Although this article can legitimately present itself, as it does at the outset, as an ironic Latin American counterpoint to U.S.-based critical “whiteness” studies, its main subject – the politics of race in census-taking in Latin America – is obviously of great importance in itself. The paper examines censuses and their accompanying commentary in more than a dozen Latin American countries over the period of 1870 to 1930. What Mara Loveman does above all is to show how governing elites cons...