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Inequality In Latin America Essay

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Given Latin America's great land mass and population, it is no surprise that the country shouldproduce inequalities in race/ethnicity, income, and politics.While Latin America produces countries with a large population above the poverty level, it stillhouses a striking number of those that live below it. After all, “many Latin American states fall into themiddle-income category and support a significant middle class.”(pg.103) However, even with all of it'simprovements, Latin America still proves to have poverty as a major hinderance to it's development. Asof now, only “12 percent of the people in the region live on less than $2 per day.” (pg.104) This showsthe inequality between income among the people of South America, since the continent is also home toone of the richest men in the world, Carlos …show more content…

For one thing, native languages are often seen as a minoritylanguage, while European based languages, such as Spanish and Portuguese, are said to be official andlegitimate. In fact, the use of Native languages was often discouraged, and not until “a constitutionalamendment in Bolivia [was] native-language instruction [legalized] in primary schools,”(pg.120) whenmore than half of the Bolivian population is Indian. This shows how native ethnicity is often lookeddown upon in Latin American countries, and how it must take the law in order to preserve it's features.In addition to the ethnic inequality as showcased above, there are various issues of inequality inproportion to race. Specifically, blacks in Brazil “suffer higher rates of homelessness, landlessness,illiteracy, and unemployment than others.”(pg.134) Clearly, the black population of Brazil experiencessocial and economic inequality due to their

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