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The Racial Composition of the Population of Colombia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

T. Lynn Smith
T. Lynn Smith*
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, University of Florida
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Extract

The Redman, the Negro, and the white man were the three colors in the human palette of Nueva Granada. With these and their derivatives time has worked, during the course of four centuries, to create every possible mixture, blend, and shade of mankind, every human color possible without the addition of the yellow element from Asia. But the more important blendings were those of the white and Indian to form the great mestizo group of the highlands and of the white and Negro to produce the mulattoes who share the hot, sultry lowlands with the more pure-blooded descendants of the Africans. In the twentieth century the immigration of a few hundred Japanese, who settled in the Cauca Valley, has added the last of the major human types to the population of Colombia.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Inter-American Studies , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , April 1966 , pp. 213 - 235
Copyright
Copyright © University of Miami 1966

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References

1 “At present a little less than five million inhabitants make up the Colombian nation, a product of the juxtaposition and mixing of the white, American, and Negro races, so that in the greater part it is composed of mixed bloods because now there does not exist one million representatives of what could be called the pure races. In a word: the ethnographic elements, which the Conquest accumulated in the national territory, tended to fuse more and more, with the positive advantage for the whole, which some day will have a perfect unity, having been suppressed forever the grave danger of race conflict, because they have come to consider each other as brothers in the Christian meaning of the term.” F. J. Vergara y Velasco, Nueva Geografía de Colombia (Bogotá: Imprenta de Vapor, 1901), I, 840.

2 The belief that the contact and mingling of races results in complete fusion, with all the original types losing their identity in a new one that is uniform and homogeneous is extremely widespread. Except for a few unique cases such as that of Pitcairn Island, in which the maintenance of a white strain was impossible because all the crew of the Bounty were males, it is difficult to see the basis upon which it has been founded and why it should have received such widespread acceptance. The evidence seems to show that when two or more races meet and mix a very complex situation results. There is preserved in relatively pure form at the several extremes groups of each of the original elements and in between them are produced various shades and colors to fit all the possible gradations.

3 Martinez, Abraham, Colombian Yearbook, 1925-1926, New York: Colombian Government Bureau of Information, 1926 [?], p. 31.Google Scholar

4 Another who certainly has greatly underestimated the importance of the Negro element in Colombia is Sir Harry H. Johnston, (The Negro in the New World, New York: The Macmillan Co., 1910, p. 483) who calculated that the number of Negroids in Colombia and Venezuela combined was “say 60,000.” The same author omits all reference to Cartagena as a center of the slave trade.

5 Luis López de Mesa, Como se ha formado la nación colombiano (Bogotá, 1934), pp. 48-49: cf. Ramón, Justo, Geografía de Colombia (Bogotá: Librería Stella, 1943), p. 106.Google Scholar

6 Mollien, G., Travels in the Republic of Colombia in the Years 1822 and 1823 (London: C. Knight, 1824), p. 351 Google Scholar.

7 Ramón Franco, R., Antropogeografía colombiana (Manizales: Imprenta del Departamento, 1941), p. 194.Google Scholar

8 Geografía económica de Colombia; 1, Antioquia (Bogotá: Imprenta Nacional, 1935), pp. 120-121. Angel, Manuel Uribe Geografía general y compendio histórico del Estado de Antioquia en Colombia (Paris: Victor Goupy y Jourdan, 1885), p. 113 Google Scholar, gives the following interesting statement concerning the ethnic origins of the people of the Medellin Valley, one of the most important centers of dispersion in Antioquia: “Before the foundation of Envigado (1775), its campos were occupied by families of Spanish origin for the most part, by some Negro slaves, and by a few mestizos. The indigenous race had disappeared from almost all the valley, leaving only a few families in the pueblo de Estrella and on the headwaters of the Rio Aburra. These Spanish campesinos of Envigado and the rest of the Medellin Valley were people of pure blood, mountaineers most of them, and all of them of patriarchial customs, honorable, industrious and old Christians in the best sense of the term.”

9 Asi es la Guajira (Barranquilla: Emp. Litográfica, 1946) pp. 47-49. Cf. Steward, Julian H., Editor, Handbook of South American Indians, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 143 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1946), II, 50-57; 865–974; III, 763-798; and IV, 1-40; 297-385Google Scholar. Leyburn, James G., Handbook of Ethnography (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1931)Google Scholar, lists 119 tribal names for the Indians of Colombia. Vergara y Velasco, Nueva geografía, pp. 877-906, discusses at some length the Colombian tribes.

10 Nueva geografía, p. 871.

11 Ministerio de Trabajo y Prevision (of Spain), Disposiciones complementarias de las leyes de Indias (Madrid: Saez Hermanos, 1930), I, 236.

12 Basilio Vicente de Oviedo, Cualidades y riquezas del Nuevo Reino de Granada, Edited by Luis Augusto Cuervo, Biblioteca de Historia Nacional (Bogotá: Imprenta Nacional, 1930), XLV, 52.

13 ibid., p. 96.

14 See the extract from their writings which is given below.

15 Geografía de Colombia (Bogotá: Librería Stella, 1943), p. 103.

16 Ensayo sobre las revoluciones políticas y la condición social de las repúblicas colombianas (París: E. Thunot y Co., 1861), p. 85. Cf. Escobar, Ricardo Uribe, El Pueblo Antioqueño (Medellín: Universidad de Antioquia, 1942), pp. 9–10 Google Scholar; Veatch, A. C., Quito to Bogotá (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1917), pp. 206–207 Google Scholar; and Ross, Edward Alsworth, South of Panama (New York: The Century Co., 1915), pp. 14–15.Google Scholar

17 A Voyage to South-America, etc. (London: L. Davis and C. Reymers, 1758), 1, 37-39.

18 For one author's comment upon the facsimiles of renowned men to be observed in small towns see, Steuart, J., Bogotá in 1836-7 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1838), pp. 92–93 Google Scholar. Of course the story of the small community, all of whose members are descendants of the old village patriarch, crops up in all of the Latin American countries, in many cases with more than a shred of evidence in its favor. Cf. Eric Pixton, De Buenos Aires a Misiones en canoa (Buenos Aires: Editorial Claridad, 1937), pp. 91-92. As a matter of fact, if everything necessary in order to attain a high degree of civilization and culture were to develop a population of almost pure blood descent, certain parts of Latin America would have attained the pinnacle of perfection.

19 A good beginning on the type of synthesis needed has been made by José Rafael Arboleda, S. J., “Nuevas investigaciones afrocolombianas,” Revista Javeriana, (May 1952); and Aquiles Escalante, El negro en Colombia, Monografías Sociológicas No. 18 (Bogotá: Facultad de Sociología, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 1964).

20 Saco, José Antonio, Historia de la esclavitud de la raza africana en el nuevo mundo y en especial en los países americo-hispanos (Habana: Cultural, S. A., 1938).Google Scholar

21 Ibid., I, 242.

22 Ibid., p. 289.

23 Ibid., II, 11. In this connection it is interesting to note that this part of what is now the Departamento of Bolivar is one of the few places in Colombia from which come reports of Negro communities in which the African language, dances, and customs, are still preserved. These small groups of Negroes are said to insist absolutely on endogamous marriage. See, Geografía económica de Colombia, Tomo V, Bolivar (Bogotá: Editorial El Gráfico, 1942), pp. 152-154.

24 Saco, Historia de la esclavitud, II, 27, 42.

25 Ibid., pp. 100-101.

26 Ibid., pp. 115-116.

27 Recopilación de las Leyes de Las Indias, Libro 8, Titulo 5, Ley 17.

28 Ibid., Libro 8, Titulo 18, Ley 7.

29 Saco, Historia de la esclavitud, II, 145.

30 Ibid., pp. 157-158; Cf. Ministerio de Trabajo y Prevision, Disposiciones complementarias de las Leyes de Indias (Madrid: Saez Hermanos, 1930), I, 250-261.

31 Saco, Historia de la esclavitud, II, 163.

32 Ibid., p. 167.

33 Jerónimo Becker, D. and José, D. Rivas Groot, M., El Nuevo Reino de Granada en el Siglo XVIII (Madrid: Biblioteca de Historia Hispano-Americana. 1921), pp. 10–11.Google Scholar

34 The Travels of Pedro de Cieza de León, Translated and edited by Clements R. Markham (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1864), pp. 93-94.

35 This process has been described in more detail in T. Lynn Smith, “Land Tenure and Soil Erosion in Colombia,” in the Proceedings of the Inter-American Conference on the Conservation of Renewable Natural Resources (Washington: U.S. Department of State, 1949), pp. 155-160.

36 Peregrinación de Alpha (Bogotá: Arboleda & Valencia, 1914), p. 276.