Chino (casta)
Chino (feminine china) was a casta term used in colonial Mexico to refer to people of mixed ancestry. In the eighteenth century, individuals of mixed Amerindian and African ancestry came to be called chinos. Historical usage A Mexican Inquisition bigamy case in Mexico City labeled one woman variously as a china, loba, and parda, one example of a person shifting racial categorization. In marriage applications where individuals had to include the names of their parents, chinos tended not to know this information. Use in casta paintings When painters produced in the eighteenth century formal depictions of "castes" as envisioned by members of the elite, the term chino appears with no fixed definition. These paintings show father of one racial category, mother of another, and the offspring yet a third category. In Mexican casta paintings, a ‘’chino’’ could refer to offspring of a Lobo (African + Indigenous) and Negra (pure African); Lobo and India (pure Indigenous woman); Mulatto (European + Negra) and an India; a Coyote and a Mulata; a Spaniard and Morisca (light-skinned woman with African ancestry); and a Chamicoyote and Indian woman. Contemporary usage The consummation of Mexican Independence in 1821 abolished the legal use of the casta system.