[10] According to the 2023 census 17.2% of the population were native Panamanians, 31.7% was of (part) African descent, while the remainder (51%) were mestizo (mixed European and Amerindian) and whites.

[11] European Panamanians or Caucasian ethnic groups in Panama include Spanish, British and Irish, Dutch, French, Germans, Italians, Portuguese, Poles, Russians or Ukrainians (a large number are Jews), Greeks, and Americans.

They are intermixed in the general population or live in small Afro-Panamanian communities along the Atlantic Coast and in villages within the Darién jungle.

Most of the people in Darien are fishermen or small-scale farmers growing crops such as bananas, rice and coffee as well as raising livestock.

Other Afro-Panamanians descend from later migrants from the Caribbean who came to work on railroad-construction projects, commercial agricultural enterprises, and (especially) the canal.

Another region with a large Afro-Caribbean population is the province of Bocas del Toro on the Caribbean coast just south of Costa Rica.

[14] Most of the Panamanian population of West Indian descent owe their presence in the country to the monumental efforts to build the Panama Canal in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Religion in Panama (2013) [15] The majority of Panamanians are Christian; most are Roman Catholics as a result centuries of Spanish colonial influence.