Indigenous, Afro-descendant, Romani and other ethnic populations of the Americas
The Americas Region there are around 826 indigenous peoples, each one with a particular worldview and cosmogony that configure unique universes and therefore ways of being in the world and in a particular territory. The indigenous peoples of the region speak more than 550 different languages, almost a quarter of which are cross-border languages, used in two or more countries, making Latin America the region with the largest number of language families in the world, not counting the languages of the uncontacted peoples and in voluntary isolation, which are around 200 of the existing peoples and who inhabit Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru and Venezuela (See ECLAC, Los Pueblos Indígenas en América Latina).
In the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, based on the population censuses for the year 2010, there is an approximate population of 45 million people belonging to indigenous peoples and they reach around 8-10% of the total population. . These peoples inhabit geographical areas of great diversity such as Patagonia, the Expanded Chaco, Amazonia, Orinoquia, Andes, the Pacific Coastal Plain, and the Continental Caribbean, as well as in lower Central America, Mesoamerica, and North America, including the Arctic Region. 87% of the indigenous people of the Americas reside in Mexico, Bolivia, Guatemala, Peru and Colombia. Brazil is the country with the most diversity of indigenous peoples with 305 peoples who speak 188 languages.
A large part of this population still resides in their traditional territories, many of which have been legally recognized by States; however, 49% of them have migrated to urban areas due to, among other things, the dispossession of their lands, environmental deterioration, displacement caused by conflicts and violence, and natural disasters (See WORLD BANK, Latinoamérica Indígena en el Siglo XXI).
Por su parte, la población Afrodescendiente en las Américas se estima para el año 2015 en alrededor de 130 millones de personas, cerca de un 24% de la población total. “Brasil es el país con una mayor cantidad de personas afrodescendientes, representando más de la mitad de su población; le sigue en importancia relativa Cuba, con un 36% de personas afrodescendientes, que suman algo más de 4 millones de personas; y con una proporción menor Colombia, Costa Rica, el Ecuador y Panamá, países en donde la población afrodescendiente representa entre un 7% y un 10%…” “…en México y Venezuela (República Bolivariana de) rondan el millón de personas y, en el Perú, a más de medio millón…” [1]
This population, although it is geographically distributed throughout the countries of the region, is predominantly urban, but it is also located in areas associated with displacement and migration from neighboring countries, or in cases such as Colombia and Nicaragua, it remains concentrated in the areas of historical settlement, that is, the destination places of the enslavement process in colonial times and strongly associated with Afro culture (See Afro-descendants in Latin America, Towards a framework of inclusion, World Bank Document). On the other hand, in countries such as Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador, some of these places of historical settlement have been recognized as territories belonging to Afro-descendants (See ECLAC, Situation of Afro-descendants in Latin America and policy challenges to guarantee their rights, 2017).Título documento (Heading 1) (cepal.org)).
It is estimated that there are around 3 million Romani (Gypsies) in the Americas region, living in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, the United States, Mexico, and Uruguay (Gitanos: érase una vez América – PanoramaCultural.com.co), originally from India, but who arrived from Europe during the colonization stage and through subsequent migratory processes.
Characterized by being a nomadic people, currently the majority of the Roma population is sedentary, but without their own territory, some still living in camps in tents or in rented houses, inside which there are windows and walls covered with cloth, evoking the inside a tent(https://www.academia.edu/60926553/Gitanos_de_Chile_un_acercamiento_etnoling%C3%BCistico).
[1]. Estimates made by CELADE based on the percentage of 21.1% of the total population estimated for the year 2010, where the Afro-descendant population amounted to 111 million -according to census data from 16 countries in the region-