Indigenous Peoples in Argentina - Indigenous Communities Today

Indigenous Communities Today

Argentina has a total population of 40 million. The Additional Survey on Indigenous Populations, published by the National Institute for Statistics and Census, gives a total of 600,329 people who see themselves as descending from or belonging to an indigenous people.

For a number of reasons the different indigenous organisations do not believe this to be a credible survey: First, the methodology used in the survey was considered inadequate, as a large number of indigenous people live in urban areas where the survey was not fully conducted. Second, many indigenous people in the country hide their identity for fear of discrimination. Moreover, when the survey was designed in 2001, it was based on the existence of 18 known peoples in the country, today there exist more than 31 groups. This increase, reflects a growing awareness amongst indigenous people in terms of their ethnic belonging.

As many Argentinians either believe that the majority of the indigenous have died out or are on the verge of doing, or 'their descendants' assimilated into Western civilisation many years ago, they wrongly hold the idea that there are no indigenous people in their country. The use of pejorative terms likening the indigenous to lazy, idle, dirty, ignorant and savage are part of the everyday language in Argentina.Due to these incorrect stereotypes many indigenous have over the years been forced to hide their identity in order to avoid being subjected to racial discrimination.