We explain what cultural minorities are, their relationship with other groups and their characteristics. Also, examples from around the world.
What are cultural minorities?
In sociology, a cultural minority is called a sector of the population of a country or a Condition, which despite being a legal part of it, is distinguished from the majority population in terms of its cultural identity, that is, his tongue, his religion, their traditions, its folklore and / or its founding stories.
Cultural minorities are often minorities too ethnic. They cohabit with the majority group (known as “hegemonic"Or" dominant ") in a relationship of subordination, that is, of submission and marginalization with respect to the benefits of the Condition.
This is the key aspect of the concept of cultural minority, since in some cases minorities can be, paradoxically, more numerous in population than the dominant group, as happened in Apartheid South Africa, in which a white population minority dominated for decades to a majority black population, but which for sociological purposes behaved as a cultural and ethnic minority.
In general, however, cultural minorities are also a minority in population terms, since they are usually the product of complex historical processes and social, like the migrations, the conquests and colonizations. That is why they tend to show a very narrow sense of belonging and of identity collective, capable of resisting the country's hegemonic culture: that which is taught in schools.
Examples of cultural minorities
Some examples of cultural minorities today are:
- The Kurdish people. Inhabitants since times prehistoric of the border region between Iran, Syria, Turkey, Iraq and Armenia, do not have their own State and in each of these nations it is considered as a cultural minority. For example, Kurds speak the Kurdish language, not officially recognized in any country except the Kurdish Autonomous Region of Iraq, along with Arabic.
- The Ranquel people. Pre-Columbian inhabitants of the Argentine pampas, along with the puelches and huarpes, were baptized as "Ancient Pampas" by the Spanish conquerors, with whom they had a hostile relationship that the Argentine State inherited in the 19th century. Defeated in 1878 during the so-called “Desert Campaign” of the Argentine Republic, only about 14,000 descendants survive in the central states of the country, in 19 communities whose legal status has only been recognized since 1995.
- The Uyghur people. An ethnic group that inhabits the northwest of the People's Republic of China, mostly in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, they also have a presence in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and in all the aforementioned countries they constitute a marked cultural minority. Speakers of the Uighur language and practitioners of the Islam, its world population does not exceed 20 million inhabitants. Its existence has become famous at the beginning of the 21st century due to the accusations made against the Chinese state of being victims of selective repression and internment in confinement and "re-education" camps.
- The village Zapotec. Descendants of one of the main Mesoamerican cultures Pre-Columbian, the Zapotecs mainly inhabit the southern regions of the Mexican state of Oaxaca. Its population, estimated at 800,000 people, speak their own idiom (bilingual together with Spanish) and keep some of their traditions alive, despite the 500 years of Hispanization that took place after the conquest of Mexico by the Spanish and the establishment of the Viceroyalty of New Spain.