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A caboclo () is a person of Multiracial Indigenous Brazilian and European ancestry, or, less commonly, a culturally assimilated or Detribalization person of full Amerindian descent. In Brazil, a caboclo generally refers to this specific type of mestico.
The term, also pronounced "caboco", is from Brazilian Portuguese, and perhaps ultimately from the Tupi language kaa'boc, meaning "the one who comes from the forest". A person of mixed Indigenous Brazilian and sub-Saharan black ancestry is known as a " cafuzo."
In the 1872 and 1890 censuses, 3.9% and 9.04% of the population self-identified as caboclos, respectively. Since then, caboclos are counted as , along with mulattoes (mixed Black-White) and zambos (mixed Amerindian-Black).
A survey performed in Rio de Janeiro showed that 14% of Whites and 6% of Pardos reported Amerindian and White ancestry.
According to some estimations, caboclos would be around 12% of Brazilian population.
The king of Portugal, Joseph I, encouraged marriages between European colonists and Indians in the 18th century; this enabled the European men to settle into families, and resulted in the birth of the first caboclo children. Similarly, in the 19th century during the time of , the government kidnapped young, primarily white and mestiço Brazilian men from Northeastern Brazil and transported them into the Amazonian interior to harvest rubber. The men were never granted permission to leave, and married local native women, fathering more generations of mestiços .
The caboclo populations in the Amazon Basin region of Brazil are noted as voracious eaters of the açaí palm fruit, which is basic to the traditional diet of the natives. In one study, açaí palm was described as the most important plant species because the fruit makes up such a major component of diet (up to 42% of the total food intake by weight) and is economically valuable in the region (Murrieta et al., 1999).
The term caboclo is also used as the term for a spirit of Indigenous origin (an ancestor or a spirit of nature) in the Afro-Brazilian religions Candomblé and Umbanda. In these religions, they are considered different from the but are nonetheless revered.
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