occupied by the pure blood Spanish that were born in the Americas. The third level was occupied by the people that had mixed ancestry, Spanish and Native American one. The fourth level was reserved for the pure blood Native Americans. This was definitely a very discriminatory manner of hierarchical division in the societies, and it didn't lasted for very long, especially because very soon the Spanish born in the Americas and the ones of mixed ancestry started to outnumber by far the Spanish born in Spain.

The Spanish imposed a pyramidal caste system to organize the population of the colonies according to their racial origin.

During the colonial period of Spanish rule in America (16th and 17th centuries) a stratified social system was established based on caste system in which people were classified according to:

This caste society organized the population in a pyramidal shape that located the Spanish and Europeans.

At the second level was the population of original people, that is, indigenous and black people from Africa.

From the third level down, the other castes were classified as a product of the mixture of the groups mentioned above and their results.

According to sociological studies, it was established that this system was influenced by the idea of blood cleansing, which is why they organized society in a hierarchy according to the proportion of Spanish blood.

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