Latin America is the part of the Americas that comprises regions where Romance languages that derive from Latin, e, g. Spanish, Portuguese and French: spoken predominantly. Wikipedia The United Nations has played a role in defining the region, establishing a geoscheme for the Americas, which divides the region geographically into North America, Central America, South America and the Caribbean. The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, founded in 1948 and initially called the Economic Commission for Latin America ECLA, consisted of Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Chile, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela.
They also included the establishment of 1948 Canada, France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and the United States,. Later, the former colonial powers Spain (197) and Portugal (198) obtained membership. In addition, countries that were not colonial powers in the region, but many of which had immigrant populations, are part of ECLAC, including Italy (1990), Germany (200), Japan (200), South Korea (200), Norway (201), Turkey (201.The Association for Latin American Studies was founded in 1966 and its membership is open to anyone interested in Latin American studies. There is no universal agreement on the origin of the term Latin America.
The concept and term were created in the 19th century, after the political independence of the countries of the Spanish and Portuguese empires. It also became popular in France in 1860 during the reign of Napoleon III. The term Latin America was part of his attempt to create a French empire in the Americas. Research has shown that the idea that a part of the Americas has a linguistic and cultural affinity with Romance cultures as a whole dates back to the 1830s, in the writings of Frenchman Saint-Simonian Michel Chevalier, who postulated that part of the Americas was inhabited by people of the Latin race, and that, by it could therefore ally itself with Latin Europe, ultimately overlapping the Latin Church, in a struggle with Teutonic Europe, Anglo-Saxon America and Slavic Europe.
The distinction between Latin America and Anglo-America is a convention based on the predominant languages of the Americas that distinguishes the Romance language and English-speaking cultures. Neither area is culturally or linguistically homogeneous; in substantial parts of Latin America (for example,. The oldest known human settlement in the area was identified in Monte Verde, near Puerto Montt, in southern Chile. Its occupation dates back some 14,000 years ago and there is controversial evidence of an even earlier occupation.
Over millennia, people spread to all parts of North and South America and the Caribbean islands. While 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. Sedentary populations from fixed settlements supported by agriculture gave rise to complex civilizations in Mesoamerica (central and southern Mexico and Central America) and the high Andean populations of Quechua and Aymara, as well as Chibcha. Agricultural surpluses from intensive maize cultivation in Mesoamerica and resistant potatoes and grains in the Andes were able to sustain distant populations beyond farmers' homes and communities.
The surpluses allowed the creation of social, political, religious and military hierarchies, urbanization with stable settlements in villages and major cities, the specialization of artisanal labor and the transfer of products through tribute and trade. In the Andes, llamas were domesticated and used to transport goods; Mesoamerica did not have large domestic animals to aid human labor or provide meat. Mesoamerican civilizations developed writing systems; in the Andes, knotted quipus emerged as an accounting system. The Spanish extensively explored the continental territories they claimed, but settled in large numbers in areas with dense and hierarchically organized indigenous populations and exploitable resources, especially silver.
The first Spanish conquistadors saw the indigenous people themselves as an exploitable resource for tribute and labor, and individual Spaniards received grants for the assignment of forced labor as a reward for their participation in the conquest. In most of Latin America, indigenous populations were the largest component, with some black slaves serving in auxiliary positions. The three main racial groups during the colonial era were whites, Europeans, blacks, and indigenous people. Over time, these populations intermingled, resulting in castes.
In most of Latin America, indigenous people were the majority population. The Roman Catholic Church, as an institution, launched a spiritual conquest to convert indigenous peoples to Christianity, incorporating them into Christianity, without allowing any other religion. In 1493, Pope Alexander VI had granted the Catholic Monarchs great power over ecclesiastical appointments and the functioning of the church in overseas possessions. The monarch was the patron saint of the institutional church.
The state and the Catholic Church were the institutional pillars of Spanish colonial rule. At the end of the 18th century, the crown also established a royal army to defend its possessions against foreign incursions, especially from the British. The number of viceroyalties in Spanish South America also increased. José de San Martín, Liberator of Argentina, Chile and Peru.
Vicente Guerrero, insurgent hero of Mexican independence, who joined Iturbide Agustín de Iturbide, former royal military officer who achieved independence from Mexico and was crowned emperor The policy of the 19th century was to end slavery and the slave trade, even in Latin America. In Brazil, Britain made the end of the slave trade a condition for diplomatic recognition. The Brazilian economy was totally dependent on slaves. Abolitionists in Brazil pushed for an end to slavery, which finally ended in 1888, followed the following year by the fall of the Brazilian monarchy.
The French were also seeking trade links with Latin America, to export luxury goods and establish financial links, including granting foreign loans to governments, often in dire need of income. While Mexican conservatives and liberals fought in the Reform War for La Reforma, Mexican conservatives, to strengthen their side, were looking for a European monarch to place him on the throne of Mexico. Napoleon III of France invaded Mexico in 1862 and facilitated the appointment of Maximilian von Hapsburg. It was involved in its own civil war, could not prevent the French occupation, which it saw as a violation of the Monroe Doctrine, but the government of Abraham Lincoln continued to recognize the Republic of Mexico as the government of the nation under President Benito Juárez.
The French were expelled in 1867 and Emperor Maximilian was executed by victorious republican forces, setting the stage for an era of stability and foreign economic investment a few years later, when Porfirio Díaz, liberal hero of the war against the French, became president of Mexico for 30 years. After World War II, U.S. policy toward Latin America focused on what it perceived as the threat of communism and the Soviet Union to the interests of Western Europe and the United States. Although Latin American countries had been staunch allies in the war and had reaped some benefits from it, in the post-war period the region did not prosper as it had hoped.
Latin America fought in the post-war period without large-scale help from the U.S. UU. In Latin America, there was increasing inequality, with political consequences for individual counties. He returned to a policy of interventionism in which he felt that his political and economic interests were threatened.
With the disintegration of the Soviet bloc in the late eighties and early nineties, including the Soviet Union itself, Latin America sought to find new solutions to long-standing problems. With the dissolution of its Soviet alliance, Cuba entered a special period of serious economic upheaval, high mortality rates and food shortages. There are significant black populations in Brazil and in the islands of the Spanish Caribbean, such as Cuba and Puerto Rico and the circumCaribbean continent (Venezuela, Colombia, Panama), provided that in the southern part of South and Central America (Honduras, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Ecuador and Peru) there is a legacy of their use. in plantations.
All of these areas had small white populations. In Brazil, coastal indigenous peoples became largely extinct in the early 16th century, and indigenous populations survived far from European cities, sugar plantations and other enterprises. Spanish is the predominant language of Latin America. Around 60% of the population speaks it as their first language.
Portuguese is spoken about 30%, and about 10% speak other languages such as Quechua, Maya, Guarani, Aymara, Nahuatl, English, French, Dutch and Italian. Portuguese is mainly spoken in Brazil, the largest and most populous country in the region. Spanish is the official language of most other countries and territories in continental Latin America, as well as Cuba and Puerto Rico (where it is co-official with English) and the Dominican Republic. French is spoken in Haiti and in the French overseas departments of Guadeloupe, Martinique and Guiana.
Some Panamanians of Afro-Antillean descent also speak it. Dutch is the official language in Suriname, Aruba, Curaçao and the Netherlands Antilles. As Dutch is a Germanic language, territories are not necessarily considered part of Latin America. Amerindian languages are widely spoken in Peru, Guatemala, Bolivia, Paraguay and Mexico and, to a lesser extent, in Panama, Ecuador, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Argentina and Chile.
In other Latin American countries, the population of speakers of indigenous languages tends to be very small or even non-existent, for example, in Uruguay. Mexico may contain more indigenous languages than any other Latin American country, but the most widely spoken indigenous language there is Nahuatl. In Peru, Quechua is an official language, along with Spanish and other indigenous languages in areas where they predominate. In Ecuador, although Quichua has no official status, it is a language recognized by the country's constitution; however, it is only spoken by a few groups in the country's highlands.
In Bolivia, Aymara, Quechua and Guaraní have official status along with the Spanish. Guaraní, like Spanish, is an official language of Paraguay, and is spoken by the majority of the population, which is, for the most part, bilingual, and is co-official with Spanish in the Argentine province of Corrientes. In Nicaragua, Spanish is the official language, but on the country's Caribbean coast, English and indigenous languages such as Miskito, Sumo and Rama also have official status. Colombia recognizes as official all indigenous languages spoken in its territory, although less than 1% of its population are native speakers of these languages.
Nahuatl is one of the 62 native languages spoken by indigenous peoples in Mexico, which are officially recognized by the government as national languages along with Spanish. In several countries, especially in the Caribbean region, Creole languages are spoken. 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. The Creole languages of continental Latin America, in a similar way, are derived from European languages and several African languages.
The Garifuna language is spoken along the Caribbean coast in Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Belize, mainly by the Garifuna people, a mestizo Zambo people who were the result of the mixture between Caribbean Indians and fugitive black slaves. Primarily an Arawakan language, it has influences from the Caribbean and European languages. The entire hemisphere was populated by migrants from Asia, Europe and Africa. Native American populations settled throughout the hemisphere before the arrival of Europeans in the late 15th and 16th centuries, and the forced migration of slaves from Africa.
Transport in Latin America is basically carried out using the road mode, the most developed in the region. There is also considerable port and airport infrastructure. The railway and river sector, although it has potential, is usually treated secondarily. Venezuelan Armando Reverón, whose work is beginning to be recognized internationally, is one of the most important artists of the 20th century in South America; he is a forerunner of Arte Povera and Happening.
In the 60s, kinetic art emerged in Venezuela. Its main representatives are Jesús Soto, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Alejandro Otero and Gego. In Brazil, the Cinema Novo movement created a particular way of making films with critical and intellectual scripts, clearer photographs related to outdoor light in a tropical landscape, and a political message. The modern Brazilian film industry has become more profitable within the country, and some of its productions have received awards and recognition in Europe and the United States, with films such as Central do Brasil (199), Cidade de Deus (200) and Tropa de Elite (200).
Puerto Rican cinema has produced some notable films, such as Una Aventura, Llamada Menudo, Los Diaz de Doris and Almost Almost. The influx of Hollywood movies affected the local film industry in Puerto Rico during the 1980s and 1990s, but since then several Puerto Rican films have been produced and it has been recovering. Cuban cinema has enjoyed a lot of official support since the Cuban revolution and among the important filmmakers is Tomás Gutiérrez Alea. Pre-Columbian cultures were mainly oral, although the Aztecs and Mayans, for example, produced elaborate codices.
Oral accounts of mythological and religious beliefs were also sometimes recorded after the arrival of European colonizers, as was the case with Popol Vuh. In addition, a tradition of oral narration survives to this day, for example, between the Quechua-speaking population of Peru and the Quiché (K'iche') of Guatemala. The 19th century was a period of foundational fictions, in the words of critic Doris Sommer, novels of romantic or naturalist traditions that sought to establish a sense of national identity and that often focused on the indigenous question or the dichotomy of civilization or barbarism (for which see, for example, Facundo de Domingo Sarmiento (184), Cumandá by Juan León Mera (187) o The Sertões by Euclides da Cunha (190). The 19th century also witnessed the realistic work of Machado de Assis, who made use of surreal devices of metaphor and playful narrative construction, much admired by the critic Harold Bloom.
At the beginning of the 20th century, modernism emerged, a poetic movement whose founding text was Azul, by the Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío (188). This was the first Latin American literary movement to influence literary culture outside the region, and it was also the first truly Latin American literature, since national differences were no longer so at stake. José Martí, for example, although he was a Cuban patriot, also lived in Mexico and the United States and wrote for magazines in Argentina and elsewhere. However, what really put Latin American literature on the world map was, without a doubt, the literary boom of the 1960s and 1970s, which was distinguished by bold and experimental novels (such as Rayuela (19) by Julio Cortázar, which were published frequently in Spain and quickly translated into English.
The defining novel of the Boom was One Hundred Years of Solitude (196), by Gabriel García Márquez, which led to the association of Latin American literature with magical realism, although other important writers of the time, such as Peruvians Mario Vargas Llosa and Carlos Fuentes, did not fit so easily into this framework. It could be said that the culmination of the Boom was the monumental I, the Supreme (197) by Augusto Roa Bastos. After the Boom, influential forerunners such as Juan Rulfo, Alejo Carpentier and, above all, Jorge Luis Borges were also rediscovered. Contemporary literature in the region is vibrant and varied, from the bestsellers of Paulo Coelho and Isabel Allende to the most avant-garde and critically acclaimed works of writers such as Diamela Eltit, Giannina Braschi, Ricardo Piglia or Roberto Bolaño.
Considerable attention has also been paid to the genre of testimony, texts produced in collaboration with subordinate subjects such as Rigoberta Menchú. Finally, a new generation of chroniclers is represented by the most journalistic Carlos Monsiváis and Pedro Lemebel. Other notable and successful artists over the years include RBD, Celia Cruz, Soda Stereo, Thalía, Ricky Martin, Maná, Marc Anthony, Ricardo Arjona, Selena and Menudo. Another well-known Latin American musical genre includes Argentine and Uruguayan tango (with Carlos Gardel as the greatest exponent), as well as the new tango, a fusion of tango, acoustic and electronic music popularized by the virtuoso bandoneon Ástor Piazzolla.
Samba, North American jazz, European classical music and choro combined to form bossa nova in Brazil, popularized by guitarist João Gilberto with singer Astrud Gilberto and pianist Antonio Carlos Jobim. Other influential Latin American sounds include the Antillean soca and calypso, the Honduran tip (garífuna), the Colombian cumbia and vallenato, the Chilean cueca, the Ecuadorian boleros and rockoleras, the Mexican ranchera and the mariachi, which is the epitome of the Mexican soul, the Nicaraguan mayo stick, the Peruvian marinera and the tondero, the Uruguayan Candombe, French Antillean Zouk (derived from Haitian compas) and the various styles of music from pre-Columbian traditions that are widespread in the Andean region. It could be said that the main contribution to music came through folklore, where the true soul of the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean is expressed. Musicians such as Yma Súmac, Chabuca Granda, Atahualpa Yupanqui, Violeta Parra, Víctor Jara, Jorge Cafrune, Facundo Cabral, Mercedes Sosa, Jorge Negrete, Luiz Gonzaga, Caetano Veloso, Susana Baca, Chavela Vargas, Simón Díaz, Julio Jaramillo, Toto la Momposina, Gilberto Gil, Maria Bethânia, Nargas Ana Caymmi, Nara Leao, Gal Costa, Ney Matogrosso and ensembles musicals such as Inti Illimani and Los Kjarkas are magnificent examples of the heights that this soul can reach.
Latin America is a region of the Western Hemisphere, south of the United States. The term Latin America is used to describe countries in South America, Central America and the Caribbean that speak Latin languages, also known as “Romance languages”. These languages include Spanish, Portuguese and French. Latin America extends from Mexico in North America to Central America, parts of the Caribbean and all of South America to the bottom of the continent.
Although it is a very diverse region, the people of these countries share similar historical experiences, languages and cultures. There are 33 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean today, according to the United Nations. The full list is shown in the table below, with the current population and the subregion (according to official United Nations statistics). Those who supported the return to export of commodities for which Latin America had a competitive advantage disagreed with advocates of an expanded industrial sector.
The First World War and the League of Nations did not resolve conflicts between European nations, but in the wake of the First World War, Latin American nations succeeded in pressing discussions of hemispheric importance. Although the conditions of pre-Columbian America and Iberia in the 15th century are beyond the scope of Latin American history itself, they must be taken into account in that regard. Although most of Latin America was colonized by Spain, the countries of Portugal and France also had a great influence in the region. Research in Latin America shows that the extension of policies towards migrants is linked to a focus on civil rights and state benefits that can positively influence integration in recipient countries.
At the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, the people of Latin America began to fight for independence. Interventions in Latin America that he had claimed as his right and initiated the Good Neighbourhood Policy in March 1933.In the post-independence period, several Latin American countries sought to attract European immigrants as a source of work, as well as to deliberately change the proportions of ethnic groups within their borders. 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). In general, Latin America is understood to consist of the entire continent of South America, in addition to Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean islands, whose inhabitants speak a Romance language.
In several Latin American countries, indigenous groups have explicitly organized themselves as indigenous, to claim human rights and influence political power. . .
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