1.

WORLD AMERICAS
Focus

African heritage in Latin America




Afro-descendants in Latin America have had a different experience from those in the US,
experts say. Despite this, social, economic, and cultural discrimination has been historically
very strong.

By Sibylla Brodzinsky, Correspondent FEBRUARY 12, 2013


Joaquin Sarmiento/Reuters
View Caption
 About video ads
View Caption

CARTAGENA, COLOMBIA — For tourists who roam the cobblestone streets

of Colombia's colonial city of Cartagena, black women in bright dresses carrying
mounds of fresh tropical fruit or coconut sweets in aluminum bowls on their heads
offer a colorful vacation snapshot.
But the smiling women represent more than a memorable picture: They are a
symbol of slave resistance and the survival of African heritage in Latin America.

These women, known as palenqueras, are from a small village called Palenque de
San Basilio, about 30 miles from the walled city of Cartagena. Their ancestors fled
Cartagena in the 16th century to found one of the first settlements of escaped slaves
in the Americas.

Recommended:Think you know Latin America? Take our geography quiz.

Cartagena was one of the principal ports of entry for hundreds of thousands of
African slaves brought to the New World to work mainly in the gold and silver
mines, but also as servants or builders. Slaves here were held in warehouses known
as factorías from where they were bought, often continuing their journey south to
territory that is today Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia.

TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE Think you know Latin America? Take our geography quiz.

PHOTOS OF THE DAY Photos of the day 05/05

Their arrival was just as traumatic and violent as that of slaves brought to
the United States. But in the centuries since then, Afro-descendents in Latin
America have had a different experience from those in the US. And their impact has
perhaps been greater, says George Reid Andrews, author of "Afro-Latin America,
1800-2000."

Africans absorbed into society

Black slaves participated in many of the wars of liberation from Spanish colonial
rule in Latin America, and racial equality and integration once independence was
achieved was "part of the deal," Mr. Andrews says.

In the post-slavery period black people in the US were separated from whites; in
Latin America, Afro-descendents were absorbed into society. This, in theory at least,
did not take racial ancestry into account: Mestizaje, or the mixing of races, was seen
as a part of nation-building.

"Mestizaje was celebrated on a superficial level," says Kwame Dixon, a scholar on

race in Latin America at Syracuse University in New York. In some countries, such
as Argentina or Mexico, the black population became so diluted it practically
disappeared.

In the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires, for example, blacks accounted for about 20
percent of the population in 1810. Today, black Argentines are nearly invisible there.
Yet a 2005 genetic study by the University of Buenos Aires and Oxford
University found that nearly 10 percent of people in Buenos Aires can trace their
roots to Africa.

Though officially most Latin American countries look past skin color, social,
economic, and cultural discrimination is historically very strong. "In Latin America,
where discrimination and inequality were not [historically] organized by the state,
it's not as easy [as in the US] to see patterns of racial inequality," Andrews says.

But they do exist. Blacks in Latin America are more likely to be poorer, less
educated, have shorter lives, and have higher infant mortality rates than whites,
reports the United Nations economic commission.

And employment opportunities are limited. Black Peruvians, for example, are
largely relegated to domestic jobs and have a tradition of being pallbearers at the
funerals of the elite. In Latin America, few blacks hold high political office.

"Particularly as people move up the social hierarchy, skin color becomes more
consequential in Latin America," Andrews says.

In recent decades, black consciousness movements have emerged, led in particular

by groups in Brazil and Colombia, which have the largest black populations in the
region.

"What we've seen in the past 20 years in Latin America is a return to blackness," Mr.
Dixon says. At a UN-sponsored conference on race and discrimination
in Durban, South Africa, in 2001, Afro-descendant groups from Latin America
challenged their governments to take action. Some have responded with race-
specific policies, such as Brazil's Law of Social Quotas. Others have incl uded race in
broader social programs.

A reluctance to identify as black

But because of historical prejudices against being black, many people of mixed race
are reluctant to identify themselves that way. In Colombia, official figures say close
to 10 percent of the population is Afro-descendant, but some demographers say the
real figure could be as high as 26 percent, depending on how the category is defined.

Argentina's 2010 Census included a question on Afro-heritage for the first time
since 1887. It revealed that 0.4 percent of the population is black. Although it is a
small number, for the first time in 150 years this population has stood up to be
counted.

https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2013/0212/African-heritage-in-Latin-America

2.The Effects of Slavery on the Caribbean

AUGUST 29, 2014 BENIAMIN PEARCE

Completed Final Project!

Ben Pearce
History 105
Stratton
DHP
12/5/14

Christopher Columbus unknowingly became the first European to travel to the Caribbean Islands in 1492,
sparking a long period of slavery, racism, and discrimination in the region. Before slave-run plantations
became the Caribbean’s first major source of income, Europeans tried, and ultimately failed, to settle the area.
It was not until roughly 150 years after its “discovery” that slavery became prominent in the region. After the
introduction of sugar plantations and industry to the Caribbean in the seventeenth century, the region became a
very busy one, becoming active in world trade. Before the implementation of slavery, European indentured
servants and free wage laborers carried the heavy workload of Caribbean sugar plantations. Plantations finally
started using imported African slaves to work in the sugar fields in the 1640’s. (liverpoolmuseums.org.uk).
The switch to slave labor saved plantation owners a substantial amount of money and these owners found
“black Africans as better fitted for the tropical climate, more resistant to disease, and stronger than the
Europeans.” (Higman, 123-124). The introduction of imported slaves to the Caribbean sugar plantations led to
a tumultuous cycle of pain, suffering, and discrimination for African slaves, as well as an abundance of wealth
for the white plantation owners. This horrific history has left the modern day Caribbean islands years behind
the rest of the world, developmentally, economically, and politically. How does slavery’s illustrious history in
the Caribbean affect the area today? What challenges do the modern day Caribbean islands face directly
resulting from slavery?
Slavery and the slave trade were huge parts of the Caribbean’s early colonial history. Slave-powered sugar
plantations made up the majority of the region’s revenue during this era. The majority of imported African
slaves ended up in the Caribbean during this time. As a result of this, the majority of the population in the
Caribbean Islands were non-white minorities after the abolishment of slavery. The region was left in ruins
economically, socially, and politically. With the majority of the population being descendants of former slaves,
the region was left hundreds of years behind the rest of the world in most aspects. Being enslaved prevented
these people from becoming educated and building their countries so they fell behind the rest of the world who
did have these opportunities that come with freedom. White Europeans justified slavery through beliefs that
Africans were less than human, and biologically inferior. These centuries of inequality has left the modern day
Caribbean region in shambles and the countries are rightfully calling for reparations. Slavery left a
developmental gap of the better part of three centuries in Africa, and the Caribbean’s populations. The
Caribbean Islands still struggle economically and socially today as a result from its slave-centric past.
Unbeknownst to many Americans, most of the slaves shipped overseas were sent to the Caribbean, not the
U.S. This should give some insight to the vast degree to which slavery was utilized in the Caribbean.
Geographically speaking, the United States of America has a much larger landmass than the Caribbean Islands,
yet more slaves were imported to the Caribbean. The attached image shows a chart that portrays the magnitude
of African slaves destined for the Caribbean between 1500 and 1870.

According to slavevoyages.org, a database of recorded slave voyages, a staggering 4,930,389 of 9,405,034

African slaves ended up in the Caribbean Islands over the course of the slave-trading era. Because of how long
ago these transgressions happened, there is bound to be some discrepancy between different sources data. This
source calculates the percentage of African slaves sent to the Caribbean as roughly 45 percent. Different
sources show a different percent value, usually hovering around the 50 percent area. Though different sources
have different numbers, they all agree that the Caribbean had the heaviest African slave traffic during this era,
followed closely by Brazil. The pandemic of slavery was justified by its European founders, completely
negating the consideration of slavery’s immorality.
White, British plantation owners justified slavery by endorsing the belief that people of color, specifically
“…the African was sub-human. Thus African slavery was legitimized by already existing views of Africans as
inferior…” (Ratansi,30). This idea of Africans, who were “black” being sub-human, rationalized the religious
idea of “whiteness being linked to goodness and chastity…” (Law, 6). This insinuated that “blackness” was
linked to badness or immorality. This theory stemmed from the belief that Europeans were biologically
superior to people of colors. This theory was largely popular during the world’s slavery era, completely
negating the moral aspect of slavery. These theories pointed to biological factors, like size and shape of the
head having links to intelligence.”…Andrew Morton in his Crania Americana (1839) used measurements of
the internal capacity of skulls to construct a hierarchy of those with the biggest brains, Caucasians at the top
and Ethiopians (‘unmixed Negroes’ and ‘Africans’) at the bottom.(Law, 31). Because of these (false)
biological and religious justifications, slavery was not seen as immoral at all. This was seen as a sort of natural
selection gleaned from European ideas of white supremacy. Though these ideas were developed close to the
end of the slavery era, they were a justification for the centuries of slavery and inequality. Though slavery is no
longer socially accepted, some people still maintain some of these values, leaving racism and inequality to be
large issues in the modern day Caribbean Islands.
Though slavery has long since been abolished in the Caribbean and the rest of the world, this tropical region is
still facing the negative effects of the disease that was slavery. Both the Caribbean and Africa, as well as other
regions, missed hundreds of years that could have been used advancing their societies economically, socially,
educationally, technologically, and politically because of the atrocity that is slavery.

Western societies advanced by using the backs of slaves as stepping stools. This is apparent in the modern day
world. Some of the poorest countries in the world lie in either Africa or the Caribbean. This image shows the
scant room and belongings of a young Cuban child. This shows an accurate depiction of how many people live
in the Caribbean today, still financially handicapped from the region’s history with slavery. Bloody slave
revolts inspired by the French Revolution, left countries like Haiti in squalor. Even now, Haiti is the 20th
poorest country in the world with a GDP per capita of $1,338, and is “the poorest nation outside of the African
continent.”(Business Insider). The most telling part about this quote is that the 19 poorer countries in the world
lie in Africa, the continent where the majority of slaves were stolen from. In addition to making these countries
extremely poor, and consequently unstable, the citizens of these countries still face racism and discrimination.
Racism is supposed to be a thing of the past, Fidel Castro even “officially abolished racial discrimination”
when he came to power in Cuba in 1959. (Hinckley, 72). Unfortunately, these inequalities and ideas of white
supremacy still resonate with many people in the world today.
Because of the crippling economic and discriminatory effects of slavery, Caribbean nations are calling for
reparations from its early colonizers. Caribbean nations rightfully blame European powers for the poverty
pandemic sweeping the nation. “In 2003, Haiti’s president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, called on France to repay
the 1825 indemnity, which he blamed for his country’s poverty. The argument was historically sound: to pay
France, Haiti had had to borrow money from French banks, entering a century-long cycle of debt.” (Dubois,
A29). Haiti had won its freedom from France in 1804, but in 1825 agreed to pay France for diplomatic
recognition. Having no money with which to pay, Haiti had to borrow money from France as the above quote
illustrates. The demanded reparations are justified by the history of slavery, but the Caribbean has not received
proper compensation. France sent aid to Haiti after the tragic earthquake of 2010 flattened the country, but in
no way has France fully repaid Haiti for the harm it caused in the past. The rest of the Caribbean, as well as
Africa, is still waiting for appropriate financial compensation from Europe. Since these poor nations do not
have the military strength to force payments, they must continue to wait for reparations, hoping that they
someday will come in full.
The Caribbean’s past as a plantation based, slave society has made the modern day quality of life very
challenging for the inhabitants. Centuries of serving as Europe’s pedestal to greatness have taken their toll on
 the Caribbean, making it one of the poorest regions in the world. False biological and religious beliefs, as well
as the idea of white supremacy, justified slavery of Africans to Europeans. The ideas of white supremacy led
some Caribbean elites to reject the “African component of their culture.” (Black in Latin America). The people
of this region still face both racial and economic discrimination, discrimination that originated with slavery. At
the peak of African slave trade, over half of the slaves went to the Caribbean. Now the descendants of these
slaves are trying to rebuild this tropical region, brick by brick, into a region of prosperity, which is no easy
task. Caribbean countries’ quest for reparations from European countries is ongoing as the region tries to
escape its slave-centric past.

Works Cited

 Black in Latin America. United States: PBS Distribution, 2011. Film.

 Dubois, Laurent. “Confronting the Legacies of Slavery.” The New York Times. October 28, 2013. Accessed
December 2, 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/29/opinion/international/confronting-the-legacies-of-
slavery.html?pagewanted=all&module=Search&mabReward=relbias:w.
 “Here Are The 20 Poorest Nations In The World.” Business Insider. October 3, 2010. Accessed December 6,
2014. http://www.businessinsider.com/poorest-countries-in-the-world-2010-8/republic-of-haiti-1#20-republic-
of-haiti-1.
 Higman, B. W. A Concise History of the Caribbean. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. 123-124.
 Hinckley, David. “Latin America Still Bound By Slavery’s Past”, Daily News (New York), April 19, 2011, 72.
http://www.lexisnexis.com/hottopics/lnacademic/.
 Law, Ian. Racism and Ethnicity: Global Debates, Dilemmas, Directions. Harlow, England: Longman, 2010.
 “List of Voyages.” Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database. Accessed December 6, 2014.
http://www.slavevoyages.org/tast/database/search.faces.
 Rattansi, Ali. Racism: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. 30.
 “Slavery in the Caribbean.” Slavery in the Caribbean. Accessed December 6, 2014.
http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/ism/slavery/archaeology/caribbean/.

https://history.libraries.wsu.edu/fall2014/2014/08/29/slavery-in-south-america/

3. Forgotten heroes of Panama Canal

Added by Anesta Henry on December 6, 2014.
Saved under Features

Facebook0Tweet0Pin0Google+0

It was an experience of pain, suffering, racism and exploitation for those 60 000 Barbadians who
went to Panama in the 1900s to help build the renowned Panama Canal. And, their years of daily
grind would finally see opened on August 15, 1914, this man-made waterway that would change the
international shipping industry forever.

The millions by many a country from that canal today is the result of the death-defying labour of
hundreds of thousands of West Indian men, recruited from their homes with both true and false
promises about the presumably many opportunities building the waterway held for them.

What did happen to those Barbadians when they got there?

In addition to suffering the indignity of the United States-style Jim Crow segregation, they had to
work with the constant probability of instantaneous death from accidental explosions of the dynamite
being used to blow through the mountains to make room for the canal.

This is a story many Barbadians have not been exposed to.

However, through the Diggers documentary aired on national television on Independence Day,
Bajans who watched CBCTV8 were able to see just what happened during that period through the
accounts of survivors ranging in age from 88 to 95.

American film-maker Roman Foster told Barbados TODAY during an interview at Hotel PomMarine
last week that the six survivors he sourced in Panama, Barbados, Jamaica and the United States
had made the documentary a sad, thought-provoking and life-changing ordeal that would forever be
etched in his mind.

American film-maker Roman Foster

“It is about what Bajans and all other West Indians who went to Panama went through. Added to that
is the fact that after the canal was built, these workers were completely forgotten; and no recognition
was ever paid to them for the work that they did. The Panama Canal is significant because world
commerce depends on it.

“If you shut down the Panama Canal today, world commerce would suffer immensely. For [these
workers] not to be recognized for their efforts was an additional crime committed against them. And
so, Diggers was a way of not only recording the history for eternity, but being a long and everlasting
tribute to what these workers accomplished, and to correct the injustice of their being forgotten by
the world,” said Forster, as he spoke about the award-winning documentary that took some 11 years
to be produced.

Giving an insight into the documentary, and speaking from research, Foster said that in 1891
thousands of Jamaicans were recruited to begin the work of building the canal by a French company
that went bankrupt 15 years later, and abandoned them there. He said this caused the Jamaican
government to spend millions in bringing their nationals back home and almost going bankrupt itself
in the process.

“The second stage of the canal begins with the United States in 1903 . . . . They wanted to pick up
from where the French left off. They went to Jamaica to recruit workers and the governor of Jamaica
refused to let them do it, because of the experience Jamaica had gone through with the French.

“So, the government of the United States came to Barbados, which was the next populated island in
the Caribbean and the Governor of Barbados was happy, because at that time, there was a
depression going on in Barbados and a lot of young people were on the streets roaming with no jobs
and nothing to do.

“So when the Americans came and give them the offer, the Barbados Government jumped at it and
said, ‘Sure, we give you permission to contract as many as you want’,” Foster revealed.

The permission granted was followed by a recruitment centre set up in Bridgetown where young
men in their late teens and early 20s signed a 500-day contract before sailing off to the Central
America nation that borders both the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, between Colombia and
Costa Rica.

When the Bajans arrived, the experience was tragic for most of these men.

Firstly, they were forced to battle with the malaria and yellow fever mosquitoes rampant in the
jungles of Panama.

Thousands died after they were bitten by these insects.

“They had no cure for malaria and yellow fever. At first, the white Americans were dying out because
the mosquitoes were infecting them, and nobody knew what to do about it. And then it happened to
Caribbean workers –– although not as badly as had happened to the Americans.
“It’s a horrible way to die, because you just turn yellow to begin with, and then you start to vomit
black blood. And when you start to vomit that black blood, you are dead within hours, because that is
probably the last stage of the disease.”

A potion was soon discovered, which the workers were given to control the effects of the malaria.

“So every day, the government made sure that they drank this [potion]. The side effects of that
potion were that you went deaf, or after a while you couldn’t hear well. That created a problem,
because you would have men digging to actually cut the country in half. And there were these long
trains carrying the dirt out into different areas, and [those men] who were deaf couldn’t hear trains
coming, and when they did realize it, they would be rushing, rushing; and next thing you know, they
were under a train,” Foster explained.

Another sad aspect of the experience was that the workers also suffered the psychological taunt of
living under discriminatory circumstances during their stay in the canal. The American laws only
covered white American workers. The West Indians were not entitled to any benefits that applied to
their United States colleagues.

“They came up with a system to keep the races from mixing; and the white workers were labelled
gold and the West Indian workers, silver. And even the facilities in the canal zone were separated by
this white and silver system.

“You go to church, white people were allowed to sit in the front and the Blacks had to sit upstairs in
the back. At hospitals, just as was happening in the United States, you had a separate entrance for
Whites and a separate entrance for Blacks. They were not allowed to mix at any time under any
condition. Men went to jail for violating these laws.”

Diseases and discrimation were just two of the problems the Blacks faced.

These Caribbean workers, who were never trained in the use of dynamite, had no choice but to work
with it to cut down the mountains to sea level.

“They wouldn’t allow the white workers to handle the dynamite; and so imagine these young men not
trained in the use of dynamite, but being told what to do with it! Due to accidental explosions, a lot of
them actually lost their lives, because the handling of dynamite is a very sensitive thing; and if you
are not trained to do it, you are looking for trouble.”

The film-maker said cutting down the mountains also proved to be a problem.
“When you cut mountains down the soil becomes soft, and Panama was a rain-drenched country.
Every day the rain would pour in Panama and loosen up the soil. So these men would be at the
bottom of the mountains digging and all of a sudden the mud would slide and bury them alive in the
cut,” Foster said.

After the work was done, some Barbadians returned home. However, quite a few stayed, having met
their companions, got children, and had already built homes for their families there.

“To some of them, it didn’t make sense to uproot the whole family to bring them back home; so they
chose to stay there. You walk through the streets of Panama today, and you would hear the same
accents you hear in Bridgetown; and you would wonder, ‘Am I in Bridgetown?’ You have Jamaicans
there, and you hear that Jamaican accent.”

The descendants of these original diggers now face the discrimination their forefathers did at the
hands of the Panamanians who viewed them as intruders. In fact, many of the descendants have
chosen to forget their past, have refused to admit their families originated in the West Indies and
only speak Spanish. Some of them even went as far as to change their West Indian surnames into
Spanish ones.

“The Panamanians viewed them as, ‘You come to my country and took away the jobs from me’, and
that created much resentment. Working for the United States government was like a status thing in
Panama, and they couldn’t understand why English-speaking black people would get those
privileges in a Spanish-speaking society; and that created a lot of animosity between the
Panamanians and the West Indian society,” said Foster who spent quite some time in Panama with
his
production team.

There was a screening of Diggers at Frank Collymore Hall last Thursday night, attended by
Governor General Sir Elliott Belgrave, Minister of Tourism Richard Sealy, Speaker of the House
Michael Carrington, Barbados Central Bank Governor Dr DeLisle Worrell, and historians Sir Henry
Fraser and Karl Watson, among other senior officials and diplomats.

Producer Foster said that from the comments he had received from some officials after the
screening, it was evident that they were all moved by what they had seen.

Despite being approached by archives, institutions and libraries on the prized volumes of film and
recordings of the history of the building of the Panama Canal, he is yet to decide where to house all
of the material –– and with a stipulation that it must be available to the public. But that is the least of
Foster’s worries. He said he was more concerned that to this day, no monument was erected to
honour those thousands of men who laboured to build the waterway.

“Nations depend on that canal to this very day. Yet nobody has taken a minute out of their time to
say let’s honour the builders of the canal. They don’t care any more.

“These men are dead; they are gone. And who cares? And that is the attitude from the government
of the United States, Panama . . . ,” the film-maker Foster declared passionately.

https://www.barbadostoday.bb/2014/12/06/forgotten-heroes-of-panama-canal/
 4. Las Castas – Spanish Racial Classifications
Posted on June 15, 2013by Roberta Estes

Las castas” – Painting containing complete set of 16 casta combinations. An 18th

century socio-racial classification system used in the Spanish American colonies.
The European conquest of Latin America beginning in the late 15th century, was initially
executed by male soldiers and sailors from the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal).
The new soldier-settlers fathered children with Amerindian women and later with
African slaves. These mixed-race children were generally identified by the Spanish
colonist and Portuguese colonist as “Castas”.

The subsequent North American fur trade during the 16th century brought many more
European men, from France and Great Britain, who took North Amerindian women as
wives. Their children became known as “Métis” or “Bois-Brûlés” by the French colonist
and “mixed-bloods”, “half-breeds” or “country-born” by the English colonist and
Scottish colonist.

Casta is an Iberian word (existing in Spanish, Portuguese and other Iberian languages
since the Middle Ages), meaning “lineage”, “breed” or “race.” It is derived from the older
Latin word castus, “chaste,” implying that the lineage has been kept pure. Casta gave
rise to the English word caste during the Early Modern Period.

The term Castas was a Spanish and Portuguese term used in 17th and 18th centuries
mainly in Spanish America to describe as a whole the mixed-race people which appeared
in the post-Conquest period. A parallel system of categorization based on the degree of
acculturation to Hispanic culture, which distinguished between gente de razón
(Hispanics) and gente sin razón (non-acculturated natives), concurrently existed and
worked together with the idea of casta.

The system of castas, or genizaros was inspired by the assumption that the character
and quality of people varied according to their birth, color, race and origin of ethnic
types. The system of castas was more than socio-racial classification. It impacted every
aspect of life, including economics and taxation. Both the Spanish colonial state and the
Church expected more tax and tribute payments from those of lower socio-racial
categories. Even baptismal records includes your designation.

This complex caste system was used for social control and also determined a person’s
importance in society. There were four main categories of race: (1) Peninsular, a
Spaniard born in Spain; (2) Criollo (feminine, criolla), a person of Spanish descent born
in the New World; (3) Indio (fem. india), a person who is descendent of the original
inhabitants of the Americas; and (4) Negro (fem. negra) – a person of black African
descent, usually a slave or their free descendants.

General racial groupings had their own set of privileges and restrictions, both legal and
customary. So, for example, only Spaniards and Amerindians, who were deemed to be
the original societies of the Spanish dominions, had recognized aristocracies. Also, in
America and other overseas possessions, all Spaniards, regardless of their family’s class
background in Europe, came to consider themselves equal to the Peninsular hidalgía
and expected to be treated as such. Access to these privileges and even a person’s
perceived and accepted racial classification, however, were also determined by that
person’s socioeconomic standing in society.

Persons of mixed race were collectively referred to as “castas”. Long lists of different
terms, used to identify types of people with specific racial or ethnic heritages, were
developed by the late 17th century. By the end of the colonial period in 1821, over one
hundred categories of possible variations of mixture existed. I’m guessing that no one
could keep up with them.
The terms for the more complex racial mixtures tended to vary in meaning and use and
from region to region. (For example, different sets of casta paintings will give a different
set of terms and interpretations of their meaning.) For the most part, only the first few
terms in the lists were used in documents and everyday life, the general descending
order of precedence being:

 Españoles (Spanish)
These were persons of Spanish descent. People of other European descent who had
settled in Spanish America and adapted to Hispanic culture would have also been
considered Españoles. Also, as noted above, and below under “Mestizos” and “Castizos,”
many persons with some Amerindian ancestry were considered Españoles. Españoles
were one of the three original “races,” the other two being Amerindians and Blacks. Both
immigrant and American-born Españoles generally shared the same rights and
privileges, although there were a few cases in which the law differentiated between
them. For example, it became customary in some municipal councils for the office of
alcalde to alternate between a European and an American. Spaniards were therefore
divided into 2 categories:

1. Peninsulares (Spaniards)
Persons of Spanish descent born in Spain (i.e., from the Iberian Peninsula, hence their
name). Generally, there were two groups of Peninsulares. The first group includes those
that were appointed to important jobs in the government, the army and the Catholic
Church by the Crown. This system was intended to perpetuate the ties of the governing
elite to the Spanish crown. The theory was that an outsider should be appointed to rule
over a certain society, therefore a New Spaniard would not be appointed Viceroy of New
Spain. These officials usually had a long history of service to the Crown and moved
around the Empire frequently. They usually did not live permanently in any one place in
Latin America. The second group of Peninsulares did settle permanently in a specific
region and came to associate with it. The first wave were the original settlers themselves,
the Conquistadors, who essentially transformed themselves into lords of an area
through their act of conquest. In the centuries after the Conquest, more Peninsulares
continued to emigrate under different circumstances, usually for commercial reasons.
Some even came as indentured servants to established Criollo families. Therefore, there
were Peninsulares of all socioeconomic classes in America. Once they settled, they
tended to form families, so Peninsulares and Criollos were united and divided by family
ties and tensions.

2. Criollos (Spanish Americans)

A Spanish term meaning “native born and raised,” criollo historically was applied to
both white and black non-indigenous persons born in the Americas. In the
contemporary historical literature, the term usually means only people who in theory
were of full direct Spanish ancestry, born in the Americas. In reality white Criollos could
also have some native ancestry, but this would be disregarded for families who had
maintained a certain status. As the second- or third-generation of Spanish families,
some Criollos owned mines, ranches, or haciendas. Many of these were extremely
wealthy and belonged to the high nobility of the Spanish Empire. Still, most were simply
part of what could be termed the petite bourgeoisie or even outright poor. As life-long
residents of America, they, like all other residents of these areas, often participated in
contraband, since the traditional monopolies of Seville, and later Cádiz, could not
supply all their trade needs. (They were more than occasionally aided by royal officials
turning a blind eye to this activity). Criollos tended to be appointed to the lower-level
government jobs—they had sizable representation in the municipal councils—and with
the sale of offices that began in the late 16th century, they gained access to the high-level
posts, such as judges on the regional audiencias. The 19th-century wars of independence
are often cast, then and now, as a struggle between Peninsulares and Criollos, but both
groups can be found on both sides of the wars.

 Indios (Amerindians)
The original inhabitants of the Americas and considered to be one of the three “pure
races” in Spanish America, the law treated them as minors, and as such were to be
protected by royal officials, but in reality were often abused by the local elites. After the
initial conquest, the elites of the Inca, Aztec and other Amerindian states were
assimilated into the Spanish nobility through intermarriage. The regional Native
nobility, where it existed, was recognized and redefined along European standards by
the Spanish and had to deal with the difficulty of existing in a colonial society, but it
remained in place until independence. Amerindians could belong to any economic class
depending on their personal wealth.

 Mestizos (Amerindian and Spanish mix)

Persons with one Spanish parent and one Amerindian parent. The term was originally
associated with illegitimacy because in the generations after the Conquest, mixed-race
children born in wedlock were assigned either a simple Amerindian or Spanish identity,
depending with which culture they were raised. The number of official Mestizos rises in
censuses only after the second half of the 17th century, when a sizable and stable
community of mixed-race people with no claims on being either Amerindian or Spanish
appeared.

 Castizos (Spanish with some Amerindian mix)

One of the many terms, like the ones below, used to describe people with varying
degrees of racial mixture. In this case Castizos were people with one Mestizo parent and
one Spanish parent. The children of a Castizo and a Spaniard, or a Castizo himself or
herself, were often classified and accepted as a Criollo Spaniard.

 Cholos (Amerindian with some Spanish mix)

Persons with one Amerindian parent and one Mestizo parent.

 Pardos (Spanish, African, and Amerindian Mix)

Persons who is the product of the mixing over the generations of the white Spanish,
Black African, and Amerindians. This mix may come about from a white Spaniard
mating with a Zambo, a Mulatto mating with Mestizo, or a Black African mating with a
Mestizo.

 Mulattos (African and Spanish mix)

Persons of the first generation of a Spanish and Black/African ancestry. If they were
born into slavery (that is their mother was a slave), they would be slaves, unless freed by
their master or were manumitted. In popular parlance, mulatto could also denote an
individual of mixed African and Native American ancestry. Further terms to describe
other degrees of mixture included, among many others, Morisco, (not to be confused
with the peninsular Morisco, from which the term was obviously borrowed) a person of
Mulatto and Spanish parents, i.e., a quadroon, and Albino (derived from albino), a
person of Morisco and Spanish parents, i.e., an octoroon.

 Zambos (Amerindian and African mix)

Persons who were of mixed Amerindian and Black ancestry. As with Mulattos, many
other terms existed to describe the degree of mixture. These included Chino and Lobo.
Chino usually described someone as having Mulatto and Amerindian parents. The word
chino derives from the Spanish word cochino, meaning “pig”, and the phrase pelo chino,
meaning “curly hair”, is a reference to the casta known as chino that possessed curly
hair. (Since there was some immigration from the Spanish East Indies during the
colonial period, chino is often confused, even by contemporary historians, as a word for
Asian peoples, which is the primary meaning of the word, but not usually in the context
of the castas. Chino or china is still used in many Latin American countries as a term of
endearment for a light-skinned person of African ancestry. Lobo could describe a person
of Black and Amerindian parents (and therefore, a synonym for Zambo), as in the image
gallery below, or someone of Amerindian and Torna atrás parents.

 Negros (Africans)
With Spaniards and Amerindians, this was the third original “race” in this paradigm,
but low on the social scale because of their association with slavery. These were people
of full Sub-Saharan African descent. Many, especially among the first generation, were
slaves, but there were sizable free-Black communities. Distinction was made between
Blacks born in Africa (negros bozales) and therefore possibly less acculturated, Blacks
born in the Iberian Peninsula (Black Ladinos), and Blacks born in the Indies, these
sometimes referred to as negros criollos. Their low social status was enforced legally.
They were prohibited by law from many positions, such as entering the priesthood, and
their testimony in court was valued less than others. But they could join militias created
especially for them. In contrast with the binary “one-drop rule”, which evolved in the
late-19th-century United States, people of mixed-Black ancestry were recognized as
multiple separate groups, as noted above.

Other fanciful terms existed, such as a torna atrás (literally, “turns back”) and tente en el
aire (“hold-yourself-in-midair”) in New Spain or a requinterón in Peru, which implied
that a child of only one-sixteenth Black ancestry is born looking Black to seemingly
white parents. These terms were rarely used in legal documents and existed mostly in
the New Spanish phenomenon of Casta paintings (pinturas de castas), which showed
possible mixtures down to several generations.

The overall themes that emerge in these categories and paintings are the “supremacy of
the Spaniards,” the possibility that Indians could become Spaniards through
miscegenation with Spaniards and the “regression to an earlier moment of racial
development” that mixing with Blacks would cause to Spaniards. These series generally
depict the descendants of Indians becoming Spanish after three generations of
intermarriage with Spaniards (usually the, “De español y castiza, español” painting). In
contrast, mixtures with Blacks, both by Indians and Spaniards, led to a bewildering
number of combinations, with “fanciful terms” to describe them. Instead of leading to a
new racial type or equilibrium, they led to apparent disorder. Terms such as the above-
mentioned tente en el aire and no te entiendo (“I don’t understand you”)—and others
based on terms used for animals: mulato (mule) and lobo (wolf), chino (derived from
cochino meaning “pig”)—reflect the fear and mistrust that Spanish officials, society and
those who commissioned these paintings saw these new racial types.

Different paintings depicted different combinations. In general, the Spanish-Indian

combinations were in agreement between them, but the categories for black admixture
are quite different.

https://nativeheritageproject.com/2013/06/15/las-castas-spanish-racial-classifications/

Videos

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIzHIRCBtdE Black
in Latin America E03,
Mexico and Peru: The Black Grandma in the Closet
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ygms7GCXIKY Blackk in Latin America, Cuba.
3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBaPG14cdkM What's it like to be Latino
- and black?
4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijQ8ZoKO7g4 Panama Canal documentary promo
5.