Alright, suppose you meet this really hot chick from Peru. I could go into details about just HOW hot, but why tease you. Anyway, she's from a part of the world I know very little about. I'm trying to figure out -just for kicks- if she's primarily of native S. American descent, or from the Spaniard invaders/conquerers. I'm sure she's probably mixed to some degree, but I find her fascinating. It's got me totally stumped. So, I need some help; what happened to the native peoples of Peru? Did the Spaniards actually wipe them out, as I recall reading here recently? Or, were the Spanish a minority... and THEY were the ones actually 'assimilated' into the local population? Also, how can you tell the difference, just by looking? What does/did a Native American from that part of the continent even look like?

Anyway this is just an enigma that I'm trying so solve. Every time I see her it bugs me that I can't figure it out. She definitely doesn't look like any other 'hispanic' I've ever seen. She has this really unique look, and as I mentioned before; she pulls it off quite nicely. Indeed it's fascinating, Captain. *raises eyebrow*

Alright, suppose you meet this really hot chick from Peru. I could go into details about just HOW hot, but why tease you. Anyway, she's from a part of the world I know very little about. I'm trying to figure out -just for kicks- if she's primarily of native S. American descent, or from the Spaniard invaders/conquerers. I'm sure she's probably mixed to some degree, but I find her fascinating. It's got me totally stumped. So, I need some help; what happened to the native peoples of Peru? Did the Spaniards actually wipe them out, as I recall reading here recently? Or, were the Spanish a minority... and THEY were the ones actually 'assimilated' into the local population? Also, how can you tell the difference, just by looking? What does/did a Native American from that part of the continent even look like?

Anyway this is just an enigma that I'm trying so solve. Every time I see her it bugs me that I can't figure it out. She definitely doesn't look like any other 'hispanic' I've ever seen. She has this really unique look, and as I mentioned before; she pulls it off quite nicely. Indeed it's fascinating, Captain. *raises eyebrow*
One of my employees is a native of Peru. She came here to go to college and has stayed. Her father is pretty much pure Spanish descent and her mother is Chinese. Lots of Chinese settled in Peru in the past 100 years. Is your girl is from Lima? When the Spanish took control of Peru there was little mixing of the two cultures and the Spanish Peruvians are quite proud of not haveing any (or just a wee bit) of Indian blood. When I was growing up, my parents had housekeepers from Ecuador and they always insisted that they were of pure Spanish heritage and blood. No Indian at all!

Those of Incan descent mostly live in the mountains and look physically different. They are shorter and have a very noticeable Indian look about them.

So if your friend is unique looking, I would just ask her about her heritage: where her parents or grandparents came from etc. Vanessa, who works for me is an unusual beauty too, and I would not have guessed she was half chinese.

Yeah, she's from Lima. She's short, cute, and I can't help but sense this kind if Latin/Mediterranean look about her. She maintains a REALLY nice tan, though. A bit darker than what I imagine the typical person from Spain has. Sort of this golden-bronzed skin tone. But anyway her face is really interesting, and attractive. I'm just wondering if that is due to genes from native S. Americans, or Spain.

I've been tempted to just ask her, but it seems inappropriate for some reason. Anyway, I could probably scan & upload a picture and seek opinions, but then I'd really be crossing the line of 'creepiness'. :mischief:

So, you're saying people from Lima are not of native descent, mostly. Not necessarily exclusively, but 'mostly'...

Afaik as a general rule Peru is one of the more divided nations in South America. Native culture is stronger there than in most other nations, similar to Bolovia in some ways. And the natives were emphatically not replaced. There were too many of them, living in places Europeans find uncomfortable, like the high mountains.

In Peru up until the 18th c. the Spanish upper crust interacted very much with a more or less Europeanised remaining, powerful Inca upper class.

That is until this native elite raised a good-awful huge rebellion against the Spanish crown, led by the self-styled last Inca, Tupac Amaru II. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Túpac_Amaru_II

It took the Spaniards some effort to put down the rebellion, and then they began wholsale repression against the natives, outlawing everything in native culture, while making sure no natives in Peru were allowed to become anything near equal in social status with the "Creoles", the Peruvians of European descent. In this they hardly dented popular native traditions, but effectively killed off anything like an native social elite.
Unlike a place like Mexico, mixing between Native Americans and European-descent Creoles hasn't been acceptable until very recently.

My guess is this girl, if she's from Lima and look Mediterranean, has next to nothing Native American in her ancestry.

She surely is a mix. In fact i have seen few people from Peru without any typical amerindian characteristic at all, for instance several peruvian presidents, like... Fujimori :lol: (even Alan Garcia who looks mostly European, has some amerindian ascendants AFAIK), and almost none among the countless Peruvian immigrants coming to Spain. In any case to be sure you will have to post some pics... :mischief:

One thing:

From what I know, the norm for racial identification among Latin Americans is the reverse of Anglo-Saxon countries. We in the anglo world typically use "hypodescent" in identifying people, whereas I understand that Latin Americans typically use hyperdecsent.

Typically in Anglo-Saxon cultures, if you're a mixture of (anglo/germanic/"caucasian") white and something else you get identified as belonging to the socially "lower" or less dominant group. So people with just a little bit of black heritage are considered more black than white. The reverse is true in Latin America, mestizos will typically identify with the socially more dominant group, so, as European moreso than native. If it's true, this tendency would tend to overestimate the European-ness of Latin America.

There are still a few mostly/exclusively native towns in Peru. I don't know how many, but I studied one of them for an anthropology class last year. They were called the Chillihuani, and they live up in the mountains, so they're pretty separated from the more modernized Peru. But they're not completely isolated. They're very self-sufficient, but they realize that for their children to get the most complete education, they have to send them down to the city schools. But it seems like most of the time, the kids just stay home act as ambassadors for their towns. It seems like the instances of the Chillihuani kids moving out are pretty low.

Of course, this is just one case study, but the other four or five Chillihuani towns act in the same way. I don't know much about the other native groups, but I'd expect the others to have assimilated more.

Peru and Bolivia are the only South American countries with an indian majority. If you add mestizos who are part indian, you have more than 90% of the population, so odds are she is at least part indian.

That said, specially in Lima, there is a visible minority of white folks. I have met some peruvians who looked just like a german or a frenchman. But your description does not seem to imply this.