Latin American racisms in global perspective

Abstract

This chapter explores the character of Latin American racisms and the way they have been shaped by ideologies and practices of mestizaje (biological and cultural mixture). The chapter traces the historical process of mixture that produced mestizos (mixed people) and also underpinned the idea of the mestizo nation, seen as founded on racial difference, but as having overcome racism through mixture. Claims to being “racial democracies” were, from the nineteenth century, made on a global stage and, after the Second World War, a global turn to anti-racism prompted social scientists to look at Brazil as a test case of racial democracy. Brazil failed the test and data accumulated documenting racial disadvantage and racism. However, mixture continued to obfuscate the operation of racism, by generating real experiences of racial conviviality. Post-1990 changes towards global trends in multiculturalism – and, from the early 2000s, towards an incipient naming of racism – altered the shape of mestizaje-based racial formations in Latin America, but did not displace them.