Misplaced Pages

#848151

200-826: Latin America often refers to the regions in the Americas in which Romance languages are the main languages. It is "commonly used to describe South America (with the exception of Suriname , Guyana and the Falkland islands ), plus Central America , Mexico , and most of the islands of the Caribbean ". In a narrow sense, it refers to Spanish America , and often it may also include Brazil ( Portuguese America ). The term "Latin America" may be used more broadly than Hispanic America , which specifically refers to Spanish-speaking countries; and more narrowly than categories such as Ibero-America ,

400-688: A coup d'état ), Mauricio Funes and Salvador Sánchez Cerén in El Salvador are all part of this wave of left-wing politicians who often declare themselves socialists , Latin Americanists , or anti-imperialists , often implying opposition to US policies towards the region . An aspect of this has been the creation of the eight-member ALBA alliance, or " The Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America " (Spanish: Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América ) by some of these countries. Following

600-408: A sea level rise of hundreds of meters following the last ice age. Both routes may have been taken, although the genetic evidences suggests a single founding population. The micro-satellite diversity and distributions specific to South American Indigenous peoples indicates that certain populations have been isolated since the initial colonization of the region. A second migration occurred after

800-569: A " racial democracy ", with less discrimination against blacks than in the U.S. Even if a system of legal racial segregation was never implemented in Latin America, unlike the United States, subsequent research has shown that in Brazil there's discrimination against darker citizens, and that whites remain the elites in the country. In Mexico, the mestizo population was considered the true embodiment of "

1000-475: A Californio to be any Spanish-speaking person born in California. Writer Jose Antonio Burciaga considers Californios to be any Hispanic living in California, even if they have lived there temporarily. Burciaga, in a 1995 Los Angeles Times article, points to such examples as Cesar Chavez , Luisa Moreno and Bert Corona . As seen here, sources differ on elements of classification of the term “Californio”. “At

1200-650: A Californio to be any settler who migrated to Alta California and their descendants; and also non-Hispanic immigrants who intermarried with Hispanics and integrated into the Californio culture during the Mexican era, and their descendants. Calisphere and author Ferol Egan restrict the meaning of Californio to the Californian elite who acquired land during the Spanish and Mexican periods and their descendants. Leonard Pitt considers

1400-555: A Californio, was the governor of California during the conflict. The Pacific Squadron , the United States Naval force stationed in the Pacific was instrumental in the capture of Alta California after war was declared on April 24, 1846. The U.S. Navy with its force of 350–400 U.S. Marines and "bluejacket" sailors on board several U.S. Naval ships near California were essentially the only significant United States military force on

1600-460: A Romance language (a language derived from Latin) predominates. Latin America are the countries and territories in the Americas which speak Spanish or Portuguese, with French being sometimes included. As is customary, Puerto Rico is included and Dominica , Grenada , and Saint Lucia (where French is spoken but not official language) are excluded from Latin America. *: Not a sovereign state Before

1800-517: A bear and star (the " Bear Flag ") to symbolize their taking control. The words "California Republic" appeared on the flag but were never officially adopted by the insurgents. The present flag of California is based on the original "Bear Flag". Their capture of the small garrison in Sonoma was later called the " Bear Flag Revolt ". The Republic's only commander-in-chief was William B. Ide , whose command lasted 25 days. On June 23, 1846, Frémont arrived from

2000-684: A considerable influence from Dutch and the Portuguese-based creole languages . Amerindian languages are widely spoken in Peru, Guatemala, Bolivia, Paraguay and Mexico, and to a lesser degree, in Panama, Ecuador, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Argentina, and Chile. In other Latin American countries, the population of speakers of Indigenous languages tend to be very small or even non-existent, for example in Uruguay. Mexico

2200-515: A crew of 600, man-of-war HMS  Collingwood , flagship under Sir George S. Seymour, also arrived at about this time outside Monterey Harbor. Both British ships observed, but did not enter the conflict. Shortly after July 9, when it became clear the US Navy was taking action, the short-lived Bear Flag Republic was converted into a United States military occupation and the Bear Flag was replaced by

SECTION 10

#1733085370849

2400-534: A day, life expectancy , murder rates and a measurement of safety through the Global Peace Index . Green cells indicate the best performance in each category, and red the lowest. List of countries by life expectancy at birth for 2022 according to the World Bank Group . This service doesn't provide data for French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Saint Barthélemy. Urbanization accelerated starting in

2600-812: A decade before the publication of Bilbao's and Torres Caicedo's works: the Invasion of Mexico or, in the US, the Mexican–American War , after which the United States annexed more than half of Mexico's territory. The second event, the Walker affair , which happened the same year that both works were written: the decision by US president Franklin Pierce to recognize the regime recently established in Nicaragua by American William Walker and his band of filibusters who ruled Nicaragua for nearly

2800-430: A degree of social racial segregation by custom, while maintaining Spanish-language newspapers, entertainment, schools, bars, and clubs. Cultural practices were often tied to local churches and mutual aid societies. At some point in the early 20th century, the official recordkeepers (census takers, city records, etc.) began grouping together all Californios, Mexicanos, and Native ( Indio ) peoples with Spanish surnames under

3000-748: A difficult time persuading people to emigrate to such an isolated outpost with no agriculture, no towns, no stores or developments of almost any kind. The majority of settlers were recruited from the northwestern parts of Mexico. The only tentative link with Mexico was via ship after the Quechans (Yumas) closed the Colorado River 's Yuma Crossing in 1781. For the next 40 years, an average of only 2.5 ships per year visited California with 13 years showing no recorded ships arriving. In Californio society, casta ( caste ) designations carried more weight than they did in older communities of central Mexico. One similar concept

3200-443: A dispatch from Gillespie notifying him of the situation. Gillespie, on September 30, finally accepted the Californio terms and departed for San Pedro with his forces, weapons, flags and two cannon (the others were spiked and left behind). Gillespie's men were accompanied by the exchanged American prisoners and several non-Californio residents. It would take about four months of intermittent sparring before Gillespie could again raise

3400-507: A few hidden documents remain today, leaving modern historians with glimpses of ancient culture and knowledge. The first inhabitants migrated into the Americas from Asia. Habitation sites are known in Alaska and Yukon from at least 20,000 years ago, with suggested ages of up to 40,000 years. Beyond that, the specifics of the Paleo-Indian migration to and throughout the Americas, including

3600-585: A home on the plaza at Sonoma, where he entertained all who came with hospitality; few travelers of note came to California without visiting him. At Petaluma he had a great ranch house called La Hacienda. About 1849 on his home farm called Lachryma Montis (Tear of the Mountain), he built a modern frame house where he spent the later years of his life. Vallejo tried to get the California State Capital moved permanently to Benicia, California on land he sold to

3800-568: A landmass comprising the totality of North America and South America . When viewed as a single continent, the Americas or America is the 2nd largest continent right after Asia, and is the 3rd largest continent by population. The Americas make up most of the land in Earth 's Western Hemisphere and comprise the New World . Along with their associated islands , the Americas cover 8% of Earth's total surface area and 28.4% of its land area. The topography

4000-515: A lesser extent, Amerindian languages, are predominant, and in other areas, the influence of African cultures is strong (e.g., the Caribbean basin – including parts of Colombia and Venezuela ). The term's meaning is contested and not without controversy. Historian Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo explores at length the "allure and power" of the idea of Latin America. He remarks at the outset, "The idea of 'Latin America' ought to have vanished with

4200-427: A million years, with the total spread of South American genera into North America far more limited in scope than the spread of North American genera into South America. There are 35 sovereign states in the Americas, as well as an autonomous country of Denmark , three overseas departments of France , three overseas collectivities of France, and one uninhabited territory of France, eight overseas territories of

SECTION 20

#1733085370849

4400-575: A minimum” means the most restrictive grouping included within every grouping stated above. Thus, this group consists of the Californian elite who were descendants of Spanish settlers and who acquired land during the Spanish and Mexican periods and their descendants. “At a maximum” means the most expansive definition inferred above. This group consists of any settler who migrated to California or any person born in California and their descendants, plus anyone who resides in California. In 1769, Gaspar de Portolá and less than two hundred men, on expedition founded

4600-480: A number of islands. The gaps in the archipelago of Central America filled in with material eroded off North America and South America, plus new land created by continued volcanism. By three million years ago, the continents of North America and South America were linked by the Isthmus of Panama , thereby forming the single landmass of the Americas. The Great American Interchange resulted in many species being spread across

4800-561: A printed work to produce the term "Latin America" in 1856 at a conference by the Chilean politician Francisco Bilbao in Paris. The conference had the title "Initiative of the America. The idea for a Federal Congress of Republics." The following year, Colombian writer José María Torres Caicedo also used the term in his poem "The Two Americas". Two events related with the United States played a central role in both works. The first event happened less than

5000-632: A private. The first job given to the California Battalion and was to assist in the capture of San Diego and Pueblo de Los Angeles . On July 26, 1846, Lieutenant Colonel Frémont's California Battalion of about 160 boarded the sloop USS  Cyane , under the command of Captain Samuel Francis Du Pont , and sailed for San Diego. They landed July 29, 1846, and a detachment of Marines and blue-jackets, followed shortly by Frémont's California Battalion from Cyane , landed and took possession of

5200-1142: A recent resurgence of left-wing politics in several countries. In many countries in the early 2000s, left-wing political parties rose to power, known as the Pink tide . The presidencies of Hugo Chávez (1999–2013) in Venezuela, Ricardo Lagos and Michelle Bachelet in Chile, Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff of the Workers Party (PT) in Brazil, Néstor Kirchner and his wife Cristina Fernández in Argentina, Tabaré Vázquez and José Mujica in Uruguay, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, Fernando Lugo in Paraguay, Manuel Zelaya in Honduras (removed from power by

5400-478: A role as not everyone is equally capable of taking advantage of its benefits. Differences in opportunities and endowments tend to be based on race , ethnicity, rurality, and gender . Because inequality in gender and location are near-universal, race and ethnicity play a larger, more integral role in discriminatory practices in Latin America. The differences have a strong impact on the distribution of income, capital and political standing. One indicator of inequality

5600-639: A series of rivers and streams that flow east with their terminus in the Atlantic Ocean, such as the Hudson River , Saint John River , and Savannah River . A similar instance arises with central Canadian rivers that drain into Hudson Bay ; the largest being the Churchill River . On the west coast of North America, the main rivers are the Colorado River , Columbia River , Yukon River , Fraser River , and Sacramento River . The Colorado River drains much of

5800-530: A shared population of flora and fauna around 2.5 million years ago, when continental drift brought the two continents into contact via the Isthmus of Panama . Initially, the exchange of biota was roughly equal, with North American genera migrating into South America in about the same proportions as South American genera migrated into North America. This exchange is known as the Great American Interchange . The exchange became lopsided after roughly

6000-670: A speech delivered in France by the radical liberal Chilean politician Francisco Bilbao in June 1856". By the late 1850s, the term was being used in California (which had become a part of the United States), in local newspapers such as El Clamor Público by Californios writing about América latina and latinoamérica , and identifying as Latinos as the abbreviated term for their "hemispheric membership in la raza latina ". The words "Latin" and "America" were first found to be combined in

6200-576: A synonym). Latin America is typically contrasted with Anglo-America , where English, a Germanic language , is prevalent, and which comprises Canada (with the exception of Francophone Canada rooted in Latin Europe [France]—see Quebec and Acadia ) and the United States. Both countries are located in North America, with cultures deriving predominantly from British and other Germanic roots. The transatlantic slave trade brought millions of Africans to

Latin America - Misplaced Pages Continue

6400-499: 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

6600-399: A vicious cycle. Inequality has been reproduced and transmitted through generations because Latin American political systems allow a differentiated access on the influence that social groups have in the decision-making process, and it responds in different ways to the least favored groups that have less political representation and capacity of pressure. Recent economic liberalisation also plays

6800-604: A wealthy educated woman of influence and town matriarch, asked to speak with him. She advised him that a generous peace would be to his political advantage. Fremont later wrote of this 2-hour meeting, "I found that her object was to use her influence to put an end to the war, and to do so upon such just and friendly terms of compromise as would make the peace acceptable and enduring". The next day, Bernarda accompanied Fremont south. On January 11, 1847, General Jose Maria Flores turned over his command to Andrés Pico and fled. On January 12, Bernarda went alone to Pico's camp and told him of

7000-453: A wide variety of indigenous religions, many of which can be categorized as animistic ; new age religions and many African and African-derived religions. Syncretic faiths can also be found throughout the Americas. Various languages are spoken in the Americas. Some are of European origin, others are spoken by indigenous peoples or are the mixture of various languages like the different creoles. The most widely spoken first language in

7200-438: A year (1856–57) and attempted to reinstate slavery there, where it had been already abolished for three decades In both Bilbao's and Torres Caicedo's works, the Mexican–American War (1846–48) and William Walker's expedition to Nicaragua are explicitly mentioned as examples of dangers for the region. For Bilbao, "Latin America" was not a geographical concept, as he excluded Brazil, Paraguay, and Mexico. Both authors also asked for

7400-478: Is access to and quality of education. During the first phase of globalization in Latin America, educational inequality was on the rise, peaking around the end of the 19th century. In comparison with other developing regions , Latin America then had the highest level of educational inequality , which is certainly a contributing factor for its current general high inequality. During the 20th century, however, educational inequality started decreasing. Latin America has

7600-475: Is also spoken by some Panamanians of Afro- Antillean descent. Dutch is the official language in Suriname , Aruba , Curaçao and Bonaire . (As Dutch is a Germanic language , the territories are not necessarily considered part of Latin America.) However, the native and co-official language of Aruba , Bonaire , and Curaçao , is Papiamento , a creole language largely based on Portuguese and Spanish that has had

7800-565: Is buried there. Monterey was originally the only port of entry for all taxable goods in California. All ships were supposed to clear through Monterey and pay the roughly 42% tariff (customs duties on imported goods before trading anywhere else in Alta California). The oldest governmental building in the state is the Monterey Custom House and California's Historic Landmark Number One. The Californian , California's oldest newspaper,

8000-660: Is dominated by blacks, but is sometimes not considered part of Latin America. In the nineteenth century, a number of Latin American countries sought immigrants from Europe and Asia. With the abolition of black slavery in 1888, the Brazilian monarchy fell in 1889. By then, another source of cheap labor to work on coffee plantations was found in Japan. Chinese male immigrants arrived in Cuba, Mexico, Peru and elsewhere. With political turmoil in Europe during

8200-510: Is dominated by the American Cordillera , a long chain of mountains that runs the length of the west coast. The flatter eastern side of the Americas is dominated by large river basins, such as the Amazon , St. Lawrence River – Great Lakes , Mississippi , and La Plata basins. Since the Americas extend 14,000 km (8,700 mi) from north to south, the climate and ecology vary widely, from

Latin America - Misplaced Pages Continue

8400-779: Is equally large white populations and smaller black populations, while Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico are more Mulatto/Triracial dominated, with significant black and white minorities. Parts of Central America and northern South America are more diverse in that they are dominated by Mestizos and whites but also have large numbers of Mulattos, blacks, and indigenous, especially Colombia, Venezuela, and Panama. The southern cone region, Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile are dominated by whites and mestizos. The rest of Latin America, including México, northern Central America (Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras), and central South America (Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Paraguay), are dominated by mestizos but also have large white and indigenous minorities. The French Caribbean

8600-464: Is generally quite flat. Similarly, the north-east of South America is covered by the flat Amazon basin . The Brazilian Highlands on the east coast are fairly smooth but show some variations in landform, while farther south the Gran Chaco and Pampas are broad lowlands . The climate of the Americas varies significantly from region to region. Tropical rainforest climate occurs in the latitudes of

8800-478: Is international movement of populations, often fleeing repression or war. Other international migration is for economic reasons, often unregulated or undocumented. Mexicans immigrated to the U.S. during the violence of the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920) and the religious Cristero War (1926–29); during World War II, Mexican men worked in the U.S. in the bracero program . Economic migration from Mexico followed

9000-474: Is only spoken by a few groups in the country's highlands. In Bolivia, Aymara , Quechua and Guaraní hold official status alongside Spanish. Guaraní, like Spanish, is an official language of Paraguay, and is spoken by a majority of the population, which is, 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

9200-403: Is possibly contains more Indigenous languages than any other Latin American country, but the most-spoken Indigenous language there is Nahuatl. In Peru, Quechua is an official language, alongside Spanish and other Indigenous languages in the areas where they predominate. In Ecuador, while Quichua holds no official status, it is a recognized language under the country's constitution; however, it

9400-497: Is spoken along the Caribbean coast in Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Belize, mostly by the Garifuna people , a mixed-race Zambo people who were the result of mixing between Indigenous Caribbeans and escaped Black slaves. Primarily an Arawakan language , it has influences from Caribbean and European languages. Archaeologists have deciphered over 15 pre-Columbian distinct writing systems from Mesoamerican societies. Ancient Maya had

9600-622: Is spoken mostly in Brazil, the largest and most populous country in the region. Spanish is the official language of most of the other countries and territories on the Latin American mainland, as well as in Cuba, 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 . It

9800-666: Is that of the Mississippi , covering the second largest watershed on the planet. The Mississippi-Missouri river system drains most of 31 states of the United States, most of the Great Plains , and large areas between the Rocky and Appalachian mountains. This river is the fourth longest in the world and tenth most powerful in the world . In North America, to the east of the Appalachian Mountains , there are no major rivers but rather

10000-555: The República de indios  [ es ] to paternalistically govern and protect Indigenous peoples. It also created the República de Españoles , which included not only European whites, but all non-Indigenous peoples, such as blacks, mulattoes, and mixed-race castas who were not dwelling in Indigenous communities. In the religious sphere, the Indigenous were deemed perpetual neophytes in

10200-474: The Amazon , American cloud forests , southeastern Florida and Darién Gap . In the Rocky Mountains and Andes , dry and continental climates are observed. Often the higher altitudes of these mountains are snow-capped. Southeastern North America is well known for its occurrence of tornadoes and hurricanes , of which the vast majority of tornadoes occur in the United States' Tornado Alley , as well as in

SECTION 50

#1733085370849

10400-684: The Arctic small tool tradition , a broad cultural entity that developed along the Alaska Peninsula , around Bristol Bay , and on the eastern shores of the Bering Strait c.  2500 BCE moved into North America. The Arctic small tool tradition, a Paleo-Eskimo culture branched off into two cultural variants, including the Pre-Dorset , and the Independence traditions of Greenland. The descendants of

10600-675: The Boothia Peninsula in northern Canada and Cape Froward in Chilean Patagonia , is roughly 14,000 km (8,700 mi). The mainland's most westerly point is the end of the Seward Peninsula in Alaska; Attu Island , further off the Alaskan coast to the west, is considered the westernmost point of the Americas. Ponta do Seixas in northeastern Brazil forms the easternmost extremity of

10800-427: The Broad Front candidate. Economically, the 2000s commodities boom caused positive effects for many Latin American economies. Another trend was the rapidly increasing importance of their relations with China . However, with the Great Recession beginning in 2008, there was an end to the commodity boom, resulting in economic stagnation or recession resulted in some countries. A number of left-wing governments of

11000-400: The Caribbean and South America; the latter contains further politico-geographical subdivisions such as the Southern Cone , the Guianas and the Andean states. It may be subdivided on linguistic grounds into Spanish America , Portuguese America , and French America . The term "Latin America" is defined to mean parts of Americas south of the mainland of the United States of America where

11200-511: The Caribbean remains a serious issue despite strong economic growth and improved social indicators. A report released in 2013 by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs entitled Inequality Matters: Report of the World Social Situation , observed that: 'Declines in the wage share have been attributed to the impact of labour-saving technological change and to a general weakening of labour market regulations and institutions.' Such declines are likely to disproportionately affect individuals in

11400-471: The Catholic Church (estimated then at about one-third of all settled property), which was continually granted property by many landowners when they died and controlled property supposedly held in trust for the Native Americans. This land, as it gradually accumulated, was seldom sold, as it cost nothing to keep, but could be rented out to gain additional income for the Catholic Church to pay its priests , friars , bishops, and other expenses. The Catholic Church

11600-534: The Columbian exchange and inaugurated a period of exploration , conquest, and colonization whose effects and consequences persist to the present. The Spanish presence involved the enslavement of large numbers of the indigenous population of America. Diseases introduced from Europe and West Africa devastated the indigenous peoples , and the European powers colonized the Americas . Mass emigration from Europe , including large numbers of indentured servants , and importation of African slaves largely replaced

11800-467: The French invasion of Mexico , Bilbao wrote another work, "Emancipation of the Spirit in America", where he asked all Latin American countries to support the Mexican cause against France, and rejected French imperialism in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas. He asked Latin American intellectuals to search for their "intellectual emancipation" by abandoning all French ideas, claiming that France was: "Hypocrite, because she [France] calls herself protector of

12000-428: The Guaraní in Paraguay and the Mapuche in Chile. The vast majority of Latin Americans are Christians (90%), mostly Roman Catholics belonging to the Latin Church . About 70% of the Latin American population considers itself Catholic. In 2012 Latin America constitutes in absolute terms the second world's largest Christian population , after Europe. According to the detailed Pew multi-country survey in 2014, 69% of

12200-444: The Latin version of Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci 's first name. The feminine form America was originally used to refer to the newly discovered continent, which is why it was accorded with the feminine names of the other continents: Asia , Africa , and Europa . Since the 1950s, however, North America and South America have generally been considered by English speakers as separate continents, and taken together are called

SECTION 60

#1733085370849

12400-411: The Latin Church , in a struggle with " Teutonic Europe " and " Anglo-Saxon America " with its Anglo-Saxonism , as well as " Slavic Europe " with its Pan-Slavism . Scholarship has political origins of the term. Two Latin American historians, Uruguayan Arturo Ardao and Chilean Miguel Rojas Mix , found evidence that the term "Latin America" was used earlier than Phelan claimed, and the first use of

12600-401: The Mexican drug war . Several right-wing leaders rose to power, including Argentina's Mauricio Macri and Brazil's Michel Temer , following the impeachment of the country's first female president. In Chile , the conservative Sebastián Piñera succeeded the socialist Michelle Bachelet in 2017. In 2019, center-right Luis Lacalle Pou ended a 15-year leftist rule in Uruguay, after defeating

12800-498: The Presidio of San Diego (military post). On July 16, Franciscan friars Junípero Serra , Juan Viscaino and Fernando Parron raised and 'blessed a cross', establishing the first mission in upper Las Californias , Mission San Diego de Alcalá . Colonists began arriving in 1774. Monterey, California was established in 1770 by Father Junípero Serra and Gaspar de Portolà (first governor of Las Californias province (1767–1770), explorer and founder of San Diego and Monterey). Monterey

13000-403: The Quaternary glaciation . These people are believed to have followed herds of now-extinct pleistocene megafauna along ice-free corridors that stretched between the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets. Another route proposed is that, either on foot or using primitive boats , they migrated down the Pacific coast to South America. Evidence of the latter would since have been covered by

13200-445: The Rancho Ex-Mission San Fernando ranch which makes up large part of what is present day Los Angeles. He went on to become a California State Assemblyman and later a California State Senator. His brother former governor of Alta California (under Mexican rule) Pío Pico also became a U.S. citizen and a prominent ranch owner/businessman in California after the war. Many others were not so fortunate as droughts decimated their herds in

13400-423: The Southern Rockies and parts of the Basin and Range Province . The river flows approximately 1,450 miles (2,330 km) into the Gulf of California , during which over time it has carved out natural phenomena such as the Grand Canyon and created phenomena such as the Salton Sea . The Columbia is a large river, 1,243 miles (2,000 km) long, in central western North America and is the most powerful river on

13600-417: The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo , wherein it guaranteed full protection of all property rights for Mexican citizens—with an unspecified time limit. Many ranch owners with their thousands of acres and large herds of cattle, sheep and horses went on to live prosperous lives under U.S. rule. Former commander of the California Lancers Andrés Pico became a U.S. citizen after his return to California and acquired

13800-418: The U.S. Army Corps of Topographical Engineers . Rumors that the Californio government in California was planning to arrest and deport many of the new residents as they had in 1844 led to a degree of uncertainty. On June 14, 1846, thirty-three settlers in Sonoma Valley took preemptive action and captured the small Californio garrison of Sonoma, California without firing a shot and raised a homemade flag with

14000-484: The U.S. Navy ships in the harbor to the U.S. flag now flying over Monterey. Two days later on July 9, USS  Portsmouth , under Captain John S. Montgomery, landed 70 Marines and bluejacket sailors at Clark's Point in San Francisco Bay and captured Yerba Buena (now named San Francisco ) without firing a shot. On July 11, the Royal Navy sloop HMS  Juno entered San Francisco Bay, causing Montgomery to man his defenses. The large British ship, 2,600 tons with

14200-419: The U.S. flag . Commodore Robert F. Stockton took over as the senior U.S. military commander in California in late July 1846 and asked Frémont's force of California militia and his 60 men to form the California Battalion with U.S. Army pay and ranks with Fremont in command. The California "Republic" disbanded and William Ide enlisted in the California Battalion , when it was established in late July 1846, as

14400-642: The United Kingdom , three constituent countries of the Netherlands , three public bodies of the Netherlands, two unincorporated territories of the United States , and one uninhabited territory of the United States. In 2021 the total population of the Americas was about 1.03 billion people, divided as follows: There are three urban centers that each hold titles for being the largest population area based on

14600-627: The arrival of Europeans in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, the region was home to many indigenous peoples, including advanced civilizations, most notably from South: the Olmec , Maya , Muisca , Aztecs and Inca . The region came under control of the kingdoms of Spain and Portugal , which established colonies, and imposed Roman Catholicism and their languages. Both brought African slaves to their colonies as laborers, exploiting large, settled societies and their resources. The Spanish Crown regulated immigration, allowing only Christians to travel to

14800-520: The missions for several generations in some cases. When the missions were secularized or dismantled and the Indians did not have to live under continued friar and military control, they were left essentially to survive on their own. Many of the Native Americans reverted to their former tribal existence and left the missions, while others found they could get room and board and some clothing by working for

15000-485: The 1990s, economic stress in Ecuador during the La Década Perdida triggered considerable migration to Spain and to the U.S. Some Latin American countries seek to strengthen links between migrants and their states of origin, while promoting their integration in the receiving state. These emigrant policies focus on the rights, obligations and opportunities for participation of emigrated citizens who already live outside

15200-465: The 20th century. These settlements grew into modern California cities, including Santa Ana , San Diego , San Fernando , San Jose , Monterey , Los Alamitos , San Juan Capistrano , San Bernardino , Santa Barbara , Arvin , Mariposa , Hemet and Indio . From the 1850s until the 1960s, the Hispanics (of Spanish, Mexican and regional Native American origins) lived in relative autonomy. They practiced

15400-451: The 84,000-acre (340 km ) Rancho Suscol and other properties by Governor José Figueroa in 1834 and later. Vallejo's younger brother, Jose Manuel Salvador Vallejo (1813–1876), was granted the 22,718-acre (91.94 km ) Rancho Napa and other additional grants known as Salvador's Ranch. Over the hills of Mariano Vallejo's estate of Petaluma roamed ten thousand cattle, four to six thousand horses, and many thousands of sheep. He occupied

15600-883: The American continents, spanning the time of the original settlement in the Upper Paleolithic to European colonization during the Early Modern period . The term Pre-Columbian is used especially often in the context of the great indigenous civilizations of the Americas , such as those of Mesoamerica ( Olmec , Toltec , Teotihuacano , Zapotec , Mixtec , Aztec , Maya ) and the Andean civilizations ( Inca , Moche , Chavín , Muisca , Cañari ). Many pre-Columbian civilizations established characteristics and hallmarks which included permanent or urban settlements, agriculture, civic and monumental architecture, and complex societal hierarchies . Some of these civilizations had long faded by

15800-698: The Americans in their quarters at the Government House. Gillespie and his men withdrew from their headquarters in town to Fort Hill which, unfortunately, had no water. Gillespie was caught in a trap, badly outnumbered by the besiegers. John Brown, an American, called by the Californios Juan Flaco , meaning "Lean John", succeeded in breaking through the Californio lines and riding by horseback to San Francisco Bay (a distance of almost 400 miles (640 km)) in an amazing 52 hours where he delivered to Stockton

16000-490: The Americas , or more rarely America . When conceived as a unitary continent, the form is generally the continent of America in the singular. However, without a clarifying context, singular America in English commonly refers to the United States of America . The pre-Columbian era incorporates all period subdivisions in the history and prehistory of the Americas before the appearance of significant European influences on

16200-421: The Americas began with the first voyage of Christopher Columbus in 1492. The first Spanish settlement in the Americas was La Isabela in northern Hispaniola . This town was abandoned shortly after in favor of Santo Domingo de Guzmán , founded in 1496, the oldest American city of European foundation. This was the base from which the Spanish monarchy administered its new colonies and their expansion. Santo Domingo

16400-464: The Americas is Spanish , followed by English and Portuguese . The dominant language of Latin America is Spanish, though the most populous nation in Latin America, Brazil , speaks Portuguese . Small enclaves of French -, Dutch - and English-speaking regions also exist in Latin America, notably in French Guiana , Suriname , and Belize and Guyana respectively. Haitian Creole is dominant in

16600-579: The Americas is made up of the descendants of four large ethnic groups and their combinations. The majority of the population lives in Latin America , named for its predominant cultures, rooted in Latin Europe (including the two dominant languages, Spanish and Portuguese , both Romance languages ), more specifically in the Iberian nations of Portugal and Spain (hence the use of the term Ibero-America as

16800-485: The Americas, such as the cougar , porcupine , opossums , armadillos , and hummingbirds . The geography of the western Americas is dominated by the American Cordillera , with the Andes running along the west coast of South America and the Rocky Mountains and other North American Cordillera ranges running along the western side of North America. The 2,300-kilometer-long (1,400 mi) Appalachian Mountains run along

17000-559: The Americas. Migration continued as people moved to the Americas fleeing religious persecution or seeking economic opportunities. Millions of individuals were forcibly transported to the Americas as slaves , prisoners or indentured servants . Decolonization of the Americas began with the American Revolution and the Haitian Revolution in the late 1700s. This was followed by numerous Latin American wars of independence in

17200-586: The Atlantic Ocean. The Mackenzie River is the largest in Canada and drains 1,805,200 square kilometers (697,000 sq mi). The largest river basin in South America is that of the Amazon , which has the highest volume flow of any river on Earth. The second largest watershed of South America is that of the Paraná River , which covers about 2.5 million km . North America and South America began to develop

17400-656: The Caribbean began to achieve peaceful independence well after World War II . Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago became independent in 1962, and Guyana and Barbados both achieved independence in 1966. In the 1970s, the Bahamas , Grenada , Dominica , St. Lucia , and St. Vincent and the Grenadines all became independent of the United Kingdom, and Suriname became independent of the Netherlands. Belize , Antigua and Barbuda , and Saint Kitts and Nevis achieved independence from

17600-517: 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 primarily from French and certain West African tongues, with Amerindian , English, Portuguese and Spanish influences as well. Creole languages of mainland Latin America, similarly, are derived from European languages and various African tongues. The Garifuna language

17800-645: The Catholic faith, which meant Indigenous men were not eligible to be ordained as Catholic priests; however, Indigenous were also excluded from the jurisdiction of the Inquisition . Catholics saw military conquest and religious conquest as two parts of the assimilation of Indigenous populations, suppressing Indigenous religious practices and eliminating the Indigenous priesthood. Some worship continued underground. Jews and other non-Catholics, such as Protestants (all called "Lutherans") were banned from settling and were subject to

18000-484: The Foreign Miners' Tax discussed below forced between five thousand and fifteen thousand foreigners out of work in just a few months. According to Antonio F. Coronel's accounts, there was systematic race-influenced violence conducted by Americans to force out Californios and other Latinos. One account tells of a Frenchman and "un español" being lynched for supposed theft in 1848. Despite offers by Californios to replace

18200-523: The Hispanic towns. California's Governor Pío Pico was criticized for his alleged descent from mestizo and mulato ( mulatto ) settlers. In the 1830s, the newly formed Mexican government was experiencing difficulties, having gone through several revolts, wars, and internal conflicts and a seemingly never-ending string of Mexican Presidents . One of the problems in Mexico was the large amount of land controlled by

18400-525: The Hudson River Valley, and what later became New Jersey. The spread of new diseases brought by Europeans and African slaves killed many of the inhabitants of North America and South America, with a general population crash of Native Americans occurring in the mid-16th century, often well ahead of European contact. One of the most devastating diseases was smallpox . European immigrants were often part of state-sponsored attempts to found colonies in

18600-564: The Indigenous peoples, Europeans, Africans initially brought as slaves, and Asians, as well as new immigrants. Mixing of groups was a fact of life at contact of the Old World and the New, but colonial regimes established legal and social discrimination against non-white populations simply on the basis of perceived ethnicity and skin color. Social class was usually linked to a person's racial category, with European-born Spaniards and Portuguese on top. During

18800-519: The Inquisition. Considerable mixing of populations occurred in cities, while the countryside was largely Indigenous. At independence in the early nineteenth century, in many places in Spanish America formal racial and legal distinctions disappeared, although slavery was not uniformly abolished. Significant black populations exist in Brazil and Spanish Caribbean islands such as Cuba and Puerto Rico and

19000-407: The Latin America and Caribbean region have large-scale school feeding activities, altogether reaching 88% of primary school-age children in the region. Compared to prior generations, Latin American youth have seen an increase in their levels of education. On average, they have completed two more years of school than their parents. However, there are still 23 million children in the region between

19200-420: The Latin American population is Catholic and 19% is Protestant. Protestants are 26% in Brazil and over 40% in much of Central America. More than half of these are converts from Roman Catholicism. The entire hemisphere was settled by migrants from Asia, Europe, and Africa. Native American populations settled throughout the hemisphere before the arrival of Europeans in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and

19400-450: The Latin race just to subject it to her exploitation regime; treacherous, because she speaks of freedom and nationality, when, unable to conquer freedom for herself, she enslaves others instead!" Therefore, as Michel Gobat puts it, the term Latin America itself had an "anti-imperial genesis," and their creators were far from supporting any form of imperialism in the region, or in any other place of

19600-603: The New World. The colonization process led to significant native population declines due to disease, forced labor, and violence. They imposed their culture, destroying native codices and artwork. Colonial-era religion played a crucial role in everyday life, with the Spanish Crown ensuring religious purity and aggressively prosecuting perceived deviations like witchcraft. In the early nineteenth century nearly all of areas of Spanish America attained independence by armed struggle, with

19800-593: The Norse colonies and Europe was maintained, as James Watson Curran states: From 985 to 1410, Greenland was in touch with the world. Then silence. In 1492 the Vatican noted that no news of that country "at the end of the world" had been received for 80 years, and the bishopric of the colony was offered to a certain ecclesiastic if he would go and "restore Christianity" there. He didn't go. Although there had been previous trans-oceanic contact , large-scale European colonization of

20000-616: The Pacific Coast in the early months of the Mexican–American War. The Royal Navy Pacific Station ships in the Pacific had more men and were more heavily armed than the U.S. Navy's Pacific Squadron, but did not have orders to help or hinder the occupation of California. New orders would have taken almost two years to get back to the British ships. The Marines were stationed aboard each ship to assist in ship-to-ship combat, as snipers in

20200-530: The Pink tide lost support. The worst-hit was Venezuela, which is facing severe social and economic upheaval . Charges of against a major Brazilian conglomerate, Odebrecht , has raised allegations of corruption across the region's governments (see Operation Car Wash ). This bribery ring has become the largest corruption scandal in Latin American history. As of July 2017, the highest ranking politicians charged were former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva , who

20400-751: The Pre-Dorset cultural group, the Dorset culture was displaced by the final migrants from the Bering sea coast line, the Thule people (the ancestors of modern Inuit ), by 1000  CE . Around the same time as the Inuit migrated into Greenland, Viking settlers began arriving in Greenland in 982 and Vinland shortly thereafter, establishing a settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows , near the northernmost tip of Newfoundland . Contact between

20600-710: The Spanish and Mexican eras of California. The term "Californio" has different meanings depending on the author or source. According to the Real Academia Española , a Californio is a person native to California. Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a Californio as both a native or resident of this state and a specific ethnic group: the Spanish settlers and their descendants in California. Authors such as Douglas Monroy, Damian Bacich or Covadonga Lamar Prieto, among others, define Californios as exclusively applying to Alta California residents and their descendants.   Historians Hunt Janin and Ursula Carlson consider

20800-498: The U.S. settled in northern Mexico. When the U.S. acquired its southwest by conquest in the Mexican American War , Latin American populations did not cross the border to the U.S., the border crossed them. In the twentieth century there have been several types of migration. One is the movement of rural populations within a given country to cities in search of work, causing many Latin American cities to grow significantly. Another

21000-616: The United Kingdom in the 1980s. The Americas make up most of the land in Earth's Western Hemisphere . The northernmost point of the Americas is Kaffeklubben Island , which is the most northerly point of land on Earth. The southernmost undisputed point is Águila Islet , although the Antarctic islands of Southern Thule are sometimes taken into account. The mainland of the Americas is the world's longest north-to-south landmass. The distance between its two polar extremities, Murchison Promontory on

21200-608: The United Kingdom, starting with the Balfour Declaration of 1926 , Statute of Westminster 1931 , and ending with the patriation of the Canadian Constitution in 1982. The Dominion of Newfoundland similarly achieved independence under the Balfour Declaration and Statute of Westminster, but relinquished self-rule in 1934. It was subsequently confederated with Canada in 1949. The remaining European colonies in

21400-611: The United Nations ECLAC , Latin America is the most unequal region in the world. Inequality in Latin America has deep historical roots in the Latin European racially based Casta system instituted in Latin America during colonial times that has been difficult to eradicate because of the differences between initial endowments and opportunities among social groups have constrained the poorest's social mobility , thus causing poverty to transmit from generation to generation, and become

21600-465: The United States and Canada, but a significant number arrived in Latin America. Although Mexico tried to attract immigrants, it largely failed. As black slavery was abolished in Brazil in 1888, coffee growers recruited Japanese migrants to work in coffee plantations. There is a significant population of Japanese descent in Brazil. Cuba and Peru recruited Chinese labor in the late nineteenth century. Some Chinese immigrants who were excluded from immigrating to

21800-508: The United States had annexed the territory, were prospecting for gold in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada . Although the territory they were in had up until recently been Mexican land, Californios and other Mexicans very quickly became the minorities and were seen as the foreigners. Once the Gold Rush had truly started in 1849, the campsites were segregated by nationality, further establishing

22000-559: The United States, and more specifically in the US state of Colorado . The highest peaks of the Americas are located in the Andes , with Aconcagua of Argentina being the highest; in North America Denali (Mount McKinley) in the US state of Alaska is the tallest. Between its coastal mountain ranges, North America has vast flat areas. The Interior Plains spread over much of the continent, with low relief. The Canadian Shield covers almost 5 million km of North America and

22200-886: The West Coast of the Americas. In the far northwest of North America, the Yukon drains much of the Alaskan peninsula and flows 1,980 miles (3,190 km) from parts of Yukon and the Northwest Territory to the Pacific. Draining to the Arctic Ocean of Canada, the Mackenzie River drains waters from the Arctic Great Lakes of Arctic Canada, as opposed to the Saint-Lawrence River that drains the Great Lakes of Southern Canada into

22400-613: The ages of 13 and 17 years, only 80% are full-time students, and only 66% of these advance to secondary school. These percentages are lower among vulnerable population groups: only 75% of the poorest youth between the ages of 13 and 17 years attend school. Tertiary education has the lowest coverage, with only 70% of people between the ages of 18 and 25 years outside of the education system. Currently, more than half of low income or rural children fail to complete nine years of education. Americas The Americas , sometimes collectively called America , known initially as India Nova , are

22600-557: The ages of 4 and 17 outside of the formal education system. Estimates indicate that 30% of preschool age children (ages 4–5) do not attend school, and for the most vulnerable populations, the poor and rural, this proportion exceeds 40 percent. Among primary school age children (ages 6 to 12), attendance is almost universal; however there is still a need to enroll five million more children in the primary education system. These children mostly live in remote areas, are Indigenous or Afro-descendants and live in extreme poverty. Among people between

22800-521: The arctic tundra of Northern Canada , Greenland , and Alaska , to the tropical rainforests in Central America and South America. Humans first settled the Americas from Asia between 20,000 and 16,000 years ago. A second migration of Na-Dene speakers followed later from Asia. The subsequent migration of the Inuit into the neoarctic c.  3500 BCE completed what is generally regarded as

23000-743: The borders of the country of origin. Research on 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. In addition, the tolerance of dual citizenship has spread more in Latin America than in any other region of the world. Despite significant progress, education access and school completion remains unequal in Latin America. The region has made great progress in educational coverage; almost all children attend primary school , and access to secondary education has increased considerably. Quality issues such as poor teaching methods, lack of appropriate equipment, and overcrowding exist throughout

23200-473: The brief Mexican–American War conflicts in California. Some of the Californios and California Native Americans fought on the side of the U.S. settlers during the conflict, with some joining John Frémont's California Battalion . Before the Mexican–American War of 1846–1848, the Californios forced the Mexican appointed governor, Manuel Micheltorena , to flee back to Mexico with most of his troops. Pío Pico ,

23400-470: The cattle and horse industry in California. About 600 horses and mules and 300 cattle survived the trip. In 1776 about 200 leather-jacketed soldiers, Friars, and colonists with their families moved to what was called Yerba Buena (now San Francisco) to start building a mission and a presidio there. The leather jackets the soldiers wore consisted of several layers of hardened leather and were strong enough body armor to usually stop an Indian arrow. In California

23600-580: The cattle and horses had few enemies and plentiful grass in all but drought years and essentially grew and multiplied as feral animals—doubling roughly every two years. They partially displaced the Tule Elk and pronghorn antelope who had lived there in large herds previously. Anza selected the sites of the Presidio of San Francisco and Mission San Francisco de Asís in what is now San Francisco; on his way back to Monterey, he sited Mission Santa Clara de Asís and

23800-641: The circum-Caribbean mainland (Venezuela, Colombia, Panama), as long as in the southern part of South America and Central America (Honduras, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Ecuador, and Peru) a legacy of their use in plantations. All these areas also have significant white populations. In Brazil, coastal Indigenous peoples largely died out in the early sixteenth century, with Indigenous populations surviving far from cities, sugar plantations, and other European enterprises. Many mixed-race people in much of Latin America are tri-racial, usually of European, African, and Indigenous blood, where European (mostly Spanish/Portuguese) tends to be

24000-482: The colonial era, with a dearth initially of European women, European men and Indigenous women and African women produced what were considered mixed-race children. In Spanish America, the so-called Sociedad de castas or Sistema de castas was constructed by white elites to try to rationalize the processes at work. In the sixteenth century the Spanish crown sought to protect Indigenous populations from exploitation by white elites for their labor and land. The crown created

24200-483: The conflict (U.S. and Mexico). The battlefield memorials attest to the heroic fight and loss on both sides. Most towns in California surrendered without a shot being fired on either side. What little fighting that did occur usually involved small groups of disaffected Californios and small groups of soldiers, marines or militia . In late December, 1846, while Fremont was in Santa Barbara, Bernarda Ruíz de Rodriguez ,

24400-457: The cosmic race ", according to Mexican intellectual José Vasconcelos , thus erasing other populations. There was considerable discrimination against Asians, with calls for the expulsion of Chinese in northern Mexico during the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920) and racially motivated massacres . In a number of Latin American countries, Indigenous groups have organized explicitly as Indigenous, to claim human rights and influence political power. With

24600-410: 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 languages. Nahuatl is one of the 62 Native languages spoken by Indigenous people in Mexico, which are officially recognized by

24800-472: The crash of the Mexican economy in the 1980s. Spanish refugees fled to Mexico following the fascist victory in the Spanish Civil War (1936–38), with some 50,000 exiles finding refuge at the invitation of President Lázaro Cárdenas . Following World War II a larger wave of refugees to Latin America, many of them Jews, settled in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, and Venezuela. Some were only transiting through

25000-535: The dates and routes traveled, are subject to ongoing research and discussion. Widespread habitation of the Americas occurred after the Late Glacial Maximum , from 16,000 to 13,000 years ago. The traditional theory has been that these early migrants moved into the Beringia land bridge between eastern Siberia and present-day Alaska around 40,000–17,000 years ago, when sea levels were significantly lowered during

25200-658: The early 1800s. Between 1811 and 1825, Paraguay , Argentina , Chile , Gran Colombia , the United Provinces of Central America , Mexico , Brazil , Peru , and Bolivia gained independence from Spain and Portugal in armed revolutions. After the Dominican Republic won independence from Haiti , it was re-annexed by Spain in 1861, but reclaimed its independence in 1865 at the conclusion of the Dominican Restoration War . The last violent episode of decolonization

25400-626: The early 1860s and they could not pay back the high cost mortgages (poorly understood by the mostly illiterate ranchers) they had taken out to improve their lifestyle and subsequently lost much or all of their property when they could not be repaid. Californios did not disappear. Some people in the area still have strong identities as Californios. Thousands of people who are descended from the Californios have well-documented genealogies of their families. The developing agricultural economy of California allowed many Californios to continue living in pueblos alongside Native peoples and other Mexicans well into

25600-583: The east coast of North America from Alabama to Newfoundland . North of the Appalachians, the Arctic Cordillera runs along the eastern coast of Canada. The largest mountain ranges are the Andes and Rocky Mountains . The Sierra Nevada and the Cascade Range reach similar altitudes as the Rocky Mountains , but are significantly smaller. In North America, the greatest number of fourteeners are in

25800-445: The exceptions of Cuba and Puerto Rico . Brazil , which had become a monarchy separate from Portugal, became a republic in the late nineteenth century. Political independence from European monarchies did not result in the abolition of black slavery in the new nations, it resulted in political and economic instability in Spanish America, immediately after independence. Great Britain and the United States exercised significant influence in

26000-529: The fact that "Americans" had taken the title as the majority ethnicity in Northern California. Because the Californio "foreigners" so quickly became a minority, their claims to land protected under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo were ignored when miners overran their land and squatted. Any protests by Californios were quickly put down by hastily formed Euro-American militias, so any legal protection provided by

26200-631: The first half of the 16th century, Spanish colonists conducted raids throughout the Caribbean Basin , bringing captives from Central America, northern South America, and Florida back to Hispaniola and other Spanish settlements. France, led by Jacques Cartier and Giovanni da Verrazzano , focused primarily on North America. English explorations of the Americas were led by Giovanni Caboto and Sir Walter Raleigh . The Dutch in New Netherland confined their operations to Manhattan Island, Long Island,

26400-472: The forced migration of slaves from Africa. In the post-independence period, a number of Latin American countries sought to attract European immigrants as a source of labor as well as to deliberately change the proportions of racial and ethnic groups within their borders. Chile, Argentina, and Brazil actively recruited labor from Catholic southern Europe, where populations were poor and sought better economic opportunities. Many nineteenth-century immigrants went to

26600-507: The future state of Oregon 's border with about 30 soldiers and 30 scouts and hunters and took command of the "Republic" in the name of the United States. Frémont began to recruit a militia from among the new settlers living around Sutter's Fort to join with his forces. Many of these settlers had just arrived over the California Trail and many more would continue to arrive after July 1846 when they got to California. The Donner Party were

26800-408: The globe. The distinction between Latin America and Anglo-America is a convention based on the predominant languages in the Americas by which Romance language- and English-speaking cultures are distinguished. Neither area is culturally or linguistically homogeneous; in substantial portions of Latin America (e.g., highland Peru , Bolivia , Mexico, Guatemala ), Native American cultures and, to

27000-1057: The government as "national languages" along with Spanish. Other European languages spoken in Latin America include: English, by half of the current population in Puerto Rico, as well as in nearby countries that may or may not be considered Latin American, like Belize and Guyana , and spoken by descendants of British settlers in Argentina and Chile. German is spoken in southern Brazil, southern Chile, portions of Argentina, Venezuela and Paraguay; Italian in Brazil , Argentina, Venezuela, and Uruguay; Ukrainian , Polish , and Russian in southern Brazil and Argentina; and Welsh , in southern Argentina. Non-European or Asian languages include Japanese in Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, and Paraguay, Korean in Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, and Chile, Arabic in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, and Chile, and Chinese throughout South America. Countries like Venezuela, Argentina and Brazil have their own dialects or variations of German and Italian. In several nations, especially in

27200-521: The highest levels of income inequality in the world. The following table lists all the countries in Latin America indicating a valuation of the country's Human Development Index , GDP at purchasing power parity per capita, measurement of inequality through the Gini index , measurement of poverty through the Human Poverty Index , a measure of extreme poverty based on people living on less than 1.25 dollars

27400-509: The indigenous peoples in much of the Americas. Decolonization of the Americas began with the American Revolution in the 1770s and largely ended with the Spanish–American War in the late 1890s. Currently, almost all of the population of the Americas resides in independent countries; however, the legacy of the colonization and settlement by Europeans is that the Americas share many common cultural traits, most notably Christianity and

27600-512: The initial peopling of the Americas; Na Dene speakers found predominantly in North American groups at varying genetic rates with the highest frequency found among the Athabaskans at 42% derive from this second wave. Linguists and biologists have reached a similar conclusion based on analysis of Amerindian language groups and ABO blood group system distributions. Then the people of

27800-408: The large ranches that took over the former mission lands and livestock. Many natives who had learned to ride horses and knew a smattering of Spanish were recruited to become vaqueros ( cowboys or cattle herders) that worked the cattle and horses on the large ranchos and did other work. Some of these rancho owners and their hired hands would make up the bulk of the few hundred Californios fighting in

28000-493: The larger group of countries where Spanish and Portuguese languages prevailed. Research has shown that the idea that a part of the Americas has a linguistic and cultural affinity with the Romance cultures as a whole can be traced back to the 1830s, in the writing of the French Saint-Simonian Michel Chevalier , who postulated that a part of the Americas was inhabited by people of a " Latin race ", and that it could, therefore, ally itself with " Latin Europe ", ultimately overlapping

28200-450: The last settlers to use the Anza trail as the Quechans (Yumas) closed the trail for the next 40 years shortly after they had passed over it. Almost none of the settlers was españoles (Spanish); the rest had casta (caste) designations such as mestizo , indio , and negro . Some classifications were changed in the California Census of 1790, as often happened in colonial Spanish America. The settlers and escort soldiers who founded

28400-475: The last travelers on the trail in late 1846 when they were caught by early snow while they were trying to get across the Sierra Nevada . Under orders from John D. Sloat , Commodore of the Pacific Squadron , the U.S. Marines and some of the bluejacket sailors from the U.S. Navy sailing ships USS  Savannah with the Cyane and Levant captured the Alta California capital city of Monterey, California on July 7, 1846. The only shots fired were salutes by

28600-421: The mainland, while Nordostrundingen , in Greenland, is the most easterly point of the continental shelf. South America broke off from the west of the supercontinent Gondwana around 135 million years ago, forming its own continent. Around 15 million years ago, the collision of the Caribbean Plate and the Pacific Plate resulted in the emergence of a series of volcanoes along the border that created

28800-402: The mid-nineteenth century and widespread poverty, Germans, Spaniards, and Italians immigrated to Latin America in large numbers, welcomed by Latin American governments both as a source of labor as well as a way to increase the size of their white populations. In Argentina, many Afro-Argentines married Europeans. In twentieth-century Brazil, sociologist Gilberto Freyre proposed that Brazil was

29000-469: The mid-twentieth century, especially in capital cities , or in the case of Brazil, traditional economic and political hubs founded in the colonial era. In Mexico, the rapid growth and modernization in country's north has seen the growth of Monterrey , in Nuevo León . The following is a list of the ten largest metropolitan areas in Latin America. Entries in "bold" indicate they are ranked the highest. Latin American populations are diverse, with descendants of

29200-425: The middle and bottom of the income distribution , as they rely mostly on wages for income. In addition, the report noted that 'highly-unequal land distribution has created social and political tensions and is a source of economic inefficiency , as small landholders frequently lack access to credit and other resources to increase productivity , while big owners may not have had enough incentive to do so. According to

29400-430: The missions, presidios , and pueblo (town) dwellers. The mission lands and herds formerly controlled by the missions were usually distributed to the settlers around each mission. Since most had almost no money, the land was distributed or granted free or at very little cost to friends and families of the government officials (or those who paid the highest bribes). The Californio Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo , for example,

29600-417: The most sophisticated textually written language, but since texts were largely confined to the religious and administrative elite, traditions were passed down orally. Oral traditions also prevailed in other major Indigenous groups including, but not limited to the Aztecs and other Nahuatl speakers, Quechua and Aymara of the Andean regions, the Quiché of Central America, the Tupi-Guaraní in today's Brazil,

29800-491: The nation of Haiti , where French is also spoken. Native languages are more prominent in Latin America than in Anglo-America , with Nahuatl , Quechua , Aymara , and Guaraní as the most common. Various other native languages are spoken with less frequency across both Anglo-America and Latin America. Creole languages other than Haitian Creole are also spoken in parts of Latin America. Californios The term Californio (historical, regional Spanish for 'Californian')

30000-781: The new California legislature was ineffective when the threat of violence and lynchings loomed. Even if Californios were able to win their land back in court, often lawyer's fees cost large sums of land that left them with a fraction of their former wealth. Many Latino miners were experienced due to learning a "dry-digging" technique in the Mexican mining state of Sonora . Their early success drew praise and respect from Euro-American miners, they eventually became jealous and used threats and violence to force Mexican workers out of their plots and into less lucrative ones. In addition to these informal forms of discrimination, Anglo miners also worked to establish Jim Crow -like laws to prevent Latinos from mining altogether. In 1851, mob violence as well as

30200-402: The obsolescence of racial theory... But it is not easy to declare something dead when it can hardly be said to have existed," going on to say, "The term is here to stay, and it is important." Following in the tradition of Chilean writer Francisco Bilbao, who excluded Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay from his early conceptualization of Latin America, Chilean historian Jaime Eyzaguirre has criticized

30400-558: The passage of anti-colonial resolutions in the United Nations General Assembly and the signing of resolutions for Indigenous rights, the Indigenous are able to act to guarantee their existence within nation-states with legal standing . Spanish is the predominant language of Latin America. It is spoken as first language by about 60% of the population. Portuguese is spoken by about 30%, and about 10% speak other languages such as Quechua , Mayan languages , Guaraní , Aymara , Nahuatl , English , French , Dutch and Italian . Portuguese

30600-425: The peace agreement she and Fremont had forged. Fremont and two of Pico's officers agreed to the terms for a surrender, and Jose Antonio Carrillo penned Articles of Capitulation in both English and Spanish. The first seven articles were almost entirely from Ruiz's suggestions. The story of Bernarda Ruiz is based largely on two short paragraphs and a footnote in Fremont's memoirs, first published in 1887. Many aspects of

30800-401: The peace. In Pueblo de Los Angeles , the largest city in California with about 3,000 residents, things might have remained peaceful, except that Major Gillespie placed the town under martial law, greatly angering some of the Californios. On September 23, 1846, about 200 Californios under Californio General José María Flores staged a revolt, the Siege of Los Angeles , and exchanged shots with

31000-424: The pink tide, there was a Conservative wave across Latin America. In Mexico, the rightwing National Action Party (PAN) won the presidential election of 2000 with its candidate Vicente Fox , ending the 71-year rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party . He was succeed six-years later by another conservative, Felipe Calderón (2006–2012), who attempted to crack down on the Mexican drug cartels and instigated

31200-401: The ports in Mexican California and elsewhere along the Pacific Coast. The only other United States military force in California at the time was a small exploratory expedition led by Lieutenant Colonel John C. Frémont , made up of 30 topographical, surveying, etc. army troops and about 25 men hired as guides and hunters. The Frémont expedition had been dispatched to California, in 1845, from

31400-602: The post-independence era, resulting in a form of neo-colonialism , where political sovereignty remained in place, but foreign powers exercised considerable power in the economic sphere. Newly independent nations faced domestic and interstate conflicts, struggling with economic instability and social inequality. The 20th century brought U.S. intervention and the Cold War 's impact on the region, with revolutions in countries like Cuba influencing Latin American politics. The late 20th and early 21st centuries saw shifts towards left-wing governments, followed by conservative resurgences, and

31600-608: The primary cultural focus of the Californio population became the Vaquero tradition practiced by the landed gentry , who received large land grants and created the Rancho system . In the 1820s–40s, American and European settlers increasingly migrated to Mexican California. Many married Californio women and became Mexican citizens, learning Spanish and often converting to Catholicism , the state religion. They are often also considered Californios, for their adherence to Californio language and culture. In 2004 studies estimated that between 300,000 and 500,000 have ancestry descended from

31800-441: The pueblo San Jose in the Santa Clara Valley but did not initially leave settlers to settle them. Mission San Francisco de Asís (or Mission Dolores), the sixth Spanish mission, was founded on June 29, 1776, by Lieutenant José Joaquin Moraga and Father Francisco Palóu (a companion of Junípero Serra). On November 29, 1777, El Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe (The Town of Saint Joseph of Guadalupe now called simply San Jose)

32000-415: The region's political turmoil, compounded by the rise of narcotrafficking and guerrilla warfare . During the Central American wars of the 1970s to the 1990s, many Salvadorans, Guatemalans, and Hondurans migrated to the U.S. to escape narcotrafficking, gangs, and poverty. As living conditions deteriorated in Venezuela under Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro , many left for neighboring Colombia and Ecuador. In

32200-423: The region, but others stayed and created communities. A number of Nazis escaped to Latin America, living under assumed names, in an attempt to avoid attention and prosecution. In the aftermath of the Cuban Revolution, middle class and elite Cubans moved to the U.S., particularly to Florida. Some fled Chile for the U.S. and Europe after the 1973 military coup. Colombians migrated to Spain and the United Kingdom during

32400-415: The region. These issues lead to adolescents dropping out of the educational system early. Most educational systems in the region have implemented various types of administrative and institutional reforms that have enabled reach for places and communities that had no access to education services in the early 1990s. School meal programs are also employed to expand access to education, and at least 23 countries in

32600-438: The reported amount of gold stolen, they were still hanged. In addition, later in the Gold Rush, Coronel and his group found a rich vein of gold on the American River. When Euro-Americans caught wind of this, they invaded the claim armed and insisted it was their plot, forcing out Coronel and ending his mining career. Accounts like these show the harsh and violent living and working conditions that Californios were faced with during

32800-435: The rigging, and to defend against boarders. They could also be detached for use as armed infantry . In addition, there were some "bluejacket" sailors on each ship that could be detached for shore duty as artillery crews and infantry, leaving the ship functional though short handed. The artillery used were often small naval cannon converted to land use. The Pacific Squadron had orders, in the event of war with Mexico, to seize

33000-523: The same American flag originally flown over Los Angeles . Los Angeles was retaken without a fight on January 10, 1847. Following their defeat at the Battle of La Mesa , the Californio government signed the Treaty of Cahuenga , which ended the war in California on January 13, 1847. The main Californio military force, known as the Californio lancers , was disbanded. On January 16, 1847, Commodore Stockton appointed Frémont military governor of U.S. territorial California. Some Californios fought on both sides of

33200-433: The same day—June 1, 1863. In some cases particular mission land and livestock were split into parcels and then distributed by drawing lots. In nearly all cases the Indians got very little of the mission land or livestock. Whether any of the proceeds of these sales made their way back to Mexico City is unknown. These lands had been worked by settlers and the much larger settlements of local Native American Kumeyaay peoples on

33400-412: The settlement by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas . The first known European settlement in the Americas was by the Norse explorer Leif Erikson . However, the colonization never became permanent and was later abandoned. The Spanish voyages of Christopher Columbus from 1492 to 1504 resulted in permanent contact with European (and subsequently, other Old World ) powers, which eventually led to

33600-443: The southerly Dixie Alley in the North American late-winter and early spring seasons. Often parts of the Caribbean are exposed to the violent effects of hurricanes. These weather systems are formed by the collision of dry, cool air from Canada and wet, warm air from the Atlantic. With coastal mountains and interior plains, the Americas have several large river basins that drain the continents. The largest river basin in North America

33800-434: The state government in December, 1851. It was named Benicia for the General's wife, Francisca Benicia Carillo de Vallejo. The General intended that the prospective city be named "Francisca" after his wife, but this name was dropped when the city of Yerba Buena changed its name to "San Francisco" on January 30, 1847. Benicia was the third site selected to serve as the California state capital, and its newly constructed city hall

34000-408: The story cannot be verified in primary source materials. On January 13, at a deserted rancho at the north end of Cahuenga Pass (modern-day North Hollywood), John Fremont, Andres Pico and six others signed the Articles of Capitulation, which became known as the Treaty of Cahuenga. Fighting ceased, thus ending the war in California. In 1848, Congress set up a Board of Land Commissioners to determine

34200-707: The strongest of the three. In most of Brazil and the Spanish Caribbean, the average ancestral mix is European and African blood, with much smaller amounts of indigenous blood. While the opposite is true in many mainland Spanish-speaking Latin American countries like Venezuela, Colombia, and Panama, where the average ancestral mix is of European and indigenous blood, with smaller amounts of African. But in Mexico, and other places in northern Central America and southern South America, mixed race people tend to be completely of European and indigenous blood. Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Brazil have dominant Mulatto/Triracial populations ("Pardo" in Brazil), in Brazil and Cuba, there

34400-464: The term 'Latin America' had already been used in 1856 by Central Americans and South Americans protesting US expansion into the Southern Hemisphere". Edward Shawcross summarizes Ardao's and Rojas Mix's findings in the following way: "Ardao identified the term in a poem by a Colombian diplomat and intellectual resident in France, José María Torres Caicedo, published on 15 February 1857 in a French based Spanish-language newspaper, while Rojas Mix located it in

34600-581: The term Latin America for "disguising" and "diluting" the Spanish character of a region (i.e. Hispanic America ) with the inclusion of nations that, according to him, do not share the same pattern of conquest and colonization . The Francophone part of North America which includes Quebec , Acadia , and Louisiana is generally excluded from the definition of Latin America. Latin America can be subdivided into several subregions based on geography, politics, democracy , demographics and culture. The basic geographical subregions are North America, Central America,

34800-665: The term was in fact in opposition to imperialist projects in the Americas. Ardao wrote about this subject in his book Génesis de la idea y el nombre de América latina (Genesis of the Idea and the Name of Latin America, 1980), and Miguel Rojas Mix in his article "Bilbao y el hallazgo de América latina: Unión continental, socialista y libertaria" (Bilbao and the Finding of Latin America: a Continental, Socialist, and Libertarian Union, 1986). As Michel Gobat points out in his article "The Invention of Latin America: A Transnational History of Anti-Imperialism, Democracy , and Race", "Arturo Ardao, Miguel Rojas Mix, and Aims McGuinness have revealed [that]

35000-408: The terms "Spanish", "Mexican", and sometimes, "colored"; some Californios even intermarried with Mexican Americans (those whose ancestors were refugees escaping the Mexican Revolution in 1910). Alexander V. King has estimated that there were between 300,000 and 500,000 descendants of Californios in 2004. In 1848, gold is discovered at Sutter's Mill , near Coloma , California. This discovery

35200-410: The territories of the Americas under the colonial rule of European powers. In South America, Portugal played a significant role in the trafficking of enslaved Africans, with estimates suggesting that around 40% of all Africans forcibly brought to the Americas were taken to Brazil alone, to work primarily in sugar cane plantations, mining, and agricultural endeavors. In North America, the British Empire

35400-424: The three main demographic concepts: In accordance with these definitions, the three largest population centers in the Americas are: Mexico City , anchor to the largest metropolitan area in the Americas; New York City, anchor to the largest urban area in the Americas; and São Paulo, the largest city proper in the Americas. All three cities maintain Alpha classification and large scale influence. The population of

35600-425: The time of the first permanent European arrivals ( c.  late 15th –early 16th centuries), and are known only through archeological investigations. Others were contemporary with this period, and are also known from historical accounts of the time. A few, such as the Maya, had their own written records. However, most Europeans of the time viewed such texts as pagan, and much was destroyed in Christian pyres. Only

35800-503: The town without firing a shot. Leaving about 40 men to garrison San Diego, Fremont continued on to Los Angeles where on August 13, with the Navy band playing and colors flying, the combined forces of Stockton and Frémont entered Pueblo de Los Angeles, without a man killed nor shot fired. U.S. Marine Lieutenant Archibald Gillespie , Frémont's second in command, was appointed military commander of Los Angeles with an inadequate force from 30 to 50 California Battalion troops stationed there to keep

36000-417: The towns of San José de Guadalupe , Yerba Buena (San Francisco), Monterey, San Diego and La Reina de Los Ángeles were primarily mestizo and of mixed Negro and Native American ancestry from the province of Sonora y Sinaloa in Mexico. Recruiters in Mexico of the Fernando Rivera y Moncada expedition and other expeditions later, who were charged with founding an agricultural community in Alta California, had

36200-422: The union of all Latin American countries as the only way to defend their territories against further foreign US interventions. Both also rejected European imperialism, claiming that the return of European countries to non-democratic forms of government was another danger for Latin American countries, and used the same word to describe the state of European politics at the time: "despotism." Several years later, during

36400-663: The use of West European languages: primarily Spanish , English , Portuguese , French , and, to a lesser extent, Dutch . The Americas are home to more than a billion inhabitants, two-thirds of whom reside in the United States , Brazil , and Mexico . It is home to eight megacities ( metropolitan areas with 10 million inhabitants or more): Greater Mexico City (21.2 million), São Paulo (21.2 million), New York City (19.7 million), Los Angeles (18.8 million), Buenos Aires (15.6 million), Rio de Janeiro (13.0 million), Bogotá (10.4 million), and Lima (10.1 million). The name "America"

36600-421: The validity of Mexican land grants in California. California Senator William M. Gwin presented a bill that, when approved by the Senate and the House on March 3, 1851, became the California Land Act of 1851 . It stated that unless grantees presented evidence supporting their title within two years, the property would automatically pass back into the public domain . Rancho owners cited the articles VIII and X of

36800-454: Was 3 miles (5 km) from the original San Jose pueblo site in neighboring Santa Clara . Mission San José was not founded until 1797, about 20 miles (30 km) north of San Jose in what is now Fremont . The Los Angeles Pobladores ("villagers") is the name given to the 44 original Sonorans—22 adults and 22 children—who settled the Pueblo of Los Angeles in 1781. The pobladores were agricultural families from Sonora , Mexico. They were

37000-403: Was California's capitol from February 11, 1853, to February 25, 1854. Vallejo gave the Rancho Suscol to his oldest daughter, Epifania Guadalupe Vallejo, on April 3, 1851, as a wedding present when she married U.S. Army General John H. Frisbie. It is unknown what he gave as a wedding present when his two daughters Natalia and Jovita married the brothers, Attila Haraszthy and Agoston Haraszthy , on

37200-485: Was arrested, and former Peruvian presidents Ollanta Humala and Alejandro Toledo , who fled to the United States and was extradited back to Peru. The COVID-19 pandemic proved a political challenge for many unstable Latin American democracies, with scholars identifying a decline in civil liberties as a result of opportunistic emergency powers. This was especially true for countries with strong presidential regimes, such as Brazil . Wealth inequality in Latin America and

37400-556: Was first published in Monterey on August 15, 1846, after the city's occupation by the U.S. Navy's Pacific Squadron on July 7, 1846. Late in 1775, Colonel Juan Bautista de Anza led an overland expedition over the Gila River trail he had discovered in 1774 to bring colonists from Sonora New Spain (Mexico) to California to settle two missions , one presidio , and one pueblo (town). Anza led 240 friars, soldiers and colonists with their families. They started out with 695 horses and mules and 385 Texas Longhorn bulls and cows—starting

37600-426: Was first recorded in 1507. A two-dimensional globe created by Martin Waldseemüller was the earliest recorded use of the term. The name was also used (together with the related term Amerigen ) in the Cosmographiae Introductio , apparently written by Matthias Ringmann , in reference to South America. It was applied to both North and South America by Gerardus Mercator in 1538. "America" derives from Americus ,

37800-425: Was founded by José Joaquín Moraga on the first pueblo -town not associated with a mission or a military post ( presidio ) in Alta California. The original San Jose settlers were part of the original group of 200 settlers and soldiers that had originally settled in Yerba Buena (San Francisco). Mission Santa Clara , founded in 1777, was the eighth mission founded and closest mission to San Jose. Mission Santa Clara

38000-447: Was further popularized by French emperor Napoleon III 's government of political strongman that in the 1860s as Latin America 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

38200-440: Was heavily involved in the transatlantic slave trade, with the establishment of colonies such as Virginia, where enslaved Africans were primarily used as labor in tobacco plantations and later in other agricultural and domestic sectors. This system perpetuated for centuries, shaping the socio-economic landscape of all nations of the hemisphere. After the Haitian Revolution led by Jean-Jacques Dessalines , which started in 1791 and

38400-401: Was made only nine days before the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed, which turned over California to the United States as a result of the Mexican–American War. From the end of 1849 to the end of 1852, the population in California increased from 107,000 to 264,000 due to the California Gold Rush . In early 1849, approximately 6,000 Mexicans, many of whom were Californios who remained after

38600-439: Was originally applied by and to the Spanish-speaking residents of Las Californias during the periods of Spanish California and Mexican California , between 1683 and 1848. The first Californios were the children of the early Spanish military expeditions into northern reaches of the Californias. They established the presidios of California and subsequently enabled the foundation of the California mission system . Later,

38800-423: Was reputed to be the richest man in California before the California Gold Rush . Vallejo oversaw the secularization of Mission San Francisco Solano and the distributions of its roughly 1,000,000 acres (4,000 km ). He founded the towns of Sonoma and Petaluma, California , owned Mare Island and the future town site of Benicia, California , and was granted the 66,622-acre (269.61 km ) Rancho Petaluma ,

39000-442: Was settled with two friars and about 40 men and served as the capital of California from 1777 to 1849. The nearby Carmel Mission , in Carmel, California was moved there after a year in Monterey to keep the mission and its Mission Indians away from the Monterey Presidio soldiers. It was the headquarters of the original Alta California province missions headed by Father-President Junípero Serra from 1770 until his death in 1784—he

39200-445: Was subject to frequent raids by English and French pirates . On the continent, Panama City on the Pacific coast of Central America, founded on August 15, 1519, played an important role, being the base for the Spanish conquest of South America. Conquistador Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón established San Miguel de Guadalupe , the first European settlement in what is now the United States , on the Pee Dee River in South Carolina . During

39400-422: Was the gente de razón , a term literally meaning "people of reason". It designated peoples who were culturally Hispanic (that is, they were not living in traditional Native American communities) and had adopted Christianity . This served to distinguish the Mexican Indio settlers and converted Californian Indios from the barbaro (barbarian) Californian Native Americans, who had not converted or become part of

39600-461: Was the Cuban War of Independence which became the Spanish–American War , which resulted in the independence of Cuba in 1898, and the transfer of sovereignty over Puerto Rico from Spain to the United States. Peaceful decolonization began with the United States's purchase of Louisiana from France in 1803, Florida from Spain in 1819, of Alaska from Russia in 1867, and the Danish West Indies from Denmark in 1916. Canada became independent of

39800-484: Was the largest and richest landowner in Mexico and its provinces. In California the situation was even more pronounced, as the Franciscan friars held over 90% of all settled property, supposedly in trust for the mission Indians . In 1834, secularization laws that voided the mission control of lands in the northern settlements under Mexican rule were enacted. The missions directed thousands of Indians in herding livestock, growing crops and orchards, weaving cloth, etc. for

40000-449: Was the only successful slave revolt in history, the world's first black republic was established. It started with the massacre of the white population, between 3,000 and 5,000 white men and women of all ages were killed. Dessalines declared: — Dessalines, first president of the Republic of Haiti, 1804 The most prevalent faiths in the Americas are as follows: Other faiths include Buddhism ; Hinduism ; Sikhism ; Baháʼí Faith ;

#848151