Lobo (fem. Loba) (Spanish for "wolf") is a racial category for a mixed-race person used in Mexican paintings illustrating the caste (casta) system in 17th- and 18th-century Spanish America.
Definitions Lobo does not have a fixed meaning, with possible parents being a black man and an Indian woman, a Cambujo (African/Amerindian) and an Indian woman, a Torna atrás and an Indian woman, a Mestizo and an Indian woman, or a Salta atrás (of African/European ancestry) and a Mulatto woman.García Saiz, Maria Conception. Las Castas Mexicanas: Un Género Pictórico Americano. Milan: Olivetti 1989, pp. 28-29.
Lobo was a classification used in official colonial documentation, including the Inquisition trials, marriage registers and censuses.Katzew, Ilona. Casta Painting. New Haven: Yale University Press 2004, p. 44. One example of a Loba is a mixed-race woman who came before the Mexican Inquisition; she had been given multiple racial labels. She was publicly known as a China, was known to be a parda (a brown-skinned person), who "looked like a loba", suggesting she had visible African features.quoted in Vinson, Ben III. Before Mestizaje: The Frontiers of Race and Caste in Colonial Mexico. New York: Cambridge University Press 2018, pp. 64-65
There were regional differences in colonial Mexico for racial labeling. For instance, in Xichú and Casas Viejas, in the Bajío region near Querétaro and the Sierra Gorda mountains, where there were resident indigenous populations, as well as blacks and mulattos, locally the people used lobos as a "normative category".Vinson, Before Mestizaje, pp. 98-99.
In his examination of marriage patterns from marital registers, Vinson found no records of lobos marrying each other; brides and grooms thus classified chose partners from other racial categories.Vinson, Before Mestizaje, p. 128
In eighteenth-century casta paintings, lobos are usually shown doing physical work and not lavishly dressed, indicating lower class status. In Joaquín Antonio de Basarás's Origen, costumbres, y estado presente de mexicanos y philipinos (1763), the lobo father is a water carrier, while his Indian wife sells chickens.Katzew, Casta Painting, pp. 186-87, illustration 248. An early 18th-century set of casta paintings shows the Lobo as the offspring of a Black father and Indigenous mother; in the same set, a Lobo father and an India mother have a dark-skinned child labeled a Lobo Torna atrás, meaning the child more closely resembled the Black father.García Saiz, ‘’Las Castas Mexicanas’’, pp. 58, 59.
Ignacio María Barreda (1777)García Sáiz, María Concepción. Las Castas Mexicanas. Olivetti 1989, 140-41Anonymous (late 18th c?)García Sáiz, María Concepción. Las Castas Mexicanas. Olivetti 1989, 180-811. Español + India - Mestizo or Cholo 2. Español + Mestiza - Castizo or cuarterón 3. Castizo + Española - Español Criollo 4. Negro + Española - Mulato 5. Mulato + Española - Morisco 6. Morisco + Española - Albina 7. Español + Tornatrás Negro 8. Torna atrás + India - Lobo or Zambo 9. Indio + Loba - Chino 10. Chino + India - Zambaiga 11. Zambaiga + Chino - Cambujo 12. Cambuja + Chino - Genízara 13. Genízara + Chino - Albarazado 14. Albarazado + Negra - Calpamula 15. Calpamula + Albarazado - Gíbaro 16. Gíbaro + Albarazao - Tente en el aire 17. Mecos and Mecas, even though they are many, they are all similarEspañol con India, Mestizo Mestizo con Española, Castizo Castiza con Español, Española Español con Negra, Mulato Mulato con Española, Morisca Morisco con Española, Chino Chino con India, Salta atrás Salta atrás con Mulata, Lobo Lobo con China, Gíbaro [Jíbaro] Gíbaro con Mulata, Albarazado Albarazado con Negra, Cambujo Cambujo con India, Sambaiga (Zambaiga) Sambaigo con Loba, Calpamulato Calpamulto con Cambuja, Tente en el aire Tente en el aire con Mulata, No te entiendo No te entiendo con India, Torna atrás
See also Coyote (racial category)
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Further reading