In Search of Lost Miscegenation

Abstract

The historical process carried out in Ibero-America that we know as mestizaje transcends the mixture of the three races: the Indo-American, the white European and the African. The encounter of the Spaniards with those Amerindian cultures meant a clash between them. Both took one from the other to amalgamate a mestizo continent, almost from the first moments. There came the conquering desire for wealth, the evangelizing cross of Catholicism in a crusade to convert souls and the crossing of men from Spain and Portugal with the natives, from Hernán Cortés to the humblest soldier, they created families and America began to be populated by people mixed. This article aims to expose the bases of the research work, which we are doing from the University of Málaga, to explore and deepen, as much as possible, in this unique experiment in the world that began during the sixteenth century. We talk about trying to understand the magnitude of studying the only mestizo continent in the world. It is not trivial to have called it the New World, because it is true.