Indigenous Peoples, Poverty and Participatory Development: The Experience of the World Bank in Latin America

Abstract

Indigenous peoples have historically been the poorest and most excluded social sectors in Latin America. They have not only faced acute discrimination in terms of their basic rights to their ancestral property, languages, cultures and forms of governance, but also in terms of access to basic social services (education, health and nutrition, water and sanitation, housing, and so on) and the essential material conditions for a satisfying life. These conditions of extreme poverty and material deprivation — what might be best described as a denial of the fundamental social citizenship rights of indigenous peoples — are widespread throughout Latin America and have recently come to the attention of international development agencies, such as the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and the various bilateral development agencies. The denial of the basic social citizenship rights of indigenous peoples have also been a growing concern of scholars, journalists and others concerned with social conditions in Latin America.2