In late 19th- and early 20th-century Peru, for instance, mestizaje denoted those peoples with evidence of Euro-indigenous ethno-racial "descent" and access—usually monetary access, but not always—to secondary educational institutions.

[14] During the colonial era of Mexico, the category Mestizo was used rather flexibly to register births in local parishes and its use did not follow any strict genealogical pattern.

[18] Mestizo (Spanish: [mesˈtiθo] or [mesˈtiso]), mestiço (Portuguese: [mɨʃˈtisu] or [mesˈtʃisu]), métis (French: [meti(s)]), mestís (Catalan: [məsˈtis]), Mischling (German: [ˈmɪʃlɪŋ]), meticcio (Italian: [meˈtittʃo]), mestiezen (Dutch: [mɛsˈtizə(n)]), mestee (Middle English: [məsˈtiː]), and mixed are all cognates of the Latin word mixticius.

There was no descent-based casta system, and children of upper-class Portuguese landlord males and enslaved females enjoyed privileges higher than those given to the lower classes, such as formal education.

This right of inheritance was generally given to children of free women, who tended to be legitimate offspring in cases of concubinage (this was a common practice in certain Indigenous American and African cultures).

[19] Artwork created mainly in eighteenth-century Mexico, "casta paintings," show groupings of racial types in hierarchical order, which has influenced the way that modern scholars have conceived of social difference in Spanish America.

[19] During the initial period of colonization of the Americas by the Spanish, there were three chief categories of ethnicities: Spaniard (español), American Indian (indio), and African (negro).

The main divisions were as follows: In theory, and as depicted in some eighteenth-century Mexican casta paintings, the offspring of a castizo/a [mixed Spanish - Mestizo] and an Español/a could be considered Español/a, or "returned" to that status.

[25] A person's legal racial classification in colonial Spanish America was closely tied to social status, wealth, culture, and language use.

[53] A 2012 study published by the Journal of Human Genetics found that the Y-chromosome (paternal) ancestry of the average Mexican mestizo was predominantly European (64.9%), followed by Indigenous American (30.8%), and African (4.2%).

European migrants used Costa Rica to get across the isthmus of Central America as well to reach the U.S. West Coast (California) in the late 19th century and until the 1910s (before the Panama Canal opened).

Other ethnic groups known to live in Costa Rica include Nicaraguan, Colombians, Venezuelans, Peruvian, Brazilians, Portuguese, Palestinians, Caribbeans, Turks, Armenians, and Georgians.

By the late 20th century, allusions in textbooks and political discourse to "whiteness," or to Spain as the "mother country" of all Costa Ricans, were diminishing, replaced with a recognition of the multiplicity of peoples that make up the nation.

[59] In Central America, intermarriage by European men with Indigenous women, typically of Lenca, Cacaopera and Pipil backgrounds in what is now El Salvador happened almost immediately after the arrival of the Spaniards led by Pedro de Alvarado.

Indigenous peoples, mostly of Lenca, Cacaopera, and Pipil descent are still present in El Salvador in several communities, conserving their languages, customs, and traditions.

[55][63] The Chilean race, as everybody knows, is a Mestizo race made of Spanish conquistadors and the Araucanian...In Chile, from the time the Spanish soldiers with Pedro de Valdivia entered northern Chile, a process of 'mestizaje' began where Spaniards began to intermarry and reproduce with the local bellicose Mapuche population of Indigenous Chileans to produce an overwhelmingly mestizo population during the first generation in all of the cities they founded.

A public health book from the University of Chile states that 60% of the population is of only European origin; mestizos are estimated to amount to a total of 35%, while Indigenous peoples comprise the remaining 5%.

[citation needed] Over time Colombia has become a primarily Mestizo country due to limited immigration from Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries, with the minorities being: the mulattoes and pardos, both mixed race groups of significant partial African ancestry who live primarily in coastal regions among other Afro-Colombians; and pockets of Amerindians living around the rural areas and the Amazonian Basin regions of the country.

[65] A genetic study conducted by Criollo at el estimates that the average admixture for Mestizo Colombians is 50.8% European, 40.7% Amerindian, and 8.5% African ancestry, however this varies significantly across region.

De Francia himself was not a Mestizo (although his paternal grandfather was Afro-Brazilian), but feared that racial superiority would create class division which would threaten his absolute rule.

[77] Like people of full Spanish ancestry (blanco, the peninsulares and insulares), mestizos de español were not required to pay the "tribute" (a personal tax) levied on natives specified in the Laws of the Indies.

Along with children from wealthy native families, they played a prominent part in the Propaganda Movement (1880–1895), which called for reforms in the colonial government of the Philippines.

[85] In the modern Philippines, the Tagalog term mestiso (feminine mestisa) refers to anyone who has the fair-skinned appearance of mixed native and European ancestry, often used as a compliment.

In Spanish America, the colonial-era system of castas sought to differentiate between individuals and groups on the basis of a hierarchical classification by ancestry, skin color, and status (calidad), giving separate labels to the perceived categorical differences and privileging whiteness.

"Mestizaje placed greater emphasis [than the casta system] on commonality and hybridity to engineer order and unity... [it] operated within the context of the nation-state and sought to derive meaning from Latin America's own internal experiences rather than the dictates and necessities of empire... ultimately [it] embraced racial mixture.

In the late nineteenth century during the rule of Porfirio Díaz, elites sought to be, act, and look like modern Europeans, that is, different from the majority of the Mexican population.

At the end of the nineteenth century, however, as social and economic tensions increased in Mexico, two major works by Mexican intellectuals sought to rehabilitate the assessment of the mestizo.

"[93] Intellectual Andrés Molina Enríquez also took a revisionist stance on Mestizos in his work Los grandes problemas nacionales (The Great National Problems) (1909).

There is also verified evidence of the grandchildren of Moctezuma II, Aztec emperor, whose royal descent the Spanish Crown acknowledged, willingly having set foot on European soil.

[101] The Counts of Miravalle, residing in Andalucía, Spain, demanded in 2003 that the government of Mexico recommence payment of the so-called "Moctezuma pensions" it had cancelled in 1934.