ABSTRACT
All political systems are systems of limited participation. Even the societies we might call primitive—societies in which essential tasks and rewards are shared more or less equally among families—generally limit participation on the basis of sex and age; that is, women and minors are excluded. Most complex, highly stratified social and political systems can be traced to armed conquest, and the national systems of Latin America as we know them today are no exception. The subjugation upon which contemporary social inequality in Latin America is based included not only the conquest and enslavement by Spaniards, Portuguese, and other Europeans of native American populations, but also the kidnapping, by European merchants of flesh, of Africans and their subsequent enslavement in the New World. Political evolution implies the incorporation of new political actors, representing previously unrepresented social strata, without the displacement of previous participants in the system.
