Sanjuanito is a danceable music used in the festivities of the mestizo and indigenous cultures.

Along with Mayans other identified tribal peoples within these communities are creole (African) and mestizo.

Indigenous, African American, and mestizo (mixed) communities have been fighting for their social, political, and economic rights ever since.

Today you can find a small community of Africans in the Catamayo valley of the predominantly mestizo population of Loja.

Many of the indigenous peoples were absorbed into the mestizo population, but the remaining 700,000 currently represent over 85 distinct cultures.

In the small Chota Valley of the province of Imbabura exist a small community of Africans among the province's predominantly mestizo population.

According to the 2005 census by the DANE the population of Colombia was composed of these racial groups 49 Mestizo (European and Amerindian).

After abolition, a national ideology of mestizaje encouraged the mixing of the indigenous and white people into a single mestizo ethnic identity http isla.igc.org SpecialRpts SR2murillo.html_ .

There are no precise percentage data available on other races or ethnic groupings, such as the indigenous Mískita, Sumu (Mayangna), Rama and Garífona and their subsequent mixture with African and mestizo peoples.

In the Highland Andes where a predominantely Mestizo, white and Amerindian population exist, the African presence is almost non existent except for a small community in the province of Imbabura called Chota Valley.

According to data from the 1998 demographic and health survey, the ethnic make up of the Nicaraguan population is as follows mestizo (69 per cent), white (17 per cent), black (9 per cent) and Amerindian (5 per cent).

However, it remains concerned about the remarkable disparities of access, regular attendance, dropouts and retention of children in schools across the country affecting particularly the poor, the mestizo children, those of African descent and children living in remote areas.

As a general rule, small elements of zambos and mulattoes coexisted among the overwhelming mestizo population of coastal Ecuador throughout its history as gold miners in Loja, Zaruma, and Zamora and as shipbuilders and plantation workers around the city of Guayaquil.

For this reason, several generations of the black population have been forced to fight to this day in order to conserve the language they brought with them, and with it all of their accumulated history, wisdom, and identity. They struggle against the rejection of the mestizo majority as well as the governments in office, who have for years denied them Costa Rican nationality, despite being born in the country.