Race and Ethnicity in Latin American History

The Spanish and Portuguese empires that existed in America for over three hundred years resulted in the creation of a new world population in which racial and ethnic distinctions were embedded in the discourse of power. Racial and ethnic identities were given to or claimed by people from birth, and the public acknowledgment of such identities by the Church and the colonial state placed people within a complex web of characteristics they carried through life. Race and ethnicity were only partially visual markers, but they were also culturally defined categories of social life in Latin America, subject to stringent codes drawn up during the colonial period.

Vincent Peloso goes back to the beginning, tracing the development of the Latin American colonies and the gradual build-up of institutional and social barriers of both race and ethnicity, and the implications of this system for the colonial whites, the indigenous people, and the African slaves that were imported as plantation labor. Ethnicity and Race in Latin America lays the groundwork for students to consider the history of the region and how the legacy of colonial racism has led to the issues and problems of racism in today’s modern Latin American society.

Vincent C. Peloso is Professor Emeritus of History at Howard University.