De la Peña, Guillermo. (2005) Social and Cultural Policies Toward Indigenous Peoples: Perspectives from Latin America

Throughout the twentieth century, social and cultural policies to-ward indigenous peoples in Latin America have been closely re-lated toindigenismo,anideological movement that denounced theexploitation of aboriginal groups and strove for the cultural unityand the extension of citizenship through social integration and “ac-culturation.” This review traces the colonial and nineteenth-centuryroots ofindigenismoand places it in the context of the populist ten-dencies in most Latin American states from the 1920s to the 1970s,which favored economic protectionism and used agrarian reform andthe provision of services as tools for governance and legitimacy. Alsoexamined is the role of anthropological research in its relation tostate hegemony as well as the denunciation ofindigenistapolicies byethnic intellectuals and organizations. In recent decades, the disman-tling of populist policies has given rise to a new official “neoliberal”discourse that extols multiculturalism. However, the widespread de-mand for multicultural policies is also seen as the outcome of the fightby militant indigenous organizations for a new type of citizenship