Trinidadians and Tobagonians

Indo-Trinidadian and Tobagonians make up the country's largest ethnic group (approximately 35.43 percent). They are primarily descendants from indentured workers from South Asia and India, brought to replace freed African slaves who refused to continue working on the sugar plantations from other Islands. Through cultural preservation residents of Indian descent continue to maintain traditions from their ancestral homeland.[11]

Afro-Trinidadians and Tobagonians make up the country's second largest ethnic group, with approximately 34.22 percent of the population. Afro-Trinidadians are the descendants of enslaved West and Central Africans brought to the Trinidad and Tobago in the last few years of the Spanish colonial era and the beginning of the English colonial period through the trans-Atlantic slave trade.[12] However, a good percentage of the Black population are descendants of people enslaved on other islands of the Caribbean, and later migrated to Trinidad and Tobago for various reasons, especially Martinique, Guadeloupe, Saint Vincent and Grenada. Other Afro-Trinidadians trace their ancestry to American slaves recruited to fight for the British in the War of 1812 or from indentured labourers from West Africa.

Chinese, Amerindians, Europeans, Arabs, Hispanic/Latinos, Douglas (mixed Indian and African), multiracial people, and Jews, reside in Trinidad and Tobago. White Trinidadians are descendants of Spanish, British, French, Corsican, Portuguese or German settlers. A small mixed indigenous Carib population is present around the Santa Rosa Carib Community. There is also a Cocoa panyol population who are of Spanish, indigenous, and African descent who came from Venezuela between the late 19th and early 20th century to work on the cocoa estates.[13]