1 Race and Political Theory: Lessons from Latin America From Race or Ethnicity? On Black and Latino Identity (Ed. Jorge Gracia, Cornell University Press, April 2007) Diego A. von Vacano Texas A&M University, College Station Political Science Department davacano@polisci.tamu.edu I. Introduction On the fourth Sunday of Advent on the island of Hispaniola, in the year 1511, the Dominican friar Antonio de Montesino reflected on the condition of the indigenous peoples of the Americas who had been mistakenly labeled “Indians,” and asked: “Are these not human beings?” 1 Thus he originated a way of thinking about the native peoples of the New World. This way of thinking, largely unknown outside of the Iberian Americas and perhaps even within large segments of societies in that part of the continent is a cardinal component of the discourse on race in Latin America. What does the Latin American perspective on race tell us about this elusive concept? In this essay I examine one particular strain of reflections on race that has become dominant since the encounter of European and pre-Columbian civilizations in 1492. While the complexity of the issue has led to various conceptual models in understanding what is meant by “race” in Hispanic (i.e., rooted in the Iberian peninsula)