page_title: White Latin Americans
section_title: Costa Rica
hierarchical_section_title: White Latin Americans / Populations / Central America / Costa Rica
caption_attribution_description: English: Family of German inmigrants in Costa Rica.
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: From the late 19th century to when the Panama Canal opened, European migrants used Costa Rica to get across the isthmus of Central America to reach the west coast of the United States (California).
  In Costa Rica, estimates of the percentage of white people vary between 77% and 82%, or about 3.1–3.5 million people. The white and mestizo populations combined equal 83%, according to the CIA World Factbook. Costa Rican European ancestry is mostly Spanish, although a significant number is descended from Italian, Greek, German, English, Dutch, French, Irish, Portuguese, Lebanese, or Polish families. Other ethnic groups include Russians, Danes, Belgians, Croats, Hungarians, Turks, Armenians and Georgians.
  Many of the first Spanish colonists in Costa Rica may have been Jewish converts to Christianity. The first sizable group of self-identified Jews immigrated from diaspora communities in 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.
caption: Family of German immigrants in Costa Rica
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