pardo

pardo

(Spanish; “brown”)

In Venezuela, a person of mixed African, European, and Indian ancestry. In the colonial period, pardos, like all nonwhites, were kept in a state of servitude, with no hope of gaining wealth or political power. Nevertheless, most pardos remained royalists during much of the war for independence because they relied on Spain for protection in their conflicts with the Venezuelan-born whites, toward whom the European Spaniards took a superior attitude. In Brazil a pardo is a person of mixed European and African descent.