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SOUTH AMERICA is a cornucopia of natural resources, a treasure house of
ecological variety. It is also a continent of striking human diversity and
geographic extremes. Yet in spite of that, most South Americans share a set of
cultural similarities. Most of the continent’s inhabitants are properly termed
“Latin” Americans. This means that they speak a Romance language (one
closely related to Latin), particularly Spanish or Portuguese. It means, too,
that most practice Roman Catholicism and share the Mediterranean cultural
patterns brought by the Spanish and Portuguese who settled the continent
over five centuries ago.
Still, it is never hard to spot departures from these cultural norms.
Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador, for example, have significant Indian populations
who speak their own languages and follow their own customs. In Paraguay
the main Indian language, Guaraní, is accepted as official along with Spanish.
Nor are all South Americans Catholics. Today Protestantism is making steady
gains, while in Brazil many citizens practice African religions right along with
Catholicism and Protestantism.
South America is a lightly populated continent, having just 6 percent of
the world’s people. It is also the world’s most tropical continent, for a larger
percentage of its land falls between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn than
is the case with any other continent. The world’s driest desert is there, the
Atacama in northern Chile, where no one has ever seen a drop of rain fall.
And the world’s wettest place is there too, the Chocó region of Colombia,
along that country’s border with Panama. There it rains almost every day.
South America also has some of the world’s highest mountains, the Andes,
Discovering South America
James D. Henderson