Indigenous Latin America in the twenty-first century

The report notes that in Bolivia, Quechua women are 28 percent less likely to complete secondary school than a nonindigenous Bolivian woman, while Quechua men are 14 percent less likely to complete secondary school than non-indigenous men. This report seeks to contribute to these discussions by offering a brief, preliminary glance at the state of indigenous peoples in Latin America at the end of the first decade of the millennium.

The authors believe that this is the first, necessary step to start working on a concerted and evidence-based agenda for subsequent work in critical areas of development such as education, health, and land rights. The report makes a critical analysis of the many inconsistencies present in much of the data, which in many cases are intrinsic to the difficulties of approaching indigenous issues with tools and data sets not originally intended to account for or include indigenous peoples’ voices and special needs.

The report is divided into six sections. The first part, how many and where they are provides a demographic overview of indigenous people in the region, including population, geographic distribution, number of ethnic groups, and indigenous languages. The second section, mobility, migration, and urbanization describes a growing tendency among indigenous people to migrate to Latin American cities, which are becoming critical, though largely ignored, areas for political participation, and market articulation. The third section, development with identity briefly discusses the concept of poverty and reflects on how the use of predominantly Western indicators of well-being might condition the understanding of indigenous peoples’ situations and needs. The fourth and fifth sections broaden this argument by focusing on two particular instances of exclusion - the market and education.





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