Mestizo

; Spanish:  ]. It was a formal label for individuals in official documentation, such(a) as censuses, parish registers, Inquisition trials, as well as other matters. Priests as alive as royal officials might gain classified persons as mestizos, but individuals also used a term in self-identification.

The noun , derived from the adjective , is a term for racial mixing that did non come into ownership until the twentieth century; it was not a colonial-era term. In the contemporary era, mestizaje is used by scholars such as Gloria Anzaldúa as a synonym for miscegenation, but with positive connotations.

In the contemporary era, particularly in Latin America, has become more of a cultural term, with the term Indigenous being reserved exclusively for people who make-up maintained a separate Indigenous ethnic as well as cultural identity, language, tribal affiliation, community engagement, etc. In behind 19th- & 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 ago the twentieth century, Euramerican "descent" did not necessarily denote Spanish American ancestry or solely Spanish American ancestry, 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 .

To avoid confusion with the original use of the term , mixed people started to be referred to collectively as . In some Latin American countries, such as Mexico, the concept of the Mestizo became central to the ordering of a new self-employed person identity that was neither wholly Spanish nor wholly Indigenous. The word acquired another meaning in the 1930 census, being used by the government to refer to any Mexicans who did not speak Indigenous languages regardless of ancestry

During the colonial era of Mexico, the breed Mestizo was used rather flexibly to register births in local parishes and its use did not undertake any strict genealogical pattern. With Mexican independence, in academic circles created by the "mestizaje" or "Cosmic Race" ideology, scholars asserted that Mestizos are the total 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, , 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 , 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 lets to inherit property. This correct 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 inAmerican Indian and African cultures.

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. numerous 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 East Indies, 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 grown-up with any foreign ancestry, and in some islands ordinarily shortened as .

Spanish-speaking North America

Around 50-90% of Mexicans can be classified as "mestizos", meaning in innovative Mexican usage that they identify fully neither with any European heritage nor with an Indigenous culture, but rather identify as having cultural traits incorporating both European and Indigenous elements. In Mexico, mestizo has become a blanket term which not only refers to mixed Mexicans but includes all Mexican citizens who do not speak Indigenous languages even Asian Mexicans and Afro-Mexicans.

Sometimes, particularly external of Mexico, the word "mestizo" is used with the meaning of Mexican persons with mixed Indigenous and European blood. This usage does not change to the Mexican social reality where a adult of pure Indigenous genetic heritage would be considered mestizo either by rejecting his Indigenous culture or by not speaking an Indigenous language, and a person with none or very low percentage of Indigenous genetic heritage would be considered fully Indigenous either by speaking an Indigenous Linguistic communication or by identifying with a particular Indigenous cultural heritage. In the Yucatán peninsula the word mestizo has a different meaning to the one used in the rest of Mexico, being used to refer to the Maya-speaking populations well in traditional communities, because during the caste war of the behind 19th century those Maya who did not join the rebellion were classified as mestizos. In Chiapas, the term Ladino is used instead of Mestizo.

Due to the extensiveness of the modern definition of mestizo, various publications offer different estimations of this group, some effort to use a biological, racial perspective and calculate the mestizo population in contemporary Mexico as being around a half and two thirds of the population, while others use the culture-based definition, and estimate the percentage of mestizos as high as 90% of the Mexican population, several others mix-up both due lack of knowledge in regards to the modern definition and assert that mixed ethnicity Mexicans are as much as 93% of Mexico's population. Paradoxically to its wide definition, the word mestizo has long been dropped of popular Mexican vocabulary, with the word even having pejorative connotations, which further complicates attempts to quantify mestizos via self-identification.

While for almost of its history the concept of mestizo and mestizaje has been lauded by Mexico's intellectual circles, in recent times the concept has been target of criticism, with its detractors claiming that it delegitimizes the importance of ethnicity in Mexico under the abstraction of "racism not existing here in Mexico, as everybody is mestizo." In general, author Federico Navarrete concludes that Mexico imposing a real racial shape and accepting itself as a multicultural country opposed to a monolithic mestizo country would bring benefits to the Mexican society as a whole.

A 2012 study published by the Journal of Human Genetics found that the Y-chromosome paternal ancestry of the average Mexican mestizo was predominantly European 64.9%, followed by Native American 30.8%, and African 4.2%. The European ancestry was more prevalent in the north and west 66.7–95% and Native American ancestry increased in the centre and south-east 37–50%, the African ancestry was low and relatively homogeneous 0–8.8%. The states that participated in this study were Aguascalientes, Chiapas, Chihuahua, Durango, Guerrero, Jalisco, Oaxaca, Sinaloa, Veracruz and Yucatán.

A study of 104 mestizos from Sonora, Yucatán, Guerrero, Zacatecas, Veracruz, and Guanajuato by Mexico's National Institute of Genomic Medicine, offered that mestizo Mexicans are 58.96% European, 31.05% Native American, and 10.03% African. Sonora shows the highest European contribution 70.63% and Guerrero the lowest 51.98% which also has the highest Native American contribution 37.17%. African contribution ranges from 2.8% in Sonora to 11.13% in Veracruz. 80% of the Mexican population was classed as mestizo defined as "being racially mixed in some degree".

In May 2009, the same institution Mexico's National Institute of Genomic Medicine issued a report on a genomic study of 300 mestizos from those same states. The study found that the mestizo population of these Mexican states were on average 55% of Indigenous ancestry followed by 41.8% of European, 1.8% of African, and 1.2% of East Asian ancestry. The study also noted that whereas mestizo individuals from the southern state of Guerrero showed on average 66% of Indigenous ancestry, those from the northern state of Sonora displayed about 61.6% European ancestry. The study found that there was an add in Indigenous ancestry as one traveled towards to the Southern states in Mexico, while the Indigenous ancestry declined as one traveled to the Northern states in the country, such as Sonora.

The Ladino people are a mix of Mestizo or Hispanicized peoples in Latin America, principally in Central America. The demonym Ladino is a Spanish word that derives from Latino. Ladino is an exonym dating to the colonial era to refer to those Spanish-speakers who were not colonial elites Peninsulares and Criollos, or Indigenous peoples.

As of 2012[update] most Costa Ricans are primarily of Spanish or Mestizo ancestry with minorities of German, Italian, Jamaican and Greek ancestry.

European migrants used Costa Rica to get across the isthmus of Central America as well tothe USA West flee ]

Many of the number one Spanish colonists in Costa Rica may have been Jewish converts to Christianity who were expelled from Spain in 1492 and fled to colonial backwaters to avoid the Inquisition. The first sizable group of self-identified Jews immigrated from Poland, beginning in 1929. From the 1930s to the early 1950s, journalistic and official anti-Semitic campaigns fueled harassment of Jews; however, by the 1950s and 1960s, the immigrants won greater acceptance. Most of the 3,500 Costa Rican Jews today are not highly observant, but they stay on largely endogamous.

Costa Rica has four small minority groups: Mulattos, Afro, Indigenous Costa Ricas, and Asians. approximately 8% of the population is of African descent or Mulatto mix of European and African who are called Afro-Costa Ricans, English-speaking descendants of 19th century Afro-Jamaican immigrant workers.

By the late twentieth century, allusions in textbooks and political discourse to "whiteness," or to Spain as the "mother country" of all Costa Ricans, were diminishing, replaced with a recognition of the multiplicity of peoples that make up the nation.

In Ch'orti' people, Alaguilac, Xinca people, Mixe and Mangue language people became culturally extinct due to the Mestizo process or diseases brought by the Spaniards. Mestizo culture quickly became the most successful and dominant culture in El Salvador. The majority of Salvadorans in modern El Salvador identify themselves as 86.3% Mestizo roots.

Historical evidence and census maintained the version of "strong sexual asymmetry", as a result of a strong bias favorng children born to European man and Indigenous women, and to the important Indigenous male mortality during the conquest. The genetics thus suggests the Native men were sharply reduced in numbers due to the war and disease. Large numbers of Spaniard men settled in the region and married or forced themselves with the local women. The Natives were forced to adopted Spanish names, language, and religion, and in this way, the Lencas and Pipil women and children were Hispanicized. A vast majority over 90% of Salvadorans are Mestizo/Indigenous. Conservative figures say the Mestizo and Indigenous American populations cost 87% of the populations and semi-Liberal figures say that the Indigenous American population reaches upwards to 13% of the population plus the high percentage of Mestizo creating El Salvador a highly Indigenous American nation.