Editing Miscegenation (section)

===Admixture in Latin America===

====Background====
Prior to the European conquest of the [[Americas]] the demographics of [[Latin America]] was naturally 100% [[Indigenous peoples of the Americas|American Indian]]. Today those who identify themselves as Native Americans are small minorities in many countries. For example, the CIA lists [[Demographics of Argentina#Indigenous peoples|Argentina's]] at 0.9%, [[Indigenous peoples in Brazil|Brazil's]] at 0.4%, and [[Uruguay]]'s at 0%.<ref>[https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html CIA Factbook] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171107142508/https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html |date=7 November 2017 }}. Cia.gov. Retrieved 11 December 2011.</ref> However, the range varies widely from country to country in [[Latin America]] with some countries having significantly larger [[Amerindian]] minorities.

[[File:Ignacio María Barreda - Las castas mexicanas.jpg|thumb|left|Depiction of casta system in [[New Spain|Mexico]], 18th century|309x309px]]

The early conquest of Latin America was primarily carried out by male soldiers and sailors from [[Spain]] and [[Portugal]]. Since they carried very few European women on their journeys the new settlers married and fathered children with Amerindian women and also with women taken by force from [[Africa]]. This process of miscegenation was even encouraged by the [[Spanish Monarchy]] and it led to the system of stratification known as the [[Casta]]. This system had Europeans ([[Spanish people|Spaniards]] and [[Portuguese people|Portuguese]]) at the top of the hierarchy followed by those of [[mixed race]]. Unmixed Blacks and Native Americans were at the bottom. A philosophy of [[Racial whitening|whitening]], an example of [[scientific racism]] in favor of [[white supremacy]], emerged in which Amerindian and African culture were stigmatized in favor of European values. Many Amerindian languages were lost as mixed race offspring adopted [[Spanish language|Spanish]] and [[Portuguese language|Portuguese]] as their first languages. Only towards the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century did large numbers of Europeans begin to migrate to [[South America]] and consequently altering its [[Latin america#Demographics|demographics]].

In addition many [[Ethnic groups of Africa|Africans]] were shipped to regions all over the Americas and were present in many of the early voyages of the [[conquistador]]s. [[Brazil]] has the largest population of African descendants outside Africa. Other countries such as [[Jamaica]], [[Cuba]], [[Puerto Rico]], [[Dominican Republic]], [[Haiti]], [[Venezuela]], [[Colombia]], and [[Ecuador]] still have sizeable populations identified as [[Black people|Black]]. However countries such as [[Argentina]] do not have a visible African presence today. Census information from the early 19th century shows that people categorized as Black made up to 30% of the population, or around 400,000 people.<ref>{{Cite journal | last1 = Fejerman | first1 = L. | last2 = Carnese | first2 = F. R. | last3 = Goicoechea | first3 = A. S. | last4 = Avena | first4 = S. A. | last5 = Dejean | first5 = C. B. | last6 = Ward | first6 = R. H. | doi = 10.1002/ajpa.20083 | title = African ancestry of the population of Buenos Aires | journal = American Journal of Physical Anthropology | volume = 128 | issue = 1 | pages = 164–170 | year = 2005 | pmid =  15714513}}</ref> Though almost completely absent today, their contribution to Argentine culture is significant and include the [[Argentine tango|tango]], the [[Milonga (music)|milonga]] and the [[Zamba (artform)|zamba]], words of [[Bantu languages|Bantu]] origin.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.cwo.com/~lucumi/argentina.html|title=Blacks in Argentina: Disappearing Acts|last=Aidi|first=Hisham|date=2 April 2002|work=History Notes|publisher=The Global African Community|access-date=13 July 2008}}</ref>

{| class="wikitable" style="float: right;"
|-
! colspan="4"|Demographics of Brazil in 1835, 1940, 2000 and 2008<ref name="skidmore">{{Cite journal|first=Thomas E. |last=Skidmore |title=Fact and Myth: Discovering a Racial Problem in Brazil|journal=Working Paper|volume=173|url=http://www.nd.edu/~kellogg/publications/workingpapers/WPS/173.pdf|date=April 1992}}</ref><ref>[http://noticias.uol.com.br/especiais/pnad/ultnot/2009/09/18/ult6843u18.jhtm Brasil perde brancos e pretos e ganha 3,2 milhões de pardos]. Noticias.uol.com.br (18 September 2009). Retrieved 11 December 2011.</ref>
|-
! Year!! White !! Brown!! Black
|-
| 1835
| 24.4% || 18.2%||51.4%
|-
| 1940
| 64% ||21%||14%
|-
| 2000
| 53.7% ||38.5%||6.2%
|-
| 2008
| 48.8% ||43.8%||6.5%
|}
The ideology of whitening encouraged non-whites to seek white or lighter skinned partners. This dilution of non-white admixture would be beneficial to their offspring as they would face less stigmatization and find it easier to assimilate into mainstream society. After successive generations of European gene flow, non-white admixture levels would drop below levels at which skin color or physical appearance is not affected thus allowing individuals to identify as White. In many regions, the native and black populations were simply overwhelmed by a succession of waves of European immigration.

Historians and scientists are thus interested in tracing the fate of Native Americans and Africans from the past to the future. The questions remain about what proportion of these populations simply died out and what proportion still has descendants alive today including those who do not racially identify themselves as their ancestors would have. Admixture testing has thus become a useful objective tool in shedding light on the demographic history of Latin America.

====Recent studies====
[[File:Cabrera Pintura de Castas.jpg|thumb|upright|A Spaniard plays with his mixed-race daughter while his Mulatta wife looks on, [[Miguel Cabrera (painter)|Miguel Cabrera]], 1763, Colonial Mexico.]]
Unlike the United States, there were no anti-miscegenation policies in Latin America. Though still a racially stratified society there were no significant barriers to gene flow between the three populations. As a result, admixture profiles are a reflection of the colonial populations of Africans, Europeans and Amerindians. The pattern is also sex biased in that the African and Amerindian maternal lines are found in significantly higher proportions than African or Amerindian Y chromosomal lines. This is an indication that the primary mating pattern was that of European males with Amerindian or African females. According to the study more than half the White populations of the Latin American countries studied have some degree of either Native American or African admixture ([[MtDNA]] or [[Y chromosome]]). In countries such as [[Chile]] and [[Colombia]] almost the entire white population was shown to have some non-white admixture.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Martínez Marignac|first=Verónica L.|author2=Bianchi Néstor O.|author3=Bertoni Bernardo|author4=Parra Esteban J.|year=2004|title=Characterization of Admixture in an Urban Sample from Buenos Aires, Argentina, Using Uniparentally and Biparentally Inherited Genetic Markers|journal=Human Biology| volume=76|issue=4|pages=543–57|url=http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/human_biology/v076/76.4marignac.html| doi=10.1353/hub.2004.0058|pmid=15754971|s2cid=13708018}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last=Gonçalves|first=V. F.|author2=Prosdocimi F.|author3=Santos L. S.|author4=Ortega J. M.|author5=Pena S. D. J.|date=9 May 2007|title=Sex-biased gene flow in African Americans but not in American Caucasians |journal=Genetics and Molecular Research|volume=6|issue=2|pages=256–61|issn=1676-5680|url=http://www.funpecrp.com.br/gmr/year2007/vol2-6/gmr0330_full_text.htm|access-date=13 July 2008|pmid=17573655}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal | last1 = Alves-Silva | first1 = Juliana| last2 = da Silva Santos | first2 = Magda| last3 = Guimarães | first3 = Pedro E. M.| last4 = Ferreira | first4 = Alessandro C. S.| last5 = Bandelt | first5 = Hans-Jürgen | last6 = Pena | first6 = Sérgio D. J.| last7 = Prado | first7 = Vania Ferreira| doi = 10.1086/303004 | title = The Ancestry of Brazilian mtDNA Lineages | journal = [[The American Journal of Human Genetics]]| volume = 67 | issue = 2 | pages = 444–461 | year = 2000 | pmid = 10873790| pmc = 1287189| display-authors=6}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|last=Salzano|first=Francisco M. |author2=Cátira Bortolini, Maria |title=The Evolution and Genetics of Latin American Populations|publisher=Cambridge University Press|location=Cambridge|year=2002|series=Cambridge Studies in Biological and Evolutionary Anthropology|volume=28|page=512|isbn=978-0-521-65275-9}}</ref>

[[Frank Moya Pons]], a [[Dominican Republic|Dominican]] historian documented that Spanish colonists intermarried with [[Taíno]] women, and, over time, these mestizo descendants intermarried with Africans, creating a tri-racial Creole culture. 1514 census records reveal that 40% of Spanish men in the colony of [[Captaincy General of Santo Domingo|Santo Domingo]] had Taíno wives.<ref>Ferbel, Dr. P. J. [http://www.kacike.org/FerbelEnglish.html "Not Everyone Who Speaks Spanish is from Spain: Taíno Survival in the 21st Century Dominican Republic".] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100529100634/http://www.kacike.org/FerbelEnglish.html |date=29 May 2010 }} ''Kacikie: Journal of Caribbean Amerindian History and Anthropology.'' . Retrieved 24 September 2009.</ref> A 2002 study conducted in [[Puerto Rico]] suggests that over 61% of the population possess Amerindian mtDNA.<ref>Martínez Cruzado, Juan C. (2002). [http://www.kacike.org/MartinezEnglish.pdf The Use of Mitochondrial DNA to Discover Pre-Columbian Migrations to the Caribbean:Results for Puerto Rico and Expectations for the Dominican Republic.] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20040622184420/http://www.kacike.org/MartinezEnglish.pdf |date=22 June 2004 }} ''Kacike: The Journal of Caribbean Amerindian History and Anthropology.'' Lynne Guitar, Ed. (Retrieved 25 September 2006)</ref>