Cholo () was a racial category used in 18th-century Spanish America to refer to people who were three-quarters Amerindians by descent and one-quarter Spanish people. Its origin is a somewhat derogatory term for people of mixed-blood heritage in the Spanish Empire in Latin America and its successor states as part of , the informal ranking of society by heritage. Cholo no longer necessarily refers only to ethnic heritage, and is not always meant negatively. Cholo can signify anything from its original sense as a person with one Indigenous parent and one mestizo parent, "gangster" in Mexico, an insult in some countries (similar to Majo in Spain), or a "person who dresses in the manner of a certain subculture" in the United States as part of the cholo subculture.[
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Historical usage
In his work Vocabulario en Lengua Castellana y Mexicana (1571), Fray Alonso de Molina reported that the word "cholo" or "xolo" derives from Nahuatl and means paje, moço, criado o esclavo (page, waiter, servant or slave).
The term's use to describe a caste is first recorded in a Peruvian book published in 1609 and 1616, the Comentarios Reales de los Incas by Inca Garcilaso de la Vega. He writes (in Spanish), "The child of a Black male and an Indian female, or of an Indian male and Black female, they call mulato and mulata. The children of these they call cholos. Cholo is a word from the Barlovento Islas later; it means "dog", not of the purebred variety, but of very disreputable origin; and the Spaniards use it for insult and vituperation".
In Ecuador, mestizas wearing Indigenous attire in Ecuador were termed cholas. "Chola appears to have been a designation largely reserved for women and which, according to Jacques Poloni-Simard, was used to indicate mestiza women who had achieved an incipient degree of hispanization that was beyond the grasp of men, who were more firmly bound to their native communities by tribute obligations."[Rappaport, Joanne. The Disappearing Mestizo: Configuring Difference in the Colonial New Kingdom of Granada. Durham: Duke University Press 2014, pp. 52-53.][Poloni-Simard, La mosaïque indienne: Mobilité, stratification sociale et métissage dan le corregimiento de Cuenca (Équateur) du XVIe au XVIII siècle. Paris: Édicions de L'École des Hautes Étusdes en Science Sociales 2000, pp. 120-22.]
In New Spain, the terms cholo and coyote co-existed, indicating mixed mestizo and Indigenous ancestry. Under the casta designations of colonial Mexico, the term rarely appears; however, an 18th-century casta painting by Ignacio María Barreda shows the grouping Español, India, with their offspring a mestizo or cholo[García Sáiz, María Concepción. Las castas mexicanas. Milan: Olivetti 1989, pp. 140-41.]
Cholo as an English-language term dates at least to 1851, when it was used by Herman Melville in his novel Moby-Dick, referring to a Spanish-speaking sailor, possibly derived from the Windward Islands reference mentioned above. Isela Alexsandra Garcia of the University of California at Berkeley writes that the term can be traced to Mexico, where in the early part of the last century, it referred to "culturally marginal" mestizos and Native American origin.
During the War of the Pacific (1879–1883), Peruvians were contemptuously referred to as "cholos" by Chilean officers.
An article in the Los Angeles Express of April 2, 1907, headlined "Cleaning Up the Filthy Cholo Courts Has Begun in Earnest", uses the terms "cholos" and "Mexicans" interchangeably.[Author unknown. "Cleaning Up the Filthy Cholo Courts Has Begun in Earnest" , Los Angeles Express, April 2, 1907.] The term "cholo courts" was defined in The Journal of San Diego History as "sometimes little more than instant slums, as shanties were strewn almost randomly around city lots in order to create cheap horizontal tenements."[Curtis, James R. and Ford, Larry. " Bungalow Courts in San Diego: Monitoring a Sense of Place". The Journal of San Diego History. Spring 1988, Volume 34,]
Modern usage
United States
The terms cholos, cholas, and cholitas are used as informal slang terms in places like Southern California (typically by Latinos) to refer to people of Mexican, Salvadoran, Colombian, Dominican, Cuban, and others who have significant ancestry in the rest of Latinoamerica, who are usually of low income and are seen dressed in work wear such as flannels, bandanas, baggy khaki work pants, flannels, jewelry, and heavyweight shirts. This also usually refers to Latin Americans (and in some cases people who currently run operations in their country of origin) who are associated with Latino street gangs in the United States [. Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration, November, 2014. Retrieved 18 March 2025.] and the Mexican Miracle which caused Mexico's explosive economic growth, which rapidly increased Mexico's population, leading to a flood of Mexicans immigrating to the United States due to the economic opportunities that were presented in places like Southern Texas, SoCal, Arizona, and New Mexico.[Raquel, Ana. "Stanford scholar examines the spike in unauthorized Mexican migration in the 1970s and how it came about" Standford University, 14 May, 2018. Retrieved 18 March, 2025.] Relatively quickly, gangs formed (such as MS13 mentioned before, which formed in the 1980s), stemming from poor conditions of Los Angeles, causing already crime-riddled neighborhoods to start forming gangs to contest their territory against gangs already in settled Los Angeles, such as the Bloods. This term is often regarded similarly to terms such as "thug" and "gangster" in Latinoamerican culture.
Bolivia
In Bolivia, "cholo" refers to people with various degrees of Indigenous ancestry.[ Cholitas are now moving into many other fields at a high level.]
Ecuador
Cholo pescador are a group of traditional fishermen along the coasts of Ecuador.
Peru
In Peru, mestizos with greater Indigenous contributions are 27.7%: Those that would be in the range of 60% to 75% of Indigenous contributions, characterized by presenting a tonality of tan, brown, and brunette skin with major features of Indigenous ethnic groups. They are mostly descendants of Quechua peoples at around 23.7%; of other ethnic groups originating from the coast in 2%; of the Aymaras by 1.5%; of native ethnic groups of the jungle at 0.5%. Of the total of this subgroup around half are in the mountains, an important part of this segment due to migration are on the coast, usually in Lima, major urban centers and finally around a quarter (1/4) in the jungle. They are also called "cholos".
Mexico
The cholo gangs started from the US in the mid- to late 1920s.
See also
External links
