Cape Verdeans
| Total population | |
|---|---|
|
c. 600,000 Cape Verdean ancestry and citizenship worldwide |
|
| Regions with significant populations | |
 Cape Verde 491,875 (2010) |
|
 Portugal
|
68,145 (almost 200,000 with 2nd/3rd generation) |
 United States
|
33,119 (Cape Verdeans born) |
| Languages | |
| Cape Verdean Creole, Portuguese, | |
| Religion | |
| Predominantly Roman Catholicism Protestantism, Irreligion |
|
Cape Verdeans, also called Cabo Verdeans (Portuguese: cabo-verdiano), are the citizens of Cape Verde. Cape Verde is a sociedade mestiça (mestizo society; as described in Portuguese), which means that it is home to mixed race people. Nearly all Cape Verdeans or their ancestors immigrated within the past five centuries.
The Cape Verde archipelago was uninhabited when the Portuguese discovered it in 1456. Slaves from adjacent West Africa were brought to the islands to work on Portuguese plantations. As a result, many Cape Verdeans are mulattoes (mestiços in Portuguese), having biracial origins. European ancestors also include Spanish and Italian seamen who were granted land by the Portuguese Empire, followed by Portuguese settlers, exiles, and Portuguese Jews who were victims of the Inquisition. Many foreigners from other parts of the world settled in Cape Verde as their permanent country. Most of them were Dutch, French, British (English), Arab and Jewish (from Lebanon and Morocco).
A genetic study revealed that the ancestry of the population in Cape Verde is predominantly European in the male line and West African in the female line; counted together the percentage is 56% West African and 44% European.
Prior to independence in 1975, many thousands of people emigrated from drought-stricken Portuguese Cape Verde, formerly an overseas province of Portugal. Because these people arrived using their Portuguese passports, they were registered as Portuguese immigrants by the authorities. Today, more Cape Verdeans live abroad than in Cape Verde itself, with significant emigrant Cape Verdean communities in Brazil and in the United States (500,000 Cape Verdeans descent, with a major concentration on the New England coast from Providence, Rhode Island, to New Bedford, Massachusetts).
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