Demographics of Colombia - Ethnic Diversity

Ethnic Diversity

The country has a diverse population that reflects its colourful history and the peoples that have populated here from ancient times to the present. The historic amalgam of three main groups are the basics of Colombia's current demographics: indigenous Amerindians, European immigrants, and African slaves, have intermingled without limitation in its history.

Many of the indigenous peoples were absorbed into the mestizo population, but the remaining 700,000 currently represent over 85 distinct cultures. Today, less than 1% of the population can be identified as fully indigenous on the basis of language and customs. Most of the indigenous population live in the country's flatlands in the south and east.

The European immigrants were Spanish colonists, but many other Europeans (i.e. the Italians, Germans, the French, the Swiss, Poles and Russians). In smaller numbers, Belgian, Lithuanian, Dutch, British, Portuguese and Croatian communities. Most of the Europeans immigrated during the Second World War (1939–1945) and the Cold War (1945–1990) as well fleeing the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s.

Other immigrant populations include Asians and Middle Easterners, particularly Arabs (esp. Lebanese and Syrians but also Palestinians), Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Southeast Asians (esp. Vietnam after the end of the Vietnam War), Armenians arrived in large numbers after World War I, and East Indians or Pakistanis settled in Colombia. The Venezuelan population is increasing in Bogotá, Bucaramanga, Cali, Cúcuta, Medellín, Santa Marta and Cartagena de Indias.

In the 1990s and 2000s, about half a million immigrants from Europe and North America (mainly the United States) usually are retired came to settle in urban areas and coasts of Colombia. It is not a new phenomenon, when about 5,000 Americans settled the Caribbean region in the late 19th century.

The Africans were brought as slaves, mostly to the coastal lowlands, beginning early in the sixteenth century, and continuing into the nineteenth century. After abolition, a national ideology of mestizaje encouraged the mixing of the indigenous and white people into a single mestizo ethnic identity .

Colombian culture, cuisine, music and social life are from the polyglot ethnic and racial balance. One famous Colombian emigrant, pop music singer Shakira of Barranquilla is herself of Italian, French and Lebanese ancestry.

According to the 2005 census by the DANE the population of Colombia was composed of these ethnic groups:

• 58% Mestizo (European and Amerindian).
• 20% White (European).
• 14% Mulatto (European and Black/African).
• 4% Afro-Colombian.
• 3% Zambo (African and Amerindian).
• 1% Amerindian.

Other ethnic groups include Arabs counted with the Whites (Lebanese, Palestinians and Syrians), Chinese, Roma or Gypsies from Eastern Europe, and South Asians (East Indians).