Creole and Mestizo are colonial racial categories referring to children to a Spanish parent and a Filipino or Chinese parent, usually a Spanish father and Filipino or Chinese mother. They were favored during the Spanish colonial period, and often granted opportunities for higher education not afforded to children of two Indios parents. Mestizo families tended to benefit economically and represented the bulk of land-holding elites by the end of the colonial period. Their sons, educated abroad, comprised membership of the early nationalist movement. By virtue of their economic position, mestizo descendants remained the economic, political, and military elite well into the contemporary era.
Sources
Steven Shirley, Guided By God: The Legacy of the Catholic Church in Philippine Politics (Singapore: Marshall Cavendish Academic, 2004), p. 17.