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Indigenous people in Latin America and the Caribbean 

An estimated 33 to 40 million indigenous people live in Latin America and the Caribbean. The approximately 400 different indigenous groups in the region have different languages, social organizations, economies and modes of production adapted to the ecosystem in which they live.

There are indigenous people in every country in Latin America, with the exception of Uruguay. About 90 per cent of indigenous people are sedentary subsistence farmers, descendants of the pre-Columbian Inca, Maya and Aztec peoples. They are generally located in the least hospitable areas: About 90 per cent of them live in the arid mountainous regions of the Andes and Central America, while about 10 per cent live in dry forests or the remote tropical rainforests of the Amazon and Orinoco basins and Central America.

Five countries (Peru, Mexico, Guatemala, Bolivia and Ecuador) account for almost 90 per cent of the indigenous people in the region. Peru and Mexico have the largest indigenous populations.

Indigenous people often are excluded from development programmes, and they are more vulnerable to poverty than non-indigenous people. In Mexico, in municipalities with a large indigenous population, poverty is almost four times greater and extreme poverty is 20 times greater than in mainly non-indigenous municipalities.

Gender issues further aggravate poverty among indigenous people. In Guatemala a non-indigenous man can earn 14 times more than an indigenous woman.

Read more: Indigenous peoples and sustainable development, IDB 1997

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Source: IFAD