Latin America

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Latin America is the region of the Americas where Romance languages — those derived from Latin — are officially or primarily spoken. The other American linguistic regions, by their official European languages, are Anglo-America, where English predominates, and the Dutch-speaking Netherlands Antilles and Aruba. Greenland, which is politically associated with Denmark and where Danish is spoken, is often treated as a part of Europe, even though geographically it is North American.

Definitions for what Latin America comprises vary. From a sociopolitical perspective, Latin America generally includes territories in the Americas where Spanish or Portuguese prevail: Mexico and most of Central America, South America, and (per land area and population) the Caribbean. This is synonymous with Ibero-America. Territories where other Romance languages such as French (e.g., Quebec in Canada) or derivatives like Papiamento or Kreyol predominate are frequently not reckoned as parts of Latin America, despite French origins of the concept. Sometimes, particularly in the United States, the term "Latin America" is used to refer to all of the Americas south of the U.S., including countries such as Belize, Guyana, Jamaica, Barbados and Suriname where non-Romance languages prevail. Conversely, it is often used in Brazil to designate the Spanish-speaking countries within this area.

Geopolitically, Latin America is divided into 20 independent countries and several dependent territories. Brazil is by far the largest country of Latin America, both in area and population. Its official language, Portuguese, sets it apart from other Latin American countries, which predominately use Spanish as their official language.

Etymology

Originally a political term, Amerique Latine was coined by French emperor Napoleon III, who cited Amerique Latine and Indochine as goals for expansion during his reign. While the term helped him stake a claim to those territories, it eventually came to embody those parts of the Americas that speak Romance languages initially brought by settlers from Iberia and France in the 15th and 16th centuries. An alternate etymology points to Michel Chevalier, who mentioned the term in 1836. In his Lettres sur l'Amèrique du Nord

In the United States, the term was not used until the 1890s, and did not become common descriptor of the region until early in the twentieth century. Before then, Spanish America was more commonly used.

The term Latin America has come to represent an expression equivalent to Latin Europe and implies a sense of supranationality greater than those implied by notions of statehood or nationhood. This supranational identity is expressed through common initiatives and organizations, like the South American Community of Nations. It's important to observe that the terms Latin American, Latin, Latino, and Hispanic differ from each other.

Many people in Latin America do not speak Latin-derived languages but native ones or languages brought over by immigration. There is also the blend of Latin-derived cultures with indigenous and African ones resulting in a differentiation in relation to the Latin-derived cultures of Europe.

Quebec, other French-speaking areas in Canada and the United States like Acadia, Louisiana, Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, and other places north of Mexico are traditionally excluded from the sociopolitical definition of Latin America, despite having significant populations that speak a Latin-derived language, due in part to these territories' not existing as sovereign states or being geographically separated from the rest of Latin America. French Guiana, however, is often included, despite being a dependency of France and not an independent country.

As alluded to above, the term Ibero-America is sometimes used to refer to the nations that were formerly colonies of Spain and Portugal, as these two countries are located on the Iberian peninsula. The Organization of Ibero-American States (OEI) takes this definition a step further, by including Spain and Portugal (often termed the Mother Countries of Latin America) among its member states, in addition to their Spanish and Portuguese-speaking former colonies in America.

History

The Americas are thought to have been first inhabited by people crossing the Bering Land Bridge, now the Bering strait, from northeast Asia into Alaska more than 10,000 years ago. Over the course of millennia, people spread to all parts of the continent. By the first millennium AD/CE, South America’s vast rainforests, mountains, plains and coasts were the home of tens of millions of people. Some groups formed permanent settlements, such as the Chibchas (or "Muiscas" or "Muyscas") and the Tairona groups. The Chibchas of Colombia, the Quechuas of Peru and the Aymaras of Bolivia were the three Indian groups that settled most permanently.

The region was home to many indigenous peoples and advanced civilizations, including the Aztecs, Toltecs, Caribs, Tupi, Maya, and Inca. The golden age of the Maya began about 250, with the last two great civilizations, the Aztecs and Incas, emerging into prominence later on in the early 14th century and mid-15th centuries respectively.

With the arrival of the Europeans following Christopher Columbus's voyages, the indigenous elites, such as the Incans and Aztecs, lost power to the Europeans. Hernán Cortés destroyed the Aztec elite's power with the help of local groups who disliked the Aztec elite, and Francisco Pizarro eliminated the Incan rule in Western South America. European powers, most notably Spain and Portugal, colonized the region, which along with the rest of the uncolonized world was divided into areas of Spanish and Portuguese control by the Line of Demarcation in 1493, which gave Spain all areas to the west, and Portugal all areas to the east (the Portuguese lands in America subsequently becoming Brazil). By the end of the 16th century, Europeans at some point occupied large areas of Central and South America, extending all the way into the present southern United States. European culture and government was imposed, with the Roman Catholic Church becoming a major economic and political power, as well as the official religion of the region.

Diseases brought by the Europeans, such as smallpox, wiped out a large proportion of the indigenous population, with epidemics of diseases reducing them sharply from their prior populations. Historians cannot determine the amount of natives who died due to European diseases, but some put the figures as high as 85% and as low as 20%. Due to the lack of written records, specific numbers are hard to verify. Many of the survivors were forced to work in European plantations and mines. Intermarriage between the indigenous peoples and the European colonists was very common, and by the end of the colonial period, people of mixed ancestry (mestizos, mulatos) formed majorities in several colonies.

By the end of the 18th century, Spanish and Portuguese power waned as other European powers took their place, notably Britain and France. Resentment grew over the restrictions imposed by the Spanish government, as well as the dominance of native Spaniards (Iberian-born peninsulares) over the major institutions and the majority population, including the Spanish descended Creoles (criollos). Napoleon's invasion of Spain in 1808 marked the turning point, compelling Creole elites to form juntas that advocated independence. Fighting soon broke out between the juntas and the Spanish authorities, with initial Creole victories, such as Father Miguel Hidalgo's in Mexico and Francisco de Miranda's in Venezuela, crushed by Spanish troops. Under the leadership of Simón Bolívar, José de San Martin and other Libertadores the independence movement gained strength, and, by 1825, all of Spanish Latin America, except for Puerto Rico and Cuba, gained independence from Spain. Brazil achieved independence with a constitutional monarchy established in 1822. During the same year in Mexico, a Spanish military officer, Agustín de Iturbide, led conservatives who created a constitutional monarchy, with Iturbide as emperor (shortly followed by a republic).

Political divisions

Countries		French Dependencies	United States Dependency
Argentina Belize Bolivia Brazil Chile Colombia Costa Rica Cuba Dominican Republic Ecuador El Salvador	Guatemala Haiti Honduras Mexico Nicaragua Panama Paraguay Peru Trinidad & Tobago Uruguay Venezuela	French Guiana Guadeloupe Martinique	Puerto Rico

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Population

Demographics

Since the 16th century a large number of Iberian colonists left for Latin America: the Portuguese to Brazil and the Spaniards to the rest of the region. An intensive race mixing between the Europeans and the Amerindians occurred and their descendants (known as mestizos) make up the majority of the population in several Latin American countries, such as Mexico, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.

Starting in the late 16th century, a large number of African slaves were brought to Latin America, the majority of whom were sent to the Caribbean and Brazil. Nowadays, Blacks make up the majority of the population in most Caribbean countries. Many of the African slaves in Latin America mixed with the Europeans and their descendants (known as Mulattoes) make up the majority of the population in some countries, such as Cuba, and large percentages in Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela and Belize. Mixes between the Blacks and Amerindians also occurred, and their descendants are known as Zambos. Many Latin American countries also have a substantial tri-racial population, which ancestry is a mix of Amerindians, Whites and Blacks, especially in Puerto Rico and to some extent the Dominican Republic.

Large numbers of European immigrants arrived in Latin America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, most of them settling in the Southern Cone (Argentina, Chile, Uruguay) and in Southern Brazil. Nowadays this region has a large majority of people of European descent and in all more than two thirds of Latin America's white population, which is in turn more than 90% composed of the top five groups of immigrants, which were: Italians, Spaniards, Portuguese, Germans and Irish. Some of the other groups are Poles, Russians, Welsh, Ukrainians, French, Croatians and Jews.

In this same period, many immigrants came from the Middle-East and Asia, including Indians, Lebanese, Syrians, and, more recently, Koreans, Chinese and Japanese (mainly in Brazil). In the late 1800's, a small wave of Americans, mostly from the former Confederate States or the Southern U.S. settled in Brazil and fewer across Latin America.

This genetic diversity has profoundly influenced religion, music, and politics, and gave rise to a weak feeling of identity in parts of these mixed cultures. This opaque cultural heritage is (arguably improperly) called Latin or Latino in United States' English. Outside of the U.S., and in many languages (especially romance ones) "Latino" just means "Latin", referring to cultures and peoples that can trace their heritage back to the ancient Roman Empire. Latin American is the proper term.

Language

Spanish is the predominant language in the majority of the countries. Portuguese is spoken primarily in Brazil, where it is both the official and the national language. French is also spoken in smaller countries, in the Caribbean, and French Guiana, just like Dutch which is spoken on various caribbean islands and in Suriname on the continent.

Several nations, especially in the Caribbean, have their own Creole languages, derived from European languages and various African tongues. Native American languages are spoken in many Latin American nations, mainly Peru, Ecuador, Guatemala, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Mexico. Nahuatl is only one of the 62 native languages spoken by indigenous people in Mexico, which are officially recognised by the government as "national languages", along with Spanish. Guarani is, along with Spanish, the official language of Paraguay, and is spoken by a majority of the population.

Other European languages spoken include Italian in Brazil and Argentina, German in southern Brazil, southern Chile and Argentina, and Welsh in southern Argentina.

Religion

Economy

Country	GDP (PPP) per capita	GDP (PPP)	Income equality
	international dollars	millions of international dollars	Gini index
	14,109	533,722	52.2
	11,937	193,213	57.1
	10,434	45,137	46.5
	10,186	1,072,563	54.6
	10,028	34,305	44.6
	8,584	1,576,728	59.3
	7,565	337,286	57.6
	7,283	23,495	56.4
	7,203	65,042	47.4
	6,186	163,503	49.1
	5,983	167,747	49.8
	4,555	28,342	57.8
	4,511	31,078	53.2
	4,316	57,039	43.7
	4,155	57,000	59.9
	3,636	20,996	43.1
	3,000	33,920	unknown
	3,009	21,740	55
	2,817	25,648	44.7
	1,783	14,917	unknown
Latin America	8,105	4,421,569

Sources: Data from table are from an April 2005 report by the IMF and graphics data are from data by the World Bank from 2003 [link]. Data for Cuba is a 2004 estimate from the CIA World Factbook. GDP (PPP) per capita for Latin America was calculated using population data from List of countries by population

Cultural diversity

The rich mosaic of Latin American cultural expressions are the product of many diverse influences, derived mainly from :

• Native cultures of the peoples that inhabitated the continents prior to the arrival of the Europeans.
• European cultures, reflected by: the Spanish, the Portuguese, the English, the French and the Dutch. This can be seen in any expression of the region's rich artictic traditions, including painting, literature and music, and in the realm of sciences and politics. European colonial influences left an enduring mark on the languages, cultures, and landscapes of Central America (including the Caribbean), North America (México) and South America.
• African cultures, who were part of a long history of New World slavery. Peoples of African descent have influenced the ethno-scapes of Latin American and the Carribbean. This is manifest in the Caribbean through dances such as the bomba, the plena, the candombe, the cumbia, to mention but a few.

Painting

The development of Latin American painting stemmed originally from the styles brought along by Spanish, Portuguese and French Baroque Painters, which in turn were following the trends of the Italian Masters. This Eurocentrism of the Arts, in general, started to fade in early 20th century, when Latin-Americans began to acknowledge the uniqueness of their condition and started to follow their own path.

From the early 20th Century, the art of Latin America was greatly inspired by the Constructivist Movement. The Constructivist Movement was founded in Russia around 1915 by Vladimir Tatlin. The Movement quickly spread from Russia to Europe and then into Latin America. Joaquin Torres Garcia and Manuel Rendón have been credited with bringing the Constructivist Movement into Latin America from Europe.

Literature

Latin American literature gained its own identity, evolving from the strong European and, at a later stage, Anglo-American influences, and is very recognisable internationally, including renowned Nobel Prize winners. The Colombian Gabriel García Márquez won the prize for his work, including the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude. Others include João Guimarães Rosa in Brazil, with his book "Grande Sertão - Veredas", and older writers such as Machado de Assis and ( "Dom Casmurro" ).

Gabriela Mistral and Pablo Neruda (in 1971) are known Chilean Nobel Prize winners. The Argentine Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) is a solid and influential figure of Latin-American letters.

Other important Latin-American writers are:

• Juan Rulfo
• Jorge Amado
• Mario Benedetti
• Juan Bosch
• Alejo Carpentier
• Julio Cortázar
• Rubén Darío
• José Donoso
• Carlos Drummond de Andrade
• Eduardo Galeano
• Rómulo Gallegos
• Nicolás Guillén
• Vicente Huidobro
• Clarice Lispector
• René Marqués
• Amado Nervo
• Octavio Paz
• Petion Savain
• César Vallejo
• Mario Vargas Llosa
• Miguel Ángel Asturias

Music

One of the main characteristics of Latin American music is its diversity, from the lively rhythms of Central America and the Caribbean to the more austere sounds of southern South America. Another feature of Latin American music is its original blending of the variety of styles that arrived in The Americas and became influential, from the early Spanish and European Baroque to the different beats of the African rhythms.

Hispano-Caribbean music, such as salsa, merengue, bachata, etc. from Panama, Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic, are styles of music that have been strongly influenced by African rhythms and melodies.

Other main musical genres of Latin American include the Argentine and Uruguayan tango, the Colombian cumbia and vallenato, Mexican ranchera, Uruguayan Candombe and the various styles of music from Pre-Columbian traditions that are widespread in the Andean region. In Brazil, samba, American jazz, European classical music and choro combined into the bossa nova music. Recently the Haitian kompa has become increasingly popular.

The classical composer Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959) worked on the recording of native musical traditions within his homeland of Brazil. The traditions of his homeland heavily influenced his classical works. Also notable is the much recent work of the Cuban Leo Brouwer and guitar work of the Venezuelan Antonio Lauro and the Paraguayan Agustín Barrios.

Arguably, the main contribution to music entered through folklore, where the true soul of the Latin American and Caribbean countries is expressed. Musicians such as Atahualpa Yupanqui, Violeta Parra, Victor Jara, Mercedes Sosa, Jorge Negrete, Caetano Veloso, and others gave magnificent examples of the heights that this soul can reach.

Latin pop, including many forms of rock, is popular in Latin America today (see Spanish language rock and roll).

More recently, Reggaeton, a blend of Latin rhythms with Hip hop music originated in Panama and Puerto Rico, is becoming more poular.

Film

Latin American film is both rich and diverse. The 1950s and 1960s saw a movement towards Third Cinema, led by the Argentine filmmakers Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino.

Mexican movies from the Golden Era in the 1940's are the greatest examples of Latin American cinema, with a huge industry comparable to the Hollywood of those years. More recently movies such as Amores Perros (2000) and Y tu mamá también (2001) have been successful in creating universal stories about contemporary subjects, and were internationally recognised.

Argentine cinema was a big industry in the first half of the 20th century. After a series of military governments that shackled culture in general, the industry re-emerged after the 1976-1983 military dictatorship to produce the Academy Award winner The Official Story in 1985. The Argentine economic crisis affected the production of films in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but many Argentine movies produced during those years were internationally acclaimed, including Nueve reinas (2000), El abrazo partido (2004) and Roma (2004).

In Brazil, the Cinema Novo movement created a particular way of making movies with critical and intellectual screenplays, a clearer photography related to the light of the outdoors in a tropical landscape, and a political message. The modern Brazilian film industry has become more profitable inside the country, and some of its productions have received prizes and recognition in Europe and the United States. Movies like Central do Brasil (1999) and Cidade de Deus (2003) have fans around the world, and its directors have taken part in American and European film projects.

See also

• Anglo America
• Ibero-America
• Americas (terminology)
• *Use of the word American
• *America (disambiguation)
• South America
• *Andean Community
• *Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas
• *Mercosur
• *South American Community of Nations
• Central America
• *Central American Common Market
• Caribbean
• *Association of Caribbean States
• *Caribbean Community
• *Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States
• Latin Union, Latin Europe
• Latino
• List of Latin Americans
• *List of Latin American artists
• *Latin American writers
• Latin American culture

Notes