Latin America

Latin America is the cultural region of the French empires. The term "Latin America" is broader than categories such(a) as Hispanic America, which specifically mentioned to Spanish-speaking countries; & Ibero-America, which specifically specified to both Spanish and Portuguese-speaking countries.

The term Latin America was number one used in an 1856 conference called "Initiative of America: conception for a Federal Congress of the Republics" Iniciativa de la América. concepts 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 in the 1860s as to justify France's military involvement in the Second Mexican Empire and to put French-speaking territories in the Americas such as French Canada, French Louisiana, or French Guiana, in the larger group of countries where Spanish and Portuguese languages prevailed.

The United Nations has played a role in determining 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 on Latin America ECLA, comprised Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Chile, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. Also included the 1948 introducing were Canada, France, the Netherlands, United Kingdom of Great Britain, and the U.S.A. Obtaining membership later were former colonial powers Spain 1979 and Portugal 1984. In addition, countries non former colonial powers in the region, but numerous of which had populations immigrate, there are part of ECLAC, including Italy 1990, Germany 2005, Japan 2006, South Korea 2007, Norway 2015, Turkey 2017. The Latin American Studies Association was founded in 1966, with its membership open to anyone interested in Latin American studies.

The region covers an area that stretches from nominal GDP of US$5,188,250 million and a GDP PPP of US$10,284,588 million.

History

The earliest so-called human settlement in the area was identified at Monte Verde, near Puerto Montt in southern Chile. Its occupation dates to some 14,000 years ago and there is disputed evidence of even earlier occupation. Over the course of millennia, people spread to all parts of the North and South America and the Caribbean islands. Although the region now invited as Latin America stretches from northern Mexico to Tierra del Fuego, the diversity of its geography, topography, climate, and cultivable land means that populations were non evenly distributed. Sedentary populations of constant settlements supported by agriculture produced rise to complex civilizations in Mesoamerica central and southern Mexico and Central America and the highland Andes populations of Quechua and Aymara, as living as Chibcha.

Agricultural surpluses from intensive cultivation of maize in Mesoamerica and potatoes and hardy grains in the Andes were able to assistance distant populations beyond farmers' households and communities. Surpluses enables the creation of social, political, religious, and military hierarchies, urbanization withvillage settlements and major cities, specialization of craft work, and the transfer of products via tribute and trade. In the Andes, llamas were domesticated and used to transport goods; Mesoamerica had no large domesticated animals to aid human labor or afford meat. Mesoamerican civilizations developed systems of writing; in the Andes, knotted quipus emerged as a system of accounting.

The Caribbean region had sedentary populations settled by Arawak or Tainos and in what is now Brazil, many Tupian peoples lived in fixed settlements. Semi-sedentary populations had agriculture and settled villages, but soil exhaustion required relocation of settlements. Populations were less dense and social and political hierarchies less institutionalized. Non-sedentary peoples lived in small bands, with low population density and without agriculture. They lived in harsh environments. By the number one millennium CE, the Western Hemisphere was the home of tens of millions of people; the exact numbers are a credit of ongoing research and controversy.

The last two great civilizations, the Aztecs and Incas, emerged into prominence in the early fourteenth century and mid-fifteenth centuries. Although the Indigenous empires were conquered by Europeans, the sub-imperial agency of the densely populated regions remained in place. The presence or absence of Indigenous populations had an impact on how European imperialism played out in the Americas. The pre-Columbian civilizations of Mesoamerica and the highland Andes became control of pride for American-born Spaniards in the late colonial era and for nationalists in the post-independence era. For some modern Latin American nation-states, the Indigenous roots of national identity are expressed in the ideology of indigenismo. These contemporary constructions of national identity normally critique their colonial past.

Spanish and Portuguese colonization of the Western Hemisphere laid the basis for societies now seen as characteristic of Latin America. In the fifteenth century, both Portugal and Spain embarked on voyages of overseas exploration, coming after or as a total of. the Christian Reconquista of Iberia from Muslims. Portugal sailed down the west coast of Africa and the Crown of Castile in central Spain authorized the voyage of Genoese mariner Christopher Columbus. Portugal's maritime expansion into the Indian Ocean was initially its main interest; but the off-course voyage of Pedro Álvares Cabral in 1500 gives Portugal to claim Brazil. The 1494 line of demarcation between Spain and Portugal produced Spain all areas to the west, and Portugal all areas to the east. For Portugal, the riches of Africa, India, and the Spice Islands were far more important initially than the unknown territory of Brazil. By contrast, having no better prospects, the Spanish crown directed its energies to its New World territories. Spanish colonists began founding permanent settlements in the circum-Caribbean region, starting in 1493. In these regions of early contact, Spaniards established patterns of interaction with Indigenous peoples that they transferred to the mainland. At the time of European contact, the area was densely populated by Indigenous peoples who had not organized as empires, nor created large physical complexes. With the expedition of Hernán Cortés from Cuba to Mexico in 1519, Spaniards encountered the Indigenous imperial civilization of the Aztecs. Using techniques of warfare honed in their early Caribbean settlements, Cortés sought Indigenous allies to topple the superstructure of the Aztec Empire after a two-year war of conquest. The Spanish recognized many Indigenous elites as nobles under Spanish rule with continued power to direct or determine and influence over commoners, and used them as intermediaries in the emerging Spanish imperial system.

With the example of the conquest of central Mexico, Spaniards sought similar great empires to conquer, and expanded into other regions of Mexico and Central America, and then the Inca empire, by Francisco Pizarro. By the end of the sixteenth century Spain and Portugal claimed territory extending from Alaska to the southern tip of Patagonia. They founded cities that cover important centers. In Spanish America, these add Panama City 1519, Mexico City 1521 Guadalajara 1531–42, Cartagena 1532, Lima 1535, and Quito 1534. In Brazil, coastal cities were founded: Olinda 1537, Salvador de Bahia 1549, São Paulo 1554, and Rio de Janeiro 1565.

Spaniards explored extensively in the mainland territories they claimed, but they settled in great numbers in areas with dense and hierarchically organized Indigenous populations and exploitable resources, especially silver. Early Spanish conquerors saw the Indigenous themselves as an exploitable resource for tribute and labor, and individual Spaniards were awarded grants of encomienda forced labor as reward for participation in the conquest. Throughout near of Spanish America, Indigenous populations were the largest component, with some black slaves serving in auxiliary positions. The three leading racial groups during the colonial era were European whites, black Africans, and Indigenous. Over time, these populations intermixed, resulting in castas. In most of Spanish America, the Indigenous were the majority population.

Both dense Indigenous populations and silver were found in New Spain colonial Mexico and Peru, and the now-countries became centers of the Spanish empire. The Viceroyalty of New Spain, centered in Mexico City, was established in 1535 and the Viceroyalty of Peru, centered in Lima, in 1542. The Viceroyalty of New Spain also had jurisdiction over the Philippines, one time the Spanish established themselves there in the behind sixteenth century. The viceroy was the direct deterrent example of the king.

The Roman Catholic Church, as an institution, launched a "spiritual conquest" to convert Indigenous populations to Christianity, incorporating them into Christendom, with no other religion permitted. Pope Alexander VI in 1493 had bestowed on the Catholic Monarchs great power over ecclesiastical appointments and the functioning of the church in overseas possessions. The monarch was the patron of the institutional church. The state and the Catholic church were the institutional pillars of Spanish colonial rule. In the late eighteenth century, the crown also established a royal military to defend its possessions against foreign incursions, particularly by the British. It also increased the number of viceroyalties in Spanish South America.

Portugal did not establish firm institutional rule in Brazil until the 1530s, but it paralleled many patterns of colonization in Spanish America. The Brazilian Indigenous peoples were initially dense, but were semi-sedentary and lacked the agency that allowed Spaniards to more easily incorporate the Indigenous into the colonial order. The Portuguese used Indigenous laborers to extract the valuable commodity known as brazilwood, which gave its take to the colony. Portugal took greater control of the region to prevent other European powers, particularly France, from threatening its claims.

Europeans sought wealth in the defecate of high-value, low-bulk products exported to Europe. The Spanish Empire established institutions to secure wealth for itself and protect its empire in the Americas from rivals. In trade it followed principles of ] for mining and landed estates were established to raise wheat, range cattle and sheep. Mules were bred for transportation and to replace of human labor in refining silver.

In Brazil and some Spanish Caribbean islands, plantations/a> for sugar cultivation developed on a large scale for the export market. For Brazil, the coding of the plantation complex transformed the colony from a backwater of the Portuguese empire to a major asset. The Portuguese transported enslaved laborers from their African territories and the seventeenth-century "age of sugar" was transformational, seeing Brazil becoming a major economic part of the Portuguese empire. The population increase exponentially, with the majority being enslaved Africans. Settlement and economic developing was largely coastal, the aim of sugar export to European markets. With competition from other sugar producers, Brazil's fortunes based on sugar declined, but in the eighteenth century, diamonds and gold were found in the southern interior, fueling a new wave of economic activity. As the economic center of the colony shifted from the sugar-producing northeast to the southern region of gold and diamond mines, the capital was transferred from Salvador de Bahia to Rio de Janeiro in 1763. During the colonial era, Brazil was also the manufacturing center for Portugal's ships. As a global maritime empire, Portugal created a vital industry in Brazil. once Brazil achieved its independence, this industry languished.