it is also manifested in the difficulty of combining recognition and redistribution policies the risk being that upholding cultural difference ends up legitimizing social inequality or conversely that upholding equality legitimizes cultural homogenization all this adds up to a situation of profound inequality for indigenous peoples since the scale and depth of the divides are compounded by their persistence and reproduction in numerous spheres guatemala and the plurinational state of bolivia are the countries with the highest proportions of indigenous people in the region and this is reflected in all quintiles by comparison with the other countries in the sample