Zambo

Zambo was a historical Spanish American caste designation for a person of mixed Indigenous American and African ancestry. Its use varied across regions and periods.

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Casta: A colonial Spanish American system of classifying people by ancestry, birthplace, and social status. Zambo was one designation within this broader colonial classification system.
Mestizaje: The process and ideology of racial and cultural mixture in Latin America. Zambo named one form of mixture within a wider history of mestizaje.
Mestizo: A historical Spanish American designation generally associated with mixed Indigenous American and European ancestry. It distinguished Indigenous-European ancestry from the Indigenous-African mixture labeled zambo.
Casta system in New Spain: Colonial Mexican practices of classifying people by ancestry, status, and legal or social position. Regional records show that caste labels could be more complex than a single fixed hierarchy.
Casta painting: A genre of colonial painting depicting families and labeling people with ancestry-based caste categories. These paintings often represented zambos as one category in a ranked social order.
Race and ethnicity in Latin America: Social identities and hierarchies shaped by ancestry, culture, and racialization across Latin America. The term belongs to the region's changing vocabulary of racial classification.
Mulatto: A historical designation for a person of mixed African and European ancestry, especially in colonial societies. It conventionally named a different ancestry combination than zambo.
Colonial Spanish American censuses: Population counts and registers produced by Spanish colonial authorities in the Americas. Administrative records used variable labels that can reveal and distort how zambo identity was recorded.
Sistema de castas: A colonial Spanish American framework of social classification based on ancestry and perceived status. Its labels and hierarchies shaped how zambo identity was described.
Racialization: The process by which societies assign racial meanings and consequences to people and groups. Colonial authorities turned ancestry into categories with social significance.