Ethnic composition of Costa Rica

Etnias de Costa Rica

Whites and mestizos de Costa Rica

Afrocostarricenses

Indigenous peoples

Sinocostarricenses

The ethnic composition of Costa Rica is the way in which the population of that country is anthropologically constituted, characterized by a multiethnic, multicultural, multilingual, and syncretic coexistence. The Costa Rican people are the result of a multi-ethnic mix from Spain (colonizers and Sephardim), Sub-Saharan Africa (blacks) and two American indigenous areas: Mesoamerica and Intermedia, which was later enriched by a massive immigration of Spaniards, Italians, Jamaicans, Poles, Germans, Americans, French, Gypsies, Chinese, Koreans, Swedish, Greeks, Croatians, English, Arubans, Russians and people from all over America.

After a long historical period recognizing itself as a homogeneous society, currently in the first article of the National Political Constitution the condition of ethnic and multicultural mosaic of the country is declared and safeguarded, stipulating that:

Costa Rica is a democratic, free, independent, multi-ethnic and multicultural Republic.

In this way, the heterogeneous Costa Rican society is distributed throughout the entire national territory, with higher percentages in certain regions of the country and with the active and visible presence of almost all the ethnic groups of the planet, as well as of all its possible mixtures. At the same time, according to the last national census carried out in 2011, 83% of the population declares itself to be white or mixed-race with various ancestry, while there are three minority groups of Afro-descendants, indigenous people and Asians.

History

Pre-Hispanic

Reconstruction of pre-Columbian indigenous tomb, Jade Museum

There is archaeological evidence that allows us to locate the arrival of the first human beings in Costa Rica between 10,000 and 7,000 BC. C. In sites in the Turrialba valley, quarry and workshop areas have been found where typical tools of that time were made —spearheads. The settlers at this time were nomadic bands of about 20 to 30 hunter-gatherer members. In addition to the species that still exist today, their usual prey included animals of the so-called megafauna, such as armadillos and giant sloths, mastodons, etc.

Since the development of Mesoamerican cultures, the northwestern part of the country gradually fell under their influence, while the rest gradually became part of the Muisca area. During the Mesoamerican Classic, the Nicoyan peoples stopped receiving the influence of that region for some time, but starting in the 13th century, Nahua and Chorotega groups from central and northern Mesoamerica entered again. Under his influence, Nicoya was reconstituted as the extreme south of the region.

The towns of the Intermediate Area, on the other hand, comprised almost the entire Costa Rican and Panamanian territory, the Ecuadorian Pacific, the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua and Honduras, as well as large areas in Colombia and Venezuela. These served as a bridge between Mesoamerican and South American (Andean, Amazonian) cultures. Through them, technological exchange between the two subcontinents was made possible, which resulted in, among other expressions of syncretism, the development of metallurgy in Mexico and Central America.

Colonial

Revolt of Paul Presbere.

In the fourth and last voyage made by Christopher Columbus, on September 18, 1502, the eastern coast of Costa Rica (now Uvita Island) was discovered. Years later, the Spanish crown began to send expeditionaries in 1509, when Diego de Nicuesa explored the Costa Rican Caribbean.

Later, in 1522, the town of Villa Bruselas was established, which was located near the Pacific coast of the country, in the limits of Nicoya (now Guanacaste) and then the City of Garcimuñoz was founded around 1561. During this period, in the XVI century, the natives of the country were conquered by the Spanish; thus Costa Rica became the southernmost province or governorate of Spanish territory, now called New Spain. At the end of that time the capital of the province was located in the recently founded city of Cartago.

In this way, the miscegenation between the Spanish conquerors, the Indians and the black slaves existed, however the fact that the indigenous population was very small compared to other lands and was further reduced with the arrival of the Europeans, it made said mix relatively less marked.

For nearly three hundred years, Spain administered the region as part of the Captaincy General of Guatemala, under a military governor. Optimistically, the Spanish had called the area Costa Rica since they had found deposits of gold and other valuable minerals in the territory, however, seeing that the places were not as rich as they thought, Compared to the other provinces, said territory was dedicated exclusively to agriculture.

The relatively poor small landowners, mostly Spanish, Sephardic Jews and mestizos, the lack of indigenous labor, the relative ethnic homogeneity of the population, coupled with its isolation from the Spanish colonies in Mexico and the Andes, contributed greatly to the development of an egalitarian society. At the end of the 18th century, due to agricultural development, the authorities of the Captaincy paid attention to the area, and began to grow tobacco, which became an important export product. Tobacco exports favored the creation of a more prosperous society. During this time the cultivation of coffee was also marked, which then became an important export product.

Likewise, in this period there was also the importation of black slaves to work on the Guanacaste farms, which would imply a new miscegenation due to the taking of black women as concubines. On the other hand, and due to the possibilities of agricultural business at this time some groups of French, Irish, English, Italian, Portuguese and Swedish also entered.

Independence

Proclamation of Central American Independence

In 1821 Costa Rica had achieved its Independence. It presented a panorama of a sparse population (65,000 inhabitants in 1824), settled in scattered nuclei in the Central Valley and dedicated to subsistence agriculture. But soon, in the 1830s –with the expansion of coffee cultivation– the country was linked to the world market early and new expectations arose. By the 1840s and early 1950s, foreign European (particularly Italian and Spanish) travelers passing through Costa Rica were impressed by the general prosperity they saw and the development of the internal market relative to the rest of Central America. Around 1850 it was clearly visible that a process of economic consolidation based on coffee farming had begun. European emigrants might well be drawn by the promises of a small, faraway nation in the throes of expansion.

Although the newly independent provinces formed a federation, border disagreements spawned disputes between them, adding to turbulent conditions for the region. The Nicoya region was freely annexed to the country on July 25, 1824, and is now part of the current province of Guanacaste.

During this period the government takes specific measures to promote European and American immigration to the country. The myth of Costa Rican “whiteness” in the face of a mestizo Central America, which was promoted by the ruling classes, also began to take shape. But, along with the European immigrants of the 19th century, Chinese, Gypsies, Polish Jews, Armenians and Arabs from the Ottoman Empire were also attracted to the country, to the point that during the administration of President Ascensión Esquivel Ibarra (1902-1906) the immigration of non-white ethnic groups.

20th century

Banana production imported Afro-Caribbean workers

Restrictions on the entry of non-white immigrants were finally lifted, especially due to the need for labor in the Caribbean for the United Fruit Company, whose climate and environment made it very difficult to hire nationals. This brought with it the arrival of new migratory flows of Chinese, Caribbean blacks and Jamaicans. During these years and since the end of the previous century, the country also received important waves of Europeans, mainly Spaniards and Italians (currently the two largest ethnic groups in the country), as well as from other parts of the Mediterranean and the Alps that would be extremely important for the consolidation of Costa Rican ethnography. In addition to the migration of Polish Jews who were escaping exacerbated anti-Semitism in Europe. Chinese and Jamaicans were restricted from leaving the province of Limón, not so the Poles who spread throughout the country, but soon became the target of xenophobia and anti-Semitism, until then rare in the country. Despite the defense wielded against them by President Ricardo Jiménez Oreamuno, various successor nationalist governments in the forties, particularly those of León Cortés Castro and Rafael Ángel Calderón Guardia, took economic and legal sanction measures against them.

One of the reasons put forward by the opposition to the government of Rafael Ángel Calderón Guardia was the situation of ethnic minorities. Opposition leader José Figueres Ferrer, the son of Catalan immigrants and of socialist thought, had befriended people of different ethnic origins such as the Jamaican descendant Alex Curling Delisser and the ethnic Croatian Francisco Orlich Bolmarcich and was against racial inequality. After the revolution that overthrew the Calderón government in 1848, all legal restrictions based on racism were abolished by the National Constituent Assembly of 1949, which also established in its articles that all Costa Ricans are equal before the law, and was given full citizenship for blacks, Chinese and indigenous peoples (even though full integration and enjoyment of rights took longer to implement, and in the case of indigenous peoples the issue is still up for debate).

After ethnic migrations at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century stabilized the racial landscape, during the XX and XXI would now be Latin American immigrants who would represent the main challenge of integration into Costa Rican society. Due to its political stability, its absence of an army (abolished by Figueres in 1949) and its favorable economic situation, it became a recipient of Ibero-American migrations. Some of these migrated escaping the violent conflicts in their countries; Central Americans in general, Colombians, Peruvians, because they were politically persecuted in their nations that had fallen under military dictatorships; Chileans, Argentines, Uruguayans, Spaniards, for economic reasons seeking to prosper in trade or with new job opportunities; Nicaraguans, Mexicans, Dominicans, Ecuadorians or for being political refugees; Cubans, Venezuelans and Hondurans.

Ethnographic studies

Various encyclopedic, academic, statistical and genetic citations have been made to determine the ethnic composition of the individual Costa Rican and some of them show relative coincidences or contrasts.

Qualitative

• Mexican academic biologist Francisco Lizcano Fernandez, of the Center for Research in Sustainable Chemistry of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UAEM, UNAM) described his work Ethnic Composition of the Three Cultural Areas of the American Continent At the Beginning of the 21st Century that 82% of Costa Ricans would be "criollos", 15%, mixed, 2%, Afro-descendants, 0.8% amerindian and 0.2% Asian.
• According to the British Encyclopedia, 80% of the Costa Rican population is of predominantly European descent, especially in the valley. The second largest group is the mestizos that make up 20% and important minorities of African descent, Amerindians and Asians.
• Professor of Linguistic and Literary Criticism at the University of Washington Eugenio Chang-Rodríguez reports in his book for U.S. university students (Latin America: its civilization and its culture) that people of European origin predominated in Costa Rica.

Self-perception

• Ethnic classification is one of the consultations carried out in the national censuses of INEC. According to the data released by the 2011 Census, of the 4301712 inhabitants, 3597000 are considered white or mixed, 44518 people were identified as black, 289 209 as mulatas, 124 000 claimed to be Nicaraguan, 104 000 indigenous, 9170 Chinese and 219781 are of another or did not respond.

• In the 2007 Latin Barometer survey, 49 per cent of Costa Ricans stated that it was white, while 21 per cent mixed. For the 2011 Latino barometer report, ethnicity was further deepened, this time the Costa Ricans surveyed were 40% white, 31% mixed, 17% mulatos, 4% Amerindian, 3% black, 1% Asian and 1% other ethnic group.

Genetic makeup

Several genetic studies have been carried out to determine the representative genetic inheritance of the Costa Rican population, with the following results:

Regions

According to Morera (2003), the genetic mix by region is as follows:

According to Wang et al., (2010), the genetic structure of the northwestern population of Costa Rica:

Central Valley

The genetic study called Geographic Patterns of Genome Admixture in Latin American Mestizos, by Wang et al, 2008, in which the School of Biology of the University of Costa Rica participated, refers to the Genetic composition of the average inhabitant of the Central Valley of Costa Rica. This study, carried out using X chromosome and autosomes to estimate the ethnic lineage, carried out in people from the Central Valley, where more than half of the country's population is concentrated, found that 42.5% and 66.7% of individuals had Caucasian X-chromosome and autosomal lineage respectively, while the Amerindian lineage was 42% and 28.7% (using the same methods) and 15.9% and 4.6% for the African lineage.

Melting pot

During the colony itself, several Italians, Irish, English, French and Swedes arrived. After independence, more Italians, French, Americans and Germans arrived. With the construction of the railroad to the Caribbean, in the last third of the 19th century, the first Chinese arrived (many of them adopted Spanish surnames), more Italians and, of course, the Afro-Caribbeans (mainly from Jamaica, but also from the rest of the Caribe), who managed to resist the harsh environmental and human conditions of the raising of the railway line.

Late 19th century 19th and early XX, even more Italians, Afro-Caribbeans, Germans, Spanish, Irish, English, French, Lebanese, Turkish, Jewish, Polish, Filipino, Chinese and Danish.

It is important to highlight the total number of registered immigrants. People who come from Nicaragua continue to be the majority and represent 74.37% of the total resident immigrants. The migratory groups from Nicaragua began around 1927, registering their highest peak between 1995 - 2000 due to the political, social and economic conflicts in Nicaragua throughout its history, while the Colombians began their migratory flow from the year 2000, establishing themselves as refugees, mainly due to the problems of insecurity, drug trafficking, hit men and guerrillas that plague Colombia.

Immigrants

Total foreign population 2015

N.o	Country	Hab.
1	Nicaragua	299.340
2	Colombia	21.787
3	El Salvador	14.439
4	United States	12.982
5	Panama	11.702
6	Cuba	5.897
7	Honduras	4.020
8	Peru	3.876
9	Hong Kong	3.365
10	Mexico	3.176
11	Guatemala	2.275
12	Spain	2.216
13	Italy	2.185
14	Germany	1.912
15	Chile	1.782
16	Argentina	1.504
17	Canada	1.444
18	Venezuela	1.415
19	Ecuador	1.303
20	Dominican Republic	1.126
21	France	895
22	Switzerland	689
23	Russia	614
24	Netherlands	605
25	Brazil	558
26	United Kingdom	533
27	Bolivia	379
28	Uruguay	321
29	Poland	310
30	Belgium	300

Immigrants are particularly important in Costa Rican culture, who also make up 9% of the population, and therefore, even more than blacks, Chinese and indigenous people. According to data from the INEC, about 385,899 migrants reside in Costa Rica, of which 287,000 are Nicaraguans, representing 74.6% of immigrants. Costa Rica is the Latin American country with the highest number of immigrants per capita. Although it has immigrant colonies from practically all Latin American countries, the most important numerically are Nicaraguans, Colombians, Salvadorans, and Panamanians. These communities preserve their customs, festivities, traditional foods, accents and religious celebrations, which is why they represent different ethnic and cultural groups and contribute to the diversity of the country. According to data from the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, in 2014 there were more than 50,000 naturalized foreigners with the right to vote.

Nicaraguans

The Nicaraguan population currently represents a visible segment of society, with nearly 300,000 inhabitants. The relationships between Nicaraguan immigrants and the rest of Costa Ricans are complex and varied. Assimilation has not always been easy and, as in any country that receives immigrants, xenophobia penetrates some areas on a daily basis, especially during times of economic or political crisis, sometimes fueled by political and border tensions between the two countries.

The greatest concentrations of Nicaraguans occur in border areas and in the Central Valley, especially San José. There are populations living in marginal urban neighborhoods such as La Carpio and the Solidarity Triangle with a high number of immigrants in a regular and irregular situation. There are also large communities of Nicaraguans in the northern zone, especially in the border cantons, in some communities family, social and economic ties are cross-border. Another relevant aspect is the existence of binational households, where one of the two parents is Nicaraguan or where both parents are Nicaraguan but the children are born in Costa Rica and therefore considered Costa Rican by birth. according to the Constitution; by the year 2000 there would be some 295,456 people living in binational households.

Likewise, the recent Nicaraguan cultural contribution is in religious celebrations, such as La gritería on December 7 in honor of the Nicaraguan patron saint of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception and the celebrations of Santo Domingo de Guzmán, patron saint of Managua, in August. Nicaraguan gastronomy is very common in Costa Rica for various reasons, ranging from the creation of sodas and restaurants run by Nicaraguans to the fact that an important segment of this population performs domestic tasks in Costa Rican homes. Thus, in Costa Rica you can taste nacatamales, rondón, chicha, pinolillo or güirila.

Other immigrants

On the other hand, in the country there are other large communities from the American continent, especially from the United States (about 25,000), Central America (about 15,000 without counting Nicaraguans) and Colombia (about 20,000). Likewise, there are other very substantial communities from Mexico (7,500 people), Argentina (5,000 people), Chile (1,782) and —more recently— Venezuela, which registers up to 19,000 citizens living in the country. Likewise, the country It is one of the nations that receives the most refugees in America, mainly from the Northern Triangle of Central America, Colombia, Venezuela and Cuba.

In parallel, there are large communities from Europe, especially from Spain, Italy, Germany, France, Switzerland and Russia. While from Asia, populations of Chinese, Japanese and Lebanese origin stand out. Finally, for a decade There are communities from more than 140 countries, with the presence of: Africans, West Indians, Austrians, Israelis, Greek Poles, Portuguese and Turks, among many others.