Arauca Department - Ethnography

Ethnography

Note these are estimates, the Colombian census does not collect data on race and ethnicity, but complied population estimates of the five groupings.

• Mestizo of mixed European-Amerindian backgrounds (could be over half or 60%) and White/unmixed European(about 33-35%) totalled at 93.70%.
• Black or Afro-Colombians (4.07%).
• Amerindian or Indigenous (2.22%).
• Roma (0.01%).
• Asian (0.01%).

There are small numbers of descendants of European immigrants: the Spanish, German, Portuguese, Italian, French, British, Dutch, Polish, Greek and Arab (i.e. Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian) nationalities.

Many Venezuelan-born nationals live in the department, but around 10-15 percent of the population is of Venezuelan origin.

It is unclear whether or not the name "Arauca" is connected with the "Araucanian" or Mapuche Indians of Chile and Argentina, unless one tracks the thousand-year old migratory patterns of indigenous Andean peoples in South America.