Protestant sects, some imported from the United States, are making headway, especially among poor Amerindians.

ECONOMIST: Mexico

Back in the 1950s, Gordon Wasson spent years gaining the trust of Amerindians who had continued the religious traditions of their pre-Columbian ancestors.

ECONOMIST: Psychedelic drugs

Colombia's 1991 constitution recognised the country's multiethnic character, and provided for two additional seats in Congress for Afro-Colombians and a similar quota for Amerindians.

ECONOMIST: Black Colombians suffer ��structural discrimination��

Some Amerindians and environmentalists are worried too, but others are not.

ECONOMIST: Oil, rockets and troubled waters

Once, he claimed to have been presented with exotic fruit by an admiring tribe of female Amerindians, who hoped he might be the answer to their acute shortage of husbands.

BBC: The kingdom of the crystal skull

Africa is the most genetically diverse continent, because that is where humanity evolved (Asians, Europeans, Aboriginal Australians and Amerindians are all descended from a few adventurers who left Africa about 60, 000 years ago).

ECONOMIST: The genetics of happiness

Brazil's Amerindians have even further to go.

ECONOMIST: Brazil��s unfinished battle for racial democracy

Writing in Evolution and Human Behaviour Victoria Reyes-Garcia, of the Autonomous University of Barcelona, and her colleagues describe a study they carried out on the Tsimane', a group of Amerindians who live in Bolivia's slice of the Amazonian rainforest.

ECONOMIST: Your parents were right. Patience is a virtue