Latin American History: Facts That Surprise People

Latin American history tends to get compressed into two chapters: ancient civilisations, then conquest. What gets lost in between is how sophisticated the first was, how quickly the second happened, and how much the region shaped the rest of the world.

Before 1492

The Olmecs are often called the "mother culture" of Mesoamerica. From around 1200 BC, on the Gulf Coast of Mexico, they carved colossal stone heads — some weighing many tonnes — and laid foundations that later cultures built on.

The Maya developed a calendar of remarkable accuracy, a full writing system and the concept of zero, centuries before it reached Europe. Their great cities, such as Tikal and Chichén Itzá, were built without metal tools or draught animals. A common myth says the Maya "disappeared". They did not: their classic cities declined, but millions of Maya people live in Mexico and Central America today and still speak Mayan languages.

The Aztecs built Tenochtitlán on an island in Lake Texcoco around 1325 — a city of canals, causeways and floating gardens, on the site of modern Mexico City. When the Spanish arrived, it was one of the largest cities in the world, bigger than most European capitals.

The Inca ran an empire down the spine of the Andes, connected by tens of thousands of kilometres of roads and rope bridges. They had no wheel for transport and no writing system as we would recognise it, yet they kept detailed records using quipu — knotted cords. Their capital was Cusco. Machu Picchu was built in the 15th century and was never found by the Spanish.

The Conquest

The speed of the conquest still surprises people. Hernán Cortés landed in Mexico in 1519, and Tenochtitlán fell in 1521. Francisco Pizarro captured the Inca emperor Atahualpa in 1532. How could so few Spanish soldiers defeat such powerful empires?

• Disease was the biggest factor. Smallpox and other illnesses, unknown in the Americas, killed a huge share of the population, often before the soldiers even arrived.
• Allies mattered too. Cortés fought alongside tens of thousands of Indigenous warriors, such as the Tlaxcalans, who were enemies of the Aztecs.
• Timing: the Inca Empire had just been through a civil war between two brothers when Pizarro arrived.

Why does Brazil speak Portuguese while most of its neighbours speak Spanish? The 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas divided newly claimed lands between Spain and Portugal along a line in the Atlantic. The eastern bulge of South America fell on Portugal's side.

Independence

The first Latin American country to win independence was Haiti, in 1804, after the only successful large-scale revolt by enslaved people in history.

Most of Spanish-speaking Latin America broke away in the early 1800s, within a couple of decades of each other. Simón Bolívar campaigned from the north, José de San Martín from the south, and the two met at Guayaquil in 1822 — a famously private conversation after which San Martín withdrew from public life.

Bolívar's ambition was a single unified republic. Gran Colombia, which briefly joined Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador and Panama, was the attempt. It fell apart within about a decade, and the continent settled into the borders we know now. Bolivia is named after him.

Brazil took a different path. It declared independence in 1822 under Pedro I, son of the Portuguese king, and became an empire rather than a republic until 1889.

What the World Took From It

Maize, potatoes, tomatoes, chocolate, vanilla, chilli, peanuts, avocados. It is difficult to overstate this: remove crops domesticated in the Americas and you remove Italian tomato sauce, Belgian chocolate, Irish potatoes, Indian curries with chilli and most of the world's hot sauce. The kitchens of Europe, Africa and Asia were rebuilt around plants from this continent — a change historians call the Columbian Exchange.

Quick Facts to Bank

• Brazil is the largest country in Latin America by both area and population.
• The Panama Canal, linking the Atlantic and Pacific, opened in 1914.
• The Mexican Revolution began in 1910.
• Spanish is the most widely spoken language in the region; Portuguese is second, thanks to Brazil.

Worth remembering the next time a quiz asks where chocolate comes from. Ready to test yourself? Try the free History quiz.