Brazil is a settler colony with an extremely clear racial hierarchy
It's easy for Americans to focus on the differences between Mexico and the US and Brazil and Chile, etc. But if we step back and think globally and historically (world-historically?) almost every country in the Western Hemisphere has the same basic characteristics.
Those characteristics: almost every country in the Americas is a Western European settler colony, speaking a Western European language, dominated by a Western European elite, and violently excluding its indigenous population and / or the population descended from slaves.
What you get within those parameters is differences of degree, not kind. Brazil has more people of African descent, Peru has more indigenous, etc. But if you compare to say, Asia or Africa (or any places which are not 100% settler colonies) there is remarkable homogeneity here
If you learn an Asian or African language you realize in about ten seconds that English, Portuguese, and Spanish are basically the same fucking language. They are close cousins. That's only possible across these two giant continents because of shared colonial history.
Again, talk to an Asian or African who moved to the Americas last century. They figured out extremely quickly which race is in charge, and which is the official religion (in every country, from Canada down to Patagonia, it's white people and Christianity).
This is all just restating the extremely obvious. But it's perhaps worth remembering that globally, settler colonies have had a very hard time (understatement) establishing social democracy or racial equality. Efforts to do so are swimming against a tsunami of historical forces
Just a reminder idunno no reason
