The politics of a datascape transformed: ethnoracial statistics in Brazil in regional comparative perspective

Abstract

The first decades of the 21^st century witnessed a dramatic transformation of the datascape for the production of ethnoracial statistics in Latin America. This transformation is most strikingly evident in national censuses in the region. A few decades ago almost no Latin American countries included questions about race or ethnicity in their national census. By the 2010 census round, almost every country in the region collected information about ethnic or racial identification. This article argues that the production of ethnoracial population data in Latin America is both product of politics and productive of politics. Ethnoracial statistics contribute to shaping the terrain they seem to merely describe, but not always in ways that are predicted or intended. Placing the Brazilian experience in regional comparative perspective illuminates how official ethnoracial statistics can produce outcomes that are simultaneously productive and counterproductive to the aims of those who struggle for their production in the first place.

Keywords
demographic data; ethnoracial population data; Afrodescendents; indigenous populations; Latin America