0 a person from Latin America who is part European, especially Spanish, and part American Indian --
1 a person from Latin America who is part European and part American Indian --
The idea of a mestizo person as a mosaic of racialised elements does not lend itself very easily to an essentialist definition of identity.
As with a genealogy, the earlier manifold faith-based features imputed to ' mestizos ' were not simply displaced by notions of ' racial mixture ' dictated by rational science.
In some cases, like colonial mestizos and contemporary mestiza market women, they even reject it.
This is particularly true of cultures that are considered central contributors to contemporary mestizo national identities.
Similarly, not all individuals who we know call ' mixed ' were, at the time, labelled mestizos.
The ' mixture ' that the label mestizo implied, then, might have meant something different.
The dangerous other is also ' mestizo' - thus in some ways like oneself.
Rather, they evoke a complex conceptual hybridity epistemologically inscribed in the notion mestizo itself.
