Mestizo is a term of Spanish origin used to designate the peoples of mixed European and Amerindian racial strain inhabiting the region spanning the Americas, from the Canadian prairies in the north to Argentina and Chile's Patagonia in the south.
In other regions and countries previously under Spanish, Portuguese or French colonial rule, variants of the term may also be in usage for people of other native and colonial European mixtures. In the Philippines, the term Mestiso, or Mistiso, is a generic reference to individuals of any non-specific foreign admixture to an ethnic Filipino base stock.
Under the caste system of colonial Latin America and Spain, the term originally applied only to the children resulting from the union of one European and one Amerindian parent, or the children of two mestizo parents. During this era a myriad of other terms (castizo, cuarterón de indio, cholo, etc.) were in use to denote other individuals of European/Amerindian ancestry in ratios smaller or greater than the 50:50 of mestizos. Today, mestizo refers to all people with discernible amounts of both European and Amerindian ancestry.
Mestizos officially make up the majority of the populations of Chile1 (90%), Colombia (58%), Ecuador (65%), El Salvador (90%), Honduras2 (90%), Mexico2 (60%), Nicaragua (69%), Panama2 (70%), Paraguay (95%) and Venezuela (67%).
In other American countries where mestizos do not constitute a majority, they nonetheless represent a significant portion of their populations; Argentina3 (approx. 13%), Belize (44%), Bolivia (30%), Peru (37%), and Uruguay3 (8%). In Brazil, mestiços are also commonly known as Caboclos, and they comprise approximately 12 percent. In Costa Rica mestizos are combined with whites and accounted for as a single figure, together they are estimated at 94% of the population.
Hispanic nations of the Caribbean are a peculiar case with respect to ancestry. At least in Puerto Rico - where broad U.S. census categories have disallowed the mixed ancestry of most Puerto Ricans to be officially acknowledged - the population has been said to comprise a White majority, an extinct Amerindian population, persons of mixed ancestry, Africans and a small Asian minority. However, recent genetic research has revealed matrilineal Native American ancestry in roughly 61% of the population and patrilineal European ancestry in 75%, thus technically deeming most to be mestizos. An overwhelming majority of Puerto Rican citizens, however, simply define themselves as "Puerto Rican", placing greater importance to national-ethnic identity rather than racial categorization.
In Mexico and Peru, mestizo has also come to be used as a cultural label. In a cultural context, people are considered indígena (Amerindian) if they live following their traditional ways of life (clothing, customs and indigenous languages), otherwise they are also deemed mestizo, what in Central America would be called ladino. Additionally, in the Mexican case, most of the Afro-Mexican minority would also simply identify as mestizo, rather than black, mulatto or zambo, by virtue of their cultural traits rather than their ancestry. These cultural implications of "mestizo" can result in an overcount of the population - in the Mexican case, as high as 80% according to some sources - which would otherwise be mestizo on a racial level. Also, race is not recorded by the Mexican nor Peruvian census, so that any calculations performed by government bodies or independent agencies are always estimates.
