ABSTRACT
Criollismo and criollo discourses have been central topics in Colonial Latin American studies. The traditional definitions of the term “criollo” coincide in a series of key points. Initially, this term was adopted in the colonial Spanish world from the Portuguese context to refer to African slaves that were born in the Americas (Mazzotti 11). The term was later reappropriated in the Spanish colonies to refer to individuals of European descent who were born and raised in the Americas. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries criollismo became a central concept in the formation of a distinct American identity that manifested itself in a series of proto-nationalist and Americanist discourses that eventually led to the independence movements. 1
