In the social history of colonial America we find an important wealth with regard to social groups, the product of the only fusion that occurred between those who already inhabited the continent (the indigenous people), those who conquered it (the Europeans) and the who were brought to him by force (African slaves). This mixture would result in endless ethnic possibilities and among them the figure of the mulatto would be present especially in those regions where the arrival of African slaves was numerous.
Specifically, the mulatto was the descendant of that union that was made between a European and an African. The mulatto was one of the lowest levels on the social scale since it represented for many individuals (even the indigenous people themselves) a person who was not pure of blood and who also mixed Europeans with enslaved Africans among their ancestors. To better understand the origin of the word, we can point out that the mulatto was the human representative of what the mule was, a cross between a horse and a donkey.
Obviously, the mulatto (as an impure descendant of Africans) did not possess any type of social rights or privileges. Although many of them did not become slaves specifically, they generally had to take care of domestic, menial and forced tasks. Mulattoes were especially abundant in areas where the black population was abundant, for example in Anglo-Saxon America, the Caribbean, Brazil, Venezuela and Colombia. They were not so common in the countries of South America although this does not mean that they did not exist there.
Today it is almost impossible to speak of pure races due to the deep contacts that different ethnic groups have had with each other over the centuries. Many African American Americans are technically mulatto even though they present themselves as of African descent. This is visible in the alteration of certain features, especially in the color of the skin, in the softening of some facial features or in the fact that they share these features with other ethnic groups, for which they are not purely black or European.
