Everything about Castizo totally explained
Castizo or castiza is a Spanish word with a general meaning of "genuine".
It has other more concrete meanings.
Race
Under the
caste System of colonial
Latin America, the term originally applied to the children resulting from the union of a
European and a
mestizo; that is, someone of three quarters Spanish and one quarter
Amerindian ancestry. During this era a myriad of other terms (
mestizo,
cuarterón de indio, etc.) were in use to denote other individuals of European/Amerindian ancestry in ratios smaller or greater than that of
castizos. The feminine form of the word is
castiza.
It was mainly used for mixed-race people who had a slightly darker complexion than that of an unmixed Spaniard, but which were otherwise of European appearance with almost no visible admixture. Under this same caste system, the offspring of a Spaniard and a Castiza was classified as a Spaniard, thus the offspring regained his/her "purity of blood".
For some
castizos whose residual quarter of Amerindian ancestry wasn't apparent at all, these were simply not categorized as
castizos, and were accepted as
criollos (Spaniards born in the Americas).
With the fall of the empire, the distinctions of the numerous caste terminologies (other than white, black, amerindian,
mestizo,
mulato and
zambo) lost detail.
Castizos today would simply be categorized as
Whites or
mestizos, depending on self-identification.
For US Latinos who yesteryear would have been classified as
castizos, "Light mestizos" or "euro-mestizos" are relatively common contemporary American English terms used, but more common in use is "light skinned Mexican" or other nationality.
In Madrid
Castizo is used in
Madrid for costumes, music, speech typical of the Madrid populace about the end of the 19th century. A person dressed in
castizo fashion can be called
manolo/
manola and
chulapo/
chulapa. Many
zarzuelas are set in a
castizo environment, like
La verbena de la Paloma.
Castizo items are the street
swivel piano,
barquillos,
Schottisch music and
Manila shawls.
Casticismo in the Spanish language
Casticismo was a tendency among Spanish intellectuals to reject foreign
loanwords and stick to traditional
Spanish roots. An example is
deporte, a word recovered from Medieval
Castilian meaning
pastime, that successfully replaced the Anglicism
sport (which, quite coincidentally, happened to mean
pastime for Shakespeare).
Further Information
Get more info on 'Castizo'.
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