page_title: White Latin Americans
section_title: Peru
hierarchical_section_title: White Latin Americans / Populations / South America / Peru
caption_attribution_description: Sofia Mulanovich
context_page_description: White Latin Americans, or European Latin Americans, are Latin Americans who are considered white, typically due to European or Levantine, descent. Latin American countries have often encouraged intermarriage between different ethnic groups since the beginning of the colonial period.
  People descended from European settlers who arrived in the Americas during the colonial and post-independence periods can be found throughout Latin America. Most of the earliest settlers were Spanish and Portuguese; after independence, the most numerous immigrants have been Europeans, followed by Levantine Semites, Armenians, and other Europeans.
  Composing from 33% to 36% of the population as of 2010, according to some sources, White Latin Americans constitute the largest racial-ethnic group in the region. White is the self-identification of many Latin Americans in some national censuses. According to a survey conducted by Cohesión Social in Latin America, conducted on a sample of 10,000 people from seven countries of the region, 34% of those interviewed identified themselves as white.
context_section_description: According to the 2017 census 5.9% or 1.3 million people self-identified as white of the population who were aged 12 and above. This was the first time the census had asked an ancestral identity question. The highest proportion was in the La Libertad Region with 10% identifying as white. 
  They are descendants primarily of Spanish colonists, and also of Spanish refugees fleeing the Spanish Civil War. After World War II, many German refugees fled to Peru and settled in large cities, while others descend from Italian, French (mainly Basques), Austrian or German, Portuguese, British, Russians, Croats, Lebanese, Jordanian, and Syrian immigrant families. The majority of whites live in the largest cities, and are concentrated in the northern coastal cities of Trujillo, Chiclayo, Piura, and the capital, Lima. Cajamarca, the Amazonas and San Martín regions, and the highlands of northwestern Peru are also places with strong Spanish, and other European, ethnic presence. The only southern city with a significant white population is Arequipa.
  According to a genetic research by the University of Brasilia, Peruvian genetic admixture indicates 73.0% Amerindian, 15.1% European, and 11.9% African ancestry.
caption: Sofia Mulanovich, surfer.
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