They number nearly 42 million, and speak over 500 languages. Despite having benefited from the expansion of basic services a decade ago, they remain largely disenfranchised. A World Bank study, Indigenous Latin America in the Twenty-first Century, systematized the available data on the region’s indigenous population to learn more about their situation after the “golden decade” of the early 2000s.
While the region's native peoples now enjoy greater visibility and recognition in political decisions, several gaps remain: an indigenous family is nearly three times more likely to live in extreme poverty than a non-indigenous family. The graphs below provide an overview of indigenous peoples’ main challenges, including the need to achieve development which takes their voices, identities and cultures into consideration:
