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Of Latin America's total population of close to 550 million people, about one-third, roughly 217 million, are classified as white or predominantly white. They are the region's largest self-identified "single-race" racial group. Most are criollos, the descendants of colonial-era Iberian settlers, although in the countries of Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay, the colonial white populations were augmented and overwhelmed by larger European immigration waves of non-Iberian origin in the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries.

Contents

Whiteness in Latin America

Heritage

Latin American Population

See also

Notes and references

Whiteness in Latin America

The evolution of Latin America's modern population is embedded in a long and widespread history of intermixing between Europeans, Amerindians and sub-Saharan Africans. Consequently, many self-identified White Latin Americans have a degree of Amerindian and/or sub-Saharan African ancestry. "Whiteness" is constructed differently in Latin America than in other contexts; for example, self-identified non-Hispanic White Americans or White Australians have ancestors from groups indigenous to their own countries or later non-Europeans such as African slaves in the USA or indentured Chinese labourers from Australia's colonial history. In fact, according to recent genetic discoveries, up to one third of non-Hispanic White Americans have African ancestors who passed the colour barrier as white, and up to one fourth of the self-identified White Australian population acknowledges distant Chinese ancestry.
As far as Amerindian ancestry in the White Latin American population is concerned, under the casta system of colonial Latin America, a person of mixed European and Amerindian ancestry would legally and automatically regain their ''limpieza de sangre'' (lit. "purity of blood") and be classified as criollo with others in that category (a designation denoting "pure" Spaniards born in the Americas), if they were of one-eighth or less Amerindian ancestry. These would be the offspring of a castizo (1/4th Amerindian 3/4th Spanish) with a Spaniard or a criollo (who may himself have been mixed).^[7]
In practice, many castizos did themselves also subversively purchase their Whiteness all over Latin America, for a steep price,^[8] with relevant "''probanzas de limpieza de sangre''" records altered, consolidating themselves within the lawfully white population. Additionally, at least in the parts of Latin America under the jurisdiction of the Viceroyalty of New Spain (from the modern Southwest United States plus Florida, all of modern Mexico then down as far south as the southern border of modern Costa Rica, as well as Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic), officials in the late 16th century did actually decide "to grant limpieza certification to those who had no more than a fourth of native ancestry," that is, to castizos.

Heritage

The heritage of White Latin Americans comes from two primary European sources:

★ Spaniards

★ Portuguese
Other Europeans that have contributed significantly include:

★ Italians

★ Germans

★ French

★ Poles

★ Other Slavic descendants

★ Other Germanic descendants

★ Ashkenazi Jews from Western and Eastern Europe
Some Latin American countries include minorities of Middle Eastern heritages of all religious backgrounds (although most are Christian) in their definitions of white, others do not. Among those that do, small contributions have come from:

★ Lebanese

★ Palestinians

★ Syrians

★ Turks

Latin American Population

The largest white populations in Latin America are found in:

Country	% local	Population (millions)
Brazil	53.7%	up to 102
Argentina	85-97%	up to 39
Mexico	9%- ~15%[9]	up to 16.3
Colombia	20%	up to 8.9
Venezuela	20%	up to 5.2
Chile	30%	up to 4.8
Peru	15%	up to 4.3
Cuba	37%	up to 4.2
Costa Rica	94%	up to 3.8
Uruguay	88%	up to 3
Nicaragua	17%	up to 1

See also

★ Peninsulares

★ White Hispanic

★ White Brazilian

★ White people

★ Criollo (people)

★ Casta

★ Mestizo

★ Mulatto

Notes and references

1. Field Listing - Ethnic groups
2. Mexico: Sources vary, Encyclopædia Britannica states Mexico's white ethnic group constitute 15%.
3. Venezuela
4. Venezuela: about one-fifth of Venezuelans are of European lineage.
5. 5.2.6. Estructura racial
6. Costa Rica: White (including mestizo) - 94% = 3,885,850
7. The Black Blood of New Spain: Limpieza de Sangre, Racial Violence, and Gendered Power in Early Colonial Mexico María Elena Martínez
8. Legal History of the Color Line: The Rise And Triumph of the One-drop Rule, Frank W. Sweet, , , Backintyme, ,
9. Mexico: Ethnic Groups