Sambo is a derogatory label for a person of African descent in the Spanish language. Historically, it is a name in American English derived from a Spanish term for a person of African and Native American ancestry. After the Civil War, during and after the Jim Crow era the term was used in conversation, print advertising and household items as a pejorative descriptor for black people. The term is now considered offensive in American and British English.
The painting Negro con Mulata produce Zambo ('a negro man with a mulatto woman makes a zambo'), Cristóbal Lozano, c. 1771–1776
Zambo or Sambu is a racial term historically used in the Spanish Empire to refer to people of mixed Amerindian and African ancestry. Occasionally in the 21st century, the term is used in the Americas to refer to persons who are of mixed African and Indigenous American ancestry.
16th-century painting of Zambo caciques from Esmeraldas, Ecuador
A representation of an infant zambo, in an 18th-century "Pintura de Castas" from New Spain. The painting illustrates "from an African and an Amerindian produces a lobo", here a synonym for zambo.
Casta painting showing 16 hierarchically arranged, mixed-race groupings. Row 2, extreme right cell, shows the torna atrás father, Indian mother, and Lobo or Zambo offspring.Ignacio Maria Barreda, 1777. Real Academia Española, Madrid.
"From a black man with a mulata produces a Sambo," Indian school, 1770.
