Zambo

Infobox Ethnic group
group = Zambo


caption = Notable Zambos: Hugo Chávez
poptime = 801,000 [cite web |url=http://www.joshuaproject.net/peoples.php?rop3=111140 |title=Peoples Listing: Zambo |accessdate=2008-08-27 |work=Joshua Project |publisher=U.S. Center for World Mission ]
popplace = Latin America
langs = Spanish, and Portuguese
rels = Christianity (Predominantly Roman Catholic, with a minority of Protestant); and other religions.
related = Garifuna, African people, and Amerindian people.

Zambo is a Spanish term (the Portuguese language term is Cafuso) that was used in the Spanish Empire and continues to be used today to identify individuals in Hispanic America who are of mixed African and Amerindian ancestry. The word originated from the Romance and Latin language. The feminine word is Zamba (not to be confused with the Afro-Brazilian Samba folk dance or Samba music, or with Argentine Zamba folk dance).

The word is not used in English, but people of this ethnicity exist in North America; the singer and guitarist Jimi Hendrix and model/actress Stacey Dash are Afro-Amerindian.

Under the caste system of Spanish and Portuguese colonial Iberic America, the term originally applied to the children of one African and one Amerindian parent, or the children of two zambo parents. During this period a myriad of other terms were in use to denote other individuals of African / Amerindian ancestry in ratios smaller or greater than the 50:50 of zambos: "Cambujo" (Zambo/Amerindian mixture) for example. Today, zambo refers to all people with significant amounts of both African and Amerindian ancestry.

History

The first zambos were initially the offspring of escaping shipwrecked slaves, as well as plantation slave escapees, who ventured into various Central American, South American and Caribbean jungles seeking refuge in remote Amerindian communities to hide and escape capture by colonial authorities. An example would be on the island of Hispaniola (the present day Haiti & the Dominican Republic), in which some escaped slaves encountered the few remaining Tainos on the island. Racial mixing occurred on the island and today Afro-Amerindians make up a small percentage of the populations of both Haiti and the Dominican Republic. These Amerindians — themselves under threat from encroaching European colonizers — were sympathetic to the plight of the fleeing slaves and welcomed them into their communities, offered them food and sanctuary, and in many cases also their daughters as wives. As in the United States during slavery, there are instances in Latin American history of Africans and Amerindians joining together and forming free renegade encampments to fight their European colonizers and slaveholders. In Latin America, these primarily African settlements of runaways, or Maroons, were called "quilombos". The most famous of all quilombos is the legendary Palmares in Brazil, which at the height of its flourishing had a population of over 30,000. The word "Zambo" later became a racist word used to describe individuals of African descent.

The history behind the African ancestry of the Garifuna is usually attributed to escaping shipwrecked slaves, whereas for the zambos of north-western South America, the Lobos of Mexico and most other Zambos in general are attributed to escaping plantation slaves.

Population today

Officially, zambos represent small minorities in the northwestern South American countries of Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador. A small but noticeable number of zambos resulting from recent unions of Amerindian women to Afro-Ecuadorian men are not uncommon in major coastal cities of Ecuador. Prior to the rural to urban migration, the Amerindian and Afro-Ecuadorian ethnicities were mostly constrained to the Andes region and province of Esmeraldas and the Chota Valley in the province of Imbabura respectively. The communities that exist in Brazil, mainly along the northwestern region of the country, are known as Cafuzos.

In Honduras, they are known as Garifunas, and while Zambos can also be found in other Caribbean and Central America countries such as the Dominican Republic, Belize, and Nicaragua, their history and origins are not linked to that of the Garifuna. In Mexico, where they were known as Lobos (literally meaning wolf), they formed a sizeable minority in the past. The great majority of Lobos have now been absorbed into the much larger Mexican Mestizo population and can only be found in tiny communities scattered around the southern coastal states including Michoacán, Guerrero, Oaxaca, Campeche, Quintana Roo, Yucatán, and Veracruz where the country's Afro-Mexicans reside.

Culturally, Mexican Lobos followed Amerindian traditions rather than African influences, as is also the case in Bolivia where the Afro-Bolivian community has absorbed and retained many aspects of Amerindian cultural influences such as dress and use of the Aymara language.

Racism and discrimination

These populations of mixed Amerindian and African ancestry are generally marginalized and discriminated against, with color bias being pervasive throughout much of Latin America. Beyond the pockets of these specifically identified ethnic communities, in Latin American nations with large populations of people of African descent, the percentage of those with Amerindian ancestry is relatively high (though not as a ratio of the make up of the individuals). Such is the case in nations such as Colombia, Nicaragua, Panama, and Brazil.

Long-standing problems of race and class discrimination in Latin America confront Latin Americans of African and Amerindian ancestry to varying degrees, depending on their membership in or identification with a specific Afro-Amerindian ethnic group such as those mentioned above, or the degree to which their ancestry is expressed in their physical characeristics. Generally, those with dark skin and frizzy hair tend to be among the region's poorest and most disenfranchised. For instance, in 1998, when Hurricane Mitch battered the northeast coast of Honduras, the nation's Garifuna communities were among the hardest hit, yet because of a history of racism and discrimination, they were virtually ignored by government relief efforts.

See also

*Afro-Latin American
*Black Indians
*Black Seminoles
*Cafuzo
*Casta
*Garifuna
*Marabou
*Miskito
*Mestizo
*Miscegenation
*Mulatto
*Mestee
*List of topics related to Black and African people

References

External links

* [http://garifunaweb.com/ofraneh/informe1-4-03.html GarifunaWeb]
* [http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A61891-2002Dec1&notFound=true Stranded in Paradise: Shipwrecked Hundreds of Years Ago, the Garifuna Are Still Trying to Find Their Way] by Teresa Wiltz, The Washington Post.