Portal:Latin America

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Latin America is a collective region of the Americas where Romance languages—languages derived from Latin—are predominantly spoken. The term was coined in France in the mid-19th century to refer to regions in the Americas that were ruled by the Spanish, Portuguese, and French empires.

The term does not have a precise definition, but it is "commonly used to describe South America, Central America, Mexico, and the islands of the Caribbean". In a narrow sense, it refers to Spanish America and Brazil (Portuguese America). The term "Latin America" is broader than Hispanic America, which specifically refers to Spanish-speaking countries, and categories such as Ibero-America, a term that refers to both Spanish and Portuguese-speaking countries from the Americas, and sometimes from Europe.

The term Latin America was first used in Paris at a conference in 1856 called "Initiative of America: Idea for a Federal Congress of the Republics" (Iniciativa de la América. Idea de un Congreso Federal de las Repúblicas), by the Chilean politician Francisco Bilbao. The term was further popularized by French emperor Napoleon III's government of political strongman that in the 1860s as Amérique latine to justify France's military involvement in the Second Mexican Empire and to include French-speaking territories in the Americas, such as French Canada, Haiti, French Louisiana, French Guiana, Martinique, Guadeloupe and the French Antillean Creole Caribbean islands Saint Lucia, and Dominica, in the larger group of countries where Spanish and Portuguese languages prevailed.

The region covers an area that stretches from Mexico to Tierra del Fuego and includes much of the Caribbean. It has an area of approximately 19,197,000 km² (7,412,000 sq mi), almost 13% of the Earth's land surface area. In 2019, Latin America had a combined nominal GDP of US$5,188,250 trillion and a GDP PPP of US$10,284,588 trillion. (Full article...)

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The Maya civilization (/ˈmaɪə/) was a Mesoamerican civilization that existed from antiquity to the early modern period. It is known by its ancient temples and glyphs (script). The Maya script is the most sophisticated and highly developed writing system in the pre-Columbian Americas. The civilization is also noted for its art, architecture, mathematics, calendar, and astronomical system.

The Maya civilization developed in the Maya Region, an area that today comprises southeastern Mexico, all of Guatemala and Belize, and the western portions of Honduras and El Salvador. It includes the northern lowlands of the Yucatán Peninsula and the Guatemalan Highlands of the Sierra Madre, the Mexican state of Chiapas, southern Guatemala, El Salvador, and the southern lowlands of the Pacific littoral plain. Today, their descendants, known collectively as the Maya, number well over 6 million individuals, speak more than twenty-eight surviving Mayan languages, and reside in nearly the same area as their ancestors. (Full article...)

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... Juan Vucetich, an Argentine chief police officier, created the first method of recording the fingerprints of individuals on file?

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WikiProject South America
WikiProject Latin America (semi-active)

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During the Venezuelan presidential crisis concerning the legitimate President of Venezuela, reactions and responses to the crisis were greatly divided.

On 10 January 2019, Venezuela's opposition-majority National Assembly declared that incumbent Nicolás Maduro's 2018 reelection was invalid, and its president, Juan Guaidó, said that he was prepared to assume the acting presidency. On 23 January 2019, Guaidó and the National Assembly declared he was acting president, who took the presidential oath. By vote of the opposition coalition that had previously supported Guaidó's claim, the Guaidó interim government dissolved on 5 January 2023. (Full article...)

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... that Brazilian computer science researcher and internet pioneer Tadao Takahashi negotiated with drug lords to install internet equipment in his country?
... that UK prime minister Rishi Sunak complained when a joint declaration was made at a summit between the EU and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States that used the term Islas Malvinas?
... that the Latin American travesti gender identity has been considered to be a third gender, akin to the hijras of India and the muxe of Mexico?
... that despite an attempted "extermination" of homosexuals in the 1960s and 1970s, the LGBT community in Argentina is now the most accepted in Latin America?
... that Franz Grave, the first bishop of Essen born in Essen, focused on intercultural dialogue with Latin America?

General images

The following are images from various Latin America-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 11903 political cartoon: President Roosevelt intimidating Colombia to acquire the Panama Canal Zone. (from History of Latin America)
Image 2Monument to Cuauhtémoc, Mexico City (from Culture of Latin America)
Image 3Holy week, Ouro Preto-MG, 2010. Chrome. Photo: Guy Veloso. (from Culture of Latin America)
Image 4Instituto Arnoldo Gabaldón, declared August 30, 1984, as a National Historic Landmark (from Culture of Latin America)
Image 5Countries in Latin America by date of independence (from History of Latin America)
Image 6Fiambre, Guatemalan traditional dish, eaten on November 1, the Day of the Dead (from Culture of Latin America)
Image 7In blue countries under right-wing governments and in red countries under left-wing and centre-left governments as of 2023 (from History of Latin America)
Image 8The Guadalajara International Film Festival is considered the most prestigious film festival in Latin America. (from Culture of Latin America)
Image 9Villa de Leyva, a historical and cultural landmark of Colombia (from Culture of Latin America)
Image 10Left-leaning leaders of Bolivia, Brazil and Chile at the Union of South American Nations summit in 2008 (from History of Latin America)
Image 11The Basilica of the National Shrine of Our Lady of Aparecida is the second largest in the world, after only of the Basilica of Saint Peter in Vatican City. (from Culture of Latin America)
Image 12The military junta of Argentina saw widespread repression against those it deemed to be political dissidents (from History of Latin America)
Image 13A 17th-century map of the Americas (from History of Latin America)
Image 14The joropo, as depicted in a 1912 drawing by Eloy Palacios (from Culture of Latin America)
Image 15Mexican Stock Exchange (from Culture of Latin America)
Image 16Intermediate level international-style Latin dancing at the 2006 MIT ballroom dance competition. A judge stands in the foreground. (from Culture of Latin America)

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The Grey Glacier and Grey Lake left of the Cordillera del Paine in Torres del Paine National Park in the Chilean Patagonia.

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Moai

Credit: Aurbina

Moai are monolithic human figures carved by the Rapa Nui people on Easter Island in eastern Polynesia between the years 1250 and 1500 CE.Nearly half are still at Rano Raraku, the main moai quarry, but hundreds were transported from there and set on stone platforms called ahu around the island's perimeter. Almost all moai have overly large heads three-eighths the size of the whole statue. The moai are chiefly the living faces (aringa ora) of deified ancestors (aringa ora ata tepuna).The statues still gazed inland across their clan lands when Europeans first visited the island, but most were cast down during later conflicts between clans.