Jump to content

Torna atrás

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 71.111.229.19 (talk) at 21:47, 13 August 2010 (→‎Language: not necessary to use spanish language or to link, since it's linked in the lede section). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Tornatrás is a caste term used in the Philippines during the Spanish colonial era from the 16th to 19th century to describe persons of mixed indigenous Malay (referred to as Indio), Chinese (referred to as Sangley), and Spanish ancestry (referred to as Filipino or Peninsular). The term comes from the Spanish words torno, meaning 'turn', and atrás, meaning 'back'. Hence, the term means "to turn back."

Present-day distribution

There are no official statistics on the number of people of Tornatrás ancestry in the Philippines, as it has not been officially used as a legal term since the end of the Spanish colonial era.

History

Persons of the Tornatrás caste were legally classified as 'blanco' (white), along with filipinos (Spaniards born in the Philippines), peninsulares (Spaniards born in Spain), and mestizos of Spanish-Malay descent, and lived in the racially segregated Intramuros, where persons who were not legally classified as white were not allowed to live.

Those born in the Tornatrás caste were commonly born from a Spanish father ('filipino' or 'peninsular') and a Malay-Chinese ('mestiza de sangley) mother as only white men were legally allowed to marry non-white women. White women were prohibited from marrying non-white men as it was against the social mores of the time. If a mestiza de sangley (Malay-Chinese) or india (Malay) married a Spaniard (filipino or peninsular), she was legally classified as 'white' and was allowed to live in Intramuros with her husband and children.

Illegitimate mestizo children of Spanish men were legally prohibited from living in Intramuros unless they were adopted by the men themselves.

Only mestizos de sangley (persons of Malay-Chinese descent) were allowed to enter strictly for employment purposes, but were required to leave and return to their section of racially segregated Binondo at the end of the day. Whites were legally exempted from paying taxes. Indios (Malays) paid the base tax, mestizos de sangley (Malay-Chinese) paid twice the base tax, and sangleys (Chinese) paid four times the base tax.

Language

Persons of the Tornatrás caste used Spanish as their primary language as the use of any other language was legally prohibited from being spoken within the walls of Intramuros, coextensive with the boundaries of Manila at the time, and was considered the capital of the territory of the Philippines during the Spanish colonial era.

Notable Persons of Tornatrás Descent

See also

Miscegenation in the Spanish Philippines


Sangley (Chinese) / Mestizo de Sangley
———
 Spaniard
———
 Spaniard
———
 Indio (Native)
———
 Sangley (Chinese)
↓
↓
↓
↓
Tornatrás Filipino Mestizo (de Español) Mestizo de Sangley
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Torna_atrás&oldid=378780246"