Latin Americans

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Latin Americans are the citizens of twenty-one countries and territories stretching from Mexico in North America down through Central and South America to the Caribbean islands of Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. What makes this population so remarkable is not its size but its sheer complexity. Latin America holds the world's largest diasporas of Spaniards, Portuguese, Africans, Italians, Lebanese and Japanese people on the planet. How did a single region come to host that extraordinary range of ancestries? And what does it actually mean, in daily life, to call oneself Latin American? Those are the questions this documentary sets out to answer.

• 2. A Region Defined by Language

  ›

  Romance languages are what bind the region together in the first place. Latin America is defined as the part of the Americas where languages descended from Latin, chiefly Spanish and Portuguese but also French, are primarily spoken. Spanish is the official language of most mainland countries and three Caribbean nations: Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, where it shares official status with English. Portuguese belongs to Brazil alone, the biggest and most populous country in the entire region.

  French takes a more fragmented path through the region. Haiti speaks it on the western third of Hispaniola, and it is also spoken in the French overseas departments of French Guiana on the South American mainland and in the Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique. Dutch is official in Suriname and certain Caribbean islands, but because Dutch is a Germanic rather than a Romance language, those territories are not counted as part of Latin America.

  Indigenous languages have official standing in several countries. In Bolivia, Aymara, Quechua and Guarani all hold official status alongside Spanish. Guarani is co-official with Spanish in Paraguay and spoken by a majority of Paraguayans, most of whom are bilingual. In Peru, Quechua is an official language alongside Spanish and any indigenous language that predominates in a local area. Colombia takes a sweeping position, recognizing every indigenous language spoken within its territory as official, though fewer than one percent of its population are native speakers of those languages.

  Creole languages add another layer. The most widely spoken is Haitian Creole, derived primarily from French and certain West African tongues, with indigenous, English, Portuguese and Spanish influences woven in. Antillean Creole French is spoken in the Lesser Antilles, including Saint Lucia, Dominica, Martinique and Guadeloupe. Other European languages also persist in pockets: German in southern Brazil, southern Chile and parts of Argentina; Italian in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Venezuela; Welsh in southern Argentina; and Hebrew and Yiddish among Jewish communities in Argentina and Brazil.

• 3. Roots of a Mixed Population

  ›

  The indigenous population of Latin America arrived during the Lithic stage, long before any European contact. After 1492, they experienced tremendous population decline, especially in the early decades of colonization. Numbers have since recovered; by some estimates the indigenous population now surpasses sixty million, though with the growth of other groups, Amerindians are a majority today only in Bolivia. Guatemala has a large Amerindian minority comprising 41% of its population. In Mexico, the official 2005 census recorded 9.8% indigenous, though broader estimates place it at 21%, representing one of the largest indigenous populations in the Americas in absolute numbers.

  Iberian colonists began arriving in large numbers from the late fifteenth century. Portuguese settled Brazil while Spaniards took the rest of the region, bringing their languages, the Catholic faith and Iberian cultural traditions. After most of Latin America gained independence in the 1810s and 1820s, a new wave of immigration reshaped the population further. Italians formed the largest group among these later arrivals, followed by Spaniards and Portuguese. Alongside them came French, Germans, Greeks, Poles, Ukrainians, Russians, Croats, Serbs, Latvians, Lithuanians, English, Jews, Irish and Welsh.

  Millions of African slaves were brought to Latin America from the sixteenth century onward, most sent to the Caribbean and Brazil. People identified today as Black are most numerous in Brazil, at more than twenty million, and in Haiti, at more than nine million. Significant Black populations also live in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Panama and Colombia. Intermixing between enslaved Africans and Amerindians was especially prevalent in Colombia and Brazil, often because enslaved people fled and were taken in by indigenous communities. In Spanish-speaking nations the mixed-ancestry people from these unions are called zambos; in Brazil they are known as cafuzos.

• 4. The Many Faces of Mestizaje

  ›

  Mestizos, people of mixed European and Amerindian descent, make up the majority of the population in half the countries of Latin America and form large minorities in nearly all the other mainland nations. Intermixing between Europeans and Amerindians began early in the colonial period and was extensive, producing a category of identity that is now central to how millions of people understand themselves.

  Mulattoes, of mixed European and African ancestry, are also numerous across the region. They form a majority in the Dominican Republic and are a significant presence in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Colombia and Ecuador. Brazil is home to Latin America's largest mulatto population.

  A 2005 survey of racial distribution across the region, counting a total population of 635,457,371, found that whites made up 36.1%, mestizos 30.3%, mulattoes 20.3%, Amerindians 9.2%, blacks 3.2%, Asians 0.7% and zambos 0.2%. Self-identification surveys conducted by Latinobarometro across 18 countries from 2007 through 2011 produced a somewhat different weighted average: 34% mestizo, 33% white, 11% Amerindian, 8% mulatto, 6% black, with 2% selecting other categories. Those numbers reveal not only the diversity of the population but the gap between how researchers count and how people describe themselves.

• 5. Asian Roots in Latin America

  ›

  The first Asians to settle in Latin America were Filipinos, arriving as a result of Spain's trade networks linking Asia and the Americas. That early presence was a product of colonial commerce, and it laid a foundation for much larger migrations that followed.

  Brazil now holds the most concentrated Asian communities in the region. The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics identifies the country's largest Asian communities as coming from West Asia and East Asia. Estimates suggest 7 to 10 million Brazilians are of Lebanese descent. The 2010 census recorded around 2 million Brazilians self-identifying as "Yellow," the census term for East Asian descent. Brazil is home to the largest ethnic Japanese community outside Japan, estimated as high as 1.5 million, along with around 200,000 ethnic Chinese and 100,000 ethnic Koreans. Ethnic Koreans also number in the tens of thousands in Argentina and Mexico.

  Lebanese and Syrian descendants have formed notable communities in Mexico and Argentina as well. In Guadeloupe, an estimated 14% of the population is of East Asian descent. Latin America also holds the largest Palestinian diaspora outside the Arab states. The region's Asian-heritage population is a reminder that migration into Latin America drew from nearly every corner of the world, not only from Europe and Africa.

• 6. Faith Across the Continent

  ›

  About 90% of Latin Americans are Christians, and roughly 71% consider themselves Catholic. That makes Latin America, in absolute terms, the world's second largest Christian population, after Europe. Iberian colonists brought the Catholic faith when they arrived from the late fifteenth century onward, and its roots run deep across the region.

  Protestant denominations are growing, with Brazil, Guatemala and Puerto Rico showing the strongest increases. Argentina stands apart in one particular way: it hosts the largest communities of both Jews and Muslims in Latin America.

  Indigenous religions and rituals are practiced in countries with large indigenous populations, especially Bolivia, Guatemala, Mexico and Peru. Afro-Latin American religions, including Santeria, Candomble, Umbanda, Macumba and Vodou, are practiced in countries with large Afro-Latin American populations, particularly Cuba, Brazil, the Dominican Republic and Haiti. Religious life in Latin America is therefore not a single story but a set of overlapping traditions shaped by every group that has made the region home.

• 7. A Population on the Move

  ›

  The 2005 Colombian census recorded about 3,331,107 Colombians living abroad. Estimates at the time placed the number of Brazilians overseas at around 2 million. Some 1.5 to 2 million Salvadorans were residing in the United States at that point. At least 1.5 million Ecuadorians had gone abroad, mainly to the United States and Spain. Approximately 1.5 million Dominicans lived outside their country, mostly in the United States, and more than 1.3 million Cubans were living abroad, the majority in the United States.

  An estimated 700,000 Bolivians were living in Argentina as of 2006, with another 33,000 in the United States. Central Americans living abroad in 2005 numbered 3,314,300 in total; Salvadorans made up the largest share at 1,128,701, followed by 685,713 Guatemalans, 683,520 Nicaraguans, 414,955 Hondurans, 215,240 Panamanians and 127,061 Costa Ricans.

  As of 2006, Costa Rica and Chile were the only two countries in the region with positive global migration rates, meaning more people were moving in than moving out. The principal destinations for Latin Americans internationally are the United States, Spain, France, Canada, Italy and Japan. One largely forgotten chapter of this migration story: Spanish colonial era censuses recorded that Mexicans and Peruvians composed 2.33% of the population of the Philippines during the 1600s, a trace of the old Pacific trade routes that once connected Latin America to Asia.