Environment
The action of clearing a wide area of trees
What is deforestation?
Long-observed practice of maintaining large estates
What is latifundia?
An exchange of people, diseases, plants, and animals between the Americas (New World) and Europe/Africa (Old World), initiated by the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492
What is Columbian Exchange?
Founded in 1948 and headquartered in Washington, DC, an organization that advocates hemispheric cooperation and dialogue
What is Organization of American States (OAS)?
Assembly plants on the Mexican border built by foreign capital
What is maquiladora?
An organizing principle for meeting human development goals while at the same time sustaining the ability of natural systems to provide the resources and ecosystem services (clean air or water) upon which the economy and society depend
What is sustainable development?
A small landholding farmed by peasants or tenants who produce food for subsistence and the market
What is minifundia?
Panama’s indigenous groups have organized territories called this
What is comarcus?
A treaty signed in 1494 between Spain and Portugal that drew a north–south line some 300 leagues west of the Azores and Cape Verde islands
What is Treaty of Tordesillas?
An economic strategy in which a country adopts the U.S. dollar as its official currency
What is dollarization?
Tropical ecosystems of the Western Hemisphere
What is neotropics?
A popular but controversial strategy to redistribute land to peasant farmers
What is agrarian reform?
Panama’s indigenous groups have organized territories called these
What are syncretic religions?
A supranational organization that seeks to integrate trade and population movements within South America
What is UNASUR (Union of South American Nations)?
This sector includes self-employed, low-wage jobs that are usually unregulated and untaxed
What is informal?
Humid lowlands interspersed with large upland plateaus
What are shields?
Makeshift housing on land not legally owned or rented by urban migrants, usually in unoccupied open spaces within or on the outskirts of a rapidly growing city
What is squatter settlement?
Columbian fast-paced hip-swinging exercise dance
What is Zumba?
A trade-oriented agreement formed in 2011 which includes Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and Chile; Costa Rica and Panama are in the process of joining the alliance
What is Pacific Alliance?
A Brazilian conditional cash transfer program created to reduce extreme poverty
What is Bolsa Familia?
The largest intermontane plateau in the Andes, which straddles Peru and Bolivia and ranges in elevation from 10,000 to 13,000 feet
What is Altiplano?
A person of mixed European and Indian ancestry
What is mestizo?
Site for the opening ceremony of the 2016 Olympics
What is Maracaña Stadium?
A trade agreement between the United States and Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Costa Rica, and the Dominican Republic to reduce tariffs and increase trade between member countries
What is Central American Free Trade Association (CAFTA)?
Descriptive term referring to the rural mestizo population that suggests a backwardness and even cowardice
What is cholas?