Emiko Saldivar | University of California, Santa Barbara (original) (raw)

Papers by Emiko Saldivar

Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, 2014

Mestizaje and ethnicity are key ideas that inform Mexico’s 20th-century racial project. But while... more Mestizaje and ethnicity are key ideas that inform Mexico’s 20th-century racial project. But while mestizaje – as an ideology, state project, and daily practice – has been discussed and criticized at length, these roles for ideas about ethnicity and diversity have not. This article deals with some of the theoretical and political implications of the use of ethnicity for race studies in Mexico. The emergence of the idea of ethnicity in the late 1930s was closely linked to the racial project of mestizaje and indigenismo, which was carried out by the formative Mexican state in the decades after the Revolution (1910–1920) and continues to shape today’s discourses of multicultural, intercultural, and racial relations in that country. The uncritical deployment of concepts of ethnicity and difference actually hinders the development of an understanding of racism and mestizaje focused squarely on domination.

Alteridades, 2021

The covid-19 pandemic has transformed people's lives globally but has particularities specific to... more The covid-19 pandemic has transformed people's lives globally but has particularities specific to each context. This article analyzes some of its effects in five Afro-Mexican municipalities on the coast of Guerrero and Oaxaca. Using official health data and interviews conducted by local researchers, we developed a collaborative study about the situation of infections in the region, the service networks available for their care, and the perception of risk by the population. The results show the uncertainty regarding the virus and-even though the prevalence of infections is apparently low-the pandemic has exposed the precarious socioeconomic and health infrastructure conditions and the structural vulnerabilities in a region with high rates of marginalization. It is an exploratory study that analyzes the first months of the pandemic but contributes to its understanding in rural contexts and among the Afro-Mexican population.

Everyday Practices of the State: An Ethnography of Indigenism. Is an ethnographic study of how an... more Everyday Practices of the State: An Ethnography of Indigenism. Is an ethnographic study of how anthropologists and their ideas shaped the state’s policies toward indigenous people and its institutional practices. The book focuses on the Instituto Nacional Indigenista (the National Indigenist Institute, or INI), the branch of government that dealt with indigenous people for most of the twentieth century in Mexico. Saldívar discusses how anthropological concepts of indigeneity and development shaped, and where shaped by, the daily practices of state employees. She traces these ideas and practices from the founding of the modern Mexican state in the 1920s up to the 1990s, and shows how shifting concepts shaped the Institute’s development programs over time. The book explores the mutual interdependency of indigeneity and state power in Mexico.

Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales, 2003

En este artículo se discute el papel que tuvo el Instituto Nacional Indigenista (INI) en la promo... more En este artículo se discute el papel que tuvo el Instituto Nacional Indigenista (INI) en la promoción de los derechos indígenas. Asimismo, se analiza de qué forma los discursos neoliberales sobre derechos indígenas formaron parte de una política social que acabó por reemplazar los programas de asistencia por un énfasis en la legalidad y la democracia. La autora sostiene que, al hacer esto, se redefinió el papel de los indígenas que pasaron de ser clientes a ser ciudadanos.

Center For Comparative Immigration Studies, Apr 1, 2001

El voto de los mexicanos en el extranjero: Inconclusa extensión de la ciudadanía mexicana.

Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research, 2014

Statistics, generated by censuses, represent knowledge of society and environment used in the gov... more Statistics, generated by censuses, represent knowledge of society and environment used in the government of complex hierarchical societies. In this article we discuss the changing ways that censuses have reflected and constructed corporeal and cultural difference in Mexico. We show that shifts in conceptualizing and identifying racial and ethnic groups in Mexico are associated with larger social dynamics, and our history of these determinations is organized according to a series of periods-colonial, mercantile; Porfirian; revolutionary; and neoliberal-that chart changes in political economy as well as shifts in census categories and statistical tools. Second, we point out a shift in the representational technologies of statistics from encyclopedic forms to enumerative forms that occurred in Mexico in the last decades of the nineteenth century. We trace categories of difference across the transition from encyclopedic to enumerative statistics and also describe a shifting balance in the content of those categories among linguistic, cultural and corporeal qualities.

Critical Sociology, 2015

This article analyses the conflicting understandings surrounding the recognition of anti-black ra... more This article analyses the conflicting understandings surrounding the recognition of anti-black racism in Mexico, drawing from an analysis of the 2005 controversy around Memín Pinguín. We ask what is at stake when opposition arises to claims of racism, how racial disavowal is possible, and how is it that the racial project of mestizaje (racial and cultural mixture) expresses a form of Mexican post-racial ideology. We argue that the ideology of mestizaje is key for unpacking the tensions between the recognition and disavowal of racism. Mestizaje solidifies into a form of nationalist denial in moments when racism is openly contested or brought up. It becomes a concrete strategy of power that is mobilized to simplify or divert attention in particular moments, such as with the Memín Pinguín controversy, when the contradictions within the social dynamic are revealed and questioned. Here is where Mexico’s “raceless” ideology of mestizaje overlaps with current post-racial politics. We explo...

Choice Reviews Online, 2015

The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, 2011

... national committee of the union, told me that the mid-level anthropologists in the INI bureau... more ... national committee of the union, told me that the mid-level anthropologists in the INI bureaucracy were responsible ... to dissolve the INI and reject various attempts to create autonomous geographical and political spaces for Mexico's indigenous groups ... 18 Translation by the author ...

Sociologia & Antropologia, 2018

By the end of the twentieth century, with the rise of multicultural discourses and identity polit... more By the end of the twentieth century, with the rise of multicultural discourses and identity politics, Latin American ideologies of racial mixture had become increasingly denounced as myths that conceal (and thus support) the reproduction of racial inequalities. These studies have largely been guided by comparisons between countries with widespread racial mixing (usually Brazil, Mexico or Colombia) and countries in which it was less encouraged and visible (most commonly, the USA). In this paper we move the focus to the diverse ways in which racial mixture currently impacts racial formations in the Latin America, looking initially at Brazil and Mexico, two of the largest countries in the region, and also those with the largest Afro-descendent and indigenous populations in the continent. For comparison, we analyze survey data from the PERLA project.

In this article, I analyse how intercultural ideas, practices and policies inform Mexico’s curren... more In this article, I analyse how intercultural ideas, practices and policies inform Mexico’s current racial formation, and how racial categories and meanings are shaped under neoliberalism and the politics of recognition. I argue that the uncritical use of cultural and ethnic differences as the central focus of interculturalism reifies and reproduces the preoccupation with culture and ethnic differences characteristic of the racial project of mestizaje that held sway for most of the twentieth century. This focus on difference has silenced a much-needed discussion about how neither interculturalism nor multiculturalism has changed existing racial hierarchies and privileges nor curtailed the effects of racism and racial injustice on indigenous people and
their communities.

Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research, 2014

Statistics, generated by censuses, represent knowledge of society and environment used in the gov... more Statistics, generated by censuses, represent knowledge of society and environment used in the government of complex hierarchical societies. In this article we discuss the changing ways that censuses have reflected and constructed corporeal and cultural difference in Mexico. We show that shifts in conceptualizing and identifying racial and ethnic groups in Mexico are associated with larger social dynamics, and our history of these determinations is organized according to a series of periods—colonial, mercantile; Porfirian; revolutionary; and neoliberal—that chart changes in political economy as well as shifts in census categories and statistical tools. Second, we point out a shift in the representational technologies of statistics from encyclopedic forms to enumerative forms that occurred in Mexico in the last decades of the nineteenth century. We trace categories of difference across the transition from encyclopedic to enumerative statistics and also describe a shifting balance in the content of those categories among linguistic, cultural and corporeal qualities.

Based on extensive, original sociological and anthropological data generated by PERLA, this landm... more Based on extensive, original sociological and anthropological data generated by PERLA, this landmark study analyzes ethnoracial classification, inequality, and discrimination, as well as public opinion about Afro-descended and indigenous social movements and policies that foster greater social inclusiveness, all set within an ethnoracial history of each country. A once-in-a-generation examination of contemporary ethnicity, this book promises to contribute in significant ways to policymaking and public opinion in Latin America.

Statistics, generated by censuses, represent knowledge of society and environment used in the gov... more Statistics, generated by censuses, represent knowledge of society and environment used in the government of complex hierarchical societies. In this article we discuss the changing ways that censuses have reflected and constructed corporeal and cultural difference in Mexico. We show that shifts in conceptualizing and identifying racial and ethnic groups in Mexico are associated with larger social dynamics, and our history of these determinations is organized according to a series of periods—colonial, mercantile; Porfirian; revolutionary; and neoliberal—that chart changes in political economy as well as shifts in census categories and statistical tools. Second, we point out a shift in the representational technologies of statistics from encyclopedic forms to enumerative forms that occurred in Mexico in the last decades of the nineteenth century. We trace categories of difference across the transition from encyclopedic to enumerative statistics and also describe a shifting balance in the content of those categories among linguistic, cultural and corporeal qualities.

Everyday Practices of the State: An Ethnography of Indigenism. Is an ethnographic study of how an... more Everyday Practices of the State: An Ethnography of Indigenism. Is an ethnographic study of how anthropologists and their ideas shaped the state’s policies toward indigenous people and its institutional practices. The book focuses on the Instituto Nacional Indigenista (the National Indigenist Institute, or INI), the branch of government that dealt with indigenous people for most of the twentieth century in Mexico. Saldívar discusses how anthropological concepts of indigeneity and development shaped, and where shaped by, the daily practices of state employees. She traces these ideas and practices from the founding of the modern Mexican state in the 1920s up to the 1990s, and shows how shifting concepts shaped the Institute’s development programs over time. The book explores the mutual interdependency of indigeneity and state power in Mexico.

Critical Sociology, Jun 18, 2015

This article analyses the conflicting understandings surrounding the recognition of anti-black ra... more This article analyses the conflicting understandings surrounding the recognition of anti-black racism in Mexico drawing from an analysis of the 2005 controversy around Memín Pinguín. We ask what is at stake when opposition arises to claims of racism, how racial disavowal is possible, and how is it that the racial project of mestizaje (racial and cultural mixture) expresses a form of Mexican post-racial ideology. We argue that the ideology of mestizaje is key for unpacking the tensions between the recognition and disavowal of racism. Mestizaje solidifies into a form of nationalist denial in moments when racism is openly contested or brought up. It becomes a concrete strategy of power that is mobilized to simplify or divert attention in particular moments, such as with the Memín Pinguín controversy, when the contradictions within the social dynamic are revealed and questioned. Here is where Mexico’s “raceless” ideology of mestizaje overlaps with current post-racial politics. We explore state, elite and popular reactions to the debate to discuss how such public displays reflect an invested denial of race and racism while, at the same time, the racial status quo of mestizaje is reinforced. This, we argue, is the essence of post-racial politics in Mexico.

Indigenismo, or the study and incorporation of indigenous culture and people intonational societi... more Indigenismo, or the study and incorporation of indigenous culture and people intonational societies, was a major political project of the Mexican state for much of the20th century. While indigenismo has been discussed as a state project and ideology by historians,we know little about the daily interactions that makeup
indigenismo as it was practiced, or the role of anthropology in shaping these daily interactions. This articlepresents an ethnographic study of state agents working in Mexico’s National Indige-nous Institute (INI). Based on interviews and fieldwork carried out between 1995 and2002, this article shows that the ‘‘street-level’’ bureaucrats of the INI determined to alarge degree the content of indigenismo as it was practiced in the field. INI workerslearned and taught an ‘‘indigenist spirit’’ based on anthropological ideas of culturalsensitivity and regional development, as well as an anthropological understanding of the field. The article argues that INI workers enjoyed a good deal of social capital, and suggests that the socio-cultural dimensions of indigenismo may live on after the demise of the INI and the end of indigenista anthropology.

... políticas sociales, que también traen una redefinición del sujeto de atención indígena. Duran... more ... políticas sociales, que también traen una redefinición del sujeto de atención indígena. Durante la década de los noventas surgen dos definiciones de lo indígena. Los pueblos ... pero ciudadanos finalmente, con derechos y obligaciones, por otro lado – particularmente ...

Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, 2014

Mestizaje and ethnicity are key ideas that inform Mexico’s 20th-century racial project. But while... more Mestizaje and ethnicity are key ideas that inform Mexico’s 20th-century racial project. But while mestizaje – as an ideology, state project, and daily practice – has been discussed and criticized at length, these roles for ideas about ethnicity and diversity have not. This article deals with some of the theoretical and political implications of the use of ethnicity for race studies in Mexico. The emergence of the idea of ethnicity in the late 1930s was closely linked to the racial project of mestizaje and indigenismo, which was carried out by the formative Mexican state in the decades after the Revolution (1910–1920) and continues to shape today’s discourses of multicultural, intercultural, and racial relations in that country. The uncritical deployment of concepts of ethnicity and difference actually hinders the development of an understanding of racism and mestizaje focused squarely on domination.

Alteridades, 2021

The covid-19 pandemic has transformed people's lives globally but has particularities specific to... more The covid-19 pandemic has transformed people's lives globally but has particularities specific to each context. This article analyzes some of its effects in five Afro-Mexican municipalities on the coast of Guerrero and Oaxaca. Using official health data and interviews conducted by local researchers, we developed a collaborative study about the situation of infections in the region, the service networks available for their care, and the perception of risk by the population. The results show the uncertainty regarding the virus and-even though the prevalence of infections is apparently low-the pandemic has exposed the precarious socioeconomic and health infrastructure conditions and the structural vulnerabilities in a region with high rates of marginalization. It is an exploratory study that analyzes the first months of the pandemic but contributes to its understanding in rural contexts and among the Afro-Mexican population.

Everyday Practices of the State: An Ethnography of Indigenism. Is an ethnographic study of how an... more Everyday Practices of the State: An Ethnography of Indigenism. Is an ethnographic study of how anthropologists and their ideas shaped the state’s policies toward indigenous people and its institutional practices. The book focuses on the Instituto Nacional Indigenista (the National Indigenist Institute, or INI), the branch of government that dealt with indigenous people for most of the twentieth century in Mexico. Saldívar discusses how anthropological concepts of indigeneity and development shaped, and where shaped by, the daily practices of state employees. She traces these ideas and practices from the founding of the modern Mexican state in the 1920s up to the 1990s, and shows how shifting concepts shaped the Institute’s development programs over time. The book explores the mutual interdependency of indigeneity and state power in Mexico.

Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales, 2003

En este artículo se discute el papel que tuvo el Instituto Nacional Indigenista (INI) en la promo... more En este artículo se discute el papel que tuvo el Instituto Nacional Indigenista (INI) en la promoción de los derechos indígenas. Asimismo, se analiza de qué forma los discursos neoliberales sobre derechos indígenas formaron parte de una política social que acabó por reemplazar los programas de asistencia por un énfasis en la legalidad y la democracia. La autora sostiene que, al hacer esto, se redefinió el papel de los indígenas que pasaron de ser clientes a ser ciudadanos.

Center For Comparative Immigration Studies, Apr 1, 2001

El voto de los mexicanos en el extranjero: Inconclusa extensión de la ciudadanía mexicana.

Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research, 2014

Statistics, generated by censuses, represent knowledge of society and environment used in the gov... more Statistics, generated by censuses, represent knowledge of society and environment used in the government of complex hierarchical societies. In this article we discuss the changing ways that censuses have reflected and constructed corporeal and cultural difference in Mexico. We show that shifts in conceptualizing and identifying racial and ethnic groups in Mexico are associated with larger social dynamics, and our history of these determinations is organized according to a series of periods-colonial, mercantile; Porfirian; revolutionary; and neoliberal-that chart changes in political economy as well as shifts in census categories and statistical tools. Second, we point out a shift in the representational technologies of statistics from encyclopedic forms to enumerative forms that occurred in Mexico in the last decades of the nineteenth century. We trace categories of difference across the transition from encyclopedic to enumerative statistics and also describe a shifting balance in the content of those categories among linguistic, cultural and corporeal qualities.

Critical Sociology, 2015

This article analyses the conflicting understandings surrounding the recognition of anti-black ra... more This article analyses the conflicting understandings surrounding the recognition of anti-black racism in Mexico, drawing from an analysis of the 2005 controversy around Memín Pinguín. We ask what is at stake when opposition arises to claims of racism, how racial disavowal is possible, and how is it that the racial project of mestizaje (racial and cultural mixture) expresses a form of Mexican post-racial ideology. We argue that the ideology of mestizaje is key for unpacking the tensions between the recognition and disavowal of racism. Mestizaje solidifies into a form of nationalist denial in moments when racism is openly contested or brought up. It becomes a concrete strategy of power that is mobilized to simplify or divert attention in particular moments, such as with the Memín Pinguín controversy, when the contradictions within the social dynamic are revealed and questioned. Here is where Mexico’s “raceless” ideology of mestizaje overlaps with current post-racial politics. We explo...

Choice Reviews Online, 2015

The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, 2011

... national committee of the union, told me that the mid-level anthropologists in the INI bureau... more ... national committee of the union, told me that the mid-level anthropologists in the INI bureaucracy were responsible ... to dissolve the INI and reject various attempts to create autonomous geographical and political spaces for Mexico's indigenous groups ... 18 Translation by the author ...

Sociologia & Antropologia, 2018

By the end of the twentieth century, with the rise of multicultural discourses and identity polit... more By the end of the twentieth century, with the rise of multicultural discourses and identity politics, Latin American ideologies of racial mixture had become increasingly denounced as myths that conceal (and thus support) the reproduction of racial inequalities. These studies have largely been guided by comparisons between countries with widespread racial mixing (usually Brazil, Mexico or Colombia) and countries in which it was less encouraged and visible (most commonly, the USA). In this paper we move the focus to the diverse ways in which racial mixture currently impacts racial formations in the Latin America, looking initially at Brazil and Mexico, two of the largest countries in the region, and also those with the largest Afro-descendent and indigenous populations in the continent. For comparison, we analyze survey data from the PERLA project.

In this article, I analyse how intercultural ideas, practices and policies inform Mexico’s curren... more In this article, I analyse how intercultural ideas, practices and policies inform Mexico’s current racial formation, and how racial categories and meanings are shaped under neoliberalism and the politics of recognition. I argue that the uncritical use of cultural and ethnic differences as the central focus of interculturalism reifies and reproduces the preoccupation with culture and ethnic differences characteristic of the racial project of mestizaje that held sway for most of the twentieth century. This focus on difference has silenced a much-needed discussion about how neither interculturalism nor multiculturalism has changed existing racial hierarchies and privileges nor curtailed the effects of racism and racial injustice on indigenous people and
their communities.

Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research, 2014

Statistics, generated by censuses, represent knowledge of society and environment used in the gov... more Statistics, generated by censuses, represent knowledge of society and environment used in the government of complex hierarchical societies. In this article we discuss the changing ways that censuses have reflected and constructed corporeal and cultural difference in Mexico. We show that shifts in conceptualizing and identifying racial and ethnic groups in Mexico are associated with larger social dynamics, and our history of these determinations is organized according to a series of periods—colonial, mercantile; Porfirian; revolutionary; and neoliberal—that chart changes in political economy as well as shifts in census categories and statistical tools. Second, we point out a shift in the representational technologies of statistics from encyclopedic forms to enumerative forms that occurred in Mexico in the last decades of the nineteenth century. We trace categories of difference across the transition from encyclopedic to enumerative statistics and also describe a shifting balance in the content of those categories among linguistic, cultural and corporeal qualities.

Based on extensive, original sociological and anthropological data generated by PERLA, this landm... more Based on extensive, original sociological and anthropological data generated by PERLA, this landmark study analyzes ethnoracial classification, inequality, and discrimination, as well as public opinion about Afro-descended and indigenous social movements and policies that foster greater social inclusiveness, all set within an ethnoracial history of each country. A once-in-a-generation examination of contemporary ethnicity, this book promises to contribute in significant ways to policymaking and public opinion in Latin America.

Statistics, generated by censuses, represent knowledge of society and environment used in the gov... more Statistics, generated by censuses, represent knowledge of society and environment used in the government of complex hierarchical societies. In this article we discuss the changing ways that censuses have reflected and constructed corporeal and cultural difference in Mexico. We show that shifts in conceptualizing and identifying racial and ethnic groups in Mexico are associated with larger social dynamics, and our history of these determinations is organized according to a series of periods—colonial, mercantile; Porfirian; revolutionary; and neoliberal—that chart changes in political economy as well as shifts in census categories and statistical tools. Second, we point out a shift in the representational technologies of statistics from encyclopedic forms to enumerative forms that occurred in Mexico in the last decades of the nineteenth century. We trace categories of difference across the transition from encyclopedic to enumerative statistics and also describe a shifting balance in the content of those categories among linguistic, cultural and corporeal qualities.

Everyday Practices of the State: An Ethnography of Indigenism. Is an ethnographic study of how an... more Everyday Practices of the State: An Ethnography of Indigenism. Is an ethnographic study of how anthropologists and their ideas shaped the state’s policies toward indigenous people and its institutional practices. The book focuses on the Instituto Nacional Indigenista (the National Indigenist Institute, or INI), the branch of government that dealt with indigenous people for most of the twentieth century in Mexico. Saldívar discusses how anthropological concepts of indigeneity and development shaped, and where shaped by, the daily practices of state employees. She traces these ideas and practices from the founding of the modern Mexican state in the 1920s up to the 1990s, and shows how shifting concepts shaped the Institute’s development programs over time. The book explores the mutual interdependency of indigeneity and state power in Mexico.

Critical Sociology, Jun 18, 2015

This article analyses the conflicting understandings surrounding the recognition of anti-black ra... more This article analyses the conflicting understandings surrounding the recognition of anti-black racism in Mexico drawing from an analysis of the 2005 controversy around Memín Pinguín. We ask what is at stake when opposition arises to claims of racism, how racial disavowal is possible, and how is it that the racial project of mestizaje (racial and cultural mixture) expresses a form of Mexican post-racial ideology. We argue that the ideology of mestizaje is key for unpacking the tensions between the recognition and disavowal of racism. Mestizaje solidifies into a form of nationalist denial in moments when racism is openly contested or brought up. It becomes a concrete strategy of power that is mobilized to simplify or divert attention in particular moments, such as with the Memín Pinguín controversy, when the contradictions within the social dynamic are revealed and questioned. Here is where Mexico’s “raceless” ideology of mestizaje overlaps with current post-racial politics. We explore state, elite and popular reactions to the debate to discuss how such public displays reflect an invested denial of race and racism while, at the same time, the racial status quo of mestizaje is reinforced. This, we argue, is the essence of post-racial politics in Mexico.

Indigenismo, or the study and incorporation of indigenous culture and people intonational societi... more Indigenismo, or the study and incorporation of indigenous culture and people intonational societies, was a major political project of the Mexican state for much of the20th century. While indigenismo has been discussed as a state project and ideology by historians,we know little about the daily interactions that makeup
indigenismo as it was practiced, or the role of anthropology in shaping these daily interactions. This articlepresents an ethnographic study of state agents working in Mexico’s National Indige-nous Institute (INI). Based on interviews and fieldwork carried out between 1995 and2002, this article shows that the ‘‘street-level’’ bureaucrats of the INI determined to alarge degree the content of indigenismo as it was practiced in the field. INI workerslearned and taught an ‘‘indigenist spirit’’ based on anthropological ideas of culturalsensitivity and regional development, as well as an anthropological understanding of the field. The article argues that INI workers enjoyed a good deal of social capital, and suggests that the socio-cultural dimensions of indigenismo may live on after the demise of the INI and the end of indigenista anthropology.

... políticas sociales, que también traen una redefinición del sujeto de atención indígena. Duran... more ... políticas sociales, que también traen una redefinición del sujeto de atención indígena. Durante la década de los noventas surgen dos definiciones de lo indígena. Los pueblos ... pero ciudadanos finalmente, con derechos y obligaciones, por otro lado – particularmente ...

Latin American countries present new opportunities for thinking about anti-racism and the role of... more Latin American countries present new opportunities for thinking about anti-racism and the role of race at a time when many claim that, at least in Europe and the United States, we have entered a ‘post-racial’ world, where anti-racism has apparently gone into ‘crisis’ and emerged as an often insipid and hard-to-defend multiculturalism. We propose that the situation in Latin America will help to interrogate the concept of anti-racism and its cross-cultural applicability and diversity, and provide lessons of wider relevance to anti-racism generally: how should anti-racism be conceptualised, as part of a social justice agenda, when racial differences are blurred by race mixture and merge into cultural difference, and when victim and victimiser can be the same person? If the world looks to some observers to be becoming post-racial, then by the same criteria, Latin America has been post-racial avant la lettre and thus provides a site to interrogate the concept of post-raciality and the place of anti-racism within it. This project investigates anti-racist practices and ideologies in Ecuador, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico. The project contributes to addressing problems of racism and racial inequality in the region and to shaping on-going debates there about how to conceptualise and label racism, anti-racism, discrimination and the idea of race.