The government wants to put on display an indigenous country, and if ‘mestizo’ turned out to be the majority identity its entire indigenous routine gets sunk,” said Victor Hugo Cardenas, a former vice president and, like Morales, an ethnic Aymara.
A dispute over ethnicity marked census-taking day in Bolivia as the landlocked Andean nation’s population submitted Wednesday to its first national head count in 11 years.
The controversy revolved around a decision by the government of President Evo Morales, Bolivia’s first indigenous president, not to include “mestizo” as a category.
It might not have been an issue — “mestizo” never appeared as an option on previous censuses — had not Bolivians been given the option Wednesday of declaring themselves members of one of 40 ethnic groups, including Afro-Bolivians.
Critics of Morales say he is afraid people would check “mestizo,” or mixed-race, so as not to identify themselves with a particular indigenous group, thus delegitimizing the government.
“I’m not Aymara. I’m not Quechua. I’m a mestizo,” read graffiti painted on walls around La Paz, the capital.
[…]
