Colonial Racial Categories
During the colony, the Spanish authorities described as different "varieties" from "crossing" include those resulting from the union of Black African people with people of other ethnic origins. The names used were:
- Mulatto: Black and White parents.
- Morisco: Mulatto and White parents.
- Albino: Morisco and White parents.
- Quadroon: one-quarter Black ancestry/three-quarter White ancestry.
- Octoroon: one-eighth Black ancestry/seven-eighth White ancestry.
- Tercerón: White/Mulatto mixed, an octoroon.
- Quinterón: fifth-generation Black ancestry/one parent who is an octoroon and one White parent.
- Hexadecaroon: sixth-generation Black ancestry.
- Zambo: Black/Amerindian mixed.
- Zambo Prieto: Black/Amerindian mixed with predominant Black.
Socially, possess a "crossing" in the family tree was a macula. These classifications, and other common in the colonial culture, as "mestizo" or cholo, were used to stigmatize people and prevent their social advancement. In some cases, well-known historical personalities were found in this situation, as Bernardo de Monteagudo and Bernardino Rivadavia, were described as "mulatto".
Read more about this topic: Afro Argentine
Famous quotes containing the words colonial, racial and/or categories:
“Are you there, Africa with the bulging chest and oblong thigh? Sulking Africa, wrought of iron, in the fire, Africa of the millions of royal slaves, deported Africa, drifting continent, are you there? Slowly you vanish, you withdraw into the past, into the tales of castaways, colonial museums, the works of scholars.”
—Jean Genet (1910–1986)
“From whichever angle one looks at it, the application of racial theories remains a striking proof of the lowered demands of public opinion upon the purity of critical judgment.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“The analogy between the mind and a computer fails for many reasons. The brain is constructed by principles that assure diversity and degeneracy. Unlike a computer, it has no replicative memory. It is historical and value driven. It forms categories by internal criteria and by constraints acting at many scales, not by means of a syntactically constructed program. The world with which the brain interacts is not unequivocally made up of classical categories.”
—Gerald M. Edelman (b. 1928)