White Colombians

Colonial period

The presence of Whites in Colombia began in 1510 with the colonization of San Sebastián de Urabá. Many Spaniards came searching for gold, while others established themselves locally as leaders of Christian social organizations.^[16]

Immigration from Europe

Basque priests introduced Handball into Colombia.^[17] Along with business, Basque immigrants in Colombia were devoted to teaching and public administration.^[17] In the first years of the Andean multinational company, Basque sailors navigated as captains and pilots on most of the ships until the country could train its own crews.^[17] In Bogotá, there is a small colony of thirty to forty families who emigrated due to the Spanish Civil War.^[18]

The first German immigrants arrived in the 16th century, contracted by the Spanish Crown, and included explorers such as Ambrosio Alfinger and Nikolaus Federmann. There was another small wave of German immigrants at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, including Leo Siegfried Kopp, the founder of the famous Bavaria Brewery. SCADTA, a Colombian-German air transport corporation established by German expatriates in 1919, was the first commercial airline in the Western Hemisphere.^[19]

In December 1941, the United States government estimated that at least 4,000 Germans were living in Colombia.^[20]

A wave of Ashkenazi immigrants came after the rise of Nazism in 1933, followed by as many as 17,000 German Jews. From 1939 until the end of World War II, immigration was forced to stop through anti-immigrant policies and restrictions on immigration from Germany.^[21]

There were some Nazi agitators in Colombia, such as Barranquilla businessman Emil Prufurt,^[20] but the majority were apolitical. Colombia asked Germans who were on the U.S. blacklist to leave and allowed German and Jewish refugees in the country illegally to stay.^[20]

Immigration from the Middle East

Colombia was one of the early focal points of Sephardi immigration.^[22] Jewish converts to Christianity and some crypto-Jews also sailed with the early explorers. It has been suggested that the present-day culture of business entrepreneurship in Antioquia and Valle del Cauca is attributable to Sephardi immigration.^{[23][better source needed]}

The largest wave of Middle Eastern immigration began around 1880 and remained during the first two decades of the 20th century. They were mainly Maronite Christians from Lebanon, Syria and Ottoman Palestine, fleeing financial hardships and the repression of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. When they were first processed in the ports of Colombia, they were classified as Turks (in part because most of them had Ottoman Passports at the time).

During the early 20th century, numerous Jewish immigrants came from Turkey, North Africa, and Syria. Shortly after, Jewish immigrants began to arrive from Eastern Europe.^[20] Armenians, Lebanese, Syrians,^[24] Palestinians, and some Israelis^[25] have continued to settle in Colombia.^[24]

Between 700,000 and 3,200,000 Colombians have full or partial Middle Eastern descent.^[26][27] Due to a lack of information, it is impossible to know the exact number of people who immigrated to Colombia. A figure of 50,000-100,000 from 1880 to 1930 may be reliable.^[24] Regardless of the figure, the Lebanese are perhaps the biggest immigrant group, next to the Spanish, since independence.^[24] Cartagena, Cali, and Bogota were among the cities with Colombia's largest number of Arabic-speaking representatives in 1945.^[24]

Immigrant communities in Colombia