Mameluco is a Portuguese word that denotes the first generation child of a European and an Amerindian. It corresponds to the Spanish word mestizo.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, mameluco was also used to refer to organized bands of explorers from Colonial Brazil known as bandeirantes, who roamed the interior of South America departing from São Paulo near the Atlantic Ocean to the interior of Brazil and Paraguay, invading Guarani settlements in search of slaves and gold.
Bandeirantes (Portuguese: [bɐ̃dejˈɾɐ̃tʃis]; lit. 'flag-carriers'; singular: bandeirante) were frontiersmen and explorers in colonial Brazil who, from the early 16th century, participated in inland expeditions to find precious metals and enslave indigenous peoples. They played a major role in expanding Brazil's borders to its approximate modern-day limits, beyond the boundaries demarcated by the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas.
Most bandeirantes hailed from São Paulo, then a small village in the Captaincy of São Vicente from 1534 to 1709 and later the Captaincy of São Paulo from 1720 to 1821. Some bandeirantes were descended from Portuguese colonists who settled in São Paulo, but most were of mameluco descent with both Portuguese and indigenous ancestry. This was due to miscegenation being the norm in colonial Brazilian society, as well as polygamy.