Many are descendants of persons enslaved in Africa and transferred to the Americas by Europeans, then forced to work mostly in European-owned mines and plantations, between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.

After the process of independence, many countries have encouraged European immigration to America, thus reducing the proportion of black and mulatto population throughout the country: Brazil, the United States, and the Dominican Republic.

Miscegenation and more flexible concepts of race have also reduced the overall population identifying as black in Latin America, whereas the one-drop rule in the United States has had the opposite effect.

Ferrari, vice president of the World Bank for the Region of Latin America and the Caribbean, black people have lower life expectancy, higher infant mortality, more frequent and more widespread diseases, higher rates of illiteracy and lower income than Americans of different ethnic origin.

Women, also the subjects of gender discrimination, suffer worse living conditions.