mestizo

Vargas Llosa’s social position — as part of the well-to-do, fair-skinned, Spanish-speaking elite — also raised questions about how he would govern a country made up largely of Indigenous people and mixed-race mestizos.

He was the son of a Spanish captain and a palla — a member of Incan royalty — making him mestizo.

“We have contaminated things par excellence, and only by accepting mixture do we become ourselves and our own. There’s not a single sci-fi concept we haven’t taken and adapted to our context, turned mestizo‌.”

Her mother asked how she could prefer “Latinx” to “Mexican” or “mestizo” — used in Latin America to describe someone of mixed Indigenous and European descent.

Underneath it, he would write-in “mestizo” to describe his Mexican American heritage.