*** Welcome to piglix ***

Race and ethnicity in Latin America


There is no single system of races or ethnicities that covers all of Latin America, and usage of labels may vary substantially. In Mexico, for example, the category mestizo is not defined or applied the same as the corresponding category of mestiço in Brazil. In spite of these differences, the construction of race in Latin America can be contrasted with concepts of race and ethnicity in the United States. The ethno-racial composition of modern-day Latin American nations combines diverse indigenous American populations, with influence from Iberian colonizers and equally diverse African groups brought to the Americas as slave labor, and also recent immigrant groups from all over the world.

Racial categories in Latin America are often linked to both continental ancestry or mixture as inferred from phenotypical traits, but also to socio-economic status. Ethnicity is often constructed either as an amalgam national identity or as something reserved for the indigenous groups so that ethnic identity is something that members of indigenous groups have in addition to their national identity. Racial and ethnic discrimination is common in Latin America where socio-economic status generally correlates with perceived whiteness, and indigenous status and perceived African ancestry is generally correlated with poverty and lack of opportunity and social status.

In Latin American concepts of race, physiological traits is often combined with social traits such as socio-economic status, so that a person is categorized not only according to physical phenotype, but also according to social standing. Ethnicity on the other hand is a system that classifies groups of people according to cultural, linguistic and historic criteria. An ethnic group is normally defined by having a degree of cultural and linguistic similarity and often an ideology of shared roots. Another difference between race and ethnicity is that race is usually conceptualized as a system of categorization where membership is limited to one category, and is externally ascribed by other who are not members of that category without regards to the individuals own feeling of membership. Whereas Ethnicity is often seen as a system of social organization where membership is established through mutual identification between a group and its members.


...
Wikipedia

...