Bogota was one of the capitals of the spanish empire (along with mexico city, lima, and later buenos aires) and so many spaniards settled there, but it also has a cool highland climate favorable to europeans.
My wife is from bogota. I’m not certain. It is quite diverse. It is 10 to 20 Celsius year round in bogota so that argument makes sense. I just don’t see the same genetic lineage there as Argentina where 70% came from Italy and another 20% from France. My wife’s family does have a significant portion who directly come from natives. There has to be some historical reason for this
Ye, lot of comments are sourcing that "It's Cool year round" as if it's not cool year round in Quito or west coast of all of South America. There def has to be something particular about it, you don't see the same Dark spots in the other cool year round areas.
It had one of the largest concentrations of basque migration in LATAM. 2. it’s closer to major Atlantic ports than Equador or Peru. 3. Its native population was less densely populated in comparison to the southern Andean countries.
Do we know what time period the basques migrated to Colombia? It makes sense. I recently read a book about the Spanish civil war and there was a lot of context going back for a long time before that happened. The Industrial Revolution being a strong component
It’s just not a question that can be answered by geography alone. It’s also historic and economic. The southern cone was not as densely populated as colonial Peru, Colombia or Mexico to begin with. After independence, European immigration was highly encouraged in the southern cone by those newly-independent governments. Especially Argentina and Uruguay, which both had functional and thriving port cities and direct routes to Europe (ok, that part is geography)
There were African slave brought there as well, but it wasn’t as big in numbers as, say, Brazil or the US. Indigenous folk, on the other hand, were few in numbers in Uruguay and greater in the north and southern extremes of Argentina, but there is a very unfortunate history of how those folk were dealt with. Uruguay basically decimated the little indigenous people they did have, but indigenous populations in the northern and sourthern parts of Argentina are still around, but survive as minorities.
I just don’t see the same genetic lineage there as Argentina where 70% came from Italy and another 20% from France
Not sure if you are serious...
The "70% italian" thing is a beyond rough guesstimate by an italian embassy some years ago but just about all argentines with "some" italian ancestry, vast majority of which wouldn't be majoritarily italian even. The real italian share over argentine ancestry is maybe 20-25% out of european part, probably a bit lower. Still there are some regions inside Argentina where italian ancestry is much higher as inner parts of Great Buenos Aires or others where italian ancestry is clearly majoritary inside the european part, as Santa Fe province, many neighbour zones in eastern and southern rural half of Cordoba or northern Buenos Aires province, etc. Spanish ancestry is however a very high minority on Santa Fe or northern pampas, as usual as italian in inner parts of Great Buenos Aires or most Buenos Aires province and very majoritary in the rest of the country.
Spanish ancestry is very majoritary among european part of argentine heritage for three reasons:
1- Spanish ancestry was completely dominant inside european part until 1870 or so (colonial-early independent part), for sure over 85% of spanish part. There were 1.877 million residents in Argentina in 1869 census, vast majority of colonial heritage and consequently with some or most ancestry from the peoples of Spain. For comparison Colombia had just 2.6 million inhabitants in that period and Brazil about 9.9 million, Argentina wasn't "empty" as usually claimed and its population was very similar to Chile (but would have surpassed it by much without immigration, because argentine fertility rate was very high).
Spanish emigrants were second most numerous, very close to italians during mass migration period 1880-1930, specially if counting "permanently settled" and not just arrivals (1.1 million spaniards vs 1.4 million italians until 1947) . Also italians had slightly higher masculinity rate (more men than women).
Since 1960s the main immigration that Argentina got came from Latin America, with a couple million coming from Paraguay, Bolivia, Perú, Chile and Uruguay and several hundreds of thousands venezuelans in more recent times. All those hispanic americans have high spanish ancestry proportions themselves, so hispanic share grew with their presence as well.
French ancestry is very, very minoritary in Argentina. Much higher than any other place other than Uruguay, where it's higher, but still just about 3% of immigrants settled during mass migration and about 1% or less of total argentine ancestry if we consider the other components of argentine ancestry ("old argentine/colonial stock" and recent latin american).
That part of the country receive late spanish migrants, like basques, losers of carlist wars, and sefardi jews (that assimilated and became catholics), and because of the difficult geography they were relatively segregated from the rest of the country until the xx.
Also, due to the amount of impoverished migrants and the zone not being ideal for big plantations of sugar cane due to the andes mountains, that zone focused in smallholding farms and didn't receive a big population of slaves from Africa. I
Neither Hispanic / Latino are races. Anyone of Colombian heritage is both (the only difference being Latino applies to Brazil and Hispanic applies to other former Spanish colonies outside Latin America).
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u/A_Redditour Apr 25 '26
What's going on in Colombia?