Mestizo

Mestizo (mɛsˈtiːzoʊ,_mɪs-; mesˈtiso; fem. mestiza, literally "mixed person") is a person of mixed European and indigenous non-European ancestry in the Spanish Empire. In certain regions such as Latin America, it may also refer to people who are culturally European even though their ancestors are Native American. 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. The noun mestizaje, derived from the adjective mestizo, is a term for racial mixing that did not come into usage until the twentieth 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, but with positive connotations. 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 accessusually monetary access, but not alwaysto secondary educational institutions. Similarly, well before the twentieth 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. To avoid confusion with the original usage of the term mestizo, mixed people started to be referred to collectively as castas.