WCasta is a term which means "lineage" in Spanish and Portuguese and has historically been used as a racial and social identifier. It has been interpreted by certain historians during the 20th century to describe mixed-race individuals in Spanish America, resulting from unions of Spaniards, Amerindians, and Africans. Basic mixed-race categories that appeared in official colonial documentation were mestizo, generally offspring of a Spaniard and an indigenous person; and mulato, offspring of a Spaniard and a black African. There were a plethora of terms for mixed-race persons of indigenous and African ancestry used in 18th-century casta paintings yet they are not known to have been widely used officially or unofficially in the Spanish Empire.
WLobo, is a racial category in the Spanish colonial racial label for a mixed-race casta, far down the racial hierarchy created by the Spanish colonial regime privileging European whites.
WBlanqueamiento, branqueamento, or whitening, is a social, political, and economic practice used in many post-colonial countries in the Americas and Oceania to "improve the race" towards a supposed ideal of whiteness. The term blanqueamiento is rooted in Latin America and is used more or less synonymously with racial whitening. However, blanqueamiento can be considered in both the symbolic and biological sense. Symbolically, blanqueamiento represents an ideology that emerged from legacies of European colonialism, described by Anibal Quijano's theory of coloniality of power, which caters to white dominance in social hierarchies. Biologically, blanqueamiento is the process of whitening by marrying a lighter-skinned individual to produce lighter-skinned offspring.
WCastizo is a racial category used in 18th-century Casta paintings of Colonial Spain to refer to people who were three-quarters Spanish by descent and one-quarter Amerindian. The feminine form of the word is castiza. Nowadays the term castizo also came to mean mixed-race people with light skin, in comparison to mulattos, pardos, mestizos and coyotes who would be mixed-race people with dark skin.
WChino was a term used in colonial Mexico to refer to people of mixed ancestry. In the eighteenth century, individuals of mixed Amerindian and African ancestry came to be called chinos. A Mexican Inquisition bigamy case in Mexico City labeled one woman variously as a china, loba, and parda, one example of a person shifting racial categorization. In marriage applications where individuals had to include the names of their parents, chinos tended not to know this information.
WCholo is a loosely defined Spanish term that has had various meanings. Its origin is a somewhat derogatory term for people of mixed-blood heritage in the Spanish Empire in Latin America and its successor states as part of castas, the informal ranking of society by heritage. Cholo no longer necessarily refers only to ethnic heritage, and is not always meant negatively. Cholo can signify anything from its original sense as a person with one Amerindian parent and one Mestizo parent, "gangster" in Mexico, an insult in some South American countries, or a "person who dresses in the manner of a certain subculture" in the United States as part of the cholo subculture.
WCoyote, , is a derogatory colonial Spanish American racial term for a mixed-race person casta, usually referring to a person born of parents one of whom is a Mestizo and the other indigenous (indio).
WIgnacio María Barreda was an eighteenth-century Mexican painter, self-identified as university graduate with a Bachiller in philosophy. Mexican art historian Manuel Toussaint noted him for his portraits, including two of elite women, reproduced in his publication, and others of elite religious men. Toussaint believed he might be the official painter for the Seminario de San Camila, His 1777 single-canvas casta painting is an exemplar of this eighteenth-century genre of secular art. It is similar in some ways to the 1750 single-canvas painting by Luis de Mena, which also includes outdoor scenes near Mexico City, particularly the Paseo de Ixtacalco.
WThe Ilustrados constituted the Filipino educated class during the Spanish colonial period in the late 19th century. Elsewhere in New Spain, the term gente de razón carried a similar meaning.
WThe indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian peoples of North, Central and South America and their descendants.
WJosé Joaquín Magón was a late eighteenth-century Mexican painter from Puebla de los Angeles.
WThe Laws of the Indies are the entire body of laws issued by the Spanish Crown for the American and the Philippine possessions of its empire. They regulated social, political, religious, and economic life in these areas. The laws are composed of myriad decrees issued over the centuries and the important laws of the 16th century, which attempted to regulate the interactions between the settlers and natives, such as the Laws of Burgos (1512) and the New Laws (1542).Throughout the 400 years of Spanish presence in these parts of the world, the laws were compiled several times, most notably in 1680 under Charles II in the Recopilación de las Leyes de los Reins de las Indias. This became considered the classic collection of the laws, although later laws superseded parts of it, and other compilations were issued.
WLuis de Mena was a Mexican artist who lived and worked predominantly in the middle of the eighteenth century. Mena painted religious works and has been described as "no more than a journeyman painter in 18th century Mexico." He signed a work entitled "Most Holy Mother of Light", now on display in the Serra Museum in San Diego, California.
WMestiço, in Colonial Brazil, was initially used to refer to mamelucos, persons born from a couple in which one was an Indigenous American and the other a European. It literally translates as "mameluke", probably referring to the common Iberian comparisons of swarthy people to North Africans.
WMestizo is a term historically used in Spain and Hispanic America that originally referred to a person of combined European and Indigenous American descent, regardless of where the person was born. 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. Individuals were labeled by priests and royal officials as mestizos, but the term was also used for self identification.
WReductions or in Spanish reducciones, also called 'congregaciones', were settlements created by Spanish rulers in Spanish America and the Spanish East Indies. The Spanish relocated, forcibly in many cases, indigenous inhabitants of their colonies into urban settlements modeled on those in Spain. In Portuguese-speaking Latin America, such reductions were also called aldeias.
WZambo and cafuzo are racial terms historically used in the Spanish and Portuguese empires referring to people of mixed Indian and African ancestry. Occasionally in the 21st century, the term is used in the Americas to refer to persons who are of mixed African and Amerindian ancestry. Historically, the racial cross between enslaved Africans and Amerindians was referred to as a zambayga, then zambo, then sambo.