Mestiza
Mestizo (; Spanish: [mesˈtiθo] (listen); fem. mestiza) is a racial classification used to refer to a person of a combined European and Indigenous American ancestry. The term was used as an ethnic/racial category for mixed-race castas that evolved during the Spanish Empire. Although, broadly speaking, mestizo means someone of mixed European/Indigenous heritage, the term did not have a fixed meaning in the colonial period. It was a formal label for individuals in official documentation, such as censuses, parish registers, Inquisition trials, and other matters. 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 Indian being reserved exclusively for people who have maintained a separate Indigenous ethnic and cultural identity, language, tribal affiliation, etc. In late 19th- and early 20th-century Peru, for instance, mestizaje denoted those peoples with evidence of "mixed" ethno-racial descent and access—usually monetary access, but not always—to secondary educational institutions. 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. 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 its current meaning, being used by the government to refer to all Mexicans who do not speak Indigenous languages, including people of complete European or Indigenous descent. As well as those of African, and to a much lesser extent, Asian ancestry.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.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 American Indian and African cultures).
In Canada, the Métis people are a distinct ethnic community composed of the descendants of Europeans (usually French, sometimes Scottish or English) involved in the fur trade and 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. Métis does not include people of mixed European and Inuit ancestry, nor is it used to describe any mixed-race individual. It is not comparable to the term Mestizo.
In the Philippines, which was a Captaincy General ruled by the Viceroyalty of New Spain in modern-day Mexico, the term mestizo was used to refer to a Filipino with any foreign ancestry, and usually shortened as Tisoy.
Similar Artists