The Racial Composition of the Population of Colombia

In: Journal of Inter-American Studies, Volume 8, Issue 2, p. 213-235

Abstract

The Redman, the Negro, and the white man were the three colors in the human palette of Nueva Granada. With these and their derivatives time has worked, during the course of four centuries, to create every possible mixture, blend, and shade of mankind, every human color possible without the addition of the yellow element from Asia. But the more important blendings were those of the white and Indian to form the great mestizo group of the highlands and of the white and Negro to produce the mulattoes who share the hot, sultry lowlands with the more pure-blooded descendants of the Africans. In the twentieth century the immigration of a few hundred Japanese, who settled in the Cauca Valley, has added the last of the major human types to the population of Colombia.