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:
“The North will at least preserve your flesh for you; Northerners are pale for good and all. There’s very little difference between a dead Swede and a young man who’s had a bad night. But the Colonial is full of maggots the day after he gets off the boat.”
—Louis-Ferdinand Céline (1894–1961)
“I don’t think Dr. King helped racial harmony, I think he helped racial justice. What I profess to do is help the oppressed and if I cause a load of discomfort in the white community and the black community, that in my opinion means I’m being effective, because I’m not trying to make them comfortable. The job of an activist is to make people tense and cause social change.”
—Al, Reverend Sharpton (b. 1954)
“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)