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South America

South America is a diverse continent located entirely within the Western Hemisphere, primarily in the Southern Hemisphere. Covering nearly 6.9 million square miles, it is the fourth-largest continent and is home to approximately 386 million people, making it the fifth-most populous. The continent features a rich tapestry of cultures and languages, with Spanish being the predominant language in nine countries, while Portuguese is spoken in Brazil, the largest nation. The geography includes a variety of terrains, such as the Andes Mountains, the Amazon River, and vast rainforests, which contribute to its ecological diversity. Historically, South America was significantly shaped by Western European colonialism, particularly by Spanish and Portuguese empires, which interacted with numerous indigenous cultures, including the famous Inca civilization.

Economically, South America has evolved from its colonial roots of mineral and agricultural exploitation to become a region experiencing substantial growth, particularly in countries like Brazil, Peru, and Colombia. Despite challenges, including drug trade-related violence and political tensions, the continent's emerging markets have drawn international attention. The demographic landscape is characterized by a blend of indigenous, European, and African ancestries, with cultural influences seen in music, religion, and traditions across the region. South America's complex history and vibrant present make it a significant area of interest for those exploring global cultures and economies.

Full Article

South America is one of two continents located entirely within the Western Hemisphere, the other being North America. Most of South America lies south of the equator in the Southern Hemisphere. The continent’s triangular land mass covers nearly 6.9 million square miles, making South America the fourth-largest continent by geographic territory. South America is home to approximately 438 million people, making it the fifth-most populous continent. Spanish is the primary language in nine countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. Brazil, the largest and most populous nation on the continent, is the largest Portuguese-speaking country in the world, while Suriname and Guyana are officially Dutch- and English-speaking societies, respectively. South America is surrounded by the Caribbean Sea to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the northeast and east, and the Pacific Ocean to the west.

Western European colonialism profoundly affected South America from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries, particularly as the Spanish and Portuguese empires established overseas colonies on the continent, interacting with and subjugating the continent’s Indigenous peoples, who had been living in South America for thousands of years, to colonialism and Western influences. The best-known South American Indigenous cultural group were the Incas of the Andean mountain region along the continent's western coast. The Incas had established an extensive empire that, at its height in the sixteenth century, ranged from present-day Colombia to Chile and featured a vast network of stone roads.

Geography and Climate

A variety of geographic terrains can be found across the continent, including deserts, islands, mountain ranges, lowlands, and tropical rain forests. Notable islands of South America include Tierra del Fuego on the southern tip of Argentina and the Galapagos Islands, located off the coast of Ecuador. The world’s highest-altitude waterfall, Angel Falls, is located in eastern Venezuela. The world’s longest mountain range, the Andes, extends more than 5,000 miles along South America’s western coast. The high altitude—many of the Andes are more than 15,000 feet above sea level—often catches visitors to South America off guard. Visitors can experience breathing difficulty as a result of the thinner air and subsequent lower oxygen volume.

The 4,000 mile long Amazon River cuts through seven of the continent’s nations and is the second-longest river in the world. The river basin is also site of the Amazon valley rainforest, a natural ecological treasure that accounts for approximately 10 percent of the total plant and animal biological diversity in the world. Two well-known species native to the Amazon River Valley include the anaconda, a large snake that kills its prey by wrapping around the prey’s body and restricting its breathing through constriction, and the piranha, a predatory fish with razor-sharp teeth. The Amazon River is the world's largest river by volume and carries an average of around 215,000 to 230,000 cubic meters per second. This water flow is greater than the next seven largest independent rivers in the world combined.

South America features tremendous climate variation. The northern and central regions, including the Amazon River Basin, experience hot and humid conditions with consistent high temperatures and heavy rainfall throughout the year. Central and southern regions, like parts of Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay, have distinct seasons with hot summers and mild winters. The southern tip of the continent, including parts of Chile and Argentina, has cool temperatures and moderate precipitation. The Atacama Desert in Chile is known as one of the driest places on Earth, with extreme temperature variations between summer and winter. The Andes Mountains, which stretch across multiple countries, experiences a range of climates depending on altitude, with snowy peaks at higher elevations. The seasons in the southern hemisphere are the opposite of those in the northern hemisphere—summer occurrs between December and February and winter occurs between June and August.

Economy

Since the sixteenth century, South America has played a key role in international trade and economics. Spanish and Portuguese explorers coveted the gold and silver found within the continent’s mines, and during the colonial era the tobacco, coffee, and sugar cane crops cultivated on South American plantations emerged as high-demand products throughout Europe and the “old world.” Brazil is the world’s greatest producer of coffee, so much so that a drought in the nation in the spring of 2014 caused the price of coffee beans to increase by 20 percent out of fears that the lack of rainfall would result in a shortage of coffee beans. In the twenty-first century, Brazil produces roughly 40 percent of the world's coffee supply, and produced approximately 62 million 60-kilogram bags of coffee in 2023 alone. Brazil is also the world’s leading producer and exporter of sugar, exporting 31.38 million tons of sugar in 2023.

Although economists and political scientists traditionally would have classified the nations of South America as underdeveloped or developing countries, South America is experiencing tremendous economic growth in the twenty-first century as a source of several rapidly emerging markets, a phenomenon that has attracted international attention and investment. This is particularly true for Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Chile, and Argentina; some of these nations experienced economic growth rates of 8 percent or more per year between 2004 and 2014. Brazil suffered slow rates of economic growth in late 2013 and early 2014, but in general the growth trends were projected to continue. In the 2020s, South America's economy faced a COVID-19 recession in 2020, rebounded strongly in 2021, and then settled into slow growth. Ongoing challenges include supply chain disruptions, high food and energy prices, and tighter US monetary policy.

Economic trade and political relations between the United States and Colombia and Venezuela have been impeded due to the drug trade and political disagreements. Colombia had emerged as the world’s leading exporter of cocaine in the 1980s, and this illegal narcotics trade came to be dominated by a few high-profile cartels, which prompted violence and anti-narcotics operations carried out by both the Colombian and American governments. Hugo Chávez's election as president in 1999 strained US relations with Venezuela as Chávez, an avowed socialist, established himself as one of the world’s leading critics of US foreign policy and expressed political support for Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.

Demographics

As a result of its long colonial history, the population of South America consists largely of a mixture of persons of European, African, and indigenous/Amerindian ancestry. Spanish and Portuguese conquistadors were the first Europeans to step foot on the continent in the early 1500s, where they encountered various indigenous cultural groups. The indigenous heritage of South America remains powerful to this day, particularly in Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil’s Amazon rain forest. Prominent indigenous groups include the Aymara, Quechua, and Yanamamo, each of whose cultures, customs, and languages have been studied extensively by anthropologists. Many South Americans, regardless of nationality, are of at least partial indigenous ancestry.

The plantation-based and mining economies first established by the Spanish and Portuguese in the sixteenth century led to the importation of enslaved people from Africa, and the African heritage on South America remains prominent today, particularly in the northern coastal regions of the continent. More than four million enslaved people were taken to Brazil alone, and today Brazil has the largest African-descent population of any nation in the world outside of Africa. African cultural influences on Brazilian society can be seen in samba music, the candomblé religious tradition, and the martial arts dance style capoeira.

Following the abolition of enslavement in South America, large numbers of European immigrants from Italy, Germany, and Ireland settled there, most notably in Brazil and Argentina. More recently, a significant number of Japanese immigrants have established communities in Peru and Brazil. Alberto Fujimori, a Japanese Peruvian, was elected president of Peru in 1990.


Bibliography

“Amazon: Bruce Parry Explores the Greatest River on Earth.” BBC, n.d. Web. 12 May 2014.

"Amazon Rivers, Major Pathways for Wildlife, People and Water." World Wildlife Fund, wwf.panda.org/discover/knowledge_hub/where_we_work/amazon/about_the_amazon/ecosystems_amazon/rivers. Accessed 13 Mar. 2025.

Beach, Hannah. "The Country That Produces The Most Coffee In The World." Food Republic, 25 Feb. 2024, www.foodrepublic.com/1522127/country-produces-most-coffee-brazil. Accessed 13 Mar. 2025.

"Biodiversity and the Amazon Rainforest." Palotoa Amazon Travel, 10 Mar. 2025, palotoaamazontravel.com/biodiversity-and-the-amazon-rainforest. Accessed 13 Mar. 2025.

Boudreau, Diane, et al. “South America: Physical Geography.” National Geographic, 25 Feb. 2025, education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/south-america-physical-geography/. Accessed 13 Mar. 2025.

"Climate & Biomes of South America." Students of History, www.studentsofhistory.com/south-america-climate. Accessed 13 Mar. 2025.

Coutino, Alfredo, et al. "What Forces Are Driving Economic Growth in Latin America and the Caribbean?" The Dialogue, 13 Sept. 2022, thedialogue.org/analysis/what-forces-are-driving-the-regions-economic-growth. Accessed 13 Mar. 2025.

Neate, Rupert. “Drought in Brazil Drives the Price of Coffee Beans to a Record High.” The Guardian, 10 Apr. 2014, www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/10/drought-brazil-coffee-beans-prices. Accessed 13 Mar. 2025.

"Population by Continent 2025." World Population Review, worldpopulationreview.com/continents#title. Accessed 13 Mar. 2025.

“South America.” World Atlas, 9 Jan. 2019, www.worldatlas.com/continents/south-america.html. Accessed 13 Mar. 2025.

Trevisani, Paulo. “Brazil’s Economy Seen in Major Downturn.” Wall Street Journal, 4 Feb. 2014, online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304703804579383274090741140.html. Accessed 13 Mar. 2025.

Full Article

South America is one of two continents located entirely within the Western Hemisphere, the other being North America. Most of South America lies south of the equator in the Southern Hemisphere. The continent’s triangular land mass covers nearly 6.9 million square miles, making South America the fourth-largest continent by geographic territory. South America is home to approximately 438 million people, making it the fifth-most populous continent. Spanish is the primary language in nine countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. Brazil, the largest and most populous nation on the continent, is the largest Portuguese-speaking country in the world, while Suriname and Guyana are officially Dutch- and English-speaking societies, respectively. South America is surrounded by the Caribbean Sea to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the northeast and east, and the Pacific Ocean to the west.

Western European colonialism profoundly affected South America from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries, particularly as the Spanish and Portuguese empires established overseas colonies on the continent, interacting with and subjugating the continent’s Indigenous peoples, who had been living in South America for thousands of years, to colonialism and Western influences. The best-known South American Indigenous cultural group were the Incas of the Andean mountain region along the continent's western coast. The Incas had established an extensive empire that, at its height in the sixteenth century, ranged from present-day Colombia to Chile and featured a vast network of stone roads.

Geography and Climate

A variety of geographic terrains can be found across the continent, including deserts, islands, mountain ranges, lowlands, and tropical rain forests. Notable islands of South America include Tierra del Fuego on the southern tip of Argentina and the Galapagos Islands, located off the coast of Ecuador. The world’s highest-altitude waterfall, Angel Falls, is located in eastern Venezuela. The world’s longest mountain range, the Andes, extends more than 5,000 miles along South America’s western coast. The high altitude—many of the Andes are more than 15,000 feet above sea level—often catches visitors to South America off guard. Visitors can experience breathing difficulty as a result of the thinner air and subsequent lower oxygen volume.

The 4,000 mile long Amazon River cuts through seven of the continent’s nations and is the second-longest river in the world. The river basin is also site of the Amazon valley rainforest, a natural ecological treasure that accounts for approximately 10 percent of the total plant and animal biological diversity in the world. Two well-known species native to the Amazon River Valley include the anaconda, a large snake that kills its prey by wrapping around the prey’s body and restricting its breathing through constriction, and the piranha, a predatory fish with razor-sharp teeth. The Amazon River is the world's largest river by volume and carries an average of around 215,000 to 230,000 cubic meters per second. This water flow is greater than the next seven largest independent rivers in the world combined.

South America features tremendous climate variation. The northern and central regions, including the Amazon River Basin, experience hot and humid conditions with consistent high temperatures and heavy rainfall throughout the year. Central and southern regions, like parts of Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay, have distinct seasons with hot summers and mild winters. The southern tip of the continent, including parts of Chile and Argentina, has cool temperatures and moderate precipitation. The Atacama Desert in Chile is known as one of the driest places on Earth, with extreme temperature variations between summer and winter. The Andes Mountains, which stretch across multiple countries, experiences a range of climates depending on altitude, with snowy peaks at higher elevations. The seasons in the southern hemisphere are the opposite of those in the northern hemisphere—summer occurrs between December and February and winter occurs between June and August.

Economy

Since the sixteenth century, South America has played a key role in international trade and economics. Spanish and Portuguese explorers coveted the gold and silver found within the continent’s mines, and during the colonial era the tobacco, coffee, and sugar cane crops cultivated on South American plantations emerged as high-demand products throughout Europe and the “old world.” Brazil is the world’s greatest producer of coffee, so much so that a drought in the nation in the spring of 2014 caused the price of coffee beans to increase by 20 percent out of fears that the lack of rainfall would result in a shortage of coffee beans. In the twenty-first century, Brazil produces roughly 40 percent of the world's coffee supply, and produced approximately 62 million 60-kilogram bags of coffee in 2023 alone. Brazil is also the world’s leading producer and exporter of sugar, exporting 31.38 million tons of sugar in 2023.

Although economists and political scientists traditionally would have classified the nations of South America as underdeveloped or developing countries, South America is experiencing tremendous economic growth in the twenty-first century as a source of several rapidly emerging markets, a phenomenon that has attracted international attention and investment. This is particularly true for Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Chile, and Argentina; some of these nations experienced economic growth rates of 8 percent or more per year between 2004 and 2014. Brazil suffered slow rates of economic growth in late 2013 and early 2014, but in general the growth trends were projected to continue. In the 2020s, South America's economy faced a COVID-19 recession in 2020, rebounded strongly in 2021, and then settled into slow growth. Ongoing challenges include supply chain disruptions, high food and energy prices, and tighter US monetary policy.

Economic trade and political relations between the United States and Colombia and Venezuela have been impeded due to the drug trade and political disagreements. Colombia had emerged as the world’s leading exporter of cocaine in the 1980s, and this illegal narcotics trade came to be dominated by a few high-profile cartels, which prompted violence and anti-narcotics operations carried out by both the Colombian and American governments. Hugo Chávez's election as president in 1999 strained US relations with Venezuela as Chávez, an avowed socialist, established himself as one of the world’s leading critics of US foreign policy and expressed political support for Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.

Demographics

As a result of its long colonial history, the population of South America consists largely of a mixture of persons of European, African, and indigenous/Amerindian ancestry. Spanish and Portuguese conquistadors were the first Europeans to step foot on the continent in the early 1500s, where they encountered various indigenous cultural groups. The indigenous heritage of South America remains powerful to this day, particularly in Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil’s Amazon rain forest. Prominent indigenous groups include the Aymara, Quechua, and Yanamamo, each of whose cultures, customs, and languages have been studied extensively by anthropologists. Many South Americans, regardless of nationality, are of at least partial indigenous ancestry.

The plantation-based and mining economies first established by the Spanish and Portuguese in the sixteenth century led to the importation of enslaved people from Africa, and the African heritage on South America remains prominent today, particularly in the northern coastal regions of the continent. More than four million enslaved people were taken to Brazil alone, and today Brazil has the largest African-descent population of any nation in the world outside of Africa. African cultural influences on Brazilian society can be seen in samba music, the candomblé religious tradition, and the martial arts dance style capoeira.

Following the abolition of enslavement in South America, large numbers of European immigrants from Italy, Germany, and Ireland settled there, most notably in Brazil and Argentina. More recently, a significant number of Japanese immigrants have established communities in Peru and Brazil. Alberto Fujimori, a Japanese Peruvian, was elected president of Peru in 1990.


Bibliography

“Amazon: Bruce Parry Explores the Greatest River on Earth.” BBC, n.d. Web. 12 May 2014.

"Amazon Rivers, Major Pathways for Wildlife, People and Water." World Wildlife Fund, wwf.panda.org/discover/knowledge_hub/where_we_work/amazon/about_the_amazon/ecosystems_amazon/rivers. Accessed 13 Mar. 2025.

Beach, Hannah. "The Country That Produces The Most Coffee In The World." Food Republic, 25 Feb. 2024, www.foodrepublic.com/1522127/country-produces-most-coffee-brazil. Accessed 13 Mar. 2025.

"Biodiversity and the Amazon Rainforest." Palotoa Amazon Travel, 10 Mar. 2025, palotoaamazontravel.com/biodiversity-and-the-amazon-rainforest. Accessed 13 Mar. 2025.

Boudreau, Diane, et al. “South America: Physical Geography.” National Geographic, 25 Feb. 2025, education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/south-america-physical-geography/. Accessed 13 Mar. 2025.

"Climate & Biomes of South America." Students of History, www.studentsofhistory.com/south-america-climate. Accessed 13 Mar. 2025.

Coutino, Alfredo, et al. "What Forces Are Driving Economic Growth in Latin America and the Caribbean?" The Dialogue, 13 Sept. 2022, thedialogue.org/analysis/what-forces-are-driving-the-regions-economic-growth. Accessed 13 Mar. 2025.

Neate, Rupert. “Drought in Brazil Drives the Price of Coffee Beans to a Record High.” The Guardian, 10 Apr. 2014, www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/10/drought-brazil-coffee-beans-prices. Accessed 13 Mar. 2025.

"Population by Continent 2025." World Population Review, worldpopulationreview.com/continents#title. Accessed 13 Mar. 2025.

“South America.” World Atlas, 9 Jan. 2019, www.worldatlas.com/continents/south-america.html. Accessed 13 Mar. 2025.

Trevisani, Paulo. “Brazil’s Economy Seen in Major Downturn.” Wall Street Journal, 4 Feb. 2014, online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304703804579383274090741140.html. Accessed 13 Mar. 2025.

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