Criollo (people)
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Criollo, in the Spanish colonial Castas (caste system) of Latin America, was a person born in the Spanish colonies deemed to have "Pureza de Sangre" (Spanish for "Purity of Blood") in respect to the individual's European ancestry.
"Purity of Blood" was a legal conception from the Spanish Reconquista. A cristiano viejo ("old Christian") was somebody with pure Christian ancestry (Mozarab or from the Northern kingdoms of Spain) as opposed to a cristiano nuevo, ("new Christian"), descending from Conversos, baptized Moriscos or Sephardis), whose real faith was suspected. In the Americas, the concept was adapted to the presence of Negroes and Amerindians. A "pure" person would be that of proven unmixed Spanish ancestry, that is, the Americas-born child of two Spanish-born Spaniards. "Purity of Blood", and thus the classification as "criollo", could also be legally attained by people of mixed origin who possessed 1/8th or less of Amerindian ancestry, that is, the offspring of one castizo parent and one Spaniard or criollo parent.
The term "criollo" is often translated into English as Creole, but this word has a much broader meaning (see Creole peoples).
The word criollo retains the original meaning in several Spanish-speaking countries in the Americas. In some countries, however, the word criollo has in time come to have other meanings.
[edit] Criollos in the caste system
While the castas system was in force, the local-born criollos ranked strictly lower than governing Peninsulares ("born in the Iberian Peninsula"), despite both being of legally pure Spanish blood.
By the 19th century, this discrimination eventually led the criollo to rebel against the Spanish rule. With the support of even lower classes — castizos, mestizos, cholos, mulatos, Amerindians, zambos, among many others, and ultimately blacks, in that descending rank order — 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 former Spanish Empire in America into a number of independent republics.
[edit] Philippine "Insulares"
During the colonial era of the Philippines, the Spanish term criollo was used with the same sense as in Latin America, namely person born in the Philippines with wholly Spanish ancestry. However, the term was not widely used, and instead were more commonly called insulares ("from the islands"), to contrast them with the higher-ranking peninsulares born on the Iberian Peninsula. However, the most common term was filipinos ("from the Philippines").
The meaning of filipino changed drastically during the Philippine Revolution. It was adopted by nationalist movements and transformed into a national designation that encompassed the entire population of the Philippines, especially the descendants of the native Austronesian peoples. In fact, the meaning of Filipino today is the opposite of its colonial meaning, since it tends to exclude the 3.6% mestizos of mixed Spanish descent, who are seen, and often regard themselves, as foreigners; as well as the non-mixed criollos, who have always been an even smaller group, and today number only 17,000 (0.02%) amid a total population of almost 90 million.
