Mestizo Identity: The Roots of Mixed-Race Culture in Latin America
What is a mestizo?
Is there a mestizo culture?
What does mestizaje have to do with the history of Latin America?
These questions are at the core of Latin American and mestizo identities.
If you’re interested in understanding Latin American culture and learning its language, Spanish, you must get familiarized with the mestizo identity.
Keep reading to learn about the meaning and origins of the term mestizo, its evolution throughout the centuries, and its cultural significance nowadays.
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Historical Overview of the Term Mestizo
The Spanish word mestizo is used “to designate the people of mixed European and indigenous non-European ancestry.” In other words, a mestizo is a person of mixed-race descent.
In Latin America, this mixing of races has been taking place for the last 500 years in a long, historical process known as mestizaje.
This second term, mestizaje, is “the process of race mixture and the process of cultural mixing that occurred widely in the Atlantic world during the colonial period.”
Origins of the Term Mestizo
The term mestizo was first used in colonial Latin America, and it “originally applied only to the children resulting from the union of one European and one Amerindian parent, or the children of two mestizo parents.”
Once the Spanish conquest of the indigenous territories in the Americas was finished, the colonization started. This event brought “the racial fusion of three social groups in a process sanctioned by royal orders and known as mestizaje.”
“A casta painting of a Spanish man and an Indigenous woman with a Mestizo child.”
Evolution Over Time of the Term Mestizo
As explained before, during colonial times, mestizaje was understood as the mixed blood process that naturally occurred between Caucasian, Black, and Indigenous people.
However, this process developed in endless ways, creating a different set of terms to put a caste system with Spanish people at the top of the pyramid.
This way, a person of white and indigenous descent could be called español, barcino, castizo, cholo, or gentil, among other terms and depending on the circumstances surrounding their situation.
A person of white and black descent would be a mulatto, cabro, loro, morisco or tercerón.
While people of black and indigenous descent had terms such as cambujo, chino, jarocho, zambo, and lobo.
With time, this caste system imploded with the Spanish Empire in the Americas, and all those terms fell out of use. However, one word persisted: mestizo.
“Casta painting showing 16 hierarchically arranged, mixed-race groupings”.
Cultural Significance of the Concept of Mestizaje Throughout the Centuries
When the Spanish arrived in the Americas five centuries ago, being a mestizo was a social disadvantage. This is because the main jobs and opportunities were reserved for Spaniards born in peninsular Spain.
However, with time the whole concept has changed as it became a defining sign of the identity of Latin American people.
Let’s try to explain why and how this happened.
There were many differences between the two European empires that came to America, the British and the Spanish.
But one of those differences was the definitive to mark the identities of the inhabitants in America.
The British didn’t think it was a good idea to mix with the natives of the lands they conquered, while the Spanish didn’t mind.
As a result, the new nations that emerged had completely different identities after the European empires imploded.
For instance, the United States and Canada were predominantly white countries with a large majority of people of European descent.
While most of Latin America was populated by mestizo people.
This way, being mestizo became synonymous with being Latin American. It became the defining feature of Latin American culture.
But also the root cause of its identity crisis.
Latin American writers and intellectuals have asked themselves throughout the years, “What are we? Who are we? Are we European? Do we belong to the West? Or Is our Indigenous blood the source of our real identity?”
Intellectuals such as Octavio Paz, Carlos Fuentes, and José Vasconcelos wrote books about this subject.
The truth might be that Latin American people aren’t Westerners or Indigenous. They might be something new. Ironically the intellectual that pointed this out wasn’t a Latin American one.
Samuel P. Huntington writes in the essay “The Clash of Civilizations” that there are seven or maybe eight major civilizations: Western, Islamic, Confucian, Japanese, Slavic-Orthodox, Hindu, Latin American, and possibly African.
This essay is famous for many other ideas, but especially for the insight that calling Latin America a civilization in itself is something that hadn’t occurred to any Latin American intellectual.
The conclusion is that the result after 500 years of mestizaje is something entirely new and unique and that mestizo race and history define it.
Different Ways of Embracing the Mestizo Identity
As with most historical processes, not everybody agrees with the idea of Latin American civilization and with mestizaje being its defining feature.
Argentina, Uruguay, and even Chile have larger white populations than the rest of Latin American countries and, as such, tend to feel more European in general.
Countries such as Bolivia and Peru have large Indigenous populations, and the idea of mestizaje is frequently challenged.
On the other hand, Caribbean islands such as Cuba and the Dominican Republic have a large percentage of the Black population. For these countries, mestizaje is different due to its unique history.
Finally, although nations such as Mexico and Colombia have a predominance of mestizo population, they still struggle with their mixed identity.
New racial concepts such as poder prieto and whitexicans in Mexico show that even in predominantly mestizo countries. All in all, the idea of mestizaje hasn’t been completely assimilated.
Compañía Folklórica México Mestizo.
Mestizo Identity and Spanish
If we accept that mestizaje is the defining feature of Latin American civilization, it’s fair to say that the Spanish language comes in a very close second place.
You can find different levels of mestizaje throughout Latin America, as mentioned before, but you’ll always find the presence of the Spanish language.
Being mestizo and speaking Spanish are two faces of the same coin.
If you’re interested in mestizo culture, learning Spanish will help you to understand it better.
On the other hand, if you’re interested in speaking Spanish, educating yourself in the intricacies of mestizo culture will help you to better understand the Spanish language.
Everything is connected!
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