three castas  Casta Paintings  On September 21, 2012, the Boston
Globe offered the following account of an interchange videotaped
at a fund-raiser for presidential candidate Mitt Romney:   “When
he [Mitt Romney] lamented that his father was born in Mexico to
American parents—‘Had he been born of Mexican parents, I’d have
a better shot of winning this’—a female donor spoke up.   ‘You
can pull an Elizabeth Warren,’ she said.   Romney explained to
the audience, ‘Elizabeth Warren, she’s the woman who’s running
for US Senate in Massachusetts who said she’s Cherokee.’   ‘It
turns out that at most she’s 1/32d Cherokee,” Romney added. “And
even that can’t be proven. So, in any event, I mean I could put
down my dad was born in Mexico and leave it at that.’”  There
are several take-aways here for both political pundits and
sociolinguists (not to mention prospective voters).  Mr.
Romney’s interlocutrix suggests that he could garner a larger
share of the increasingly important Latino vote by claiming to
have had a Mexica