page_title: Latin Americans
section_title: Ethnic groups
hierarchical_section_title: Latin Americans / Demographics / Ethnic groups
caption_attribution_description: Português: Sacerdotista xintoísta participando de um festival japonês na Praça do Japão, em Curitiba, Paraná.
context_page_description: Latin Americans are the citizens of the Latin American countries and dependencies. Latin American countries are multi-ethnic, home to people of different ethnic and national backgrounds. As a result, some Latin Americans do not take their nationality as an ethnicity, but identify themselves with both their nationality and their ancestral origins. Aside from the indigenous Amerindian population, all Latin Americans or their ancestors immigrated since 1492. Latin America has the largest diasporas of Spaniards, Portuguese, Black Africans, Italians, Lebanese and Japanese in the world. The region also has large German, French, and Jewish diasporas.
  The specific ethnic and/or racial composition varies from country to country: many have a predominance of European-Amerindian, or Mestizo, population; in others, Amerindians are a majority; some are mostly inhabited by people of European ancestry; and others are primarily Mulatto. Various Black, Asian, and Zambo minorities are also identified in most countries. White Latin Americans are the largest single group. Together with the people of part-European ancestry they combine for almost the totality of the population.
context_section_description: The population of Latin America comprises a variety of ancestries, ethnic groups, and races, making the region one of the most diverse in the world. The specific composition varies from country to country: many have a predominance of European-Amerindian, or Mestizo, population; in others, Amerindian are a majority; some are dominated by inhabitants of European ancestry; and some countries' populations are primarily Mulatto. Black, Asian, and Zambo (mixed Black and Amerindian) minorities are also identified regularly. White people are the largest single group, accounting for more than a third.
  Amerindians. The indigenous population of Latin America, the Amerindians, arrived during the Lithic stage. In post-Columbian times they experienced tremendous population decline, particularly in the early decades of colonization. They have since recovered in numbers, surpassing sixty million (by some estimates), though with the growth of the other groups meanwhile, they now compose a majority only in Bolivia, and Peru. In Guatemala, the Amerindians are a large minority that comprises 41% of the population. Mexico's 21% (9.8% in the official 2005 census) is the next largest ratio, and one of the largest Amerindian population in the Americas in absolute numbers. Most of the remaining countries have Amerindian minorities, in every case making up less than one-tenth of the respective country's population. In many countries, people of mixed Amerindian and European ancestry make up the majority of the population (see Mestizo).
  Asians. People of Asian descent number several million in Latin America. The first Asians to settle in the region were Filipino, as a result of Spain's trade involving Asia and the Americas. The majority of Asian Latin Americans are of Japanese or Chinese ancestry and reside mainly in Brazil and Peru; there is also a growing Chinese minority in Panama. Brazil is home to perhaps two million people of Asian descent, which includes the largest ethnic Japanese community outside Japan itself, estimated as high as 1.5 million, and circa 200,000 ethnic Chinese and 100,000 ethnic Koreans. Ethnic Koreans also number tens of thousands of individuals in Argentina and Mexico. Peru, with 1.47 million people of Asian descent, has one of the largest Chinese communities in the world, with nearly one million Peruvians being of Chinese ancestry. There is a strong ethnic-Japanese presence in Peru, where a past president and a number of politicians are of Japanese descent. The Martiniquais population includes an African-White-Indian mixed population, and an East Indian (Asian Indian) population. The Guadeloupean East Indian population is estimated at 14% of the population.
  Blacks. Millions of African slaves were brought to Latin America from the 16th century onward, the majority of whom were sent to the Caribbean region and Brazil. Today, people identified as "Black" are most numerous in Brazil (more than 10 million) and in Haiti (more than 7 million). Significant populations are also found in Cuba, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Panama, and Colombia. Among the Hispanic nations and Brazil, Puerto Rico leads this category in relative numbers, with a 15% ratio. Latin Americans of mixed Black and White ancestry, called Mulattoes, are far more numerous than Blacks.
  Mestizos. Intermixing between Europeans and Amerindians began early in the colonial period and was extensive. The resulting people, known as Mestizos, make up the majority of the population in half of the countries of Latin America. Additionally, Mestizos compose large minorities in nearly all the other mainland countries.
  Mulattoes. Mulattoes are people of mixed European and African ancestry, mostly descended from Spanish or Portuguese settlers on one side and African slaves on the other, during the colonial period. Brazil is home to Latin America's largest mulatto population. Mulattoes form a majority in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean places which are the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and depending on source, Cuba as well, and are also numerous in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Pa
caption: Woman from Curitiba, one of over a million Japanese Brazilians.
exif: {}