page_title: Costa Ricans
section_title: Ethnic groups
hierarchical_section_title: Costa Ricans / Ethnic groups
caption_attribution_description: English: This is a picture of the swimmer Claudia Poll. Español: Esta es una fotografía de la nadadora Claudia Poll.
context_page_description: Costa Ricans, also called Ticos, are a group of people from a multiethnic Spanish-speaking nation in Central America called Costa Rica. Costa Ricans are predominantly castizos, whites and mestizo, but their country is considered a multiethnic society, which means that it is home to people of many different ethnic backgrounds. As a result, modern-day Costa Ricans do not consider their nationality as an ethnicity but as a citizenship with various ethnicities. Costa Rica has four small minority groups: Mulattoes, Blacks, Asians, and Amerindians. In addition to the "Indigenas", whites, mestizos, blacks and mulattoes, Costa Rica is also home to thousands of Asians. Most of the Chinese and Indians now living in the country are descendants of those that arrived during the 19th century as migrant workers.
  By 2018, Costa Rica has a population of 5,000,000 people. The population growth rate between 2005 and 2010 was estimated to be 1.5% annually, with a birth rate of 17.8 live births per 1,000 inhabitants and a mortality rate of 4.1 deaths per 1,000 inhabitants. By 2016, the population had increased to about 4.9 million.
context_section_description: As of 2019 most Costa Ricans are primarily of Spanish or Mixed Native/Spanish/African ancestry with minorities of Italian, Portuguese, German, French, British, Irish, Jamaican, Greek, mixed or other Latin American ancestries.
  European migrants used Costa Rica to get across the isthmus of Central America as well to reach the USA West Coast (California) in the late 19th century and until the 1910s (before the Panama Canal opened). Other ethnic groups known to live in Costa Rica include Nicaraguan, Venezuelans, Peruvian, Brazilians, Portuguese, Palestinians, Caribbeans, Turks, Armenians and Georgians.
  Many of the first Spanish colonists in Costa Rica may have been Jewish converts to Christianity who were expelled from Spain in 1492 and fled to colonial backwaters to avoid the Inquisition. According to DNA tests from Ancestry.com and 23&me most of the original Costa Rican population from the Central Valley have around 1-3% Sephardi Jewish DNA. The first sizable group of self-identified Jews immigrated from Poland, beginning in 1929. From the 1930s to the early 1950s, journalistic and official anti-Semitic campaigns fueled harassment of Jews; however, by the 1950s and 1960s, the immigrants won greater acceptance. Most of the 3,500 Costa Rican Jews today are not highly observant, but they remain largely endogamous.
  Costa Rica has four small minority groups: Mulattos, Blacks, Amerindians and Asians. About 8% of the population is of Black African descent or Mulatto (mix of European and black) who are called Afro-Costa Ricans, English-speaking descendants of 19th century black Jamaican immigrant workers.
  In 1873 the Atlantic Railroad imported 653 Chinese indentured laborers, hoping to duplicate the success of rail projects that used Chinese labor in Peru, Cuba, and the United States. Asians represent less than 0.5% of the Costa Rican population, mostly from China, Taiwan and Japan.
  There are also over 104,000 Native American or indigenous inhabitants, representing 2.4% of the population. Most of them live in secluded reservations, distributed among eight ethnic groups: Quitirrisí (in the Central Valley), Matambú or Chorotega (Guanacaste), Maleku (northern Alajuela), Bribri (southern Atlantic), Cabécar (Cordillera de Talamanca), Guaymí (southern Costa Rica, along the Panamá border), Boruca (southern Costa Rica) and Térraba (southern Costa Rica).
  Today, according to modern DNA test's data the average Costa Rican (with 4 Costa Rican grand-parents) from the Central Valley is around 59% and 75% European, mostly Spanish, Basque or Portuguese, with around 15% - 35% Native American DNA from Central America or Colombia/Venezuela and 1-10% African particularly from Cameroon, Senegal or Congo on average. Native American from other regions in the Americas, European Jewish, Italian, Irish, Asian and Middle Eastern DNA can also be traced in part of the current Costa Rican population. Values vary drastically per region.
  A considerable portion of the Costa Rican population is made up of Nicaraguans. There is also a number of Colombian refugees. Moreover, Costa Rica took in many refugees from a range of other Latin American countries fleeing civil wars and dictatorships during the 1970s and 80s – notably from El Salvador, Chile, Cuba and recently from Venezuela.
  Currently immigrants represent 13% of the Costa Rican population, the largest in Central America and the Caribbean. By 2019 the largest Immigrant Diasporas in Costa Rica are people from: Nicaragua, Colombia, Honduras, El Salvador and United States.
caption: Claudia Poll, White-Costa Rican, Gold-Medalist Olympic Swimmer
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