ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the significance of race for the extension of citizenship rights in contemporary Latin America, particularly in Brazil. It reviews evolving perceptions of race relations in order to illuminate the degree to which issues of race were until recently obscured by widely held myths about the existence of "racial democracy." The chapter offers an updated analysis of the position occupied by Afro-Brazilians in the social structure of Brazil, as an illustration of racial inequalities between whites and blacks in Latin America. Studies of race relations after the abolition of slavery are more developed in Brazil than in the remaining countries of Latin America. The chapter suggests that a number of strategies that nascent democratic systems might pursue in an effort to improve conditions faced by victims of racial discrimination and, ultimately, to overcome such discrimination. The solution devised by the nation provides the key to understanding race relations in Republican Brazil.
