The initial shortage of Spanish women and families in 16th-century Latin America contributed to frequent occurrences of MESTIZAJE (interracial sexual relations), and as a result, many mestizos (mixed-race persons of Indian and Spanish parentage).
Interracial sexual relations, far more prevalent in colonial Latin America than in British North America, produced a large, racially diverse stratum in the area under Spanish influence. The Spanish devised nomenclature to distinguish among the various amalgamations resulting from sexual relationships among persons of European, African, and Native American descent. Terms used to denote racial differences included, among others: mestizo, or Indian-white mixture; castizo, mestizo-white mixture; and ZAMBO, Indian-African mixture. Although seemingly firm categories, the Spanish applied such labels in a casual and unpredictable way, basing most assumptions on skin color. In addition, settlers in different regions of Latin America used different terms for similar hybrids. For example, settlers used the term zambo in Mexico but used chino in Brazil to refer to individuals of Indian-African heritage.
The majority of mestizo individuals were the products of unions between Spanish men and Indian women, and a large percentage of the mestizo population resulted from casual sexual encounters and concubinage. Nevertheless, some Spanish males married Indian women. In such cases the Spaniards benefited through the acquisition of land rights or other tribute from the woman’s family. In a number of cases Spanish men acknowledged their mestizo children by providing an inheritance and/or rearing them in the white community, but as a general rule, particularly during the late colonial period, most fathers did not welcome their mixed-race children. As a result, many mestizos made lives for themselves as part of the Indian community of their mothers. Others traveled to Europe, where they sought low-level positions on the outskirts of the Spanish economy as part of the church or state bureaucracy.
As a whole, mestizo men and women fared better in colonial society than did their Indian counterparts. They tended to occupy more skilled positions and roles, such as that of a master artisan, in which they supervised or delegated tasks to others. Such fluidity existed to a larger extent during the early years of conquest and colonization, when Spanish men more regularly acknowledged their mestizo children and thus gave them many of the privileges enjoyed by whites. Nevertheless, as the mixed-race population grew over the course of the 16th and 17th centuries, the social status of mestizos declined.
In the racial hierarchy devised by the Spanish, the mestizo population ranked above Indians and African-descended individuals but below the Spanish. During the mid-16th century the Spanish Crown issued various orders that linked mestizos with unemployment, poor instruction, adultery, and other crimes. During the later years of the century, the Crown continued to characterize mestizo individuals as a “vicious and lost people” whose very existence jeopardized the colonial social order.
During the 17th century free mixed-race individuals represented a growing presence in rural areas and the largest group in most mining districts and urban centers. As early as 1650, due primarily to the relatively small number of Spaniards who immigrated to the Americas, mestizos outnumbered Spaniards in New Spain.
Further reading: Mark A. Burkholder and Lyman L. Johnson, Colonial Latin America, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); Claudio Esteva-Fabregat, Mestizaje in Ibero-America, trans. John Wheat (Tuscon: University of Arizona Press, 1995); Magnus Morner, Race Mixture in the History of Latin America (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967); Gary B. Nash, “The Hidden History of Mestizo America,” Journal of American History 82:3 (December 1995): 941-964.
—Kimberly Sambol-Tosco
World History
