Diversity

Our project proposes to examine the various ways Latin American countries tackled the challenges of diversity and heterogeneity in their efforts to build and develop democratic institutions and practices, in the context of the global history of democracy between 1810 and 1930. Although we are aware that the two notions are considered distinct, we treat diversity and heterogeneity as synonyms.¹

Heterogeneity and democracy have not been natural bedfellows in the past.  Yet ‘democracy’ was the form of government adopted by a significant number of Latin American emerging states, in highly heterogeneous societies, following their independence from Spain during the early decades of the nineteenth-century. Our main focus is on race, women and religion, although of course we fully acknowledge that the topic embraces other fundamental dimensions, such as class and political ideologies.

Race receives special attention, as it is here where we identify one of the features that sets aside the history of democracy in the region during the period under study compared to the rest of the western world. But we give significant attention to religion and women as well, also to identify the peculiarities of the Latin American trajectory, though each of the three dimensions we focus on illustrates different aspects of the story.

Racial diversity serves to underline how heterogeneous Latin American societies generally were, and to examine the ways the region tried to construct democracy on racially heterogeneous societies. In turn, religious attachment to the Catholic Church by large segments of its population indicates at first significant levels of social homogeneity. Yet the approaches towards the Catholic Church in its relations with the emerging states gave way to serious cleavages that let to what social scientists refer to ideological heterogeneity.

Women introduce different perspectives when related to issues of heterogeneity in the history of democracy. The exclusion of women was a common feature of modern democracies elsewhere until the end of the nineteenth-century, when they increasingly acquired voting rights in Northern European countries, New Zealand, Australia and the United States – though mostly white women only. Indeed, the issue of women rights in a democracy stresses the fundamental notion of diversity in all societies and questions the very idea of homogeneity in democracies. Bringing women fully into the picture, at a time when their political inclusion was still limited, serves to underline the notion of multiple identities that permeate social conflicts, which democracy is supposed to mediate.

To what extent did the adoption of democratic institutions and practices in Latin American countries tackle with success the challenges posed by the heterogeneous composition of their respective societies between 1810 and 1930? How did the interplay between heterogeneity and democracy evolve over time in the different countries of the region? 

To answer these and other related questions, our project will examine the subject comparatively in Latin America. By exploring the relationship between heterogeneity and democracy, focusing on the issues of race, religion and women, our project also aims to place the Latin American experience in the wider global history of democracy during the period under study.

We have organised a double panel at the next LASA conference in San Francisco, whose papers will examine some of these issues: https://laghod.web.ox.ac.uk/event/latin-american-studies-association-202...

1) https://biology.st-andrews.ac.uk/biodiversity/?seminar=diversity-is-not-...

Image credit:
Francisco Laso de los Ríos (Tacna, 1823 – San Mateo, 1869)
Las tres razas o La igualdad ante la ley, ca. 1859
Óleo sobre tela, 81 x 105 cm
Museo de Arte de Lima, Fondo Alicia Lastres de la Torre
Restaurado con el patrocinio de Rehder & Asociados
Photography: Edi Hirose

https://coleccion.mali.pe/objects/1302/las-tres-razas-o-la-igualdad-ante...