Representation of zambos during the Latin American colonial period. Translated, the legend for the figures in the foreground reads, "A male black (left) and a female Amerindian (right) produce an infant 'Lobo' (literally "wolf," center), which is a Mexican synonym for "zambo." Note the slave shackles on the ground in the background (left) near the timbers.

Zambo (cafuzo in Brazil, lobo in Mexico, Garifuna in Honduras and Belize) is a term of Latin American origin describing peoples of mixed African and Amerindian racial descent. The feminine form is zamba (not to be confused with the afro-Brazilian Samba folk dance or Samba music, or with Argentine zamba folk dance).

Zambo also may be used, though very rarely, to denote the offspring resulting from the union of a mulatto and an African.

The first zambos were initially the offspring of escaping shipwrecked slaves, as well as plantation slave escapees, who ventured into various Central American, South American and Caribbean jungles seeking refuge in remote Amerindian communities to hide and escape capture by colonial authorities. These Amerindians — themselves under threat from encroaching European colonizers — were sympathetic to the plight of the fleeing slaves and welcomed them into their communities, offered them food and sanctuary, and in many cases also their daughters as wives. As in the United States during slavery, there are instances in Latin American history of Africans and Amerindians joining together and forming free renegade encampments to fight their European colonizers and slaveholders. In Latin America, these primarily African settlements of runaways, or Maroons, were called quilombos. The most famous of all quilombos is the legendary Palmares in Brazil, which at the height of its flourishing had a population of over 30,000.

Zambos don’t generally constitute any proportion of most countries in Latin America, but they do represent small minorities in the north-western South American countries of Colombia (3%), Venezuela and Ecuador, and along north-western Brazil where they are known as Cafuzos. In Honduras they are know as Garifunas, and while Zambos can also be found in other Caribbean and Central America countries (notably Belize and Guatemala) their history and origins are not linked to that of the Garifuna. In Mexico, where they were known as Lobos, they formed a sizeable minority in the past. The great majority of Lobos have now been absorbed into the much larger Mexican Mestizo population and can only be found in tiny communities scattered around the southern coastal states, most notably the state of Veracruz and the Costa Chica , incidentally the same locales where the country's afro-Mexicans reside. Culturally, Mexican Lobos followed Amerindian traditions rather than African ones.

The history behind the African ancestry of the Garifuna is usually attributed to the escaping shipwrecked slaves, whereas for the Zambos of north-western South America, the Lobos of Mexico and most other Zambos in general is usually attributed to escaping plantation slaves.

Limited numbers of modern zambos resulting from recent unions of Amerindian women to Black slave descended men in major costal cities of Ecuador (ethnicities that prior to the rural to urban migration were mostly constrained to the Andes region and Esmeraldas province respectively) is not an uncommon sight.

See also

• Atlantic slave trade
• Cafuzo
• Capoeira
• Garifuna
• List of terms for multiraciality
• Palmares (quilombo)
• Quilombo
• Slavery
• Triangular trade
• Zumbi