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Colombia RACE AND ETHNICITY
The population is descended from three racial
groups--Indians,
blacks, and whites--that have mingled throughout the
nearly 500
years of the country's history. No official figures were
available,
but according to rough estimates in the late 1980s,
mestizos
(white-Indian mix) constituted approximately 50 percent of
the
population, whites 25 percent, mulattoes (black-white mix)
and
zambos (black-Indian mix) 20 percent, blacks 4
percent, and
Indians 1 percent.
Recognizing the impossibility of objective racial
classification and not wishing to emphasize ethnic or
racial
differences, the national census dropped references to
race after
1918. Nevertheless, most Colombians continued to identify
themselves and others according to ancestry, physical
appearance,
and sociocultural status. Social relations reflected the
importance
attached to certain characteristics associated with a
given racial
group. Although these characteristics no longer accurately
demarcated distinct social categories, they still helped
determine
rank in the social hierarchy.
The various groups were found in differing
concentrations
throughout the nation, largely reflecting the colonial
social
system. The whites tended to live mainly in the urban
centers,
particularly in Bogotá and the burgeoning highland cities.
The
large mestizo population was predominantly a peasant
group,
concentrated in the highlands where the Spanish conquerors
had
mixed with the women of Indian chiefdoms. After the 1940s,
however,
mestizos began moving to the cities, where they became
part of the
urban working class or urban poor. The black and mulatto
populations were also part of this trend but lived mainly
along the
coasts and in the lowlands.
Descendants of Indians who survived the Spanish
conquest were
found in scattered groups in remote areas largely outside
the
national society, such as the higher elevations of the
southern
highlands, the forests north and west of the cordilleras,
the arid
Guajira Peninsula, and the vast eastern plains and
Amazonian
jungles, which had only begun to be penetrated by other
groups in
the twentieth century. The Indian groups differed from the
rest of
the nation in major cultural aspects. Although some
continued to
speak indigenous languages, Spanish, introduced by
missionaries,
was the predominant language among all but the most
isolated
groups.
Data as of December 1988
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