What is mestizo?

  • (noun): A person of mixed racial ancestry (especially mixed European and Native American ancestry).
    Synonyms: ladino

Mestizo

Mestizo /mɛˈstizoʊ/ is a term traditionally used in Spain and Latin America for people of mixed heritage or descent. In some countries it has come to mean a mixture of European and Amerindian, while in others, such as Venezuela, mestizo means being mixed without specifying which admixture. The term was used as a racial category in the Casta system that was in use during the Spanish empire's control of their American colonies; it was used to describe those who had one European-born parent and one who was a member of an indigenous American population in some countries, while it was used to refer to people of European, African and Indigenous admixture in others like Venezuela. In the Casta system mestizos had fewer rights than European-born persons called "Peninsulares", and "Creoles" who were persons born in the New World of two European-born parents, but more rights than "Indios" and Negros. Also refers to the people of mixed race of native south american and spanish/european. During the colonial period, mestizos quickly became the majority group in much of what is today Latin America, and when the colonies started achieving independence from Spain, the mestizo group often became dominant. 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 and the word mestizo acquired its current double meaning of mixed cultural heritage and actual racial descent.

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Some articles on mestizo:

Subdivisions Of Belize - Demographics - Mestizos
... The Mestizo culture was originated from a mixture of mainly Spanish and Maya ... The Mestizos make up to 50% of the population of Belize ... The Mestizo towns centre on a main square, and social life focuses on the Catholic Church built on one side of it ...
Filipino Mestizo
... Filipino mestizo is a term used in the Philippines to describe people of mixed Filipino and foreign ancestry ... The word mestizo is of Spanish origin, and was originally used in the Americas to only describe people of mixed European and Native American ancestry ...
Clefting Prevalence In Different Cultures - Mestizo Americans
... Mestizo Americans that come from Mexico, Central America and South America, and the Caribbean (Meyerson, 1990) ... The prevalence of Mestizo Americans is lower than that of Caucasians and Native Americans, yet it is still higher than African Americans (Croen et al ... Mestizo have a prevalence of clefting of 9.7 per 10,000 live births (Kirby, Petrini Alter, 2000) ...
Languages Of Honduras - Mestizo
... They have been absorbed as "mestizos", though there are pockets of visibly African descended people in the south ... beginning of the twentieth century at least, Honduras has framed itself as a "mestizo" country, ignoring and at times disparaging both the African component of the population ...