ABSTRACT
Citizenship and the contests over its meaning have been key themes in Latin American development since the Independence movements of the nineteenth century. Citizenship is a concept that has a variety of meanings. Latin American states have been strongly nationalistic and determined to make their members forswear parochial loyalties, whether of community, region or ethnicity, in favour of the central authority. The rights attached to citizenship have, however, often been of little practical value to the inhabitants of the region. Citizenship in Latin America appears, then, to have primarily served the purposes of elites as they have struggled with each other over the making of the modern nation. Social movements in Latin America are the most visible signs of the struggle to define and redefine citizenship. In the 1950s and 1960s, commentators in various countries of Latin America emphasized the social and economic marginality of a major part of the region's urban population.
