Politics
This term refers to the unique political system in Mexico (1929–2000) where the President handpicked his successor, a process often mocked as 'The Big Finger'.
What is El Dedazo?
This term refers to the violent period in Colombia (roughly 1948–1958) triggered by the assassination of populist leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán.
What is La Violencia?
La Violencia was the ten-year civil war between the Liberal and Conservative parties that killed roughly 200,000 people.
Last year, Billboard recognized this artist as the highest-grossing Latin American woman artist for her most recent tour.
Who is Shakira?
Name the only two landlocked countries in the region.
What are Bolivia and Paraguay?
This Argentine economist and Executive Secretary of ECLAC (CEPAL) is credited with formulating the 'structuralist' thesis that divided the global economy into the 'Center' and the 'Periphery,' laying the groundwork for Dependency Theory.
Who is Raúl Prebisch?
In early 2023, El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele opened this massive facility, the largest in the Americas, designed to hold over 40,000 suspected gang members under a 'State of Exception'.
What is the CECOT (Terrorism Confinement Center)?
This conflict (1864–1870), the deadliest interstate war in Latin American history, resulted in the loss of approximately 60% of Paraguay's population and significant territorial loss to Argentina and Brazil.
What is the War of the Triple Alliance?
In 2018, this song became the first Latin song to receive a digital diamond certification, the highest certification for a single, with over 13 million units sold.
What is "Despacito" by Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee?
Standing at 6,961 meters (22,837 ft), this Argentine mountain is the highest peak in the Western Hemisphere.
What is Mount Aconcagua?
In the 2020s, the 'Lithium Triangle' has become the focal point of global battery supply chains. Which three countries comprise this geographic economic bloc?
What are Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile?
In June 2024, a rogue general attempted a coup by driving armored vehicles into the government palace in this Andean capital, only to be confronted by the president in the hallway.
Who is General Juan José Zúñiga?
During the Porfiriato in Mexico, this circle of technocratic advisors advocated for 'Order and Progress' through the application of positivist philosophy and foreign investment.
Who are the Científicos?
In 1928, Oswald de Andrade published this seminal text of Brazilian Modernism, which argued that Brazil should digest foreign cultural influences to create something uniquely new, metaphorically consuming the colonizer.
What is the 'Manifesto Antropófago'?
This forest is the second-largest in South America, behind only the Amazon rainforest. It was the site of the deadliest war in the region in the 20th century.
What is El Gran Chaco?
What is the title of the massive economic manifesto—developed by the 'Chicago Boys'—that served as the foundational neoliberal blueprint for the Pinochet regime in Chile?
What is El Ladrillo?
Founded by Victor Raúl Haya de la Torre in 1924, this political party became the oldest continuous political organization in Peru and influenced populist movements across the region with its platform of Pan-Americanism and anti-imperialism.
What is the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana)?
Signed in 1494, this treaty divided the 'New World' between Spain and Portugal along a meridian 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde islands.
What is the Treaty of Tordesillas?
Known as 'The Tenth Muse,' this 17th-century Hieronymite nun and scholar in New Spain wrote the famous 'Respuesta a Sor Filotea,' defending a woman's right to education.
She is also regarded as the first feminist in the hemisphere.
She is also Johanna's favorite historical figure :)
Who is Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz?
Located between Peru and Bolivia, this is the highest commercially navigable lake in the world.
What is Lake Titicaca?
This 'Super-cycle' in the early 2000s saw Latin American economies grow at record rates due to insatiable demand for soy, iron, and copper. Which country?
What is China?
This 1947 treaty, signed in Rio de Janeiro, established a system of mutual defense among American states, essentially declaring that an attack against one is an attack against all.
What is the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (Rio Treaty)?
This 18th-century artistic genre in Mexico and Peru sought to visually categorize the complex outcomes of miscegenation using a standardized 16-set sequence of domestic scenes.
What are the Casta Paintings?
In the prologue to his novel 'The Kingdom of This World' (1949), this Cuban author distinguished 'lo real maravilloso' (the marvelous real) from European surrealism, arguing it was an inherent quality of Latin American history and geography.
Alejo Carpentier
Found primarily in the Guiana Shield, these ancient, flat-topped 'table mountains' are known by the local Pemon people as 'Houses of the Gods' and host entirely unique, isolated ecosystems.
What are Tepuis?
Chile is often cited as a global model for avoiding 'Dutch Disease' through the use of this specific institutional mechanism, which mandates that the government save windfall profits from copper when prices are high to use during downturns.
What is the Economic and Social Stabilization Fund (FEES)?