, in the modern day, is a term used to describe people of mixed Spanish and Indigenous Americans descent in the Americas, with the term mestiza used for women, and mestizo used for men. Other definitions of the word would be used to describe any mixed-raced person living in Latin America, whether they are of African, European, or Indigenous ancestry. In certain regions of the continent, it may also refer to anyone who is culturally Hispanic, regardless of racial admixture. The term was used as an ethno-racial exonym for mixed-race 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.
The noun , derived from the adjective , is a term for racial mixing that did not come into usage until the 20th century; it was not a colonial-era term. In the modern era, mestizaje is used by scholars such as Gloria Anzaldúa as a synonym for miscegenation, with positive connotations.Lewis, Stephen. "Mestizaje", in The Encyclopedia of Mexico. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1997, p. 840
In the modern era, particularly in Latin America, has become more of a cultural term, with the term indio ('Indian') 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 accessusually monetary access, but not alwaysto secondary educational institutions. Similarly, well before the 20th century, Euramerican "descent" did not necessarily denote Spanish American ancestry (distinct Portuguese administrative classification: mestiço), especially in Andean regions re-infrastructured by United States and European "modernities" and buffeted by mining labor practices. This conception changed by the 1920s, especially after the national advancement and cultural economics of .
To avoid confusion with the original usage of the term , mixed people started to be referred to collectively as . 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 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. In 20th- and 21st-century Peru, the nationalization of Quechuan languages and Aymaran languages as "official languages of the State...wherever they predominate" 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 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.
Sorting society into racial categories was extremely important during the colonial period, in 1777, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon created a paper identifying each type of race in the Americas, including that if a white person and an Native American had a child, it would be a mestizo.
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.
Etymology The Spanish word is from Latin , meaning . Its usage was documented as early as 1275, to refer to the offspring of an Egyptian ("Hamite") and a Canaanite Jew (Semite). This term was first documented in English in 1582.
Cognates and related terms ( ), ( ), (), (), (), (), (), (), and mixed are all cognates of the Latin word .
The Portuguese cognate, , historically referred to any mixture of Portuguese and local populations in the Portuguese colonies. In colonial Brazil, most of the non-enslaved population was initially , i.e. mixed Portuguese and Native Brazilian. There was no descent-based casta system, and children of upper-class Portuguese landlord males and enslaved females enjoyed privileges higher than those given to the lower classes, such as formal education. Such cases were not so common and the children of enslaved women tended not to be allowed to inherit property. This right of inheritance was generally given to children of free women, who tended to be legitimate offspring in cases of concubinage (this was a common practice in certain Indigenous American and African cultures). In the Portuguese-speaking world, the contemporary sense has been the closest to the historical usage from the Middle Ages. Because of important linguistic and historical differences, (mixed, mixed-ethnicity, miscegenation, etc.) is separated altogether from (which refers to any kind of brown people) and (brown people originally of European–Indigenous American admixture, or assimilated Indigenous American). The term can also refer to fully African or East Asian in their full definition (thus not brown). One does not need to be a to be classified as pardo or caboclo.
In Brazil specifically, at least in modern times, all non-Indigenous people are considered to be a single ethnicity (. Lines between ethnic groups are historically fluid); since the earliest years of the Brazilian colony, the group has been the most numerous among the free people. As explained above, the concept of should not be confused with mestizo as used in either the Spanish-speaking world or the English-speaking one. It does not relate to being of Indigenous American ancestry, and is not used interchangeably with , literally "brown people". (There are among all major groups of the country: Indigenous, Asian, , and African, and they likely constitute the majority in the three latter groups.)
In English-speaking Canada, Canadian Métis (capitalized), as a loanword from French, refers to persons of mixed French or European and Indigenous ancestry, who were part of a particular ethnic group. French-speaking Canadians, when using the word métis, are referring to Canadian Métis ethnicity, and all persons of mixed Indigenous and European ancestry. Many were involved in the fur trade with Canadian First Nations peoples (especially Cree and Anishinaabeg). Over generations, they developed a separate culture of hunters and trappers, and were concentrated in the Red River Valley and speak the Michif language.
Mestizo as a colonial-era category
In the Spanish colonial period, the Spanish developed a complex set of racial terms and ways to describe difference. Although this has been conceived of as a "system", and often called the sistema de castas or sociedad de castas, archival research shows that racial labels were not fixed throughout a person's life. Artwork created mainly in eighteenth-century Mexico, "casta paintings", show groupings of racial types in hierarchical order, which has influenced the way that modern scholars have conceived of social difference in Spanish America.
During the initial period of colonization of the Americas by the Spanish, there were three chief categories of ethnicities: Spaniard (español), American Indian (indio), and African (negro). Throughout the territories of the Spanish Empire in the Americas, ways of differentiating individuals in a racial hierarchy, often called in the modern era the sistema de castas or the sociedad de castas, developed where society was divided based on color, calidad (status), and other factors.
The main divisions were as follows: Español (fem. española), i.e. Spaniard – person of Spanish ancestry; a blanket term, subdivided into Peninsulares and Criollos Peninsular – a person of Spanish descent born in Spain who later settled in the Americas; Criollo (fem. criolla) – a person of Spanish descent born in the Americas; Castizo (fem. castiza) – a person with primarily Spanish and some American Indian ancestry born into a mixed family. Mestizo (fem. mestiza) – a person of extended mixed Spanish and American Indian ancestry; Indio (fem. India) – a person of pure American Indian ancestry; Pardo (fem. parda) – a person of mixed Spanish, Amerindian and African ancestry; sometimes a polite term for a black person; Mulato (fem. mulata) – a person of mixed Spanish and African ancestry; Zambo – a person of mixed African and American Indian ancestry; Negro (fem. negra) – a person of African descent, primarily former enslaved Africans and their descendants.
In theory, and as depicted in some eighteenth-century Mexican casta paintings, the offspring of a castizo/a [mixed Spanish – Mestizo] and an Español/a could be considered Español/a, or "returned" to that status.Mörner, Race Mixture, p. 58.
Racial labels in a set of eighteenth-century Mexican casta paintings by Miguel Cabrera: De Español e India, nace Mestiza De Español y Mestiza, nace Castiza De Castizo y Española, nace Española De Español y Negra, nace Mulata De Español y Mulata, nace Morisca De Español y Morisca, nace Albino De Español y Albina, nace Torna atrás De Español y Torna atrás, "Tente en el ayre" De Negro y India, Chino Cambuja De Chino Cambujo y India, Loba De Lobo y India, Albarazado De Albarazado y Mestiza, Barcino De Indio y Barcina, Zambaiga De Castizo y Mestiza, Chamizo Indios Gentiles (Barbarian Meco Indians)
Policies endorsing mestizaje were undertaken by the crown of Spain since 1503, when governor Nicolás de Ovando received royal orders to increase intermarrying. It was reiterated in a real cédula in 1514. In the early colonial period, the children of Spaniards and American Indians were raised either in the Hispanic world, if the father recognized the offspring as his natural child; or the child was raised in the Indigenous world of the mother if he did not. As early as 1533, Charles V mandated the high court (Audiencia) to take the children of Spanish men and indigenous women from their mothers and educate them in the Spanish sphere.Mörner, Race Mixture, p. 55. Miguel Díez de Aux, the first mestizo documented in history, was among those raised by their Spanish fathers. The mixed group born out of Christian wedlock also increased in numbers, generally living in their mother's Indigenous communities.