The first Spaniards to arrive in New Mexico were led by Francisco Vazquez de Coronado in 1540. The fictional Delgado family portrayed in DAUGHTER OF THE WEEDS arrived in the late 1600s after the Pueblo Revolt. The story takes place in 2020, hundreds of years later.

The main character in the novel, Genna Delgado, can trace her family history for hundreds of years because the Catholic church maintained detailed records of births and deaths. Your bloodline determined your status in the Spanish Casta system. Although New Mexico was geographically removed from Spain, the purity of your bloodline mattered, especially among people who had little but rank. Your casta level determined everything, including how much you paid in taxes, and whether you paid taxes at all.

The photo on the far right shows a single panel of the levels of casta recognized by the King of Spain. The full panel shows 54 casta levels. The number of levels recognized depended on location, population composition, and distance from Spain.

The fictional village of Dos Pies recognized three levels—Espanole, Anglo, and Nativo.

Early New Mexico had a Black population. One of the first was a slave, Estevanico, bought by Antonio de Mendoza, the first Viceroy of New Spain. Estevanico accompanied Fray Marcos de Niza on his journey to the north, to what is now New Mexico.

A panel from an 18th-century painting of La Casta in the National Museum of Mexico shows 54 categories of La Casta. The number of levels of status varied depending on geography and the population.