Creole

Creole, originally, any person of European (mostly French or Spanish) or African descent born in the West Indies or parts of French or Spanish America (and thus naturalized in those regions rather than in the parents’ home country). The term has since been used with various meanings, often conflicting or varying from region to region.

In Spanish colonial America, Creoles were generally excluded from high office in both church and state, although legally Spaniards and Creoles were equals. Discrimination arose from Spanish crown policy aimed at rewarding its favoured Spanish subjects with lucrative and honorific colonial posts while excluding Creoles from such positions and severely restricting their commercial activities. Especially in the 18th century, immigrants from Spain (called peninsulares or, with contempt, gachupines and chapetones in Mexico and South America, respectively) who succeeded in business in the colonies aroused the Creoles’ enmity. The Creoles led the revolutions that effected the expulsion of the colonial regime from Spanish America in the early 19th century. After independence in Mexico, Peru, and elsewhere, Creoles entered the ruling class. They were generally conservative and cooperated with the higher clergy, the army, large landowners, and, later, foreign investors.

In the West Indies the noun creole formerly was used to denote descendants of any European settlers, but commonly the term is used more broadly to refer to all the people, whatever their class or ancestry—European, African, Asian, Indian—who are part of the Caribbean culture. In French Guiana the term refers to those who, whatever the colour of their skin, have adopted a European way of life; in neighbouring Suriname it refers to descendants of African slaves. In Louisiana in the United States it refers, in some contexts, to French-speaking white descendants of early French and Spanish settlers and, in other contexts, to a person of mixed black and white ancestry speaking a form of French and Spanish.

In different parts of Latin America the term creole has various referents: it may denote any local-born person of pure Spanish extraction; it may refer more restrictively to members of old-line families of predominantly Spanish descent who have roots in the colonial period; or it may simply refer to members of urban Europeanized classes, as contrasted with rural Indians. In such countries as Peru, the adjective creole describes a certain spirited way of life. Important expressions of that way of life are the abilities to speak wittily and persuasively on a wide range of topics, to turn a situation to one’s advantage, to be masculine (macho), to exhibit national pride, and to participate in fiestas and other sociable activities with a certain gusto; a person exhibiting those characteristics is described as muy criollo (“very creole”).