Multiculturalism in Brazil, Bolivia and Peru

Abstract

The different strategies of resistance deployed by discriminated ethnic groups in Brazil, Peru and Bolivia are analysed here. In Brazil, Afro movements and indigenous populations are increasingly fighting against discrimination and developing their cultural identities, while demystifying the idea of Brazil's national identity as a racial democracy. In Peru and Bolivia, indigenous populations are challenging the generally accepted idea of integration through miscegenation (racial mixing). Assimilation through race-mixing has been the apparent solution in most Latin American countries since the building of the nation states. Its positive side is that a peaceful interethnic relationship has been constructed but its negative side, stressed in recent multicultural strategies, is that different ethnicities and cultures have been accepted only as parts of this intermingling and rarely recognised as the targets of discrimination.