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 non-European 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 are 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]
The Spanish word mestizo is from Latin mixticius, meaning mixed.[15][16] Its usage was documented as early as 1275, to refer to the offspring of an Egyptian/Afro Hamite and a Semite/Afro Asiatic.[17] This term was first documented in English in 1582.[18]
Mestizo (Spanish: [mesˈtiθo] or [mesˈtiso]), mestiço (Portuguese: [mɨʃˈtisu] or [mesˈtʃisu]), métis (French: [meti(s)]), mestís (Catalan: [məsˈtis]), Mischling (German: [ˈmɪʃlɪŋ]), meticcio (Italian: [meˈtittʃo]), mestiezen (Dutch: [mɛsˈtizə(n)]), mestee (Middle English: [məsˈtiː]), and mixed are all cognates of the Latin word mixticius.
The Portuguese cognate, mestiço, 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 mestiço de indio, 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 Native 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, mestiço (mixed, mixed-ethnicity, miscegenation, etc.) is separated altogether from pardo (which refers to any kind of brown people) and caboclo (brown people originally of European–Indigenous American admixture, or assimilated Indigenous American). The term mestiços can also refer to fully African or East Asian in their full definition (thus not brown). One does not need to be a mestiço 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 (os brasileiros. Lines between ethnic groups are historically fluid); since the earliest years of the Brazilian colony, the mestiço group has been the most numerous among the free people. As explained above, the concept of mestiço 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 Native American ancestry, and is not used interchangeably with pardo, literally "brown people". (There are mestiços among all major groups of the country: Indigenous, Asian, pardo, 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.
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.[19] 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.[19]
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:
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.[20]
Racial labels in a set of eighteenth-century Mexican casta paintings by Miguel Cabrera:
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.[21] This mixed group born out of Christian wedlock increased in numbers, generally living in their mother's Indigenous communities.[21]
Mestizos were the first group in the colonial era to be designated as a separate category from the Spanish (Españoles) and enslaved African blacks (Negros) and were included in the designation of "vagabonds" (vagabundos) in 1543 in Mexico. Although Mestizos were often classified as castas, they had a higher standing than any mixed-race person since they did not have to pay tribute, the men could be ordained as priests, and they could be licensed to carry weapons, in contrast to negros, mulattoes, and other castas. Unlike Blacks and mulattoes, Mestizos had no African ancestors.[22] Intermarriage between Españoles and Mestizos resulted in offspring designated Castizos ("three-quarters white"), and the marriage of a castizo/a to an Español/a resulted in the restoration of Español/a status to the offspring. Don Alonso O’Crouley observed in Mexico (1774), "If the mixed-blood is the offspring of a Spaniard and an Indian, the stigma [of race mixture] disappears at the third step in descent because it is held as systematic that a Spaniard and an Indian produce a mestizo; a mestizo and a Spaniard, a castizo; and a castizo and a Spaniard, a Spaniard. The admixture of Indian blood should not indeed be regarded as a blemish, since the provisions of law give the Indian all that he could wish for, and Philip II granted to mestizos the privilege of becoming priests. On this consideration is based the common estimation of descent from a union of Indian and European or creole Spaniard."[23] O’Crouley states that the same process of restoration of racial purity does not occur over generations for European-African offspring marrying whites. "From the union of a Spaniard and a Negro the mixed-blood retains the stigma for generations without losing the original quality of a mulato."[24]
The Spanish colonial regime divided groups into two basic legal categories, the Republic of Indians (República de Indios) and the Republic of Spaniards (República de Españoles) comprised the Spanish (Españoles) and all other non-Indian peoples. Indians were free vassals of the crown, whose commoners paid tribute while Indigenous elites were considered nobles and tribute exempt, as were Mestizos. Indians were nominally protected by the crown, with non-Indians (Mestizos, blacks, and mulattoes) forbidden to live in Indigenous communities. Mestizos and Indians in Mexico habitually held each other in mutual antipathy. This was particularly the case with commoner American Indians against Mestizos, some of whom infiltrated their communities and became part of the ruling elite. Spanish authorities turned a blind eye to the Mestizos' presence, since they collected commoners' tribute for the crown and came to hold offices. They were useful intermediaries for the colonial state between the Republic of Spaniards and the Republic of Indians.[25]
A person's legal racial classification in colonial Spanish America was closely tied to social status, wealth, culture, and language use. Wealthy people paid to change or obscure their actual ancestry. Many Indigenous people left their traditional villages and sought to be counted as Mestizos to avoid tribute payments to the Spanish.[26] Many Indigenous people, and sometimes those with partial African descent, were classified as Mestizo if they spoke Spanish and lived as Mestizos.
In colonial Venezuela, pardo was more commonly used instead of mestizo. Pardo means being mixed without specifying which mixture;[27] it was used to describe anyone born in the Americas whose ancestry was a mixture of European, Native American, and African.[28]
When the First Mexican Republic was established in 1824, legal racial categories ceased to exist. The production of casta paintings in New Spain ceased at the same juncture, after almost a century as a genre.
Because the term had taken on a myriad of meanings, the designation "Mestizo" was actively removed from census counts in Mexico and is no longer in official nor governmental use.[18]
