People of South America
Majority of the South American population are Mestizos, a mixed Indian and European origins. Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Paraguay constitute considerable Indian population. In Chile, Argentina, and Southern part of Brazil, majority of the population are Europeans. Many Brazilians claim African heritage and Guianas are a mosaic of East Indians, Indonesians, Africans, Creoles and Chinese
South Americans are not a singular people, and the
distinct cultures and histories of the immense Latin
American region defy clear or facile definitions. It is
impossible to assign a general physiognomic characterization
to “Latin Americans.” The people are descendents
of Native Americans, Europeans, Africans,
and people of Middle Eastern and Asian origin. The
distribution of these peoples and their descendents varies
throughout the region and reflects a dynamic
sociopolitical and economic exchange over a lengthy
time period. The largest concentrations of Asians in
Latin America are found in Peru (mostly descendents
of Chinese workers who migrated in the nineteenth
century) and Brazil (mostly Japanese in origin, who
migrated to Brazil and settled primarily in the city of
São Paulo in the first half of the twentieth century,
particularly in the interwar years).
People of African
descent are concentrated in the Northeast of Brazil
(where they were forced to work as slaves during the
sugar plantation boom of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries), on the north coast of South America, the
northern Pacific coast of South America (including the
Colombian Chocó, the lowlands of Ecuador, and the
northwestern region of Peru), and the Caribbean is Latin Americans are not a singular people, and the
distinct cultures and histories of the immense Latin
American region defy clear or facile definitions. It is
impossible to assign a general physiognomic characterization
to “Latin Americans.” The people are descendents
of Native Americans, Europeans, Africans,
and people of Middle Eastern and Asian origin. The
distribution of these peoples and their descendents varies
throughout the region and reflects a dynamic
sociopolitical and economic exchange over a lengthy
time period. The largest concentrations of Asians in
Latin America are found in Peru (mostly descendents
of Chinese workers who migrated in the nineteenth
century) and Brazil (mostly Japanese in origin, who
migrated to Brazil and settled primarily in the city of
São Paulo in the first half of the twentieth century,
particularly in the interwar years).
Latin America, it is important to note, is a remarkable
melting pot—more so, perhaps, than the United
States. Most Latin Americans, culturally and racially, fall
somewhere “in between.” Categories that are normally
assigned in the United States (black or white, for example)
fail to capture the reality of Latin American
mestizaje, or race-mixing, over time. The nature of contact
and conquest, the number and influence of Native
American communities, and the African presence all influence
the contour of mestizaje in Latin America and
make it impossible to draw exact definitions when discussing
the Latin American people. Yet, though racially
mixed over time and place, social (and racial) segregation
continues to pose historic challenges to Latin American
citizens and societies.
Portuguese is spoken by about
185 million residents of Brazil, while Spanish is the
dominant language in the rest of Latin America. However,
large percentages of the populations of Peru,
Bolivia, and Guatemala speak Native American languages,
including Quechua, Aymara, and Quiché. The
official language of Paraguay is not Spanish but
Guaraní.
