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Portal:Latin America

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Latin America is the cultural region of the Americas where Romance languages are predominantly spoken, primarily Spanish and Portuguese. Latin America is defined according to cultural identity, not geography, and as such it includes countries in both North and South America. Most countries south of the United States tend to be included: Mexico and the countries of Central America, South America and the Caribbean. Commonly, it refers to Hispanic America plus Brazil. Related terms are the narrower Hispanic America, which exclusively refers to Spanish-speaking nations, and the broader Ibero-America, which includes all Iberic countries in the Americas and occasionally European countries like Spain, Portugal and Andorra. Despite being in the same geographical region, English- and Dutch-speaking countries and territories are excluded (Suriname, Guyana, the Falkland Islands, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Belize, etc.), and French-speaking countries and territories are usually excluded.

The term Latin America was first introduced in 1856 at a Paris conference titled, literally, Initiative of the Americas: Idea for a Federal Congress of the Republics (Iniciativa de la América. Idea de un Congreso Federal de las Repúblicas). Chilean politician Francisco Bilbao coined the term to unify countries with shared cultural and linguistic heritage. It gained further prominence during the 1860s under the rule of Napoleon III, whose government sought to justify France's intervention in the Second Mexican Empire. (Full article...)

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Portrait attributed to Simplício de Sá, c. 1830

Dom Pedro I (12 October 1798 – 24 September 1834), known in Brazil and in Portugal as "the Liberator" (Portuguese: o Libertador) or "the Soldier King" (o Rei Soldado) in Portugal, was the founder and first ruler of the Empire of Brazil from 1822 to 1831 (under the name of Pedro I) and King of Portugal in 1826 (under the name of Pedro IV).

Born in Lisbon, Pedro was the fourth child of King Dom John VI of Portugal and Queen Carlota Joaquina, and thus a member of the House of Braganza. When the country was invaded by French troops in 1807, he and his family fled to Portugal's largest and wealthiest colony, Brazil. (Full article...)

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The Salvadoran military dictatorship was the period of time in Salvadoran history where the Salvadoran Armed Forces governed the country for almost 48 years from 2 December 1931 until 15 October 1979. The authoritarian military dictatorship limited political rights throughout the country and maintained its governance through rigged elections.

The military came to power in El Salvador when the first democratically elected president, Arturo Araujo, was overthrown in a military coup d'état on 2 December 1931. The military appointed Araujo's vice president, Brigadier General Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, as acting president on 4 December 1931. He remained in office until he was forced to resign on 9 May 1944 following strikes and protests by students in the capital of San Salvador. He was followed by three short-lived presidents, who were then succeeded by Óscar Osorio in 1950. His successor, José María Lemus, was overthrown in a military coup d'état in 1960 and was replaced by Julio Adalberto Rivera Carballo in 1962. From 1962 to 1979, the National Conciliation Party (PCN) ruled the country in a de facto one party state; opposition parties existed, but in practice held no real power. The military regime ended on 15 October 1979, when young military officers overthrew President Carlos Humberto Romero and established the Revolutionary Government Junta, a joint civilian-military government which ruled the country from 1979 until the presidential elections of 1982. The fall of the military government marked the beginning of the twelve-year-long Salvadoran Civil War which lasted until 1992. (Full article...)

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Tatacoa Desert
Tatacoa Desert
Credit: Julien H

The Tatacoa Desert, the second largest arid zone in Colombia after the Guajira Peninsula, is one of the most attractive scenery Colombia and occupies 330 square kilometers of land in ocher and gray brushstrokes of green cactus..

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Guna woman selling Molas in Panama City
Guna woman selling Molas in Panama City
The mola or molas, forms part of the traditional outfit of a Guna woman, two mola panels being incorporated as front and back panels in a blouse. The full costume traditionally includes a patterned wrapped skirt (saburet), a red and yellow headscarf (musue), arm and leg beads (wini), a gold nose ring (olasu) and earrings in addition to the mola blouse (dulemor). In Dulegaya, the Guna's native language, "mola" means "shirt" or "clothing". The mola originated with the tradition of Guna women painting their bodies with geometrical designs, using available natural colors; in later years these same designs were woven in cotton, and later still, sewn using cloth bought from the European settlers of Panama.

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