Mestizo

This article is about the Spanish term. For the Portuguese term, see Mestiço. For the American rapper, see Mestizo (rapper). For the Mexican pop group, see Mestizzo.

Mestizo
A casta painting of a Spanish man and an Indigenous woman with a Mestizo child
Regions with significant populations
Latin America, United States, Spain, Philippines, Micronesia
Languages
Religion
Predominantly Roman Catholic; religious minorities including Protestants and syncretism with Indigenous beliefs exist

Mestizo (/mɛˈstiːzoʊ, mɪˈ-/ mest-EE-zoh, mist-,[1][2] Spanish: [mesˈtiθo] or [mesˈtiso]; fem. mestiza, literally 'mixed person') is a person of mixed European and Indigenous American ancestry in the former Spanish Empire.[3][4] In certain regions such as Latin America, it may also refer to people who are culturally European even though their ancestors were Indigenous.[5] The term was used as an ethno-racial exonym for mixed-race castas that evolved during the Spanish Empire. It was a formal label for individuals in official documents, such as censuses, parish registers, Inquisition trials, and others. Priests and royal officials might have classified persons as mestizos, but individuals also used the term in self-identification. With the Bourbon reforms and the independence of the Americas, the caste system disappeared and terms like "mestizo" fell in popularity.[6]

The noun mestizaje, derived from the adjective mestizo, is a term for racial mixing that did not come into usage until the 20th century; it was not a colonial-era term.[7] In the modern era, mestizaje is used by scholars such as Gloria Anzaldúa as a synonym for miscegenation, but with positive connotations.[8]

In the modern era, particularly in Latin America, mestizo has become more of a cultural term, with the term indio being reserved exclusively for people who have maintained a separate Indigenous ethnic and cultural identity, language, tribal affiliation, community engagement, etc. In late 19th- and early 20th-century Peru, for instance, mestizaje denoted those peoples with evidence of Euro-indigenous ethno-racial "descent" and access—usually monetary access, but not always—to secondary educational institutions. Similarly, well before the 20th century, Euramerican "descent" did not necessarily denote Iberian American ancestry or solely Spanish American ancestry (distinct Portuguese administrative classification: mestiço), especially in Andean regions re-infrastructured by Euramerican "modernities" and buffeted by mining labor practices. This conception changed by the 1920s, especially after the national advancement and cultural economics of indigenismo.[9]

To avoid confusion with the original usage of the term mestizo, mixed people started to be referred to collectively as castas. In some Latin American countries, such as Mexico, the concept of the Mestizo became central to the formation of a new independent identity that was neither wholly Spanish nor wholly Indigenous. The word mestizo acquired another meaning in the 1930 census, being used by the government to refer to all Mexicans who did not speak Indigenous languages regardless of ancestry.[10][11] In 20th- and 21st-century Peru, the nationalization of Quechuan languages and Aymaran languages as "official languages of the State...wherever they predominate"[12] has increasingly severed these languages from mestizaje as an exonym (and, in certain cases, indio), with indigenous languages tied to linguistic areas as well as[13] topographical and geographical contexts. La sierra from the Altiplano to Huascarán, for instance, is more commonly connected to language families in both urban and rural vernacular.[14]

During the colonial era of Mexico, the category Mestizo was used rather flexibly to register births in local parishes and its use did not follow any strict genealogical pattern. With Mexican independence, in academic circles created by the "mestizaje" or "Cosmic Race" ideology, scholars asserted that Mestizos are the result of the mixing of all the races. After the Mexican Revolution the government, in its attempts to create an unified Mexican identity with no racial distinctions, adopted and actively promoted the "mestizaje" ideology.[10]

  1. ^ "mestizo". Dictionary.com Unabridged (Online). n.d. Retrieved 15 October 2017.
  2. ^ "mestizo". The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.). HarperCollins.
  3. ^ Marez, Curtis (2007). "Mestizo/a". In Burgett, Bruce; Hendler, Glenn (eds.). Keywords for American Cultural Studies, Third Edition. NYU Press.
  4. ^ Mangan, Jane E. (30 June 2014). "Mestizos". Atlantic History. doi:10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0240.
  5. ^ "mestizo | Definition & Facts". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 15 March 2021.
  6. ^ Rappaport, The Disappearing Mestizo, p. 4
  7. ^ Rappaport, Joanne. The Disappearing Mestizo, p. 247.
  8. ^ Lewis, Stephen. "Mestizaje", in The Encyclopedia of Mexico. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1997, p. 840.
  9. ^ Tarica, Estelle (2016). "Indigenismo". Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History. Oxford Research Encyclopedias. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199366439.013.68. ISBN 978-0-19-936643-9. Retrieved 5 April 2022. {{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help)
  10. ^ a b "en el censo de 1930 el gobierno mexicano dejó de clasificar a la población del país en tres categorías raciales, blanco, mestizo e indígena, y adoptó una nueva clasificación étnica que distinguía a los hablantes de lenguas indígenas del resto de la población, es decir de los hablantes de español". Archived from the original on 23 August 2013.
  11. ^ Bartolomé, Miguel Alberto (1996). "Pluralismo cultural y redefinicion del estado en México" (PDF). Coloquio sobre derechos indígenas. Oaxaca: IOC. p. 5. ISBN 978-968-6951-31-8.
  12. ^ "Political Constitution of Peru" (PDF).
  13. ^ Urban, Matthias (1 May 2021). "Linguistic and cultural divisions in pre-Hispanic Northern Peru". Language Sciences. 85: 101354. doi:10.1016/j.langsci.2020.101354. ISSN 0388-0001. S2CID 234217133.
  14. ^ Coler, Matt; Valenzuela, Pilar; Zariquiey, Roberto (April 2018). "Introduction". International Journal of American Linguistics. 84 (S1): S1–S4. doi:10.1086/695541. ISSN 0020-7071. S2CID 224808126.