Abstract

The discourse developed by the dominant classes that built the nation state in the late nineteenth century in the southernmost countries of Latin America proposed the construction of a mostly “White” ethnic-geographic space, although with an active Mestizo presence. This official discourse concealed the presence of both native peoples and Afro-descendants for the sake of social homogenization. The “civilizing” advancement as understood by those elites under the slogan of Order and Progress marginalized the descendants of the formerly enslaved and indigenous communities, seeing them as a discordant hindrance to the new parameters with which society would presumably be transformed.