Indigenous Latin America in the
Twenty-First Century

In 2013 the World Bank set itself two
ambitious goals: to end extreme poverty within a generation
and to boost the prosperity of the bottom 40 percent of the
population worldwide. In Latin America, the significance of
both goals cannot be overstated. Indigenous people account
for about 8 percent of the population, but represent 14
percent of the poor and over 17 percent of all Latin
Americans living on less than United States (U.S.) $2.50 a
day. Though the World Bank has chosen two general indicators
for measuring progress toward its twin goals - the
proportion of people living on less than U.S. $1.25 a day
(purchasing power parity, 2005) and the growth of real
capital income among the bottom 40 percent of the population
- this report acknowledges that these indicators offer only
a partial view of the obstacles preventing many indigenous
peoples from achieving their chosen paths of development.
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.