science

Latin America and the Caribbean

Latin America and the Caribbean is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Latin America and the Caribbean rather than just read about it. In short: Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is a geopolitical and cultural region encompassing the Americas south of the contiguous United States. It includes all countries and territories in the Americas but the United States, Canada, and Greenland.

Key takeaways

Latin America and the Caribbean belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Latin America and the Caribbean to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Latin America and the Caribbean from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is a geopolitical and cultural region encompassing the Americas south of the contiguous United States. It includes all countries and territories in the Americas but the United States, Canada, and Greenland. It covers an extensive region, extending from The Bahamas and Mexico in the north to Argentina and Chile in the south. In comparison to Latin America, LAC also includes countries in Central America, South America, and the Caribbean where predominantly non-Latin languages—i.e. English or Dutch—are spoken, such as Belize, Guyana, and Jamaica. The region has over 670,230,000 people as of 2016, and spans for 21,951,000 square kilometres (8,475,000 sq mi).

Politics

The region has a unique history and varied between stability to instability, included various deadly conflicts, though its level remains conflicted. The two deadliest conflicts in the region are the Colombian conflict and the Mexican drug war; and more recently, the crisis in Venezuela and Gang war in Haiti. Some other bloody conflicts include the internal conflict in Peru and gang wars in Brazil and Honduras. Other conflicts include the Mapuche conflict in Argentina and Chile; and the Insurgency in Paraguay. These conflicts, however, have received lesser attentions from international media, and varied by time. The Latin American and Caribbean countries with the most representative democracy were Costa Rica, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, and Jamaica and least democratic were Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela according to 2024 V-Dem Democracy Report.

Culture

Religion

Most countries are dominated by Christianity, the largest being Roman Catholicism. Smaller groups include Protestantism (including Mormonism and Jehovah's Witnesses) and Orthodoxy and other forms of Christianity. There are many venerated folk saints and folk religions namely folk Catholicism as well as African diaspora religions (syncretic African traditional religions) as well as Native American religions including shamanism. Many folk healers also practice folk magic. Specific Creole peoples often have their own religions/spiritual practices like the Maroons's Rastafari and Garifuna's belief system (or New Orleans Voodoo and Melungeon in North America). Especially in the Caribbean, Central America and Brazil, there are Jewish (including Messianic Jews), Muslim, Hindu, Baháʼí Faith (especially in Panama, Bolivia and Belize), Buddhist, Shinto and Romani mythology, Chinese folk religion, Dravidian folk religion (among others) practitioners. The Muslims and especially Jews and Gitanos are often descendants of the peoples forced into Crypto-Judaism and Crypto-Islam (and even Crypto-Paganism, for lack of a better term) from the Reconquista. There most likely is Sikh and Jainist groups (and possibly even smaller Zoroastrianism, Samaritan and Druze groups). There is also a growing movement of unitarian universalism/new age/neo-paganism-type unorganized spirituality; goddess worship is especially popular with younger, often progressive people like feminists. Again, these movements are often also syncretic, such as Pachamama or other Pre-Columbian Deity worship. Atheism/Agnosticism is quite dichotomous with a few countries having high percentages, but most are small and may be growing slowly.

Music

The region is extremely popular for its own distinct music which can not be found somewhere in the world. Began since the conquest of Spain, France, Britain, the Netherlands and Portugal in 15th century, due to the greater diversification including indigenous, Asian, African and European population merged, it expanded popularity of their music, dated from 1950s and rampant globalization, music from the region has become widely noticed, and has been nominated for several music awards.

Sports The region is rich at sporting activities, especially in association football, which have some of the world's strongest football teams, including Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and others. Baseball, tennis, cycling, volleyball, rugby union, basketball, hockey, and cricket are also popular. The region is known for producing significant mixed martial-arts fighters, notably competing in the Ultimate Fighting Championship, Mexico and Brazil being the ones that stand out in this sport.

List of countries and territories by subregion

Caribbean

Scattered island in the Caribbean Sea

Federal Dependencies of Venezuela (Venezuela)

West Indies

Antilles

Greater Antilles

* Disputed territory administered by the United States, claimed by Haiti.

Lesser Antilles

Lucayan Archipelago

Latin America

Central America

* The UN geoscheme includes Mexico in Central America.

Offshore islands

* Disputed territories administered by Colombia, claimed by the United States.

South America

* The UN geoscheme includes Bouvet Island in South America instead of Antarctica or Africa. † Disputed territories administered by the United Kingdom, claimed by Argentina.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Latin America and the Caribbean

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Latin America and the Caribbean claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Latin America and the Caribbean before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Latin America and the Caribbean ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Latin America and the Caribbean

In research: Latin America and the Caribbean appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Latin America and the Caribbean in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Latin America and the Caribbean is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Caribbean, Economic country classifications, Latin America, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Latin America and the Caribbean outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Latin America and the Caribbean in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Latin America and the Caribbean means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Latin America and the Caribbean out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Latin America and the Caribbean in simple terms?

Why does Latin America and the Caribbean matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Latin America and the Caribbean?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Latin America and the Caribbean.