This article is adapted from AQ’s special report on Latin America’s demographic transformation
In Colombia’s Pacific coast city of Buenaventura, Danelly Estupiñán grew up witnessing the pain of childbirth as her mother worked as a midwife. She also saw the significant time and effort it took for her mother to raise 12 children. Estupiñán, an Afro-Colombian who now works as a rights defender at the civil association Proceso de Comunidades Negras, remembers those experiences, which led her to decide to have only one child.
A shrinking family tree is becoming more common among many Afro-Colombians, whose numbers follow the national tendency of declining birth rates and increasing life expectancy, although the trend is less pronounced, according to Matthieu de Castelbajac, a sociology professor at Universidad de los Andes. A recent study shows that the average life expectancy for Afro-Colombians is 71.5 years—7.4 years less than that of white-mestizos.
Colombia’s Afro-descendant population accounts for about 10% of the overall country, although exact numbers are hard to come by. The connection between race and demographics throughout Latin America remains understudied and in need of further scholarship, analysts say. Nevertheless, experts and activists on the ground highlight a clear gap in demographic transition caused by racial inequalities in income and education. The poverty rate of the Afro-descendant population reached 42.6% in 2024, compared to the national average of 31.8%. That same year, the national enrollment rate for people aged 17 to 21 in higher education was 36%, while for the Afro-descendant population it was just 26%.
Estupiñán, 46, was the first person in her family to attend college. Through her work and family experiences, she sees education as a way for women to pursue personal life goals. As signs of progress in recent decades, she points to the founding of Buenaventura’s first public university and new satellite campuses from universities in Cali and Pasto. However, Estupiñán also notes that in the predominantly rural region, patriarchal dynamics persist, placing the main roles of reproduction and caregiving on women.
In Chocó, the largest department by area on Colombia’s Pacific coast, infant mortality—one of the main causes of shorter life expectancy—is more than twice the national average. This reflects broader socio-economic and racial inequalities rooted in the historical legacy of slavery, neglect by a weak and centralized government, and the internal displacement of rural populations caused by the country’s long-standing armed conflict.
Over the past 10 years, for example, armed groups involved in drug trafficking and illegal mining have been concentrated along the Pacific coast. In the cities, much of the Afro-Colombian population lives in poorer neighborhoods that experience higher homicide rates among young men, Bladimir Carabali, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara, told AQ.
The 1991 constitution declared Colombia a multi-ethnic nation, granting Afro-Colombians cultural recognition and paving the way for laws that provided these communities with land rights in the Pacific region and two seats in Congress. “In Colombia, the issue of racial inequality has advanced at the legislative level, but unlike countries such as Brazil, there is a lack of best practices, data and analysis,” Carabali said, pointing to the work that still needs to be done across Latin America to understand this challenge.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael Rendón Vera
Reading Time: 3 minutesRendón Vera is a freelance Colombian-American journalist.
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