Critical Race Theory: Re-evaluating Racialised Sovereignty in Latin America

This briefing explores racialised sovereignty and the limits of mainstream International Relations, uses Latin America as a case study, and reimagines sovereignty through critical race theory . This article was written by Isabel Koh Wei Shi, and edited by Tanvi Sureka.

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Introduction

Latin America’s role in international relations is unique and paradoxical. On paper, it has been formally sovereign since the 1820s; yet, in practice, recognition of its sovereignty is conditional and continually undermined. Its contradictory position reveals that sovereignty is not merely a binary legal status, but a racialised instrument for power. More revealingly, this paradox exposes a core flaw of mainstream International Relations theory: what Robert Vitalis calls the “race-blind fiction of sovereign equality”.

Critical Race Theory (CRT), particularly the Latin American variant (LatCrit), provides the necessary analytical tools to examine how colonial racial logic persists even within contemporary legal spheres. Ultimately, CRT reveals that Latin American sovereignty is fundamentally racialised, transforming what should be self-determination into a pervasive constriction of the region’s influence and autonomy.

Racialised Sovereignty and the Limits of Mainstream IR

Mainstream International Relations paradigms –– namely realism, liberalism, and constructivism –– sanguinely overlook race as an element of the global political landscape. Realism’s conception of anarchy assumes a Westphalian system imposed by colonial violence, with key theorists like Kenneth Waltz consulting racist anthropologies to categorise “primitive” nations, ignoring how racial hierarchies undercut sovereign recognition. This perception of anarchy as “primitive” normalises Eurocentric perspectives while obfuscating, behind a smoke screen, how the Westphalian system was cemented through colonial pillage. Moreover, liberalism’s democratic peace theory asserts that democracies rarely go to war with each other, implying long-lasting peace founded on shared commitments of democratic norms and institutional frameworks. Yet, this conceals the incriminating fact that democratic regimes have repeatedly fought colonial warfare, which detractors argue are antithetical to the theory’s claim. Lastly, constructivism investigates socially constructed norms, but it rarely questions racial development as a process that shapes normative questions such as ‘what is considered civilised?’. Ultimately, all three mainstream paradigms elevate Western over non-Western civilisations by establishing tiered sovereignties that remain the foundation of today’s international order.

Colonial Legacies, US Hegemony, and Racialised Governance

Latin America's history reveals that sovereignty is intrinsically racialised. Aníbal Quijano's concept of the "coloniality of power" highlights how racial stratification established during colonisation shaped access to authority and resources. White creole elites spearheaded independence movements that aimed to decolonise while maintaining internal racial hierarchy. As Roberto Góngora-Mera demonstrates, "the mutually supporting interconnections between law and 'race' did not significantly change with independence," implying only a shift from externally pushed to nationally driven racist regimes. The move from colonial caste systems to post-independence nationalist aspirations preserved racialised property relations while professing nominal equality.

The 1823 Monroe Doctrine cemented racialised sovereignty in the international domain. It established U.S. hemispheric hegemony based on racial stereotypes about Latin America's potential for self-government. The Roosevelt Corollary (1904) made this logic explicit by declaring U.S. intervention rights in times of "flagrant and chronic wrongdoing," implying that non-white states were incapable of appropriate self-management. Repeated military invasions of Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, and Guatemala further exemplified this racialised vision of sovereignty –– providing ceremonial independence but denying substantive self-government. According to Juan González, past interventions had a direct impact on current migration patterns since statistically, the countries that the U.S. once intervened in have produced the most migrants to the U.S. This exposes the resounding, tangible repercussions of sovereignty undermined by racial hierarchy.

Racialisation in Contemporary Latin America: Migration

CRT is an important lens for understanding how migratory governance in Latin America maintains and adjusts racial hierarchy under modern contexts. CRT demonstrates that sovereignty is not a neutral legal entity, but systematic practices that frequently advantage certain racialised groups while marginalising others –– insights perhaps best exemplified by the Venezuelan displacement crisis and its aftermath.

The Venezuelan refugee crisis, in which over 6.1 million people have fled their home country since 2015, demonstrates how formal commitments to equal rights and humanitarian protection in countries such as Peru and Colombia are undermined by everyday practices and policies that perpetuate racial disadvantage. Despite progressive legal guarantees, Venezuelan migrants face a myriad of challenges rooted in their migrant status: administrative paralysis prevents access to formal employment, while restrictive documentation rules and abrupt policy shifts create administrative "irregularity" deliberately, forcing migrants into informal, precarious, and often exploitative labour conditions. These findings are consistent with CRT's emphasis on the survival of racialised institutions beneath the surface of legal equality.

Apart from entrenched systemic oppression, empirical studies consistently document discrimination against Venezuelan migrants –– one-third or more in Peru, according to surveys –– which correlates with negative media portrayals and wider societal biases. CRT highlights that such systemic discrimination is not a collection of isolated incidents, but racism subtly institutionalised and steeped into at all stages, from policy making to societal attitudes. This analysis foregrounds how formal nationality becomes a proxy for race and enables exclusionary practices even in the absence of overt racial language.​

CRT in Latin America reveals the disparity between formal sovereignty or legal equality and the realities of racialised governance. It sheds light on the enduring institutions that enable racialised exclusion, calling for reforms that take into account both legal frameworks and the lived reality of marginalised communities.

An Ideology of Racialised Sovereignty: Mestizaje

CRT’s most significant contribution to understanding Latin America’s strained sovereignty is perhaps its deconstruction of mestizaje –– the long-standing ideology of racial mixing often boasted as evidence of racial harmony. Mestizaje narratives present the creation of a new Mestizo (mixed race) citizen as the panacea to ethnoracial differences. Yet, CRT reveals that this is merely a colonial construct designed to mask ethnoracial discrimination, and more sinisterly, maintain white supremacy through blanqueamiento (whitening) policies that seek to erase non-white ancestry. Research demonstrates that those with darker skin and Indigenous roots within Mestizo communities face educational and socioeconomic impediments, highlighting how racial hierarchies are perennial even within mixed populations which are supposedly the acme of racial harmony.

The myth of mestizaje carries crucial political purposes in international relations. It favourably portrays Latin America as a racially harmonious region, thus concealing anti-Indigenous and anti-Black discrimination that hinder claims to uncontested sovereignty. This framing, implicitly juxtaposed against a racially fractured North America, enables Latin American states to appear as “mestizo nations” which have successfully overcome ethnoracial divisions and friction, even as systematic internal hierarchies and normalisation of racially stratified societies persist. Therefore, mestizaje allows regional elites to strategically masquerade as modern and progressive on the global stage while condoning and perpetuating racial exclusion at home.

While CRT has its strengths, it has also attracted criticism for unilaterally and uncritically importing U.S.-centric racial categories into Latin American societies which are far more diverse and are divided into distinct categories of phenotype, culture, and religion. The black-white racial binary which the U.S. 's CRT is centred around is simply too reductionist an instrument to fully capture Latin America’s multilayered racialisation, which organises Indigenous, Black, and mestizo identities. Furthermore, CRT must also engage with and dissect Latin America’s structuralism and dependency theory, which argue that race and racism are intricately woven into class exploitation, colonial domination, and exploitative capitalism.

Conclusion: Reimagining Sovereignty Through CRT

Ultimately, the potential of CRT in Latin America can be found in unpeeling racialised sovereignty, and rendering it open to debate. Instead of assuming that sovereignty is a neutral legal status, CRT reveals how it has been policed and weaponised along ethno-racial lines. Moreover, CRT must go a step further and illustrate how subaltern actors actively challenge the status quo. Indigenous organisations utilise CRT frameworks to expose how ongoing extraction and conservation projects mimic settler colonial ideologies and actions of dispossession. Venezuelan migrants balance on stopgap, precarious refugee protection policies, to mobilise human rights discourse while denouncing racialised assumptions that view them as threatening. These practices illuminate how CRT can be leveraged as a mechanism to assert alternative political imaginaries.

In conclusion, CRT demonstrates that Latin America’s sovereignty has been plagued with issues from its very inception –– from colonial hierarchies, to the archaic Monroe Doctrine and its interventions, and into contemporary migration governance. Latin America’s historical and contemporary experiences prove to be a mismatch with mainstream International Relations paradigms. Straying away from the typical assumption which equates decolonisation with formal equality, CRT interrogates and critiques self-determination, delving into the racialised reasons that constrain it.

Moving away from a purely theoretical lens, CRT also importantly informs practice. By placing emphasis on experience and the perspectives of the marginalised affected by racialised policies, CRT enables marginalised groups to challenge and potentially overthrow these hierarchies. Realising this potential requires sustained engagement with domestic academic spheres, so that CRT can be integrated into regional narratives instead of simply being tacked onto them. Future research should investigate how CRT-informed policies affect and shape racial equality.