page_title: White Latin Americans
section_title: Puerto Rico
hierarchical_section_title: White Latin Americans / Populations / Caribbean / Puerto Rico
caption_attribution_description: Puig US16 (38)
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: An early census on the island was conducted by Governor Francisco Manuel de Lando in 1530. An exhaustive 1765 census was taken by Lieutenant General Alexander O'Reilly, which, according to some sources, showed 17,572 whites out of a total population of 44,883. The censuses from 1765 to 1887 were taken by the Spanish government who conducted them at irregular intervals. The 1899 census was taken by the United States War Department. Since 1910, Puerto Rico has been included in every decennial census taken by the United States.
  White Puerto Ricans of European, mostly Spanish, descent are said to comprise the majority, with 75.8% of the population identifying as white. In 1899, one year after the U.S invaded and took control of the island, 61.8% identified as white. In 2000, for the first time in fifty years, the census asked people to define their race and found the percentage of whites had risen to 80.5% (3,064,862); not because there has been an influx of whites to the island (or an exodus of non-White people), but a change of race perceptions, mainly because Puerto Rican elites wished to portray Puerto Rico as the "white island of the Antilles", partly as a response to scientific racism.
  From the beginning of the 20th century, American observers remarked on the "surprising preponderance of the white race" on the island. One travel writer called Puerto Rico "the whitest of the Antilles". In a widely distributed piece, a geologist wrote that the island was "notable among the West Indian group for the reason that its preponderant population is of the white race". In a more academic book he reiterated that "Porto Rico, at least, has not become Africanized".
  During the 19th century, hundreds of Corsican, French, Middle Eastern, and Portuguese families, along with large numbers of immigrants from Spain (mainly from Catalonia, Asturias, Galicia, the Balearic Islands, Andalusia, and the Canary Islands) and numerous Spanish loyalists from Spain's former colonies in South America, arrived in Puerto Rico. Other settlers have included Irish, Scots, Germans, and Italians. Thousands of immigrants were granted land from Spain during the Real Cedula de Gracias de 1815 (Royal Decree of Graces of 1815), which allowed European Catholics to settle in the island with a certain amount of free land.
  According to a genetic research by the University of Brasilia, Puerto Rican genetic admixture consists in a 60.3% European, 26.4% African, and 13.2% Amerindian ancestry.
caption: Puerto Rican tennis player Monica Puig at the 2016 US Open.
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon EOS 7D Mark II", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image DateTime": "2016:09:18 18:09:41", "Image Artist": "sirobi", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image Copyright": "", "Image ExifOffset": "2326", "GPS GPSVersionID": "[2, 3, 0, 0]", "Image GPSInfo": "14258", "Image XPAuthor": "sirobi", "Image XPKeywords": "[80, 0, 117, 0, 101, 0, 114, 0, 116, 0, 111, 0, 32, 0, 82, 0, 105, 0, 99, 0, ... ]", "Image Padding": "[]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "14446", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "9259", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/250", "EXIF FNumber": "63/10", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Aperture Priority", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "800", "EXIF SensitivityType": "Recommended Exposure Index", "EXIF RecommendedExposureIndex": "800", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0230", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2016:08:29 23:44:01", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2016:08:29 23:44:01", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "8", "EXIF ApertureValue": "43/8", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "135", "EXIF SubSecTime": "00", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "00", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "00", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2193", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "3299", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "14138", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "5472000/899", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "3648000/599", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF ImageUniqueID": "B7FCCDEC8F134442AC760DD804B409E6", "EXIF CameraOwnerName": "", "EXIF BodySerialNumber": "153053003095", "EXIF LensSpecification": "[70, 300, 0, 0]", "EXIF LensModel": "EF70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM", "EXIF LensSerialNumber": "000051be6c", "EXIF Padding": "[]", "EXIF OffsetSchema": "4050"}