Havana and San Juan - DNA Study Comparison

[BirdMan]

In the past of couple of years, two detailed detailed studies of Cuban and Puerto Rican regions have come out.

With this new data, I thought it would be interesting to compare two of the three largest cities in the Spanish Caribbean - San Juan and La Habana.

Both cities are predominantly European. The median individual in San Juan is ˜ 71% European and the median individual in La Habana is ˜ 79% European - the main difference being that people in San Juan are more Amerindian. If the Puerto Ricans were 4% less amerindian and the Cubans were 4% more Amerindian, they would be virtually identical in the median.

But what is far more interesting than the Median is the distribution, so I decided to divide the population of each city into the following groups:



There are obviously many ways to interpret this data, but based on my experience, I thought it made sense to divide the population of each city this way.

Definitions:



I think both people in the "white" and "off-white" categories likely self-identify as white, but I wanted to separate the two to better highlight the difference between Havana and San Juan in this regard.

The fascination thing to me is that in Havana there are relatively few people between the White/"Off-white" and Black/"Mulato" categories. In San Juan, people in between the two groups ("Trigueños) are 36% of the population, but in Havana they're only 9%!

This is despite the two cities having relatively similar "median people." I'm not sure what the historical/cultural explanation for this is . Maybe more of the people in Havana have ancestors who recently arrived on the island (both from Spain and from Africa). In some parts of Cuba, there seem to be more people in the trigueño category.

Anyone have any thoughts?

I'd appreciate it if we could keep this thread free of racism and instead focus on the interesting historical and genetic background of these two islands.

If you prefer this data in visual form, here are the charts I used to make the table. The numbers above are of course just approximations, but I really tried my best to be accurate. Let me know if you think any changes would be helpful.

Spoiler!

San Juan


Havana


In the charts, the bottom is European, the middle is African, and the top in Amerindian.

Puerto Rico Study: The Puerto Rico Alzheimer Disease Initiative (PRADI): A Multisource Ascertainment Approach
Cuba Study: Exploring Cuba’s population structure and demographic history using genome-wide data

[BirdMan]

I got bored, so I made a comparison using the same two studies . This time instead of just the capitals, I compared the whole islands.

[BirdMan]

Detailed breakdowns of other regions

Mayagüez, Western Puerto Rico

[Erronkari]

In the past of couple of years, two detailed detailed studies of Cuban and Puerto Rican regions have come out.

With this new data, I thought it would be interesting to compare two of the three largest cities in the Spanish Caribbean - San Juan and La Habana.

Both cities are predominantly European. The median individual in San Juan is ˜ 71% European and the median individual in La Habana is ˜ 79% European - the main difference being that people in San Juan are more Amerindian. If the Puerto Ricans were 4% less amerindian and the Cubans were 4% more Amerindian, they would be virtually identical in the median.

But what is far more interesting than the Median is the distribution, so I decided to divide the population of each city into the following groups:



There are obviously many ways to interpret this data, but based on my experience, I thought it made sense to divide the population of each city this way.

Definitions:



I think both people in the "white" and "off-white" categories likely self-identify as white, but I wanted to separate the two to better highlight the difference between Havana and San Juan in this regard.

The fascination thing to me is that in Havana there are relatively few people between the White/"Off-white" and Black/"Mulato" categories. In San Juan, people in between the two groups ("Trigueños) are 36% of the population, but in Havana they're only 9%!

This is despite the two cities having relatively similar "median people." I'm not sure what the historical/cultural explanation for this is . Maybe more of the people in Havana have ancestors who recently arrived on the island (both from Spain and from Africa). In some parts of Cuba, there seem to be more people in the trigueño category.

Anyone have any thoughts?

I'd appreciate it if we could keep this thread free of racism and instead focus on the interesting historical and genetic background of these two islands.

If you prefer this data in visual form, here are the charts I used to make the table. The numbers above are of course just approximations, but I really tried my best to be accurate. Let me know if you think any changes would be helpful.

Spoiler!

San Juan


Havana


In the charts, the bottom is European, the middle is African, and the top in Amerindian.

Puerto Rico Study: The Puerto Rico Alzheimer Disease Initiative (PRADI): A Multisource Ascertainment Approach
Cuba Study: Exploring Cuba’s population structure and demographic history using genome-wide data

Havana is unbelievable segregated talking about =/= groups.
In Havana there are some individuals who are practically spaniards in the New World (in San Juan there are too) while there are also A very important number of individuals who seem descendants of people arrived from África one or two generations ago (in San Juan only two or three samples have only 20/30% Euro, despite those few ones, It's genetically far more homogeneous than Havana).
I always feel very surprised for this situation.
Cuba seems an unique case in that sense, may be the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, has some resemblance in that sense.

[Zuh]

What is a Caribbean castizo? What percentage of 50-60% euro puerto ricans make?

[BirdMan]

What is a Caribbean castizo?

"Caribbean Castizo" is a term I made up for people who are 70-80% European. I'm using it a a synonym for "off-white" because in my experience, most people in that range are considered "white" in Puerto Rico's cultural context (and presumably Cuba's too).

They're in the Castizo range, but their non-European part is a mix of Amerindian and African (usually more Amerindian than African). So I didn't want't to simply label them Castizo and it would be even inaccurate to call them "quadroons" (a word that I believe also has distasteful implications that I would like to avoid), so I came up with this term.

What percentage of 50-60% euro puerto ricans make?

People from 50-60% European are 10% of the population in this study.

8% of people are less that 50% European.

83% of people are more than 60% European.

Obviously the exact percentages will vary according to the study, but this result is very consistent with many others.

[BirdMan]

Havana is unbelievable segregated talking about =/= groups.
In Havana there are some individuals who are practically spaniards in the New World (in San Juan there are too) while there are also A very important number of individuals who seem descendants of people arrived from África one or two generations ago (in San Juan only two or three samples have only 20/30%, despite those few ones, It's genetically far more homogeneous than Havana).
I always feel very surprised for this situation.
Cuba seems an unique case in that sense, may be the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, has some resemblance in that sense.

Exactly! I find Cuba really fascinating in this regard.

I'm also glad that more studies done on the island of Cuba have started coming out as well. Always very interesting to see results from people living on the island rather than Miami!

[BirdMan]

What is a Caribbean castizo?

People who are 70-80% European. I think I mistyped above, so I just wanted to be sure to clarify.

[Duffmannn]

I would put the level of white in 85% instead of 80%

Also I would differenciate between Black and Mulatto, just for stadistical purposes.

[BirdMan]

I would put the level of white in 85% instead of 80%

Also I would differenciate between Black and Mulatto, just for stadistical purposes.

Here is another chart with different Euro ranges. I kept the names "Blanco" and "Negro" for some of the more mixed categories, because I wanted the categories to reflect their Caribbean context and how people are likely to self-identify.

For example, I've seen studies that say the average self-identified "negro" in Puerto Rico is <40% African. I didn't want to limit the "negro" category to people under 25% European (the Afram range), because that would exclude most people who self-identify as black.

The same goes for "blancos". Someone in PR who is 80% European, 15% Amerindian, and 5% African is likely to self-identify as "blanco." In any event, I think the interesting thing is to see how many people fall in all these ranges rather than how they are called.