The upper classes of more or less remote European ancestry have maintained a semi-feudal political dominance that has been disastrous to the welfare of the country, and it is doubtful whether the Yankee influence, which during the last generation has been stronger in Nicaragua than in any of the other Latin American states except Panama, has been particularly useful.
Costa Rica has always prided itself on being the whitest of the Central American Republics, and its history of relative peace and prosperity reflects this fact. Apart from a fringe of Indians and Negroes in the lowlands, the population of nearly 500,000 is concentrated in a beautiful and healthful inland region. The Indians of the country having been driven out or destroyed at an early day, the settlers of Costa Rica were unable to live as parasites exploiting serfs as did the upper classes in some of the other Central American countries, but were forced to settle on the land and work out their own salvation. While they were therefore considered in colonial days to be in a pitiable situation, the result was highly advantageous in the long run, for it has given the country a more nearly genuine population of citizens prepared to contribute to the progress and welfare of the country.
A large part of the Spanish blood in Costa Rica is supposed to be Galician, and therefore to have a considerable Nordic infusion. The Gallegos, as natives of this part of the Iberian Peninsula are called, are one of the most law-abiding and hard-working of the numerous peoples that comprise the Spanish Republic, and their descendants in Costa Rica reflect credit on their origin. In most of the other Latin American countries the Spanish element is supposed to be largely from Andalusia and therefore quite different in make-up, with a noteworthy Moorish element.
Panama with its hybrid population of half a million, largely Negro in composition, is unimportant in the picture of Latin America. North American influence has transformed it economically, but cannot change mongrels into a sound and vigorous stock.
Colombia has large numbers of Negroes in the hot lowlands, but the bulk of the six million population is Indian with a slight infusion of European blood. The upper class of Colombia represents the results of geographical isolation, the region until recently having been inaccessible; and by virtue of a sort of intellectual inbreeding it has long been the most conservative and least touched by foreign influence of all the Latin American "aristocracies." The upper-class Colombian prides himself with reason on the purity of his Spanish blood, and still lives to a large degree in the memories of the ancient colonial period. In Bogotá there is an intense anti-Negro social sentiment. The isolation of the half-breeds in Colombia has come nearer to producing a new racial group than is to be found elsewhere in Latin America.
Venezuela, in spite of its nearly three million inhabitants, is an unimportant country, largely hybrid with extensive Negro infiltrations. As in many other Latin American countries, the number of Whites is officially put down as about 10 per cent, but as in most such instances it is doubtful whether one resident in fifty can properly be called a white man, except by courtesy.