Racial Identity and Politics in Latin America

Latin America’s racial and ethnic landscape is shaped by centuries of colonial conquest, forced migration and state‐led projects of national integration. The legacy of Spanish and Portuguese colonial rule, coupled with the transatlantic slave trade, established complex hierarchies in which notions of whiteness, indigeneity and African descent have been continually renegotiated. In the twentieth and twenty‐first centuries, ideals of mestizaje and multicultural citizenship have clashed with persistent inequalities, prompting diverse social movements—from Afro‐descendant activism in Brazil and Colombia to indigenous mobilisation in Mexico, Bolivia and Chile. Contemporary research highlights how electoral politics, public policy and grassroots organising intersect to produce new forms of inclusion, exclusion and identity formation. Increasingly, scholars examine the role of state classification systems, urban dynamics and transnational networks in reshaping understandings of race and ethnicity. This body of work underscores the region’s global importance as a site for exploring the legacies of colonialism, the politics of recognition and the pursuit of social justice.

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Racial Identity and Politics in Latin America publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in racial identity and politics in latin america across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Mestizaje: The ideological and social process of racial and cultural mixing that became a foundational narrative for many Latin American nation-states.

Racialisation: The dynamic process by which social meanings and hierarchies are attached to perceived physical traits, producing and reproducing systems of inequality.

Intersectionality: An analytical framework recognising that social categories such as race, class, gender and ethnicity interlock to shape individual and collective experiences of marginalisation.

References

1. Racism, Interculturality, and Public Policies: An Analysis of the Literature on Migration and the School System in Chile, Argentina, and Spain. SAGE Open (2021).
2. How States Make Race: New Evidence from Brazil. Sociological Science (2018).
3. When Racial Inequalities Return: Assessing the Restratification of Cuban Society 60 Years After Revolution. Latin American Politics and Society (2020).