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Mameluco the word is believed to be of Arabic origin. The word in Arabic is Mamluk (masculine) or Mamluka (feminine) مملوك (masculine) or مملوكه (feminine). The word
Mameluco is a term of
PortuguesePortuguese is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia and northern Portugal. It is derived from the Latin spoken by the romanized Pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula around 2000 years ago...
origin describing the first generation offspring of a European and an Amerindian.
The corresponding Spanish word is
mestizoMestizo is a Spanish and Portuguese term that was used in the Spanish Empire and Portuguese Empire to refer to Latin people of mixed European and Amerindian ancestry in the Americas....
.
In the 17th and 18th centuries,
Mameluco was used to refer to organized bands of slave-hunters, also known as
bandeirantesThe Bandeirantes or "followers of the banner" were Portuguese colonial scouts in Brazil, members of the 16th-18th century South American slave-hunting expeditions, called Bandeiras...
, who roamed the interior of South America from the Atlantic to the foothills of the Andes, and from Paraguay to the Orinoco river, invading
GuaraniGuaraní are a group of culturally related indigenous peoples of South America. They distinguished from the related Tupi by their use of the Guaraní language. The traditional range of the Guaraní people is in what is now Paraguay between the Uruguay River and lower Paraguay River, the Corrientes and...
-occupied areas in search of slaves.
The word may have become common in Portugal in the Middle Ages, deriving from the
ArabicArabic is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages such as Hebrew and the Neo-Aramaic languages. In terms of speakers, the Arabic macrolanguage is the largest member of the Semitic language family. It is spoken by more than 280 million people as...
'mamlûk', used in the association with the
MamlukA mamluk was a soldier who converted to Islam and served the Muslim Arab caliphs from the 9th to the 16th centuries. They were of mixed ancestry but mainly Kipchak Turks...
s.