Mestizo

Mestizo
	A casta painting of a Spanish man and an Indigenous woman with a Mestizo child
Regions with significant populations
	Latin America, United States, Spain, Philippines, Micronesia
Languages
	Spanish (mainly), Indigenous languages of the Americas, and Austronesian languages;
Religion
	Predominantly Roman Catholic; religious minorities include Protestants and syncretism with Indigenous beliefs
Related ethnic groups
	Spaniards ; Indigenous peoples of the Americas ; Métis;

Mestizo (meh-STEE-tzo) is a Spanish term for a person who is of mixed Spanish and Native American ancestry.

An image from colonial South America shows that mestizos are the children of Spanish people and Indigenous people.

Mestizos have existed since Spain controlled much of what is now Latin America. A mestizo was usually the son of a Spanish father and a Native American mother. Mestizos form the largest part of the population in some Latin American nations. A large minority of mestizos makes up most of the population in Mexico, the Spanish-speaking nation with the largest population in the world.

During the colonial era, many Native Americans converted to Roman Catholicism and began using Spanish instead of their traditional language. That was because of the racial hierarchy that existed in the Spanish colonies, which gave Spaniards a higher social class than Native Americans and Africans. That has made many Native Americans gain a better social status by calling themselves "mestizos" instead of "Indios."

Indo-Mestizo

Indo-Mestizo (also known as Cholo, is a Spanish term for a person who has around three-fourths Native American and one-fourth Spanish ancestry, It is a derogatory term used by the Spanish caste system for racial discrimination against original Native people.

It is a racial slur used that discriminates mostly against original Native people in eastern and southern Mexico, much of Northern Central America, the Pacific side of Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Colombia, and Bolivia.

Indo-Mestizos usually have more Native American traits but may have either a light pigmentation with completely Native American features or a dark pigmentation with some obvious Spanish features.

Famous Indo-Mestizos are Maya Zapata, George Lopez, and Danny Trejo. They are called so because of their appearance, not because of their known genetic background.

Mestizo Media

A casta painting by Miguel Cabrera. Here he shows a Spanish (español) father, Mestiza (mixed Spanish–American Indian) mother, and their Castiza daughter.
Luis de Mena, Virgin of Guadalupe and castas, 1750. The top left grouping is of an indio and an española, with their Mestizo son. This is the only known casta painting with an indio man and española woman.
A statue of Gonzalo Guerrero, who adopted the Maya way of life and fathered the first mestizo children in Mexico and in the mainland Americas (the only mestizos before were those born in the Caribbean to Spanish men and Indigenous Caribbean women)
Distribution of admixture estimates for individuals from Mexico City (left) and Quetalmahue, Chile (right). The position of each dot on the triangle plot indicates the proportion of European, indigenous American and African ancestry estimated for each individual in the population.
Chavela Vargas Mixed-Costa Rican Born - Singer
Keylor Navas Mixed-Costa Rican - Real Madrid Goalkeeper
Painting of the First Independence Movement celebration in San Salvador, El Salvador. At the center, José Matías Delgado, a Salvadoran priest and doctor known as El Padre de la Patria Salvadoreña (The Father of the Salvadoran Fatherland), alongside his nephew Manuel José Arce, future Salvadoran president of the Federal Republic of Central America.
Distribution of genetic ancestry among 441 individuals from Argentina by four major regions.