Most of the literature on racial mixing in colonial Spanish America takes at face value the categories - indio, negro, mestizo, mulato, español - that appear in archival documents. Using a series of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century cases from the Nuevo Reino de Granada (today, Colombia), this article explores the instability of these categories, particularly of the intermediate ones, and the extent to which they are subject to social negotiation.
race; mestizaje; New Kingdom of Granada
