Criollo people

Criollo
Criollos in Latin America

Notable Criollos: Juan Ponce de León II · Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz · Simón Bolívar · Luisa Cáceres de Arismendi · Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla · José Martí
Regions with significant populations
Throughout Hispanic America
Languages
Spanish
Religion
Predominantly Roman Catholic · Protestant · Christian Latinos · Jewish minority
Related ethnic groups
Spaniards · Italian · Portuguese · French · White Cuban · White Brazilian · White Argentine · White Mexican · White Latin American

Criollo is a term that dates back to the Spanish colonial casta system (caste system) of Latin America. It referred to a person born in the Spanish colonies deemed to have limpieza de sangre (literally, "cleanliness of blood") in respect of an individual's purity of European (Iberian) ancestry.

The term criollo is often translated into English as Creole, but this word has a much broader meaning. See Creole peoples.

Origin of the term

Limpieza de sangre or cleanliness of blood was a legal conception derived from the Spanish Reconquista, and later introduced to the Spanish colonies in the Americas. In Spain, the concept was used to distinguish old Christians of "pure" unmixed Iberian Christian ancestry (either Southern Spanish Mozarabs or Christians from the Northern Kingdoms of Spain) from new Christians descending from baptized Moriscos (Iberian Muslims) and Sephardim (Iberian Jews), together known as conversos (converts), whose real faith was institutionally suspected.

In the Americas the concept was adapted into a context of racial hierarchy based on racial "purity", in an environment which had become largely repopulated by persons of mixed race as a result of the arrival of Europeans and their miscegenation with indigenous Amerindians as well as with imported African slaves. A "pure" person able to be deemed a criollo would be one of proven unmixed Spanish ancestry, that is, the Americas-born child of two Spanish-born Spaniards, of two criollos, or a Spaniard and a criollo.

Cleanliness of blood, and thus the classification as criollo, could also be legally and automatically attained by people of mixed origin with 1/8th or less of Amerindian ancestry, that is, the offspring of one castizo parent and one Spaniard or criollo parent. The same 1/8th or less reclassification did not legally or automatically exist for those with any African admixture, although it was often subversively purchased with relevant probanzas de sangre (bloodline records) altered.

Criollos in the casta system

While the casta system was in force, the local-born criollos ranked lower than the governing peninsulares, that is, Spaniards born on the Iberian Peninsula, despite the fact that both were of legally pure Spanish blood. Peninsulares were appointed by the crown to the top ecclesiastical, military and administrative positions, and they favoured the Cádiz monopoly, while most of the criollo land-owning elite would have preferred free trade and in many places resorted to smuggling with British America (although often with the tacit approval of the local, peninsular, government official).

By the 19th century, this perceived discrimination and the examples of the American Revolution and the anti-white Haitian Revolution eventually led the criollo to rebel against peninsulare rule. Eventually earning the support of other castes— castizos, mestizos, cholos, mulatos, indios, zambos, among many others, and ultimately blacks, they engaged Spain in the Mexican War of Independence (1810–1821) and the South American Wars of Independence (1810–1826), which ended with the break-up of the former Spanish Empire in America into a number of independent republics.

Insulares in Asia

During the Spanish colonial era of the Philippines, the Spanish term criollo was used with the same sense as in Latin America, namely, a person born in the Philippines with wholly Spanish ancestry. However, the term was not widely used, and instead insulares ("from the islands") was more commonly applied to contrast them with the higher-ranking peninsulares. However, the most common term for those people was Filipinos ("from the Philippines"), distinct from the modern definition of that word.

Modern colloquial uses

• The word criollo retains its original meaning in most Spanish-speaking countries in the Americas. In some countries, however, the word criollo has over time come to have additional meanings, such as "local" or "home grown". For instance, comida criolla in Spanish-speaking countries refers to "local cuisine", not "cuisine of the criollos".

• In some Latin American countries, the term is also used to describe people from the countryside or mountain areas. In Puerto Rico, natives of the town of Caguas are usually referred to as criollos; professional sports teams from that town are also usually nicknamed criollos de Caguas ("Caguas Creoles"). Caguas is located near Puerto Rico's part of the Cordillera Central mountain area.

• In Argentina, locals of Argentina's interior northern and northwestern provinces are called criollos by their porteño counterparts from Buenos Aires. They are typically seen as more traditionally Hispanic in culture and ancestry than the hotpot of non-Hispanic European influences that define the people and culture of Buenos Aires.

• In Perú, "criollo" has come to define the syncretic culture of the coast with its Spanish, African and Indigenous elements. Thus, in many ways, it is similar to the French Creole version of the word in that it embraces the local mixture of foreign and local and the peoples and culture that arose. Thus you will see people and food refer to themselves as criollo who are of all different ancestries, but embrace the Afro, Spanish, Indigenous and even Gitano influenced culture of the coast.

See also

• White Argentine
• White Brazilian
• White Cuban
• White Mexican
• Latin America population
• Peninsulares
• White Hispanic
• White Latin American