cholo#Bolivia

{{Main|Casta}}

{{Further|Spanish colonization of the Americas}}

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).{{cite book

| last =de Molina

| first =Alonso

| title =Vocabulario en Lengua Castellana y Mexicana

| year =1571

| pages =160

}}

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 known as Windward Islands]; it means "dog", not of the purebred variety, but of very disreputable origin; and the Spaniards use it for insult and vituperation".{{cite book

| last =Garcilaso de la Vega

| first =Inca

| author-link = Inca Garcilaso de la Vega

| year =1609

| title =Los Comentarios Reales de los Incas

| title-link =Comentarios Reales de los Incas

| pages =ME

| quote= Aqui el escribe 'Al hijo de negro y de india, o de indio y de negra, dicen mulato y mulata. A los hijos de éstos llaman cholo; es vocablo de la isla de Barlovento; quiere decir perro, no de los castizos (raza pura), sino de los muy bellacos gozcones; y los españoles usan de él por infamia y vituperio.'

}} Interestingly, the Mexican hairless dog is known as "xoloitzcuintli" or "xolo" in Nahuatl.

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 Imperial Mexico, the terms cholo and coyote co-existed,{{citation needed|date=August 2019}} 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 choloGarcía 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.{{cite book

| last =Vigil

| first =James Diego

| title =Barrio Gangs: Street Life and Identity in Southern California

| publisher =University of Texas Press

| year =1988

| location =Austin

| url =https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780292711198

| url-access =registration

| isbn =0-292-71119-0 }}

During the War of the Pacific (1879–1883), Peruvians were contemptuously referred to as "cholos" by Chilean officers.{{cite journal |last1=Vergara |first1=Jorge Iván |last2=Gundermann |first2=Hans |title=Conformación y dinámica interna del campo identitario regional en Tarapacá y Los Lagos, Chile |trans-title=Constitution and internal dynamics of the regional identitary in Tarapacá and Los Lagos, Chile |language=es |journal=Chungara |date=March 2012 |volume=44 |issue=1 |pages=115–134 |doi=10.4067/s0717-73562012000100009 |doi-access=free |url=https://scielo.conicyt.cl/pdf/chungara/v44n1/art09.pdf }}

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. [http://www.ulwaf.com/LA-1900s/07.04.html#Mexicans "Cleaning Up the Filthy Cholo Courts Has Begun in Earnest"] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130618014516/http://www.ulwaf.com/LA-1900s/07.04.html#Mexicans |date=June 18, 2013 }}, 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. "[http://www.sandiegohistory.org/journal/88spring/bungalow.htm Bungalow Courts in San Diego: Monitoring a Sense of Place]". The Journal of San Diego History. Spring 1988, Volume 34,

{{Main|Cholo (subculture)}}

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 {{cite web |last1=The Information Architects of Encyclopaedia Britannica |title=Cholo |url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/cholo-gang-subculture |publisher=Britannica Encyclopaedia |access-date=18 March 2025 |language=en}} such as MS13, the Latin Kings, and the Sureños. While all Cholos are Latinos, they are more typically of Salvadoran and Mexican descent as the Cholo culture originated in Los Angeles, in which the expansive Latinoamerican population is mostly made up of Mexicans and a smaller number of Salvadorans. This influx of Mexicans and Salvadorans came due to the Salvadoran Civil War, which caused over 500,000 Salvadorans{{cite web |last1=University of California |first1=Davis |title=Salvadorans TPS to Expire |url=https://migration.ucdavis.edu/mn/more.php?id=512 |publisher=University of California, Davis |access-date=18 March 2025}} to immigrate to the United States {{cite web|author=Rob Paral and Associates|title=Measures of Immigrant Integration in Los Angeles County|url=http://dornsife.usc.edu/assets/sites/731/docs/RPA_measures_immigrant_integration_web.pdf}}. 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. [https://migration.ucdavis.edu/mn/more.php?id=512 "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.{{fact|date=May 2025}} This term is often regarded similarly to terms such as "thug" and "gangster" in Latinoamerican culture.

File:Chola Cuencana.JPGna]]

In Bolivia, "cholo" refers to people with various degrees of Indigenous ancestry.{{cite web|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26172313 |title=The rise of the 'cholitas' |work=BBC News |date=2014-02-20 |access-date=2014-02-20}} The term "cholita" has, traditionally, been used to refer in a derogatory way to Aymara women. These women are now combatting this pejorative use by associating it with, for example, extreme sports such as wrestling, the fighting cholitas, and mountaineering, the cholita climbers. Cholitas, with their Indigenous costumes of bowler hats, shawls, and pollera are now seen as fashion icons. Cholitas are now moving into many other fields at a high level.{{Cite news |date=2018-02-22 |title=The rise of Bolivia’s indigenous 'cholitas' – in pictures |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2018/feb/22/rise-bolivia-indigenous-cholitas-in-pictures |access-date=2024-12-29 |work=the Guardian |language=en-GB |issn=0261-3077}} A "cholo" in Bolivia is the name given to a campesino (peasant, farmer) who moved to the city, and though the term was also originally derogatory, it has now become more of a symbol of Indigenous power. The word "cholo/a" is considered a common and/or official enough term in Bolivia such that "cholo" has been included as its own ethnic group option in demographic surveys conducted in the country. In these same surveys, the term had on occasion been used interchangeably with the term "mestizo".{{Cite web|url=http://www.indexmundi.com/bolivia/demographics_profile.html|title=Bolivia Demographics Profile 2017|website=www.indexmundi.com|access-date=2017-09-19}} Nevertheless, some locals still use cholo as a derogatory term.

Cholos pescadores are a group of traditional fishermen along the coasts of Ecuador.{{citation needed|date=March 2021}}

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".{{cite web |title=Composición étnica y fenotipos en el Perú |url=http://www.espejodelperu.com.pe/Poblacion-del-Peru/Composicion-etnica-del-Peru.htm#.W1rSbtJKiUl |website=www.espejodelperu.com.pe |publisher=Población del Perú |access-date=27 July 2018}} The term has been used as a racial slur towards people of Indigenous origin. It has also been used as a cultural slur towards people of a lower social class or simply someone perceived to be crass, unsophisticated, or ignorant.

The cholo gangs started from the US in the mid- to late 1920s.{{cite news |title=Los cholos de 'Nezayork' |first=Susana |last=López Peña |url=http://www.esmas.com/noticierostelevisa/noticieros/376243.html |newspaper=Noticieros Televisa |location=Mexico City |access-date=18 January 2010 |language=es |trans-title=The cholos of 'Neza York' |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081208180037/http://www.esmas.com/noticierostelevisa/noticieros/376243.html |archive-date=8 December 2008 }} Cholo groups in Mexico were well established at least by the mid-1970s along the US-Mexico border, and in Central Mexico.{{cite book |title=Pachucas and Pachucos in Tucson: Situated Border Lives |series=Southwest Center |publisher=University of Arizona Press |year=2009 |first1=Laura Lee |last1=Cummings |isbn=978-0-8165-2737-3 }}{{page needed|date=September 2019}} These were called by various names, such as "barrios", "clickas", and "gangas". They were typically seen as American Hispanics and not as Mexicans because of their dress and appearance, which was not traditionally worn in Mexico. Many of these groups were formed by youths who had spent time in the United States and who returned with a different identity picked up in US street life.{{cite news |title=La vida loca |first=Saúl |last=Sánchez Lemus |url=http://www.esmas.com/noticierostelevisa/losreporteros/387110.html |newspaper=Noticieros Televisa |location=Mexico City |access-date=18 January 2010 |language=es |trans-title=The Crazy Life |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100124202145/http://www.esmas.com/noticierostelevisa/losreporteros/387110.html |archive-date=24 January 2010 }} These groups mimic the organization of gangs in the United States, especially California, Texas, and Chicago. Cholos have their own style of dress and speech. They are known for hand signals, tattoos, and graffiti. Groups of cholos control various territories in the city. Most of the violence among these groups is over territory. Well-established Latino gangs from the United States (such as Norteños, Sureños, Latin Kings, 18th Street Gang, and MS-13) have made a strong presence in Mexico through making alliances with local drug cartels based on particular regions or cities.

• Aymara ethnic group
• Caboclo
• Chicano
• Chulo (disambiguation)
• Coyote (racial category)
• Mixed Race Day
• Naco (slang)
• Pachuco
• Zambo

{{Reflist}}

{{Commons category|Casta paintings}}

• "[https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-history-of-the-chola-456/ The Folk Feminist Struggle Behind the Chola Fashion Trend]", an article describing Chola history from Vice Magazine

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