Transnational articulations of law and race in Latin America: a legal genealogy of inequality

Abstract

Until quite recently, Latin American countries widely assumed that legal discrimination against ethno-racial groups was a practice that took place elsewhere but not in the region. Somehow, the articulations between law and racial inequality remained successfully covered for almost two centuries. By tracing how such articulations could be hidden for so long, this article changes the focus on domestic legislation and offers a legal transnational approach for the analysis of the multi-scale intercrossing of racial discourses through law. It aims to elucidate the chronological and epistemic concurrence between different legal projects of racial stratification operating in different world areas and to expose the crucial role that law played in the racialization of society under colonial rule, and the continuities of such role in Latin America until the twentieth century.