As we all know, the American continent became a continent of immigrants after being discovered by Europeans. Because of the mass extinction of Native Americans and the influx of immigrants from around the world, the ethnic situation in the Americas is indeed more complicated. However, in fact, in modern America, especially in Latin America outside the United States, Canada and other English and French-speaking countries, there is actually a relatively close and somewhat agreed with each other", that is, the Mestisso people. So who is this ethnic group? How were they born? What about the current situation?
Mestisso people from scratch
In fact, in the popular languages of Latin America, that is, in Spanish and Portuguese, the word "Mestisso" itself already describes the nature of this ethnic group. Because in both Spanish and Portuguese, "Mestiso" (Spanish Mestizo/ Portuguese Mestiço) means "mixed", so in fact the name "Mestisso" means mestizo. In the early days, the "Mestiso" were mestizo offspring born specifically from the mixed Spanish or Portuguese male and colonial local females.
A schematic diagram of a Mestizo family
And the reason for this is quite simple, because this is how the first Mestisso people in the Americas came. In the 15th and 16th centuries AD, because of the harsh conditions of the transatlantic route and the plague of various plagues, the vast majority of Europeans who immigrated to the Americas were men, and the number of European women who successfully reached the Americas was very small. Some records of the time show that around the 16th century AD, the ratio of Spaniards to Men and Women who traveled to the Americas was about 9 to 1 to 8 to 1. At that time, the vast majority of Spaniards who went to the Americas were young people, with an average age of about 25 years old, and after they arrived in the Americas as colonists, their status in the local society was still relatively high, so it was natural to look for a spouse, which gave birth to the first Mestisso. In 1543, the Mestiso ethnic group appeared in the registration system of the Spanish colonial authorities.
Portrait of the Mestiso family in Peru in the 18th century AD
In some Latin American countries, a writer named Inca Gasilaso de la Vega is often referred to as the "first Mestiso", and his origin can be said to be a microcosm of the origin of the Mestisso ethnic group.
The De la Vega was born in 1539, just six years after the destruction of the Inca Empire, the largest empire in the history of the Americas, by the Spaniards. His birthplace is Cusco, Peru, the former capital of the Incas. De La Vega's father, Sebastian, was a member of the Pizarro Expeditionary Force that destroyed the Inca Empire and once commanded an army of 80 men. De La Vega's mother, Para Chimp Oclo, was the daughter of the Spanish puppet king in the Incas, Tupac Valpa, the last King of the Incas. So it can also be said that she was the last Princess of the Incas.
However, although De la Vega's mother, Paragui, was an Inca princess, her family's status in the inca homeland, which had already fallen, was still far inferior to that of the conquistadors Spaniards. So although Parra bore Sebastian a son, De la Vega, because the two did not marry in the Catholic Church, she was not Sebastian's official wife in the Spaniard system, but only his mistress. Sebastian quickly abandoned her and married another young Spanish woman.
Inca Gassillaso de la Vega
In this way, De la Vega grew up with her mother and her family, and received a systematic education in Inca culture. But as we have just said, the Spaniards as conquerors were in a much higher position than the former Inca royals, so although De La Vega was only regarded as Sebastian's illegitimate son at the time, at the age of 10 he was taken to his home by Sebastian and began to receive a Spanish education.
During this period, although the Inca Empire had long since perished, the remnants of the Inca army continued to resist, so the situation in Peru has been relatively turbulent. And in 1559, when De la Vega was 20 years old, Sebastian died. This complicated situation in Peru was even more embarrassing, so he left the Americas two years later and came to his father's hometown of Spain. After arriving in Spain, he naturally became an outlier in the eyes of others, who called him Mestizo at that time. Growing up with an Inca education, he did not shy away from this, and also called himself a Mestizo.
Commentary on the Inca Royal Family by Draviga
Because he came from an Inca royal family and knew the history of the Inca royal family and even the Inca Empire, he quickly became a historical writer in Spain, specializing in articles related to Inca history. His work "Commentary on the Royal Family of Inca" (in this translation of the Inca is translated as "Inca") later caused a sensation in European countries and became an important document for later generations to study the history of the Inca and even the Americas. In this book, De La Vega's praise for his ancestor, the Inca royal family, also caused great uneasiness among the Spanish colonial authorities, and soon banned the publication of the book.
But this further elevated De la Vega's historical stature, making him and his work an important source of national pride for the American Inca descendants, most of whom were also Mestisso. As late as the 18th century, Condorcánchi, an Inca descendant of Peru, had been inspired by De la Vega's work to launch an uprising against Spanish rule. Thus, de la Vega, although he spent the rest of his life in Spain, was regarded as an important life in the Mestisso population of the Americas, also known as "the first physically and mentally Mestisso in the Americas".
Strangled in teeth? Why didn't it work?
From this description, we can also understand that although the vast majority of the fathers of the first Mestisso were Spaniards or Portuguese, these mestizos with Inca and other Native American ancestry did not recognize Spain culturally and emotionally (but most mestizos were also hostile to the surviving pure-blood Native Americans). Perhaps for this reason, although the early colonizers were so unbalanced that the Spanish colonial authorities acquiesced to the birth of the first Mestisso, after the later colonizers were less unbalanced, the Spaniards soon introduced a series of measures, the "Casta" system (the same word as the Indian caste), to restrict the intermarriage between Spaniards and the natives, that is, to strangle the Mestisso group in the cradle.
Popular casta diagrams in the Spanish colonies at that time
The casta system defines each different mixed race in detail and gives it a different name, and each person is classified into different casta according to the degree of "purity" of his or her bloodline. For example, the Spanish and Native Americans are mestizos, while the Mestiso and Spaniards are mixed with the Castisso, and if the Castisso are mixed with the Spaniards, then their descendants will return to Spanish identity. In addition, under this system, spaniards and blacks have descendants called Murattos, black and Native American descendants are called Sambo people, and people with three Spanish, Native American and black descents are called Paledo. Some accounts indicate that there were as many as 16 different mixed casta in the Spanish colonies of the Americas at that time, and each casta enjoyed different rights in various aspects, including carrying weapons, holding public office, obtaining university degrees, and religious titles.
The only Casta illustration now has a native American male figure
Moreover, in this system, the union of Spanish women with Native American or black men was strictly prohibited, and similar cases were found to be native American or black men who were executed for rape. However, because intermarriage between Spanish men and women of other races was too common at the time, especially some Spanish slave owners had many offspring with their female slaves. Some Spaniard women would secretly have illicit relations with Native American or black men in spite of the ban. So although this system is very restrictive, it is very loose when it is actually implemented. Many times it is not too difficult to bribe officials to register The Mestiso as Spaniards, or to register Pure-Blood Native Americans as Mestiso. So this policy ultimately failed to eliminate the Mestiso, who were still increasing rapidly in the Americas.
The Mestiso people of modern America
Soon this American version of the "caste" system also existed in name only, and later when the Spanish colonies registered races, most people would not register the various ethnic groups according to the degree of mixed race according to the previously mentioned regulations, but would register most of the mixed races as Mestisso, so that the Mestisso in many parts of Latin America gradually became the most important ethnic group. But the pure-blood Spaniards, especially some from mainland Spain, still used this policy to control all parts of the Americas for a long time, and they used it to occupy the upper echelons of local society for a long time, suppressing the mostly mixed-race natives to the lower classes.
Painting depicting the american race celebrating independence
So although the independence of Latin America did not break out mainly because of this American version of the caste system, after independence, Latin American countries immediately abolished this "casta" system, and the Mestiso people have become the dominant group in many Latin American countries in modern times, especially in Mexico.
But in Mexico, the Mestiso people have truly gone through a tortuous process of becoming the dominant social group. Although Mexico abolished the hierarchy based on descent and color immediately after independence, the gap between the upper echelons of Societies with more European ancestry and the lower strata of More Native American descent was deep, and there was a strong exclusion of Native Americans and their cultures. Especially during the tenure of Mexican President Pomerio Diaz at the end of the 19th century, the Mexican city elite once prided itself on dressing up like Europeans and behaving like Europeans.
Diaz, who is also a Mestizo mestizo himself
Although Pofferio Diaz himself is also a Mestiso with Native American ancestry, he has been deliberately whitening his skin with cosmetics for many years to make himself look like a white European. So in the later years of his reign, there were many contradictions between different classes in Mexico (closely related to blood). Coupled with his more than 30 years in office, he was overly open to multinational companies in the United States, Britain and other countries, infringing on many interests of the local people without bringing obvious benefits to Mexico, and eventually triggering a revolution in Mexico, and the Diaz regime and its remnants were finally completely defeated in 1920.
After this, mexico's new government elevated ethnic integration (mestizaje) to the heights of national policy. In the first census conducted by the new Mexican government in 1921, the new government redefined the Mestiso people, including all mestizos. In the 1930 census, the Mexican government simply eliminated the "white" option in the ethnic option, defining all Mexicans who did not explicitly belong to an indigenous tribe as Mestiso. At that time, some Mexican scholars further proposed that the Mestiso people in Mexico were the crystallization of the excellent qualities of various ethnic groups, and only when all mexican people accepted the integration of ethnic groups and became Mestisso people, Mexico would achieve real prosperity.
Modern Mexicans are overwhelmingly Mestiso
Since then, the process of national integration in Mexico has further accelerated. Nearly 90 percent of people in Mexico are currently identified as Mestiso. In Mexico, however, the term Mestiso has departed from its original meaning and become a collective term for all people who do not speak native American languages, and can be said to have become the name of the Mexican nation. And by strict Mestisso standards, about half of Mexico's population can be grouped into this ethnic group. In recent years, some genetic studies have shown that the Mestizo people in Mexico account for about half of their European ancestry and Native American ancestry, while African and Asian ancestry each account for about 1%.
In Latin America, the largest ethnic group in most of these countries is the Mestiso
Outside of Mexico, Mestiso accounts for more than 50 percent of costa Rica, El Salvador, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru and Venezuela, and in some cases 90 percent. In Brazil, which was historically a Portuguese colony, the Mestiso (often referred to as the Palers, brazil also defines the Mestiso as all mestizos) also account for more than 40%. Among the major Latin American countries, only Argentina and Uruguay are mainly of European descent, and the Mestiso people account for a relatively low proportion. However, in some provinces of northwestern Argentina, there are still a large number of the aforementioned Castisso, that is, 3/4 of the mixed-race people of European descent. So in general, there is no doubt that the mestisso, which has a short history and was ostracized at the time of its birth, has now become the dominant ethnic group in Latin America. (Image from the Internet)