ABSTRACT
In November of 2003, black legislators from several Latin American countries, including Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Peru, and Uruguay, met over a three-day period to discuss a list of topics related to their roles as blacks in the legislative process. This chapter analyzes a survey of the elected officials present at the meeting in Brasília. The development of this survey instrument was informed by the issues raised in the literature on black representation. It is from this literature that constructed the questionnaire around three general rubrics: background characteristics, such as social class standing, national origin, gender, religion, and age; racial identity and the related subject of descriptive representation; and the institutional environment. The survey questionnaire was constructed to tap into several areas of theoretical concern, including the relevance of socio-economic characteristics in determining both the cross-national similarities among the legislators as well as their perceptions of their links to their constituencies.
