An overview of Latin American History

The name “Latin America” conjures images of contrast: Amazon River and Andes Mountains, rich and poor, Indian and white, urban and rural, masters and slaves, young and old, stable and tumultuous, revolutionary and conservative. Many contrasts are as contemporary as they are historical. In fact, to understand Latin America today, we must look at its history.

Physically, the land is diverse: from the Andes mountain range, which stretches along the western edge of South America to the tropical forests of the Amazon River, the second-longest river in the world and the largest by volume, carrying 20 percent of the world’s fresh water and draining 40 percent of South America. Contrast Mexico’s arid high plains and the deserts of Chile with the fertile grasslands of Argentina.

Sixteenth Century Spanish explorer Hernan Cortes was reported to have crumpled a piece of paper to demonstrate to Spanish officials what the land of Mexico looked like. The islands of the Caribbean add to the tropical and mountainous aspects of Latin America, which stretches from the United States-Mexico border south through Mexico and Central America to the southern tip of South America in Chile, specifically 32.3 degrees North to 55 degrees South.

Culturally Latin America is as diverse as the land. Mexico’s population is descended largely from indigenous people. Argentina is ethnically more European than indigenous. A very important component of this racial mix is the approximately 5 million Africans brought as slaves to Latin America – 3.5 million to Brazil alone – whose descendants are largely centered in Brazil and the Caribbean.

Latin America’s multiethnic makeup also varies within nations. In Cuba and Nicaragua, for instance, blacks and whites tend to live along the coast, while a more indigenous-and-white mixed population lives in the interior highlands. Countries such as Peru and Bolivia contain large indigenous populations that live apart from each other, thus maintaining their own languages.

While overwhelmingly Catholic, much of Latin America retains indigenous religious rituals, the Mestizo Virgin of Guadalupe is the most visible example. In recent years, Protestants have made inroads into the mainstream religious culture.

Spanish is the dominant language spoken, but Brazilians speak Portuguese, and many people speak more than one language, often including a European or an indigenous one, or both. This diversity is displayed best in the rich literary and artistic heritage of Latin America, whose artists have created a unique style.

Latin America’s cultural characteristics reflect the legacy of Spanish and Portuguese conquest and colonization. Spanish explorers limited their early attention to the Caribbean, Mexico, and Peru, which became sparsely settled by Europeans. In Brazil, the concept of conquest could be called accidental since Pedro Alvares Cabral was headed to India via the tip of Africa when he bumped into Brazil and found a few natives.

The Spanish were the leaders in discovering and exploiting the gold and silver found on the Latin American mainland, although their explorations were rooted in competition with Portugal’s successes in Africa and Indonesia.

The semisedentary natives of Brazil, by successfully resisting the forced labor mandates of the Portuguese, were able to withstand initial European exploitation. The Tupis’ resistance, however, compelled Portugal to turn to Africa for its labor needs, ultimately enslaving millions of Africans.

Spanish knowledge of enormous complex and sedentary societies of the Aztec and Inca meant the conquistadors had an enormous advantage over the indigenous leaders: Moctezhuma in Mexico and Atahualpa in Peru. Natives living in Aztec and Inca societies retained many of their traditional institutions, while tribes such as the Tupi saw their lands transformed into sugar or coffee plantations.

European conquest cannot be understood without looking at how diseases decimated native nomadic and sedentary populations. Europe’s diseases, when transported to the Americas, killed millions of native people. America, in contrast to the Eurasian and African worlds, was a relatively isolated island with fewer opportunities to develop highly competitive organisms, including disease-carrying germs. Europeans who did not die from scarlet fever had developed immunities not present in the native population. Most historians agree that nearly 90 percent of the native population died as a result of “imported” diseases.

The term “Latin America,” which came into use in the mid-19th century, documents the shift from a primarily Iberian-controlled region to a more Europeanized one. The use of the word “Latin” created a more European identity, which had been in play long before the mid-19th century. English, Dutch, and French colonies were established in the 17th century.

But it was in the late 18th century that a Spanish “creole” identity solidified as a reflection of events in Europe and of a growing native-born white elite class. This spurred a continentwide Spanish-American nationalism that resulted in a series of successful wars for independence in the early 19th century.

While some historians have called them “same wine new bottles,” these wars provided an impetus for economic and political nation building that pervaded the 19th century. This common identity also was a way of responding to and resisting increased efforts by the United States to extend its sphere of influence in Latin America. For Mexico, that “interaction” had begun in the mid-19th century with a war that resulted in the loss of more than half of Mexican territory to the United States.

Part of the history of Latin America in the 20th century is the history of U.S. economic and political influence.

In Central America, U.S. interests displaced millions of peasants and turned them into wage workers on enormous plantations, called “latifundia,” devoted to export-oriented agriculture, such as coffee beans, bananas, and cacao. The resulting social disarray often brought local resistance to U.S. interests, protected by the national government, which sought and received aid from the U.S. government.

Resistance to U.S. economic interests in Cuba developed into a home-grown socialist revolution in 1959, which has continued to this day. The Cuban Revolution and the Cold War shifted U.S. foreign policy toward providing political and economic support to authoritarian and dictatorial regimes in nations such as Argentina, Chile, and Brazil in a period that some historians have described as neoliberal.

Despite the violence and human rights abuses that occurred in Latin America as a result of these policies, the end of the Cold War, a more diverse developing economy in many regions, and an emerging political culture oriented toward indigenous and working-class rights have contributed to the current relative stability in Latin America. Even with a growing desire for independence from U.S. influence, Latin America is a region of enormous natural resources the U.S. economy needs.

Series contributors: Dr. Brad Dearden, Associate Professor of Geography, University of Maine at Farmington;

Allison L. Hepler, Associate Professor of History, University of Maine at Farmington; Dr. Jon Oplinger, University of Maine

at Farmington; Margaret Shaw Chernosky and her geography students, employing GIS technology, Bangor High School, Bangor; Susan Lahti, Maine Geographic Alliance, Department of Social Science and Business, Roberts Learning Center, University of Maine at Farmington; The Maine Geographic Alliance. Photos: iStockphoto

Additional content: National Geographic; Maine Office GIS; ESRI

Geography Awareness Week is sponsored by Casco Bay Energy.

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Bangor Daily News’ Newspapers in Education editor: Pat Lemieux

Series editor: Julie Harris

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