I Am Indigenous, Not Pardo’: Push for Self-Declaration in Brazil’s Census
Mongabay reports the mixed box contested from the inside. Indigenous Brazilians describe being absorbed into the pardo category for generations, and critics quoted in the piece argue the category served an old ideology of whitening by folding distinct peoples into an undifferentiated middle. The story documents the campaign urging Indigenous people to declare themselves on the census, and the count that followed recorded the highest Indigenous share in Brazil’s history. The caution translates directly for our community: a mixed category can reveal people, or it can hide them, and the difference is who controls the pen.