24 - Indentured migration, gene flow, and the formation of the Indo-Costa Rican population

Summary

Introduction

Few regions in the world have seen as many human population upheavals as has the Caribbean region broadly defined (including the Atlantic coast of Central America). While it has been well established that the Caribbean region was inhabited by large human populations before the European invasion, it is difficult to estimate exactly how many people died after the Europeans arrived. In his book Born to Die (1998), Cook details the earliest stages of the European-Amerindian contact in the Caribbean. The sad conclusion to Cook’s account is that after a quarter century of contact the Taino and their circum-Caribbean neighbors were approaching extinction. Since the native populations of the Caribbean essentially died off (Cook, 2002; Kiple and Ornelas, 1996), the Europeans turned to African sources of labor to sustain their expansion into the region (Klein, 1978).

In this chapter we discuss the history of Caribbean human population migratory movements. We begin by taking a macro perspective which considers large migrations. We finish with a micro perspective focusing on a small population derived from East-Indian workers who settled in the Atlantic coast of Costa Rica. We argue that the human migratory history of the Caribbean is evident in the genetic makeup of this small group of Indo-Costa Ricans.