What is Mestizaje (Concept, Meaning and Definition)

The miscegenation It is the biological and cultural crossing of individuals from different ethnicities. In the past, miscegenation used to be related to the idea of ​​racial mixing, that is, the union between individuals of different races; However, currently the concept of race has been discarded by science.

Therefore, today we rather talk about miscegenation when a combination occurs at a biological level (genetic material) and cultural level (customs, traditions, beliefs, etc.) between individuals belonging to different ethnic groups. From this mixture a new individual called a mestizo results.

Thus, the combination of different ethnicities gives rise to a new mestizo ethnicity, which is identified with elements of both ethnicities, although sometimes one of them predominates over the other.

Processes of miscegenation have taken place at different times in the history of humanity, either due to migration, due to the movement and exchange that trade gives rise to, for religious reasons or due to political and military domination of one people by another.

America is an important example of miscegenationbecause due to the process of domination and colonization of the continent, indigenous people, Europeans and Africans produced different cultural and social realities, a product of the unions that proliferated between these three groups.

Cultural mixing

Cultural miscegenation is a phenomenon resulting from the encounter, interaction, exchange and appropriation of the different traditions, customs, practices, beliefs and behaviors of different ethnic groups.

An example of cultural miscegenation is today’s Latin America, in which individuals from different ethnic groups (indigenous Americans, Spaniards, black Africans), with markedly different customs, traditions, beliefs and physical characteristics, made possible a new cultural reality that is recognized and reflects, in different degrees and forms, in those human groups from which they come.

Thus, in cultural mixing, the characteristics of the cultural particularities of different ethnic groups merge, which can be expressed in music, clothing, food, values, religion or speech. This process is also known as syncretism.

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