Mexico and Colombia are two countries that, despite their notable differences in terms of state structuring and nation consolidation, have enormous similarities in their cultural violence that produce social closures and keep entire population groups immersed in cultural status that inhibit their mobility social, generating a process of persistent inequality. This article, based on the contrast between a theoretical corpus and a historical revision, aims to analyze this process in the light of the concept of horizontal inequality, prioritizing its perspective of cultural status. This in order to understand the symbolic forms that support stereotyping processes, and that according to the results, account for a framework that ends up defining the governed subject and the governable subject, in clear expression of a democracy with inequality. It is concluded that in both countries the cultural devices arising from their colonial origin, by designating attributes to the entire groups, ended up perpetuating inequality; in the case of Mexico, based on the concept of ethnic citizenship, which exalted the ancient indigenous but not the contemporary; in the case of Colombia through an ideology of equality represented by biological miscegenation. © 2019, Universidad del Zulia.