If 94 percent of Costa Rica's population is white AND mestizo what percentage is mestizo?

Answer 1

nobody really knows, Costa Rica never had a large Amerindian population and many died out. Many Ticos could have Amerindian ancestors but they don't know about it because it was very long ago. For the most part a lot of Ticos are of predominently Spanish descent with a potential chance of a little bit of Amerindian

ReplyThanks. I was using a population survey and trying to figure out how common each was.

reply

I believe that there is a larger mestizo population in Costa Rica than many tico's like to admit. Although there were no dense Indian populations there like in Mexico or Guatemala (not to mention most Indians there were wiped out by epidemics during the conquest) there was still a degree of mestizaje that is notable in the appearance of the Ticos today. Most Ticos I've met have Mestizo features (perceivable Indian heritage), and I'm willing to bet DNA tests would corroborate this. The same phenomena happens in Chile. In both coutries, for census purposes there is no distinction made between "white" and "mestizo", however, the Indianess is there.

There was definitively a certain degree of mestizaje (mixture) in parts of Costa Rica, however the degree is lower than in many Latin American countries and it is predominately in the coastal areas of Costa Rica and in the northern areas where the population density is the lowest. According to new research, about 85% of the Costa Rican population is of Spanish descent, with the rest being predominately mestizo and a few Indian and black population. From my personal experience I have seen that most of the Costa Rican population from the central plateau tend to be lighter skin with few indigenous features as the northern (Guanacastecos) or people from the zona sur since the population in these regions tend to be from Nicaraguan or Panamenian descent. My father is Costa Rican and we have done DNA testing as well as a family tree to learn more about his ancestry. From these studies we concluded that my dad's family has been in Costa Rica as early as the 1500s and surprisingly about 70% of his DNA is of BERBER descent (North African) with lower frequencies of Irish and mediterranean stock. According to the test, his "Indian" DNA frequencies fall below 1%, which again it is very surprising since my dad resemebles any typical Costa Rican from the San Jose region and his family has been in the region ever since colonial times. This totally contradicts the guy who wrote the second answer. Most Costa Ricans I know are white while some are mestizos and very very few are black.