Race and ethnicity in Latin America
There is no single system of races or ethnicities that covers all modern Latin America, and usage of labels may vary substantially.
The ethno-racial composition of modern-day Latin American nations combines diverse Indigenous American populations, with influence from Iberian and other Western European 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.
[8] Blanqueamiento was enacted in national policies of many Latin American countries, particularly Brazil, Venezuela and Cuba, at the turn of the 20th century.
[21][22] Very generally speaking ethno-racial relations can be arranged on an axis between the two extremes of European and Indigenous American cultural and biological heritage, this is a remnant of the colonial Spanish caste system which categorized individuals according to their perceived level of biological mixture between the two groups.
Additionally the presence of considerable portions of the population with partly African and Asian heritage further complicates the situation.
Even though it still arranges persons along the line between indigenous and European, in practice the classificatory system is no longer biologically based, but rather mixes socio-cultural traits with phenotypical traits, and classification is largely fluid, allowing individuals to move between categories and define their ethnic and racial identities situationally.
It is now however becoming recognized that processes of identity formation and social stratification in regards to all population groups in Mexico can be analyzed both in terms of race and of ethnicity.
As the place where this mixing was already well underway, Mexico, and Latin America in general, was the center of the creation of this new and improved species of human beings, the mestizo.
[31] Additionally the categories carry additional meanings having to do with social class so that the term indigena or the more pejorative "indio" (Indian) is connected with ideas of low social class, poverty, rural background, superstition, being dominated by traditional values as opposed to reason.
They can be defined narrowly according to linguistic criteria including only persons that speak one of Mexico's 62 indigenous languages, this is the categorization used by the National Mexican Institute of Statistics.
[35][36] In Cuba, people are defined as either “blanco” (white), “negro” (black) or “mulatto” (mixed African and European) Subdivisions for these include “Trigueño” which means a person of Mediterranean ancestry or phenotype.
“Habao” is a term used to describe European people with light afro hair or pale skin with African features.
The five racial categories in which the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistic has for the population is Branco, Pardo, Preto, Amarelo, and Indigena.
Raizales inhabit Archipielago of San Andres and they keep their British influences through the practice of Protestantism, and English based creole language use.
[37] El Hombre Ecuatoriano: "The Ecuadorian Man" Mejorar La Raza: "Improve the Race" There is a nationalization effort in Ecuador to homogenize the country's ethnicity.
The Levantamiento Indigena called for Ecuador to be classified as a plurination, agrarian redistribution, and validation of former indigenous lands.
