Mestizo

'''''' is a term primarily used to denote people of mixed Spanish and Indigenous ancestry in the former Spanish Empire. In certain regions such as Latin America, it may also refer to people who are culturally European, even though their ancestors were Indigenous Americans. The term was used as an ethno-racial exonym for mixed-race that evolved during the Spanish Empire. It was a formal label for individuals in official documents, such as censuses, parish registers, Inquisition trials, and others. Priests and royal officials might have classified persons as mestizos, but individuals also used t

thumb|A mestizo and Indigenous parents' child was a , traditionally. Casta painting from colonial Peru, 1770. thumb|Casta painting showing 16 hierarchically arranged, Mestizo|mixed-race groupings. The top left grouping uses cholo as a synonym for mestizo. Ignacio Maria Barreda, 1777. [[Real Academia Española de la Lengua, Madrid.]]

Montubio is the term used to describe the mestizo people of the countryside of coastal Ecuador. The Montubio make up 7.4% of the country's population and were recognized as a distinct ethnicity by the government in the spring of 2001 after protests that included protracted hunger strikes. The Council for the Development of the Montubio People of the Ecuadorian Coast and Subtropical Zones of the Littoral Region (CODEPMOC) was granted official status and government funding.

thumb|right|Mestiço man with gun and sword under a fruiting papaya tree, Albert Eckhout, mid-seventeenth century [[Dutch Brazil]] Mestiço is a Portuguese term that refers to persons of mixed race, as people from European and Indigenous non-European ancestry.

thumb|The child of a Spaniards|Spaniard (right) and a mestiza (middle) is a castiza. By Miguel Cabrera. (1763)

Small group of several hundred converts to Judaism