Latin America: identity or miscegenation? The nation at stake

Abstract

In this article the author examines the place granted to the Indian peoples in the Latin-American countries national project, during the period from their Independence to the current constitutional reforms. He then goes on to analyze what the recognition of the historicism of the indigenous peoples can signify: when they establish themselves, how a new ethnic “actor†inter venes and in what sense the State modifies its Indian affairs policy. Lastly, he explores the possibility of our facing the effective construction of new frontiers in the hear t of nations which from now on will be designated as "multi-cultural".