Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- 1 The African slave trade and the Caribbean
- 2 Obesity, hypertension, and non-insulin-dependent diabetes in Afro-Caribbean populations: an evolutionary overview
- 3 Infectious disease epidemiology and Afro-Caribbean populations
- 4 Population genetics of Afro-Caribbean groups
- 5 Demography of Afro-Caribbean groups
- 6 The Afro-Caribbean population in Limón, Costa Rica
- References
- Index
6 - The Afro-Caribbean population in Limón, Costa Rica
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 August 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- 1 The African slave trade and the Caribbean
- 2 Obesity, hypertension, and non-insulin-dependent diabetes in Afro-Caribbean populations: an evolutionary overview
- 3 Infectious disease epidemiology and Afro-Caribbean populations
- 4 Population genetics of Afro-Caribbean groups
- 5 Demography of Afro-Caribbean groups
- 6 The Afro-Caribbean population in Limón, Costa Rica
- References
- Index
Summary
This chapter is the culmination of the entire book, as it will present a microevolutionary history of the Afro-Caribbean population in Limón, Costa Rica. We will start with an historical overview, tying the initial and subsequent migrations which formed this group with the contractions and expansions of the Caribbean economy that were reviewed in Chapter 5. Then we will discuss some of the cultural-anthropological and linguistic work on the group, although this will be by necessity a short section, as this book is about human biology, not cultural anthropology. We will then discuss work on obesity, hypertension, and diabetes in the region, as well as on infectious diseases, and put Limón in the wider Caribbean epidemiologic context. Data are limited for both chronic and infectious diseases unfortunately: in Costa Rica data are collected not according to ethnic group but only to geography. Thus if we work with data from the Limón region we might be looking at data of the Afro-Caribbean and the Hispano-Limonense groups combined. However, a few research projects have focused on the African-derived population, and these will be very helpful. In contrast with epidemiology studies, there are plenty of demographic projects which focus exclusively on the Afro-Limonense population, projects that look at the family structure and other demographic aspects of interest. There have also been more data published on the population genetics of the Afro-Limonense group than on any other Costa Rican group.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Human Biology of Afro-Caribbean Populations , pp. 155 - 204Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006