The Palgrave International Handbook of Mixed Racial and Ethnic Classification (eds) Zarine Rocha and Peter

J. Aspinall. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Colombia: the meaning and measuring of mixedness

Peter Wade

According to the 2005 census, Colombia’s “black” population was about 10.5% of the total

of just under 42 million, while the indigenous population was 3.4%. Apart from a third

category, “Rom” (Roma, less than 0.1%), these were the only two ethnic categories employed

in the census. Mixedness, as such, was not measured. I will return to this historic census, but

it helps to convey an idea of Colombia as a country with a substantial Afro-descendant

population (at 4.26 million people, it is the third largest in Latin America, after Brazil and

Haiti) and a small but significant indigenous population (1.4 million individuals). Survey data

suggest that about 30% of the population self-identify as “white” (Telles and Flores, 2013),

which means that the rest - over 50% - do not identify as black, white, indigenous or Rom,

i.e. they are probably, in some sense, “mixed”. This chapter will explore the meaning and

measurement of the “mixed” category in Colombia - and, by implication, the meaning of

white, black and indigenous, as it is in relation to these categories that mixedness is

conceived.

Historical background

In the colonial period, New Granada (approximately equivalent to today’s Colombia, Panama

and some of Venezuela) was similar to other regions of the Spanish empire in recognising

certain key categories of people, viz. Spanish whites, American-born whites, slaves, negros

(blacks, whether African or American-born, enslaved or free) and indios (indigenous natives).

In terms of counting people, colonial authorities were mostly interested in numbers of

blancos (whites), esclavos (slaves) and indios, as these were important categories for

governance purposes. From early on, sexual relations between these categories produced

people who might be recognised as “mestizos” (mixed people) of various kinds, but this was

a very fluid denomination, often used to discredit someone and associate him or her with

illegitimacy and/or with “impure blood”.1 Multiple categories existed to label mixed people

(see below) and judgements about who belonged in which category were based on parentage,

1

upbringing and status, but also appearance and behaviour (especially in relation to religion

and morality) (Rappaport, 2014). Mixed people with African ancestry were often seen as

inferior to those with indigenous parentage: 1778 Spanish Crown regulations that controlled

marriage allowed the possibility of marriage between whites and indigenous people, and

between whites and mestizos, while restricting unions between whites and other castas (a

term used to denote mixed people in general or any non-white people) (Mörner, 1967: 39).

An important census of 1777-78 - the second carried out by the Statistics Office of

New Granada founded in 1758 - used the categories blanco, indio, esclavo and the umbrella

term, libres de varios colores (free people of various colours), which included anyone who

was not counted in the other three categories, who would have been freed blacks, acculturated

indigenous people, probably some poor whites and escaped slaves, and diverse mestizos.2

The category of libres was just under 50% of the total, compared to 25% whites, 19%

indigenous people and 5% enslaved people (Wade, 1993: 359). However, this small number

of categories is deceptive as previous local censuses had used a much greater variety of

categories, such as zambo (notionally a person of black-indigenous parentage), cholo, mestizo

(both being persons of notionally white-indigenous parentage), pardo, mulato, moreno,

cuarterón and quinterón (all referring to persons of notionally black-white parentage); this

does not include other categories such as nobles (nobles) and gente blanca del común

(ordinary white people), blancos limpios de sangre (whites of clean blood), among others

(Solano, 2015: 73). These kinds of categories were also used by the Church when registering

births, death and marriages, and by the Inquisition, based in the Caribbean port city of

Cartagena, when recording details of religious crimes, including sexual acts such as sodomy

(Maya Restrepo, 2005; Von Germeten, 2013).

After Independence (1810-1824), these socio-racial categories mostly disappeared

from the official record, but, as slavery was not abolished until 1851, the state was still

concerned to enumerate the enslaved population. The 1827 census counted slaves and also

“independent and uncivilised indigenous tribes”; the 1835 census omitted slaves but counted

indigenous people, while the 1843 census counted indigenous people as 9.4% of the

population and slaves as 1.4% (DANE, 1998: 16-18). Thereafter, with abolition of slavery

and of the institution of the indigenous reserve in 1850, socio-racial categories disappeared

altogether from the census, as liberal conceptions of society and the state took over,

according to which all citizens were equal before the law (DANE, 2006: 27).3 From 1810 to

1912, only people who were either enslaved (until 1851) or indigenous were counted as such:

everyone else was legally speaking, simply a citizen.

2

However, mixedness was recognised as a feature of Colombian society and several

nineteenth-century travellers and commentators hazarded estimates of the size of the mixed

population (said to be between 54% and 75%), occasionally distinguishing between mestizos

and mulatos (Smith, 1966: 215). Mixture was seen in ambivalent terms (Wade, 2017: 7-9).

Writer and politician José María Samper wrote in 1861 of Colombia’s “marvellous work of

the mixture of races”, which in his view “should produce a wholly democratic society”

(Samper, 1861: 299). Despite this optimism about mixture in general, Samper saw indigenous

people as “semi-savage” (1861: 88) and described in derogatory terms the “savage features”

of some dark-skinned Colombians, who “had of humanity almost only the external form” as a

result of “of the crossing of two or three different races” (Samper, 1980: 88).

In 1912, census practice made a new departure by including a question on raza (race),

with census takers assigning the population to four categories: white (32.5%), black (10.2%),

indigenous (8.6%) and mezclado (mixed, 48.7%) (Smith, 1966: 215). It is not clear why the

state thought it was necessary to have these data, but it was doubtless connected to the

emergence of a eugenic preoccupation with the quality of the nation’s “racial stock” and a

pan-Latin American concern with attracting European immigration to “whiten” the

population and improve its progress (Appelbaum, Macpherson, and Rosemblatt, 2003;

Estrada Orrego, 2017; Loveman, 2014; Stepan, 1991). However, there was apparently a lack

of consensus within Colombia around this agenda and one large “department” (the main

administrative division of the country), Magdalena, located in the historically dark-skinned

Caribbean coastal region of the country, refused to return data on racial classification. In the

1918 census, when the question was repeated, Magdalena again refused, as did its neighbour,

Bolívar, which in 1912 had reported 21% blacks, 20% whites, 10% indigenous people and

50% mezclados. These refusals were probably connected to the fact that elites in Colombia’s

Caribbean region felt demeaned and excluded by the power-holding department of the

Andean interior, with the region’s racial profile felt to be an integral part of this exclusion

(McGraw, 2014; Múnera, 2005).

The census data from 1912 and 1918 indicated that of 14 departments, 11 had

substantial proportions of mixed people (between 40% and 66%), with nine having 50% or

more. The remaining three had large proportions of black people (Chocó, 58%), indigenous

people (Nariño, 19%; Cauca, 32%), and/or white people (Nariño, 44%). Certain departments

encompassed Andean and Pacific coastal environments and showed marked internal

diversity: Valle del Cauca, Cauca and Nariño all had coastal provinces with over 60% black

people (Ministerio de Gobierno, 1912; República de Colombia, 1924). What the data could

3

not show was that mixed people with significant African descent were more frequent in the

Caribbean region, the Pacific coastal region and the two major valleys of the Cauca and

Magdalena rivers, while mixed people with substantial indigenous descent were more

frequent in the Andean interior (Smith, 1966).

It is worth noting that, until 1993, Colombian identity cards (cédula) registered a

person’s “colour”. Identity cards were first introduced to monitor voting in 1853 and they

underwent numerous changes and revisions, gradually becoming a requisite for every citizen.

In 1934, a law was passed specifying that the cédula should give information about a

person’s physical appearance including (skin) colour, type and colour of hair, features of the

forehead, the mouth, the lips, eyes, nose and any other distinctive marks (RNEC, 2009,

2012). Along with a fingerprint, these were ways of identifying an individual using physical

appearance, for mostly forensic purposes, rather than classifying people by racial category for

demographic purposes. A very common skin colour label on cédulas was trigueño (wheat-

coloured), which was applied to a very wide variety of skin tones and could conceivably be

taken to indicate mixed ancestry. However, no statistics were ever available to count cédulas

according to ascribed skin colour.

After 1918, then, Colombia did not officially count by “race” or colour. The censuses

of 1938, 1951 and 1964 did attempt to count indigenous people, defined as those who spoke

an indigenous language and lived in a “tribal” system, and in the 1960s and 70s the state also

undertook specialised counts of the inhabitants of indigenous reserves. The 1973 census was

more thorough than previous editions and used a broader, cultural definition (groups

characterised by “cultural traits of pre-Hispanic origin”), which doubled the number of

indigenous people counted. The 1985 census counted indigenous people using the twin

criteria of self-identification as indigenous and residence in an indigenous community or

territory (DANE, 1998, 2006). Meanwhile, an atlas published by the Banco de le República

in 1963 estimated the ethnic composition of the country as follows: blacks 6%, mulatos 24%,

mestizos 47.5%, whites 20% and indigenous people 2.2% (Smith, 1966: 215). This estimate

was reproduced in 1970 by the state geographical agency, Instituto Geográfico Agustín

Codazzi, in a basic atlas of Colombia (cited by Zapata Olivella, 2010: 343). Quite how the

state agencies came up with these statistics is unclear.

Multicultural reform and the census

In 1991, Colombia passed a new constitution recognising the country as “pluriethnic and

multicultural”, thus breaking with the slogan “Un Dios, una raza, una lengua” (one God, one

4

race, one language), inscribed on the entrance of the Colombian Academy of Language,

founded in 1871. This was part of a turn towards multiculturalism in most of Latin America,

involving new or greater recognition for indigenous minorities and, to a lesser extent, for

Afrodescendants (Van Cott, 2000; Wade, 2010). Colombia was in the vanguard of legislative

reform, especially for comunidades negras (black communities), which, in Law 70 of 1993,

were given land rights in some regions of the country and representation in various instances

of the state (Paschel, 2016; Wade, 2002).

This new landscape brought with it changes to census practice and other state

enumeration processes, such as household surveys, admissions to some public universities,

etc. The 1993 census was preceded by negotiations between the state statistical agency

(DANE) and indigenous and black organisations, which led to several pilot questionnaires.

The question finally adopted, to be directed at every person in the household, was this: “Do

you belong to any ethnic group (etnia), indigenous group or black community?” Those who

answered yes would then be asked, “Which one?”4 This suggested that the respondent was

expected to name a specific community, which was probably an obstacle for some indigenous

people, but was highly problematic for black people, as it was only with Law 70 of 1993 that

the concept of “black community” as a legal entity was established and no individual

community had yet been recognised as such; in addition, black community was legally

defined as existing only in rural areas of the Pacific coastal region. The results were that only

1.6% of the population claimed to be indigenous and only 1.5% a member of a “black

community”. Of course, everyone else was assumed not to belong to any etnia: if you did not

self-consciously identify as a member of an indigenous or black community, you were part of

an unmarked category of “ordinary” non-ethnic citizens.

Among those extremely dissatisfied with these results were sociologists at the

Universidad del Valle (Univalle), who carried out two surveys in the city of Cali in 1998-99,

in which the interviewer assigned household members on the basis of their appearance to one

of five categories - black, mulato, mestizo, indigenous or white - and also asked the

household head an open question “What is your skin colour?” (Barbary and Urrea, 2004: 63).

For the statistical analysis of the data, these five categories were usually simplified into Afro-

Colombian and non-Afro-Colombian, but differentiation within the categories was

maintained in some cases: overall, Cali’s population was about 41% white, 20% mestizo,

11% black and 18% mulato. The vagaries of measurement are shown by the fact that the

1998 survey gave 10% mulatos and 28% mestizos and the 1999 survey showed 19% mulatos

and 22% mestizos: the negro-mulato boundary was clearly very vague. Separating negros

5

from mulatos also showed that negros were significantly worse off: the poorest

neighbourhoods held half of Cali’s total population, but 74% of the black population; this

compared to 52% of mulatos, similar to mestizos (49%) and even whites (46%). The

wealthier areas were home to 20% of the total population but only 8% of negros, compared to

19% of mulatos, 19% of mestizos and 24% of whites (Barbary, 2004: 179, 182). Other

analyses of the data showed that mulatos were higher than negros in terms of educational and

occupational status (Viáfara López, 2008). More recent survey data from a national sample,

which included a measure of skin tone, confirmed the correlation between racial category and

educational status, while also showing a stronger correlation of education with actual skin

colour than with self-ascribed racial category (Telles and Project on Ethnicity and Race in

Latin America, 2014: 107). As is common throughout Latin America (and North America

too), lighter-skinned Afro-descendants have some advantages, a fact obscured by the current

tendency - most notable in Brazil (Silva, 1985) - to oppose all Afro-descendants to non-

blacks in statistical analyses.

In conjunction with the Univalle sociologists, DANE’s national household surveys

experimented in 2000 by using four photographs as prompts when asking people to self-

identify on the basis of skin colour (Barbary et al., 2004): 18% of people sampled identified

with the photos showing a black man or a black-mulato woman. Further DANE survey

experiments using different questions: with self-identification based on choosing a

phenotype-based category (negro, white, mestizo, mulato) about 10% of people identified as

negro or mulato; when the question asked people to self-identify as afrocolombiano results

were lower, at about 1%, but the options did not explicitly include a category suggesting

mixedness (DANE, 2010: 18).

The Univalle sociologists’ emphasis on skin colour was influential in the debates

leading up to the 2005 census about how to count ethnic minorities. These were hemispheric

debates: in 2000 and 2002, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and the

United Nations Population Fund convened two international seminars which explored

methods and concepts. A key issue was whether the census should align with people’s self-

identifications or use a more objective measure of appearance (e.g. skin colour). In the end,

for the 2005 Colombian census, self-determination won out, but some room was given to

physical appearance too, resulting in the hybrid question: “According to your culture, pueblo5

or physical features, do you identify yourself as: Indigenous (give the name of your pueblo);

Roma; raizal of the San Andrés and Providencia islands;6 palenquero from San Basilio;7

negro, mulato, Afrocolombiano [sic] or afrodescendiente?” As can be seen from the official

6

results from this question reported at the top of this chapter, all except the first two categories

are nearly always collapsed into “Afro-Colombian”. This is a hybrid biocultural category,

defined in terms of culture and appearance, with an implicit reference to inheritance of both

these dimensions: the word “Afro” captures this hybrid character, as it refers to African

origins, which are biological and cultural (although in Colombia, African-derived culture is

less obvious than in, say, Brazil, and has historically been negated, including by black

people).

As in 1993, the census shows no interest in ethnically labelling anyone who is not

either indigenous or Afro-Colombian (or Roma). Afro-Colombian explicitly includes some

people who see themselves as mixed - mulatos - and this obeys trends across Latin America

and particularly in Brazil towards the construction of a single political black category. In

Brazil, many statistics still differentiate between preto (black) and pardo (brown), even if the

two categories are often telescoped into a single negro category. In Colombia there is no way

of measuring mixedness with these census statistics: only if surveys follow the Univalle

example can mixedness be measured in any way.

It is notable that the category of mestizo does not appear at all in the census. There is

an asymmetry in the way mulatos are nowadays routinely and consensually encompassed in

the black or Afrodescendant category - and not just in Colombia - while it would be

inconceivable to Colombians to routinely and collectively include mestizos in the indigenous

category, even if in specific contexts the boundary between mestizo and indigenous is

recognised to be porous (Rappaport, 2005). This obeys the fact that indigenous people are

still typically seen as culturally very distinct rural dwellers - even though about 20% of those

identified as indigenous in the 2005 census resided in urban areas (Molina Echeverri, 2012).

While black people may be seen as “other” in some ways - a perception reinforced by census

counting - indigenous people are even more “other”; there is no marked cultural difference

perceived to distinguish negros from mulatos, while a strong cultural distinction is perceived

to operate at the mestizo/indigenous boundary, even if that perception is motivated by

stereotypes about what indigenous people are. Black and indigenous people fit into the

nation’s structures and imaginaries of alterity in different ways - although analytically it is

necessary to keep them in the same frame as subaltern racialised subjects (Wade, 2010,

2018).

7

Genomics and mixedness

A recent variation on the question of measuring mixedness has been generated by genomic

science. Although the basic science for estimating degrees of genetic ancestral mixture has

been around since the 1940s, in crude form, the advances over the last 20 years or so in DNA

processing technology mean that these estimates can now be made more easily, and with

bigger samples, greater accuracy and more finely disaggregated attributions of geographical

ancestral origins; geneticists can also now make these estimates for individuals as well as

populations. The science works by sampling blood from Latin American populations, usually

defined in social terms as indigenous, mestizo or black, or as belonging to a certain

administrative division or region. Then, using samples from present-day populations selected

to represent the African, European and Amerindian parental populations of 500 years ago,

estimates are made of how much of the DNA of the Latin American sample is attributable to

each continental origin (Wade, 2017).

This estimation is done using different bits of the genome. First, the autosomal DNA

(the main body of DNA inherited from both parents, with the DNA sequences being

recombined or “shuffled” in the process) gives a sense of the overall profile of mixture. The

results vary massively from one study to another, depending on their samples, but for

Colombia, one early source (Sandoval, De la Hoz, and Yunis, 1993) showed African genetic

ancestry as highest in the Pacific region (about 55%) and much lower in samples taken from

the Andean interior (about 7% on average); European genetic ancestry was lowest in the

Pacific (under 30%) and highest in the Andean interior (65-70%); indigenous ancestry was

highest in the southwest Andes (over 40%) and lower elsewhere (20-30%). Other more recent

studies give markedly different figures, without changing the overall picture very much

(Rojas et al., 2010). Second, the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is a tiny part of the genome

inherited unrecombined from the mother alone and thus passed on only down the maternal

line in unchanged form, barring occasional but regular mutations. Third, the Y chromosome

(Y-DNA) is passed on down the paternal line and has parts that are also transmitted

unchanged, apart from mutations. Both mtDNA and Y-DNA allow geneticists to delve back

into the past, tracing mutations as markers of distant geographical origins. The data show

that, except for some (but not all) indigenous samples, all Colombians show some - and often

a lot of - mixture in the autosomal DNA. In addition, almost all have high levels of

indigenous (and in some areas African) markers in the mtDNA and high levels of European

markers in the Y-DNA, data which are taken to show that present-day mestizo populations

8

bear the mark of early sexual encounters between European colonists and indigenous (and in

some areas African) women.

Genomics may be hailed as an accurate way to measure mixedness, but it is important

to see that genetic make-up is not the same as social identity. High levels of indigenous

markers in the mtDNA of the provincial population of Antioquia, for example, makes little

difference to their self-image as rather white, an image usefully reinforced by autosomal data

showing nearly 80% European genetic ancestry, which in turn supports their idea of

themselves as a rather superior breed of Colombian. Also, readings of the mtDNA and Y-

DNA data that focus on encounters between European men and indigenous/African women

routinely gloss over the systematic violence that characterised these encounters, while also

side-lining other data that reveal the contribution of indigenous and African men (Wade,

2017).

Conclusion

Genomics tends to highlight mixedness - all Colombians are genetically mixed, whatever

their ethnic self-identification (although this is less the case for some indigenous groups).

Politics tends towards binary distinctions - black and indigenous versus white/mestizo -

which hide mixedness, despite the historical image of Colombia as a mestizo country.

Political ethnic movements from below - and to some extent multicultural politics from above

- are keen on the idea that the nation’s mestizo image erases the presence and identity of

black and indigenous people and masks the racism they suffer. Binary distinctions help to

reveal that and create a foothold to combat racism. At the same time, where mixedness is

measured in surveys, the data show that Afro-Colombians are a heterogeneous category and

that lighter-skinned blacks - and lighter-skinned mestizos in general - have better life

chances. This presents a conundrum for anti-racism in Colombia (and other Latin American

countries): whether to down-play mixedness in favour of a racialised solidarity, or

acknowledge mixedness and use it as a foothold to build alliances that cross racialised

difference without ignoring it.

9

Notes

10

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1 “Purity of blood” was defined in fifteenth-century Spain to mean being without raza de judío o moro (Jewish or Moorish ancestry) and was gradually extended in the Americas to include indigenous and African ancestry. Purity of blood was needed to access certain opportunities (the clergy, universities, certain guilds) and to testify to noble status, which was vital to elite marriage arrangements (Martínez, 2008).2 Clergy were also counted separately.3 In 1892, a partial special census of indigenous communities was carried out (DANE, 1998: 19).4 People living in areas identified as predominantly indigenous were subject to a special questionnaire that asked about indigenous language speaking, a procedure that had also been adopted for the 1985 census.5 Pueblo means village, community or town, but also nation or people (in the sense of both nation-state and ethnic group).6 San Andrés and Providencia are Colombian island territories off the coast of Nicaragua, which were settled in the nineteenth century by white English-speakers and their slaves. The islands’ native inhabitants (raizales or rooted ones) are traditionally Anglophone and mainly black.7 Palenque de San Basilio is a village not far from the Caribbean port city of Cartagena. Historically it was a maroon community and remains culturally and linguistically distinctive to this day. Some of its members have been influential in the Afro-Colombian social movement.