4.8- Culture of Latin America

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Instructor's Video: Mexico Links to an external site.

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Instructor's Video: Peru Links to an external site.

Latin American racial and ethnic heritage is a complex blend of indigenous, European and African people.  Generations of intermarriage have led to four broad racial groups: blanco (European ancestry), mestizo (mixed ancestry), indio (Indian ancestry) and negro (African Ancestry).   Latin America is perhaps the most racially mixed region in the world and culture across the region reflects this cultural blending.

Languages

Nearly 400 million people speak Spanish in Latin America. 200 million Brazilians speak Portuguese. At least one million people speak one of the following languages in Latin America: English, German, Italian and Arabic. Another half million people speak Chinese and Ukrainian (with Japanese lagging a little behind), and a quarter of a million speak French as well as Dutch.  In Guyana, English is the official language. There are over 5 million English speakers living in Latin America. For instance in Mexico, the ex-pat community is growing fast with more than one million Americans (and many Canadians) living in the country. Cities like Cancun, Playa del Carmen, and Cabo San Lucas, are basically bilingual towns with many services delivered in both Spanish and English. Most of the 2 million German speakers in Latin America live in Brazil, where several waves of German immigration took place. The impact of the German language in Brazil is not common knowledge, but there are towns in the Brazil that look exactly like German towns and others where learning German is mandatory in schools. Besides Spanish and Portuguese, no other language in Latin America has had a bigger influence in the region than Italian. But that influence has been mostly confined to Argentina. With over 1.5 million Italian speakers in the country, the impact Italians have had on Argentinian culture is undeniable. Even the characteristic Argentinian accent has a similar cadence to Italian. Some neighborhoods in Buenos Aires are “Little Italys,” where everything sounds Italian—from the food to the surnames and everything in between.

Latin America has been the recipient of large Arab immigration waves, particularly from Lebanon and Syria. The history of Arabs in Latin America is filled with presidents like Carlos Menem in Argentina, big-name businessmen such as Carlos Slim in Mexico, and famous dishes like tacos al pastor that are a variation of the Turkish kebabs.  Interestingly, even though the Islamic Organization for Latin America estimates that around 6 million Muslims live in the region, the Arab language itself is spoken by no more than one million people.

Indigenous Languages

Even though the actual number of indigenous languages in Latin America totals perhaps 560, some studies estimate that before Spanish colonization the continent had over 2,000 indigenous languages. Think about the huge cultural loss that reflects.  With an estimated 8 million speakers, Quechua is the most spoken indigenous language in Latin America today. In Peru, it’s an official language alongside Spanish. This country has even launched a TV show in Quechua, and some cities have started to include it in their school curriculum. Mayan speakers total approximately 6 million, distributed between southern Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize. However, there is no one Mayan language. Just in Guatemala, 22 different Mayan languages co-exist. In Guatemala and the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, a couple of initiatives have tried to preserve the Mayan languages, encouraging indigenous peoples to write in their native language.

Around 5 million people speak Guarani in Paraguay, where it is an official language on par with Spanish. The case of the Guarani language in Paraguay is an interesting one, as it’s probably the indigenous language most widely integrated into national life. Guarani is taught in schools throughout the country and seems to have “equal stature” in art and other cultural expressions. 

Between Peru and Bolivia, there is an estimated number of 2.5 million Aymara speakers. Recently deposed Bolivian President, Evo Morales, is ethnically Aymaran. In Bolivia, the Aymara language shares the distinction of being an official language of the country with Spanish and 30 other indigenous languages. 

The language of the ancient Aztecs, Nahuatl is still the mother tongue of 2 million people in Central Mexico. The Nahuatl language has influenced many languages without anyone noticing. The words chocolate, tomato, and chili, to name just a few all come from Nahuatl. In Mexico, several attempts to preserve and integrate Nahuatl into everyday life have been attempted. Nowadays, it’s taught in some schools as a second language. However, it remains a relatively minor player in the country’s linguistic landscape. 

Religion

One of the primary legacies of Spanish and Portuguese Colonial rule was Catholicism. Latin America remains overwhelmingly Catholic, but Catholics have declined substantially as a share of the region’s overall population. As recently as 1970, Catholics comprised more than 90% of Latin America’s population, according to the World Religion Database and the Brazilian and Mexican censuses. Today, a Pew Research survey shows that 69% of Latin Americans identify as Catholic – 15 percentage points lower than the share of adults who say they were raised Catholic (84%).

Growing Evangelical and Pentecostal churches have become a major social phenomenon across Latin America with a growing prominence in public life. Just 9% of adults in the region were raised Protestant and 4% were raised unaffiliated, but twice as many now describe themselves as Protestants.

In Latin America, people in Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador are among the most religiously committed and socially conservative. By contrast, people in the countries of Argentina, Chile and especially Uruguay are among the most secular, with relatively low levels of religious commitment. The biggest country surveyed – Brazil – falls somewhere between these two groups in terms of religious commitment and social attitudes.

Food

Each Latin American country has, of course, unique cultural attributes and as a result, unique cuisines. “Latin American cuisine” really is a collection of different cuisines, rather than its own entity. We often think that all people who speak Spanish eat tacos and enchiladas. Those foods are from Mexico (and in Mexico not all region eat tacos and enchiladas).  You will not find them in most other regions, and particularly not in South American cuisine. Only Mexican and Central American cuisines use tortillas. In fact, in Spain, a tortilla actually means an omelette. 

Some foods, like tamales and salsas, can be found in many regions; but they vary greatly, depending on what is found locally. Take beans, for instance. Rice and beans is a staple dish in many Latin American cuisines but in Peru its likely to be fava and white beans and in Mexico, pinto beans.

In Argentina, beef is a staple and asado is the national dish. In Brazil, the national dish is a plate of feijoada in Minas Gerais with traditional accompaniments: rice, fried kale (couve), cassava flour crisps, orange slices, a mix of olive oil, alcohol vinegar, tomatoes, onions and sometimes bell peppers called vinagrete (vinaigrette), and cassava flour (farinha). In Peru, the national dish is cerviche, a spicy, raw fish salad with salt, garlic, onions, and hot Peruvian peppers, all mixed together and marinated in lime. In Nicaragua,  most people in eat gallo pinto almost daily and it is considered a national symbol. It is composed of a mixture of fried rice with onion and sweet pepper, red beans boiled with garlic. They are mixed and fried all together. Chicken Pepian a chicken dish with a spicy sauce with pumpkin seeds and sesame. This is the national dish of Guatemala.