Admixture of Amerindian, African and European Genes: Cuba, Mexico and Colombia as Study Cases

One hundred years after Columbus arrived in America in 1492, Amerindian population had fallen from 80 to 8 million in North and South America. The main causes were new microbes, slavery conditions and war. The people of San Basilio de Palenque (Colombia), close to Cartagena, in the Colombian Caribbean Coast, were established by runaway African slaves who built a refuge in San Basilio. The Spanish governors pressured the Spanish monarchs in Madrid to grant freedom to the Africans of San Basilio de Palenque, who became the first free Africans in the Americas. They speak the only Bantu-Spanish Creole and preserve African genetic traits according to HLA genes. Research also examined Cubans from Havana, showing that around 12% of the typical Amerindian HLA genes are present in Havana’s population. Cubans’ blood contains Amerindian genes in spite of that Amerindian physical traits do not exist now in the Cuban population. Amerindian HLA and other genes analyses and other cultural traits observed in Mexico—such as those of the Pacific Mayo/Yoreme and the Atlantic Huastecan/Teenek groups—suggest that the initial peopling of the American continent occurred much earlier than traditionally proposed, and that there was a bidirectional exchange of populations between the Pacific and Atlantic in relation to Europe (finding in America of European Paleolothic Solutrean traits) peoples may have occurred.