Suchergebnisse

"The era of official color-blindness in Latin America has come to an end. For the first time in decades, nearly every state in Latin America now asks their citizens to identify their race or ethnicity on the national census. Most observers approvingly highlight the historic novelty of these reforms, but National Colors shows that official racial classification of citizens has a long history in Latin America. Through a comprehensive analysis of the politics and practice of official ethnoracial classification in the censuses of nineteen Latin American states across nearly two centuries, this book explains why most Latin American states classified their citizens by race on early national censuses, why they stopped the practice of official racial classification around mid-twentieth century, and why they reintroduced ethnoracial classification on national censuses at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Beyond domestic political struggles, the analysis reveals that the ways that Latin American states classified their populations from the mid-nineteenth century onward responded to changes in international criteria for how to construct a modern nation and promote national development. As prevailing international understandings of what made a political and cultural community a modern nation changed, so too did the ways that Latin American census officials depicted diversity within national populations. The way census officials described populations in official statistics, in turn, shaped how policymakers viewed national populations and informed their prescriptions for national development--with consequences that still reverberate in contemporary political struggles for recognition, rights, and redress for ethnoracially marginalized populations in today's Latin America. "While Loveman is not the only scholar paying attention to governmental census taking, this book stands out for its theoretical depth, the remarkable mastery of historical context and agency, and its long-term historical breath. Loveman shows that rather than reflecting domestic politics or specific demographic configurations, Latin American states collected data on the kind of racial or ethnic categories that they thought would help document, to a global audience of other states, their efforts and achievements in becoming modern nations."--Andreas Wimmer, Hughes-Rogers Professor of Sociology, Princeton University"--

As primeiras décadas do século XXI presenciaram uma dramática transformação do cenário de dados para a produção de estatísticas etnorraciais na América Latina. Essa transformação é mais evidente nos censos nacionais da região. Há algumas décadas, quase nenhum país latino-americano incluía questões sobre raça ou etnia em seu censo nacional. Já no censo de 2010, quase todos os países da região coletaram informações sobre identificação étnica ou racial. Este artigo argumenta que a produção de dados populacionais etnorraciais na América Latina é tanto um produto da política quanto produz a política. Tais dados contribuem para moldar o terreno que parecem meramente descrever, mas nem sempre da maneira prevista ou pretendida. Colocar a experiência brasileira em uma perspectiva comparativa regional revela como essas estatísticas oficiais podem produzir resultados que são simultaneamente producentes e contraproducentes para os objetivos daqueles que lutam, primeiramente, por sua produção.***AbstractThe first decades of the 21st century witnessed a dramatic transformation of the datascape for the production of ethnoracial statistics in Latin America. This transformation is most strikingly evident in national censuses in the region. A few decades ago almost no Latin American countries included questions about race or ethnicity in their national census. By the 2010 census round, almost every country in the region collected information about ethnic or racial identification. This article argues that the production of ethnoracial population data in Latin America is both product of politics and productive of politics. Ethnoracial statistics contribute to shaping the terrain they seem to merely describe, but not always in ways that are predicted or intended. Placing the Brazilian experience in regional comparative perspective illuminates how official ethnoracial statistics can produce outcomes that are simultaneously productive and counterproductive to the aims of those who struggle for their production in the first place.

The first reports of popular disturbances in connection with Decree 798, calling for obligatory civil registration of births and deaths in the Brazilian empire, surfaced in the early days of January 1852. In the ensuing weeks, men, women, and children from across the impoverished northeastern Brazilian backlands convened in small settlements and towns to protest the decree. Local authorities reported being forced to abandon their posts, fleeing from the "mass of ignorants," who, armed with knives and stones, threatened violence against those who would implement the law. Disturbances were reported in at least thirty-one localities, with crowds estimated at one hundred to several thousand people.