Latin America
1
My take is the following:
It's not that they hate them but rather mestizos or people with native ancestry try to the downplay it, in the hope that it will "whiten" them, earn them special privileges or show the world how civilized they are. The same case is with blacks in Latin America. This means most of the things associated with Amerindian cultures that foreigners find interests are seen as backward.
My theory is that in the Spanish colonial model there's only one culture and that is the Catholic, civilized culture and the Ameridian society is framed as the ignorant, savage and pagan culture. You are seeing this now with Bolivian and how Camacho and Áńez are trying to reintroduce Catholicism as the opposite to the Aymara culture. In this societies there's a loaded definition of what it means to be "white" where it means(Civilizen, Catholic, Spanish speaker), skin color counts as well but it can be "overlooked."
In contrast, in the Anglosphere and the countries influenced by the English language, there's a lot of people who believe in "race" as a very fixed and immutable identity. Where your race and identity not only determines who you are, what things you like but also who your "kin" or your people are. People have this strong notion of "my people." Therefore, many of this minority groups tend to identify with their minority culture. Therefore, 'mestizos' and 'mulatos' see themselves as hispanics or blacks and will try to highlight their 'ethnic identity' and identity with it. Therefore, that's why achievements of the civilization are seen as great and native cultures seems as exotic or more pure..etc. Since the US is the dominant word power the world sees their perspective more therefore, foreigners like yourself are shocked when you value this ancient cultures more than the people that live in that country(to an extend of course).
It's very complex, but I've seen many light skinned mestizos or mulatos who when they arrive to the US or Europe are suddenly deemed as non-white despite having money or being 'civilized' that shocked them. Therefore they start to identity with their country of origin as their new identity. I'm not Native, I'm Guatemalan. or I'm not black, I'm Puerto Rican..etc. And for Argentinians they say, "I'm not Latino/hispanic, I'm Argentinian"(I'm seen it happen since Latinos are seen as brown Central Americans..etc.)
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Originally Posted by Smeagol
United States
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