Latin America

Racial groups

Amerindians

The aboriginal population of Latin America, the Amerindians, experienced tremendous population decline particularly in the early decades of colonization. They have since recovered in numbers, surpassing sixty million, though they compose a majority in only one country, Bolivia. In Peru they are a plurality, while in Ecuador, Chile, Guatemala and Mexico, they are large minorities of more than 25%, per CIA statistics. (Official Mexican figures put Amerindian Mexicans at 13% of the country's population.) Most of the other countries have small Amerindian minorities.

Asians

Blacks

Millions of African slaves were brought to Latin America from the sixteenth century onward, the majority of whom were sent to the Caribbean region and Brazil. Today, people identified as black constitute important parts of the populations of Brazil, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Colombia, Puerto Rico, and Ecuador.

Europeans

Millions of Europeans have immigrated to Latin America since most countries gained independence in the 1810s and 1820s, with most of the immigration occurring in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the bulk of the immigrants settling in Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil. Italians formed the largest group of immigrants, and next were Spaniards and Portuguese. Many others arrived, such as Germans, Poles, Ukrainians, Russians, Jews, Irish and Welsh. Whites make up the vast majority of the population in Argentina and Uruguay, as they do in Southern Region, Brazil. In absolute numbers, Brazil has the largest population of whites in Latin America, Argentina the second and Mexico the third.

Latin American countries attracted European immigrants to work in agriculture, commerce and industry. Many Latin American governments encouraged immigrants from Europe to civilize the region. Despite their different origins, these immigrants integrated in the local societies and most of their descendants only speak Spanish or, in Brazil, Portuguese. For example, people of Italian descent make up half of Argentina's and Uruguay's population, but only a few of them are able to speak Italian. The only notable exceptions are some communities of Germans and Italians across Southern Brazil who still preserve their languages. Brazil has the biggest population of Italians outside of Italy; São Paulo city alone has more Italians than Rome.

Immigration from the Middle East took place also since the 19th century, and consisted largely of Christian Lebanese and Syrians. They have generally assimilated into the European-descended population.

Mestizos

Mulattoes

Zambos

In addition to the foregoing groups, Latin America also has millions of people of mixed African, Amerindian and European triracial ancestry.

Racial distribution

Language

Castillian Spanish is the predominant language in the majority of Latin American countries. Portuguese is spoken primarily in Brazil, the most populous country in the region. French is spoken in some countries of the Caribbean (notably the dependencies of Guadeloupe, Martinique, and French Guiana as well as the sovereign island-nation of Haiti). Dutch is the official language of some Caribbean islands and in Suriname on the continent; however, as Dutch is a Germanic language, these territories are not considered part of Latin America.

Other European languages spoken in Latin America include: English, by some groups in Argentina, Nicaragua, Panama, and Puerto Rico; German, in southern Brazil, southern Chile, Argentina, and German-speaking villages in northern Venezuela; Italian, in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and, to a lesser extent, Venezuela; and Welsh, in southern Argentina.

In several nations, especially in the Caribbean region, creole languages are spoken. The most widely-spoken creole language in the Caribbean and Latin America in general is Haitian Creole, the predominant language of Haiti; it is derived primarily from French and certain West African tongues with some Amerindian and Spanish influences as well. Creole languages of mainland Latin America, similarly, are derived from European languages and various African tongues. Native American languages are widely spoken in Peru, Guatemala, Bolivia, Paraguay, and to a lesser degree, in Mexico, Ecuador and Chile. In absolute numbers, Mexico contains the largest population of indigenous-language speakers of any country in the Americas, surpassing those of the Amerindian-majority countries of Guatemala, Bolivia and the Amerindian-plurality country of Peru. In Latin American countries not named above, the population of speakers of indigenous languages is tiny or non-existent.

In Peru, Quechua is an official language, alongside Spanish and any other indigenous language in the areas where they predominate. In Ecuador, while holding no official status, the closely-related Quichua is a recognized language of the indigenous people under the country's constitution; however, it is only spoken by a few groups in the country's highlands. In Bolivia, Aymara, Quechua and Guaraní hold official status alongside Spanish. Guarani is, along with Spanish, an official language of Paraguay, and is spoken by a majority of the population (who are, for the most part, bilingual), and it 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 hold official status. Colombia recognizes all indigenous languages spoken within its territory as official, though fewer than 1% of its population are native speakers of these. Nahuatl is one of the 62 native languages spoken by indigenous people in Mexico, which are officially recognized by the government as "national languages", along with Spanish.

Religion

Emigration

Economy

Economic performance

According to ECLAC, an economic growth rate of 5.3% is estimated for 2006, equivalent to a per capita increase of 3.8%. This marks the fourth consecutive year of economic growth, and the third consecutive year of rates exceeding 4%, after an average annual growth rate of only 2.2% between 1980 and 2002. A breakdown of the annual rates of GDP growth (in U.S. dollars at constant 2000 prices) is transcribed as follows:

Sources: 1. All countries, except Cuba: IMF 2. Cuba and Latin America: ECLAC

Inequality and poverty

Crime and Violence

Crime and violence prevention and public security have become key social issues of concern to public policy makers and citizens in the Latin American and Caribbean region. In Latin America, violence is now among the five main causes of death and is the principal cause of death in Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador and Mexico. Homicide rates in Latin America are among the highest of any region in the world. From the early 1980s through the mid-1990s, intentional homicide rates in Latin America increased by 50 percent. The major victims of such homicides are young men, 69 percent of whom are between the ages of 15 and 19 years old. Many analysts agree that the prison crisis will not be resolved until the gap between rich and poor is addressed. They say that growing social inequality is fuelling crime in the region. But there is also no doubt that, on such an approach, Latin American countries have still a long way to go.

Trade blocs

The major trade blocs or agreements in the region are Mercosur and the Andean Community of Nations (CAN). Minor blocs or trade agreements are the G3 and the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). However, major reconfigurations are taking place along opposing approaches to integration and trade; Venezuela has officially withdrawn from both the CAN and G3 and it has been formally admitted into the Mercosur (pending ratification from the Brazilian and Paraguayan legislatures). The president-elect of Ecuador has manifested his intentions of following the same path. This bloc nominally opposes any Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the United States, although Uruguay has manifested its intention otherwise. On the other hand, Mexico is a member of the North American Free Trade Agreement, Chile has signed an FTA with the United States, and Colombia's and Peru's legislatures have approved an FTA with the United States and are awaiting its ratification by the US Senate.

Standard of living

Culture

The rich mosaic of Latin American cultural expressions is the product of many diverse influences:

• Native cultures of the peoples that inhabited the continents prior to the arrival of the Europeans.
• European cultures, brought mainly by the Spanish, the Portuguese and the French. This can be seen in any expression of the region's rich artistic traditions, including painting, literature and music, and in the realms of science and politics. The most enduring European colonial influence was language. Italian and British influence has been important as well.
• African cultures, whose presence derives from a long history of New World slavery. Peoples of African descent have influenced the ethno-scapes of Latin America and the Caribbean. This is manifest for instance in dance and religion, especially in countries such as Brazil, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Colombia, Haiti, Dominican Republic and Cuba.

Literature

Pre-Columbian cultures were primarily oral, though the Aztecs and Mayans, for instance, 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 the Popol Vuh. Moreover, a tradition of oral narrative survives to this day, for instance among the Quechua-speaking population of Peru and the Quiché of Guatemala.

From the very moment of Europe's "discovery" of the continent, early explorers and conquistadores produced written accounts and crónicas of their experience--such as Columbus's letters or Bernal Díaz del Castillo's description of the conquest of Mexico. During the colonial period, written culture was often in the hands of the church, within which context Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz wrote memorable poetry and philosophical essays. Towards the end of the 18th Century and the beginning of the 19th, a distinctive criollo literary tradition emerged, including the first novels such as Lizardi's El Periquillo Sarniento (1816).

The 19th Century was a period of "foundational fictions" (in critic Doris Sommer's words), novels in the Romantic or Naturalist traditions that attempted to establish a sense of national identity, and which often focussed on the indigenous question or the dichotomy of "civilization or barbarism" (for which see, say, Domingo Sarmiento's Facundo (1845), Juan León Mera's Cumandá (1879), or Euclides da Cunha's Os Sertões (1902)).

At the turn of the 20th century, modernismo emerged, a poetic movement whose founding text was Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío's Azul (1888). This was the first Latin American literary movement to influence literary culture outside of the region, and was also the first truly Latin American literature, in that national differences were no longer so much at issue. José Martí, for instance, though a Cuban patriot, also lived in Mexico and the USA and wrote for journals in Argentina and elsewhere.

However, what really put Latin American literature on the global map was no doubt the literary boom of the 1960s and 1970s, distinguished by daring and experimental novels (such as Julio Cortázar's Rayuela (1963)) that were frequently published in Spain and quickly translated into English. The Boom's defining novel was Gabriel García Márquez's Cien años de soledad (1967), which led to the association of Latin American literature with magic realism, though other important writers of the period such as Mario Vargas Llosa and Carlos Fuentes do not fit so easily within this framework. Arguably, the Boom's culmination was Augusto Roa Bastos's monumental Yo, el supremo (1974). In the wake of the Boom, influential precursors such as Juan Rulfo, Alejo Carpentier, and above all Jorge Luis Borges were also rediscovered.

Contemporary literature in the region is vibrant and varied, ranging from the best-selling Paulo Coelho and Isabel Allende to the more avant-garde and critically acclaimed work of writers such as Diamela Eltit, Ricardo Piglia, or Roberto Bolaño. There has also been considerable attention paid to the genre of testimonio, texts produced in collaboration with subaltern subjects such as Rigoberta Menchú. Finally, a new breed of chroniclers is represented by the more journalistic Carlos Monsiváis and Pedro Lemebel.

The region boasts five Nobel Prizewinners: in addition to the Colombian García Márquez (1982), also the Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral (1945), the Guatemalan novelist Miguel Ángel Asturias (1967), the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (1971), and the Mexican poet and essayist Octavio Paz (1990).

Art

Beyond the rich tradition of indigenous art, the development of Latin American visual art owed much to the influence of Spanish, Portuguese and French Baroque painting, which in turn often followed the trends of the Italian Masters. In general, this artistic Eurocentrism began to fade in the early twentieth century, as Latin-Americans began to acknowledge the uniqueness of their condition and started to follow their own path.

From the early twentieth century, the art of Latin America was greatly inspired by the Constructivist Movement. The Constructivist Movement was founded in Russia around 1913 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.

An important artistic movement generated in Latin America is Muralismo represented by Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, José Clemente Orozco and Rufino Tamayo in Mexico and Santiago Martinez Delgado and Pedro Nel Gómez in Colombia. Some of the most impressive Muralista works can be found in Mexico, Colombia, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Philadelphia.

Mexican painter Frida Kahlo remains by far the most known and famous Latin American artist. She painted about her own life and the Mexican culture in a style combining Realism, Symbolism and Surrealism. Kahlo's work commands the highest selling price of all Latin American paintings.

Music and dance

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 the Andes and the Southern Cone. 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 Merengue, Bachata, Salsa, and more recently Reggaeton, from such countries as the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Panama has been strongly influenced by African rhythms and melodies. Haiti's Compas is a genre of music that draws influence and is thus similar to its Hispano-Caribbean counterparts with an element of jazz and modern sound as well.

Other Latin American musical genres include the Argentine, and Uruguayan tango, the Antillean Soca, and Calypso, the Central American (Garifuna) Punta, the Colombian cumbia and vallenato, the Chilean Cueca, the Ecuadorian Boleros, and Rockoleras, the Mexican ranchera, the Nicaraguan Palo de Mayo, the Peruvian Marinera and Tondero, the Uruguayan Candombe, the French Antillean Zouk, and the various styles of music from Pre-Columbian traditions that are widespread in the Andean region. In Brazil, samba, North American jazz, European classical music, and choro combined to form bossa nova.

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 recent work of the Cuban Leo Brouwer and guitar work of the Venezuelan Antonio Lauro and the Paraguayan Agustín Barrios. Latin America has also produced world-class classical performers such as the Chilean pianist Claudio Arrau, Brazilian pianist Nelson Freire and the Argentinian pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim.

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 Yma Súmac, Chabuca Granda, Atahualpa Yupanqui, Violeta Parra, Victor Jara, Mercedes Sosa, Jorge Negrete, Luiz Gonzaga, Caetano Veloso as well as musical ensembles such as Inti Illimani, Quilapayún and Illapu, are 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, which blends Jamaican reggae and dancehall with Latin America genres such as bomba and plena, as well as that of hip hop, is becoming more popular, in spite of the controversy surrounding its lyrics, dance steps (Perreo) and music videos. It has become very popular among populations with a "migrant culture" influence - both Latino populations in the U.S., such as southern Florida and New York City, and parts of Latin America where migration to the U.S. is common, such as Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Mexico.

Film

Latin American film is both rich and diverse. Historically, the main centers of production have been México, Brazil, Cuba, and Argentina.

Latin American cinema flourished after the introduction of sound, which added a linguistic barrier to the export of Hollywood film south of the border. The 1950s and 1960s saw a movement towards Third Cinema, led by the Argentine filmmakers Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino. More recently, a new style of directing and stories filmed has been tagged as "New Latin American Cinema."

Argentine cinema was a big industry in the first half of the 20th century. 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) and El abrazo partido (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, with movies such as Central do Brasil (1999), Cidade de Deus (2003) and Tropa de Elite (2007).

Cuban cinema has enjoyed much official support since the Cuban revolution, and important film-makers include Tomás Gutiérrez Alea.

Mexican cinema in the Golden Era of the 1940s boasted a huge industry comparable to Hollywood at the time. Stars included María Félix, Dolores del Rio and Pedro Infante. In the 1970s Mexico was the location for many cult horror and action movies. More recently, films such as Amores Perros (2000) and Y tu mamá también (2001) enjoyed box office and critical acclaim and propelled Alfonso Cuarón and Alejandro González Iñarritu to the front rank of Hollywood directors. Alejandro González Iñárritu directed in (2006) Babel and Alfonso Cuarón directed (Children of Men in (2006), and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in (2004)). Guillermo del Toro close friend and also a front rank Hollywood director in Hollywood and spain, directed Pan's Labyrinth (2006) and produce El Orfanato (2007). Carlos Carrera (The Crime of Father Amaro), and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga are also some of the most known present-day Mexican film makers.

It is also worth noting that many Latin Americans have achieved significant success within Hollywood, for instance Carmen Miranda and Salma Hayek, while Mexican Americans such as Robert Rodriguez have also made their mark.

See also

• Crime and Violence in Latin America
• Anglo America
• Southern Cone
• Hispanic America
• Ibero-America
• United States-Latin American relations
• Americas (terminology)
• Use of the word American
• America (disambiguation)
• Free Trade Area of the Americas
• Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas
• Caribbean
• Association of Caribbean States
• Caribbean Community
• Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States
• Central America
• Central American Common Market
• North America
• North American Free Trade Agreement
• South America
• Andean Community
• Mercosur
• Union of South American Nations
• Latin Union, Latin Europe, Latin Africa
• Latino, Latino Canadian, Afro-Latin American, Asian Latin American, White Latin American, Latin American British
• List of Latin Americans
• List of Latin American artists
• List of Latin American writers
• Latin American culture
• Latin American studies
• Irish settlement in Argentina

Notes and references

External links

• The Washington Post Interactive Map of Politics in Latin America
• Andean Community official webpage
• Council on Hemispheric Affairs
• Latin American Network Information Center
• Latin America Working Group
• Washington Office on Latin America
• Politics in Latin America
• Infolatam. Information and analysis of Latin America Blog
• Travel in South America News
• The Council on Hemispheric Affairs An independent source of Latin American news and opinion
• Business News Americas Daily news and research on Latin American business and industries.
• BBC - South America Creates Single Market
• Latin Business Chronicle Weekly news on Latin American business and technology.Articles
• "The failure of Latin America": an article by David Gallagher in the TLS, February 29, 2008