Zamboangueño people

The Zamboangueño people (Chavacano: Pueblo Zamboangueño), are a creole ethnolinguistic people of the Philippines originating in Zamboanga City. Like most lowland people in the Philippines, the Zamboangueño people are a hispanized people. They are Subanon people who were hispanized and had relationships with other ethnic groups brought in Zamboanga city during the Spanish colonial period. Unlike the hispanized groups in Luzon and the Visayas who retained their indigenous languages, the Zamboangueño were not able to teach their indigenous Subanon language to the younger generation, resulting to the absorption of Spanish as their first language under colonial rule, which eventually led to the development of a creole language called Chavacano. Some places who were heavily hispanized during Spanish rule also speak Chavacano such as Iloilo City, Bacolod, Dumaguete, Cebu City, and Cavite City, although the language most spoken in those cities are the original native languages of the natives, rather than a colonial language. In many cases, the number of people who speak the colonial language of Chavacano in those cities have fallen as the people have gradually re-embraced the language of their indigenous ancestors.

The Zamboangueño people constitute a distinct ethnolinguistic identity under a cultural and historical heritage based mostly on Spanish colonialism and influence, most notably Chavacano, that distinguishes them from neighboring ethnolinguistic groups. Spanish censuses records previously claimed that about a third of the inhabitants of Zamboanga City has some Iberian and Hispanic-American admixture by 1870. This question on genetics was later clarified in 2021. As a result of Spanish colonization, according to a recent genetic study, "4 out of 10 individuals tested among Chavacanos" had large "West Eurasian ancestry" admixture.