Pardo (feminine parda) is a term used in the former Portuguese and Spanish colonies in the Americas to refer to the triracial descendants of Europeans, Amerindians, and West Africans. In some places they were defined as neither exclusively mestizo (Amerindian-European descent), nor mulatto (West African-European descent), nor zambo (Amerindian-West African descent). In colonial Mexico, pardo "became virtually synonymous with mulatto, thereby losing much of its indigenous referencing." In the eighteenth century, pardo might have been the preferred label for blackness. Unlike negro, pardo had no association with slavery. Casta paintings from eighteenth-century Mexico use the label negro never pardo to identify Africans paired with Spaniards.