page_title: Afro-Latin Americans
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Afro-Latin Americans / History
caption_attribution_description: English: 18th century painting made in Colonial Peru showing a family of free blacks
context_page_description: Afro-Latin American or Black Latin American, refers to Latin Americans of significant or mainly African ancestry. The term may also refer to historical or cultural elements in Latin America thought to have emanated from this community.
  The term Afro-Latin American refers specifically to people of African ancestry and not to European ancestry, such as Sub-Alpine European white. The term is not widely used in Latin America outside academic circles. Normally Afro-Latin Americans are called black. More commonly, when referring to cultural aspects of African origin within specific countries of Latin America, terms carry an Afro- prefix followed by the relevant nationality. Notable examples include Afro-Cuban, Afro-Brazilian, Afro-Haitian, Afro-Latino, and Afro-Latinx.
  The accuracy of statistics reporting on Afro-Latin Americans has been questioned, especially where they are derived from census reports in which the subjects choose their own designation, because in various countries the concept of African ancestry is viewed with differing attitudes.
context_section_description: In the 15th and 16th centuries, many people of African origin were brought to the Americas by the Spanish and Portuguese. Pedro Alonso Niño, traditionally considered the first of many New World explorers of African descent, was a navigator in the 1492 Columbus expedition. Those who were directly from West Africa mostly arrived in Latin America as part of the Atlantic slave trade, as agricultural, domestic, and menial laborers and as mineworkers.  They were also employed in mapping and exploration (for example, Estevanico) and were even involved in conquest (for example, Juan Valiente.) The Caribbean and South America received 95 percent of the Africans arriving in the Americas with only 5 percent going to Northern America.
  Countries with significant African, Mulatto, or Zambo populations today include Brazil (54 million, if including the pardo Brazilian population with Mulatto phenotype), Haiti (8.7 million), Dominican Republic (8.5 million), Cuba (7 million), Colombia (5 million), Venezuela (4 million) and Ecuador (1.1 million).
  Traditional terms for Afro-Latin Americans with their own developed culture include garífuna (in Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and Belize), cafuzo (in Brazil), and zambo in the Andes and Central America. Marabou is a term of Haitian origin denoting a Haitian of multiracial ethnicity.
  The mix of these African cultures with the Spanish, Portuguese, French, and indigenous cultures of Latin America has produced many unique forms of language (e.g., Palenquero, Garífuna, and Creole), religions (e.g., Candomblé, Santería, and Vodou), music (e.g., kompa, salsa, Bachata, Punta, Palo de Mayo, plena, samba, merengue, cumbia) martial arts (capoeira) and dance (rumba, merengue).
  As of 2015, Mexico and Chile are the only two Latin American countries yet to formally recognize their Afro-Latin American population in their constitutions. This is in contrast to countries like Brazil and Colombia that lay out the constitutional rights of their African-descendant population.
caption: 18th-century painting showing a family of free blacks
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