- Tornatrás
Tornatrás is an archaic caste term used in the Philippines during the Spanish colonial era from the 16th to 19th century to describe persons of mixed indigenous Malay (referred to as Indio), Chinese, and Spanish ancestry. The said term comes from the Spanish words "torno", meaning 'turn', and "atrás", meaning back. Although the term was used in the Spanish colonial period, it has since fallen into disuse. One problem seen in the use of the term "Tornatrás" is its specificity, especially since the Tornatrás have various mixtures of Spanish, Malay, and Chinese blood.
Present-day distribution
There are no official statistics on the number of Tornatrás in the
Philippines , since it has no longer been officially used as a legal term since the end of the Spanish colonial eraLanguage
The vast majority of Tornatrás used Spanish as their primary language, while many were also conversant in either two of the following languages:
Lan-nang (Philippine variant ofMin Nan ), Cantonese, or in any Philippine language, Ilocano, Tagalog,Cebuano , or the Spanish creole Chabacano.See also
*
Filipino mestizo
*Eurasian
*Chinese Filipino
*Spanish settlement in the Philippines
*Criollo
*White Latin American
*Mestizo
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