The seven countries of Central America are Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama. Latin America is a much broader term, and includes Central America, as well as Mexico and all the countries of South America. It is true that everyone speaks Spanish except Haiti, which uses French, and Brazil, whose 44 million inhabitants (one third of all Latin Americans) speak Portuguese. But the convenient term “Latin America” should not mislead anyone to assume that the area is a uniform political or economic whole.
Most of these units differ greatly in size, population composition, social structure, type of government, and degree of economic development. Each country should be considered for itself, and all generalizations should be avoided or carefully qualified when applied to a single country. South America and Latin America are two different types of entities. The first mentioned is a geographical entity, while the other is a cultural entity.
There are also great contrasts in this field, although from an economic point of view all Latin American nations have some ties in common. Nowadays, people still have trouble classifying their Americas, especially when it comes to the terms South America and Latin America. The most widely spoken Creole language in Latin America and the Caribbean is Haitian Creole, the predominant language of Haiti, derived mainly from French and certain West African languages, with Amerindian, English, Portuguese and Spanish influences. Although the region now known as Latin America extends from northern Mexico to Tierra del Fuego, the diversity of its geography, topography, climate and arable land meant that the populations were not evenly distributed.
Chile, Peru, Colombia and Mexico are the only four Latin American nations that have an FTA with the United States and Canada, both members of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). While all three countries are located in geographical Latin America, their official languages are English (Belize, Guyana) or Dutch (Suriname), which makes them non-Latin countries in the eyes of some list makers. Compared to other developing regions, Latin America then had the highest level of educational inequality, which is undoubtedly a contributing factor to its current high overall inequality. Transport in Latin America is basically carried out using the road mode, the most developed in the region.
Most people in the region speak Spanish or Portuguese, although French, English, Dutch and Kreyol are also spoken in parts of the Caribbean, Central and South America. This European and Japanese immigration, when added to the already diversified racial structure of Latin America, helps explain why generalization can hardly be made about the people of Latin America. Portugal sailed along the west coast of Africa and the Crown of Castile, in central Spain, authorized the trip of Genoese sailor Christopher Columbus. Mining is one of the most important economic sectors in Latin America, especially for Chile, Peru and Bolivia, whose economies depend heavily on this sector.
Originally, the name America was used to refer only to the southern part of the land mass, but over time the designation applied to the entire New World. In Latin America, the so-called Caste Society or Caste System was built by white elites to try to rationalize the processes in operation. By far the most populous country in Central America, as well as its greatest linguistic diversity, is Guatemala, known for the richness of its Mayan culture.
Leave Reply