Race and ethnicity in Colombia

A study from Rojas et al. involving 15 departments determined that the average Colombian (of all races) has a mixture of 47% Amerindian, 42% European, and 11% African.

[6] Rojas et al. (2010) measured the genetic mixture for fourteen Colombian departments:[2] The various groups exist in differing concentrations throughout the nation, in a pattern that to some extent goes back to colonial origins.

The large Mestizo population includes most campesinos (people living in rural areas) of the Andean highlands, where some Spanish conquerors mixed with the women of Amerindian chiefdoms.

Mestizos had always lived in the cities as well, as artisans and small tradesmen, and they have played a major part in the urban expansion of recent decades.

[5] According to the 2005 census, the heaviest concentration of the indigenous population (22 to 61 percent) is located in the departments of Amazonas, La Guajira, Guainía, Vaupés, and Vichada.

[8] The Black, Zambo and Mulatto populations have largely remained in the lowland areas on the Caribbean and Pacific coasts, its islands, and along the Cauca and Magdalena Rivers.

[9] The population of the Archipelago of San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina, which Colombia inherited from Spain after the Spanish had overcome an initial British settlement, is mostly Afro-Colombian, including several thousand raizal blacks.

Despite the length of time during which Colombia has had jurisdiction over them, most raizales on these Caribbean islands have retained their Protestant religion, have continued to speak an English-based creole language as well as English, and have regarded themselves as a group distinct from mainland residents.

Moreover, the blacks came from different areas of Africa, often did not share the same language or culture, and were not grouped into organized social units on arrival in the New World.

Of the many palenques that existed in former times, only the one of San Basilio has survived until the present day and developed into a unique cultural space.

[14] Finally, despite their position on the bottom rung of the social ladder, black slaves often had close relations—as domestic servants—with Spaniards and British and were therefore exposed to Spanish culture much more than were the Amerindians.

By the end of the colonial period, the blacks thought of themselves as Colombians and felt superior to the Amerindians, who officially occupied higher status, were nominally free, and were closer in skin color, facial features, and hair texture to the emerging mestizo mix.

Rather than forming organizations to promote their advancement as a group, blacks have for the most part concentrated on achieving mobility through individual effort and adaptation to the prevailing system.

Chocó, the department with the highest percentage of Afro-Colombian residents, had the lowest level of social investment per capita and ranked last in terms of education, health, and infrastructure.

It also continued to experience some of the country's worst political violence, as paramilitaries and guerrillas struggled for control of the department's key drug- and weapons-smuggling corridors.