Abstract: This article aims to understand how the perceptions of ethnic-racial and religious diversity, which can be perceived in official instruments such as census surveys, were expressed in the management of religious diversity in Brazil and Argentina, countries still considered hegemonically Catholic. We have as main objectives to characterize the configuration and connections between these diversities in both countries and to evaluate their incorporation in the respective legal-political models of religious freedom. To do so, we will analyze comparatively the constitutional framework historically given to religious and ethnic-racial diversity and the official tools to describe and name it, such as census surveys. We will demonstrate that the way of perceiving and categorizing diversity is reflected in government responses to manage it through state policies. We will work with the hypothesis that the difference between the two countries in dealing with diversity strains the relations between the freedom regime and the equality regime in a different way, although some parallels in the configurations of inequality are noticeable.
Keywords:
ethnic-racial diversity; religious pluralism; religious freedom