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Why Some Latinas are Reclaiming the Term “Mulatta"


www.nlcamerican.org

In the states, the term mulatto comes with a lot of negative connotations. If said loudly in public, it would most likely make people cringe. But in Latin America, the term isn’t met with as much backlash. Though the word has the same painful roots no matter where you live, there’s recently been a reclamation of it by young Latinas.

The term originates from the Spanish word “mula” which translates to mule, meaning the offspring of a horse or donkey. During the times of slavery in the United States, the term mulatto was used to describe the offspring or children conceived by both a white (usually a slave master) and a black person (usually a female slave who was raped by her slave master). It’s very easy to understand why people find it so offensive.

But among Latinos, the term is used a more frequently and many times as a term of endearment or affection. Before the term Afro-Latino became popular, mulatto was typically the word used to describe Latinos of mixed African (specifically Spanish) descent. In fact, in 2015, Pew Research was still using the term to describe Latinos of mixed race identities. They used it in a report called “Mestizo and ‘mulatto’: Mixed-race identities among U.S. Hispanics.”

Though Latin America has a long legacy of African slavery, a lot of Latinos still identify with the term mulatto and have found ways to use and view it positively. In fact, quite a few young Latinas have made a point to reclaim the word as a way to embrace their roots and empower themselves.

“Growing up, I always knew I looked different. My hair texture made sure I looked unique. Being a girl growing up with an Afro wasn’t the easiest,” says Siriled Hernandez Guzman, a 31-year-old Puerto Rican woman who currently resides in East Hartford, Connecticut. “Both my sisters have straight hair like my mom … people always referred to me as the “negrita con el pelo malo.”

Guzman’s curly hair texture made her curious to learn more about her roots. In high school she started looking into her family’s ancestry. “I wanted to know about my history and I successfully found ancestors from my black/African side,” she says. “Calling myself Mulatta or Afro-Latina makes me very proud. It’s important for me to identify this way because my ancestors didn’t endure everything they went through for us now in 2018, to be ashamed of who we truly are. I believe in order for us to make it past the hatred, we have to believe in ourselves.”

The reclaiming of words and transforming them into something positive and empowering is not new. We’ve seen it done many times, especially among marginalized groups. We’ve seen women reclaim the term bitch, we’ve seen the reclamation of the term queer – especially among millennials – and we’ve seen the reclamation of terms like chicana and chonga.

Some might call the reclamation of terms like mulatta, politicized. In some ways that might be true. But there’s also something beautiful about a community of people coming together to transform a word that was once associated with so much pain and transforming it into something uplifting. It’s about making yourself visible and being unapologetic about it. It’s about the refusal and unwillingness to conform to what society has tried to tell us to be.