ABSTRACT
Uruguay, Chile, Argentina and Costa Rica constitute the Latin American countries most closely identified with whiteness. In these cases whiteness is often signaled as European, though the processes by which this image was constructed have varied, as have the strength and reception of the association.1 Uruguay and Argentina orchestrated significant amounts of Spanish and Italian immigration, alongside other national European ethnic groups, and though Chile received less European traffic, the primary conception of that country and citizenry is also white. Notably, the Costa Rican national imaginary is predicated on a notion of whiteness and homogeneity as defining of the nation. In contrast to the rest of Latin America, Costa Rica lays claim to whiteness beginning in the colonial era, framing itself as an always white and fairly egalitarian society comprised of supposedly poor but self-sufficient and equally encumbered yeoman farmers.2 These characteristics differentiate it from its problematic, and ‘darker’ Central American neighbors.3 Instead they place it on par with the white-identified, and thus clearly more advanced, Latin American countries of Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile.4
