How were non-whites treated in Spanish America?

by El_Presidente17

I know that there were laws giving indigenous peoples the same rights as whites and criollos, but what was the effective situation? Did indigenous peoples have those rights in practice, or they only had them "on paper"? What was the relation between blacks, criollos, mestizos, whites and "indios"?

drylaw

That's a huge question that spans many books and debates. How native people partook of colonial justice (they had rights but not the same as Europeans) and  how the groups you mention interacted as part of casta system is really complex. I've written here on various aspects of it, especially for Mexico:

If I'd recommend just one book on all this it's  "María Elena Martínez's Genealogical Fictions", a great study of limpieza de sangre and the casta system. 

 Hope this helps!