Chilean People - Ethnic Structure

Ethnic Structure

Chile is a multiethnic society, home to people of many different ethnic backgrounds. Studies on the ethnic structure of Chile vary significantly from one another.

As in other Latin American countries, in Chile, from the onset of Spanish colonization and settlement, race mixing or mestizaje was the norm rather than the exception. Today, ethnic and racial self-identities are highly fluid and can differ between persons of the same family, including siblings of the same parentage. It is dictated not only by strict physical appearance, nor more loosely by ancestry (actual or presumed), but by cultural patterns, social class, wealth and access, language, and prevailing biases of the era. These very factors, indeed, lend to the significantly varying ethnic structure figures from one source to the next. Additionally, those various figures refer to different, even if often overlapping, concepts: including racial vs ethnic categories, self-identity vs genetic findings, as well as culturally assigned categories. These concepts should not be confused, and the figures represented in one source might not be corresponding to figures of concepts from another source.

Thus, for instance, UNAM professor of Latin American studies, Francisco Lizcano, in his social research estimates that a predominant 52.7% of the Chilean population can be classified as culturally European, with an estimated 44% as Mestizo. Other social studies put the total amount of Whites at over 60 percent. Some publications, such as the CIA World Factbook, state that the entire population consist of a combined 95.4% of "Whites and White-Amerindians", and 4.6% of Amerindians. These figures are based on a national census held in 2002, which classified the population as indigenous and non-indigenous, rather than as White or Mestizo.

A public health book from the University of Chile states that 30% of the population is of Caucasian origin; Mestizos with predominantly-White ancestry are estimated to amount a total of 65%, while Amerindians comprise the remaining 5%. A genetic study by the same university showed that the average Chilean's genes are 64% Caucasian and 35% Amerindian. Other genetic studies have found that in Chile's capital Santiago, about 84% of mitochondrial DNA is of Amerindian origin, while the European contribution in the Y chromosome is about 70%, and between 6% to 15% Native American, depending on the area of the city.

In regards to average admixture by social class, a genetic study indicated that the composition of ancestries of the average middle class person of Santiago to be 70% European and 30% Native American. The low class average was 41% European and 59% Amerindian, whilst the results for the upper class were 91% European and 9% Native American. Other cities with a historically higher proportion of European input, such as Concepción, exhibited 75% European and 25% Native American ancestries, while in Valparaiso, the composition found was 77% European and 23% Native American. Another study showed that Amerindian genetic contribution is 27% in the high-income groups, 32% in the middle-income groups and 52% in low-income groups. Conversely, other areas of the country, including the northern regions, and regions like Chiloé, with historically higher Amerindian input, serve to counterbalance.

Despite the genetic considerations, many Chileans, if asked, would self-identify as white. The 2011 Latinobarómetro survey asked respondents in Chile what race they considered themselves to belong to. Most answered "white" (59%), while 25% said "mestizo" and 8% self-classified as "indigenous". A 2002 national poll revealed that a majority of Chileans believed they possessed some (43.4%) or much (8.3%) "indigenous blood", while 40.3% responded that they had none.