99 Fun Facts About Latin America

Which Spanish conquistador brought down the Aztec Empire, taking its capital Tenochtitlan in 1521?

Hernán Cortés won over the Tlaxcalans, longtime rivals of the Aztecs, and their warriors far outnumbered his Spaniards in the final siege.

Which food's English name comes from Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs?

Avocado comes from the Nahuatl ahuacatl, which Spanish speakers muddled with their own word for 'lawyer' before English borrowed it.

Which Central American country abolished its army after a brief civil war in 1948?

Costa Rica's leader José Figueres marked it by striking a barracks wall with a mallet, and the old barracks now houses the National Museum.

Which papal name did Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Latin America's first pope, take in 2013?

Francis honours Saint Francis of Assisi: as the votes mounted, a cardinal friend hugged Bergoglio and whispered 'Don't forget the poor'.

Which language of the Inca Empire is official in Peru alongside Spanish?

The Inca rulers made Quechua the official language of their many-language empire.

Which French-based hybrid language is the most widely spoken in Latin America and the Caribbean?

Most Haitian Creole words come from French, yet its grammar is so different that French speakers can't simply follow it.

Which country mined more copper than any other in 2024?

Chile nationalised its big foreign-owned copper mines in 1971 under Salvador Allende, and the state company Codelco grew out of them.

Which country has historically been the world's largest producer of emeralds?

Colombia's emeralds fell to Spanish conquistadors, who traded the stones for gold and silver and made them prizes for royalty in Europe and Asia.

What was Miguel Hidalgo's job when he launched Mexico's war of independence with the 1810 'Grito de Dolores'?

A Catholic priest, Hidalgo rang his church bell to rally his parishioners; he was shot within a year, yet the rebellion carried on without him.

Which spirit takes its name from a town in Mexico's Jalisco state?

Tequila is a denomination of origin owned by the Mexican state, so it must be distilled from blue agave grown inside a defined territory.

Simón Bolívar was born in which city?

Simón Bolívar was born in Caracas, where in 2010 Hugo Chávez had his remains exhumed to test a theory that he was murdered; the tests proved nothing.

Which leader of the slave revolt in French Saint-Domingue was seized in 1802 and died in a French prison?

Toussaint Louverture was taken while Napoleon's army tried to retake the colony, and France's failure there helped push Napoleon to sell Louisiana to the United States.

Which is the driest non-polar desert on Earth?

The Atacama's soil is so dry and nearly lifeless that scientists study it as a stand-in for the surface of Mars.

The Aztec capital Tenochtitlan was built on an island in which body of water?

Lake Texcoco was mostly drained after the conquest to stop floods, and pumping water from beneath the old lakebed is why Mexico City keeps sinking.

Which emperor ruled the Aztecs when the Spanish arrived in 1519?

Moctezuma II received the Spaniards peacefully in his capital, but they soon took him hostage, and he died a captive in 1520.

What was the capital of the Inca Empire, the largest empire in pre-Columbian America?

In Cusco the Spanish melted down the gold of the Coricancha sun temple and built the Santo Domingo convent on top of its walls.

Which explorer brought Machu Picchu to world attention in 1911?

Hiram Bingham shipped thousands of the site's artifacts to Yale, which agreed to return them to Peru only in 2010, after years of pressure.

Which Mesoamerican civilisation had the pre-Columbian Americas' most sophisticated writing?

The Maya wrote folding books on bark paper, and after a Spanish friar burned many in 1562, only four are known to survive.

The Sacred Cenote at Chichen Itza was used to make offerings to which god?

Chaac, the rain god, was said to guard cenotes, and this well has yielded jade, gold and human bones from offerings made to bring rain.

Which active volcano near Mexico City has sent ash clouds that disrupted flights to the capital?

When Popocatépetl erupted in December 2000, more than 40,000 people living nearby had to be evacuated.

After France abandoned its attempt, which country completed the Panama Canal in 1914?

The United States sent warships to back Panama's 1903 independence, won rights to the canal zone, and held it until Panama took full control in 1999.

The Castros' revolution began with an assault on which Cuban military post on 26 July 1953?

The Moncada Barracks attack failed and Fidel Castro was sentenced to 15 years in prison, but an amnesty freed him in 1955.

Before joining the Cuban Revolution, Che Guevara earned a university degree in which field?

Medicine was Guevara's degree, but the poverty he saw on a motorcycle trip across South America fueled his belief that only revolution could help.

Who was the first Latin American writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1945?

Gabriela Mistral was the pen name of Lucila Godoy Alcayaga, a village schoolteacher who later helped reform Mexico's school system.

Which poet, born Ricardo Reyes Basoalto, won the 1971 Nobel Prize and served as a Communist senator?

Pablo Neruda protested the crackdown on striking miners, faced an arrest warrant, and lived in hiding for over a year before escaping abroad in 1949.

García Márquez's most famous novel is set in which fictional village, based on his birthplace Aracataca?

In 2006 Aracataca voted on renaming itself after Macondo, and over 90% of voters said yes, but turnout was too low for the change to pass.

Which 1967 novel about the Buendía family is credited with bringing magical realism into vogue?

One Hundred Years of Solitude went unfilmed for decades because its author doubted a feature film, or a version not in Spanish, could do it justice, until Netflix made a Spanish-language series in 2024.

Which Mexican painter is famous for self-portraits mixing realism with fantasy and folk art?

Frida Kahlo was so ill at her first solo show in Mexico, in 1953, that she arrived by ambulance and spent the opening in a bed set up in the gallery.

The artist Fernando Botero is instantly recognisable for what feature of his figures?

Botero's exaggerated, plump proportions grew from his preoccupation with volume, which also led him to make huge bronze sculptures.

The tango was born in the 1880s along which river, the natural border between two neighbouring countries?

The Río de la Plata's poor port districts were tango's first stage, before Buenos Aires dancers and bands carried it to Europe and set off a craze in Paris.

Samba originated in the Afro-Brazilian communities of which Brazilian state?

Bahia's samba de roda was carried by migrants to Rio de Janeiro, where it shaped the urban samba that became a symbol of Brazil.

Bossa nova, popularised by Gilberto and Jobim, blended samba with which imported style?

North American jazz met samba on 'The Girl from Ipanema', which beat the Beatles' 'I Want to Hold Your Hand' to the 1965 Grammy for Record of the Year.

Where did reggaeton take shape in the late 1980s, building on the Spanish-language reggae of Panama?

Puerto Rico's police raided six San Juan record stores in 1995 and seized hundreds of tapes and CDs, claiming the lyrics were obscene.

A typical modern mariachi band uses a deep-bodied acoustic bass called what?

The guitarrón eventually replaced the harp as the mariachi bass, and its big body makes it loud enough for small venues without an amplifier.

Which flower traditionally decorates family altars and graves during Mexico's Day of the Dead?

Marigold petals are laid out for the dead, but Mexico City's big Day of the Dead parade only began in 2016, inspired by the James Bond film Spectre.

Which country stunned Brazil in the 1950 World Cup's deciding match at the Maracanã?

After losing 2–1 to Uruguay, Brazil ditched its white shirts and ran a newspaper design contest, which produced its famous yellow kit.

Which Brazilian martial art, played inside a circle to live music, mixes fighting moves with dance?

Capoeira is often said to have been created by enslaved Africans who disguised their fighting skills as a dance.

Diego Maradona shared the FIFA Player of the Century award with which other player?

Pelé won a separate FIFA jury vote after Maradona's fans swept the online poll, so FIFA split the award between them.

Barcelona agreed to pay for young Lionel Messi's treatment for what?

Messi's hormone deficiency meant daily injections, and Barcelona's first contract offer for him was famously written on a paper napkin.

Rio de Janeiro's Christ the Redeemer statue stands on the peak of which mountain?

Corcovado's statue was struck by lightning in January 2014, which knocked off part of a finger.

Near the Bolivian city of Uyuni lies the world's largest what?

The salt flat is so vast and level that scientists use it to calibrate satellite instruments that measure the height of Earth's surface.

Angel Falls, the world's tallest uninterrupted waterfall, drops from the Auyán-tepui in which country?

Venezuela's falls are named after Jimmie Angel, an American pilot who flew over them in 1933 while searching for ore.

Despite its name, the Panama hat is a traditional straw hat from which country?

Ecuador's toquilla straw hats were shipped through Panama for export, so buyers named them after the place where they bought them.

Which is the only Central American country where English is the official language?

Belize won independence from Britain in 1981, but neighbouring Guatemala, which claimed its territory, refused to recognise it for another decade.

The crater left by the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs lies buried beneath which peninsula?

Geophysicists hunting for oil spotted the buried Yucatán crater in 1978, but rock samples pointing to an asteroid impact turned up only in 1990.

In 2014 Greenpeace apologised to Peru after activists left footprints beside a hummingbird figure at which ancient site?

The Nazca Lines stunt aimed to pressure UN climate talks in Lima, but Peru called it damage, and one activist was later convicted and fined.

Which legend, rooted in a ritual on Lake Guatavita, sent Spanish conquistadors searching South America for gold?

El Dorado was a new Muisca chief who, covered in gold dust, paddled a raft onto Lake Guatavita and threw gold and emeralds into it as offerings.

Marine iguanas, the only lizards that feed in the sea, live on which islands?

On the Galápagos, marine iguanas can shrink in length when El Niño wipes out the algae they eat, then grow back once food returns.

Which emperor was overthrown in Brazil in 1889, a year after abolition?

Pedro II was away in Europe when his daughter, as regent, signed abolition into law, and a year later a military coup sent the family into exile.

Which country, the eighth-largest in the world, takes its name from the Latin word for silver?

Argentina comes from argentum, the same Latin root that gives silver its chemical symbol, Ag. Sixteenth-century explorers associated the region with the precious metal.

O. Henry coined 'banana republic' after months spent hiding from the law in which country?

Honduras had no extradition treaty with Washington, so O. Henry fled there before his embezzlement trial. Its fruit-export economy became the fictional Republic of Anchuria in Cabbages and Kings.

The golden eagle at the centre of Mexico's flag is perched on which plant while devouring a snake?

A cactus, the prickly pear or nopal, is where legend says an eagle eating a serpent showed the Aztecs the place to found their city, Tenochtitlan.

Which staple crop was first domesticated in the Andes of southern Peru and northwestern Bolivia?

The potato fed Andean farmers for thousands of years but reached Europe only in the later 16th century, carried home by the Spanish after they conquered the Inca.

Which small rodent, a popular household pet elsewhere, is roasted and served as 'cuy' in the Andes?

The guinea pig was domesticated in the Andes as livestock, raised for its meat, and only became a pet after traders carried it to Europe in the 16th century.

Which tree-dwelling mammal of the American tropics climbs down about once a week to defecate?

The sloth makes the risky trip all the way to the forest floor, digging a hole and covering it afterwards. Biologists have yet to agree on why it bothers.

Which Mexican celebration marks an 1862 victory over French invaders at Puebla, not independence?

Cinco de Mayo recalls a win that did not last: a larger French force later took Mexico City. Independence Day is a separate holiday, marked on 16 September.

Which conquistador took a roomful of gold as ransom for the Inca ruler Atahualpa, then executed him?

Francisco Pizarro had seized Atahualpa at Cajamarca with fewer than 200 men, and he kept the ransom after having the emperor garrotted in 1533.

Diego Maradona scored his 'Hand of God' goal against which team in a 1986 World Cup quarter-final?

England lost 2–1, and just four minutes after the handball Maradona scored again with a solo run that became known as the 'Goal of the Century'.

What ability has made the axolotl, a Mexican salamander, a staple of medical research laboratories?

Regrowing lost limbs is only the start: the axolotl can also regenerate its gills and parts of its eyes and brain, all while keeping its larval form for life.

Which big cat, the largest in the Americas, kills by biting straight through the skull of its prey?

The jaguar is the third-largest cat in the world, behind only the tiger and the lion, and its jaws can also pierce the shells of turtles and tortoises.

Which singer from Barranquilla had worldwide hits with 'Hips Don't Lie' and 'Whenever, Wherever'?

Shakira built her sound on the Arab dance of her Lebanese father's heritage as much as on pop and rock, and recorded her first album while still in her early teens.

Which Brazilian three-time Formula One champion died while leading the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix?

Ayrton Senna held the record for pole positions, 65, when he crashed at Imola. Brazil's government declared three days of national mourning.

On which inlet of Cuba's coast did CIA-backed exiles land in April 1961 and meet swift defeat?

The Bay of Pigs landing is known in Cuba as Playa Girón, after the beach where the battle was fought. Its failure was an early humiliation for President Kennedy.

Which South Atlantic islands did a South American junta invade in 1982, starting a ten-week war?

The Falklands, known in Spanish as the Malvinas, were back in British hands after 74 days. Defeat hastened the junta's downfall and the return of democracy.

Which Mexican revolutionary raided Columbus, New Mexico, in 1916 and eluded Pershing's manhunt?

Pancho Villa attacked the border town in anger at Washington's support for his rival Carranza. Pershing's expedition killed many of his men but went home without capturing him.

What name is given to the roving horsemen of South America's southern plains, akin to cowboys?

The gaucho lived by hunting wild cattle across the open plains, until cheap barbed wire fenced the range and did away with the need for roaming riders.

Which Mexican spectator sport is known for colourful masks and high-flying moves?

Lucha libre treats the mask as a wrestler's honour: in some matches the loser must remove his for good, the highest stake a luchador can wager.

Which Pacific territory, known locally as Rapa Nui, holds hundreds of giant statues called moai?

Easter Island got its European name from the Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen, who came upon it on Easter Sunday in 1722. A South American republic annexed it in 1888.

Which caffeinated drink, brewed from holly leaves, is sipped from a gourd through a metal straw?

Mate is for sharing: friends and family pass round one gourd and drink through the same straw, the bombilla. The plant, yerba mate, is a South American member of the holly genus.

In which South American country do most people speak Guaraní, an official language beside Spanish?

Paraguay is the rare American nation where an indigenous tongue outlived the conquest as an everyday language, spoken by the majority and not only by indigenous communities.

Which South American country, independent only since 1975, has Dutch as its official language?

Suriname is the smallest sovereign state in South America, and the only independent country outside Europe where Dutch is the language of government, schools and the media.

Which country named its currency after the quetzal, the long-tailed bird that appears on its flag?

Guatemala's choice has a long pedigree: centuries before coins arrived, the tail feathers of the resplendent quetzal were themselves used as money in the region.

Which overseas territory is home to Kourou, the tropical launch site of the European Space Agency?

French Guiana lies about five degrees north of the equator, where the Earth's spin gives rockets an extra push, and open sea to the east keeps falling debris away from towns.

Which country shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, occupying its larger eastern part?

The Dominican Republic covers about 48,000 of the island's 76,000 square kilometres, and its capital is the first permanent European settlement in the Americas.

Christopher Columbus first set foot in the Americas in 1492 on an island in which modern country?

The Bahamas island where he landed was called Guanahani by its Lucayan people. Columbus renamed it San Salvador, and scholars are divided over exactly which island it was.

Which early Mesoamerican civilisation carved colossal stone heads on Mexico's Gulf Coast?

The Olmec moved the giant boulders a long way from the mountains where the basalt lay, and nobody is sure how. Seventeen of the heads are known.

Which title of the Virgin Mary comes from apparitions reported to Juan Diego near Mexico City?

Our Lady of Guadalupe is said to have left her image on Juan Diego's cloak, and the basilica where it hangs is the most-visited Catholic shrine in the world.

Which Mexican muralist saw his Rockefeller Center fresco destroyed over a portrait of Lenin?

Diego Rivera had added Lenin after a newspaper attacked the unfinished mural as anti-capitalist propaganda. Working from photographs, he later repainted the scene in Mexico City.

Which Havana-born 'Queen of Salsa' was famous for her joyful shout of '¡Azúcar!'?

Celia Cruz left Cuba in 1960 after the revolution nationalised the music industry, and became a symbol of the exile community. Her catchphrase simply means 'sugar'.

Which general took power in a 1973 coup that shelled the La Moneda palace, then ruled for 17 years?

Augusto Pinochet stepped down in 1990 after losing a plebiscite, but kept command of the army until 1998, the year he was arrested in London over human rights abuses.

Which general led an army across the Andes in 1817 and four years later was named Protector of Peru?

José de San Martín left the job of finishing the war to Simón Bolívar after a closed-door meeting at Guayaquil in 1822, then quit both politics and the army.

Which 1494 treaty split the newly explored world between Spain and Portugal along an Atlantic line?

The Treaty of Tordesillas put the eastern bulge of South America on Portugal's side of the line, which is why Brazil speaks Portuguese and its neighbours Spanish.

The Inca tracked taxes and census counts without writing, using knotted cords known by what name?

A quipu stored numbers as knots tied in a decimal positional system, and specialist record keepers called quipucamayocs were trained to make and read them.

Which author of Ficciones and The Aleph became director of his national library as he went blind?

Jorge Luis Borges wrote of the 'splendid irony' of being granted books and night at one touch. He never won the Nobel Prize, and joked that denying it to him was a Scandinavian tradition.

Which Nobel Prize-winning novelist ran for president of Peru in 1990 and lost to Alberto Fujimori?

Mario Vargas Llosa won the first round but lost the run-off to the then-unknown agricultural engineer. He returned to fiction and took the Nobel in 2010.

Which author's debut novel, The House of the Spirits, began as a letter to her dying grandfather?

Isabel Allende was living abroad when the news of his illness reached her on 8 January 1981, and she has made a rule of starting every book since on that date.

Which singer, the 'Brazilian Bombshell', wore towering fruit hats in her 1940s Hollywood musicals?

Carmen Miranda only began wearing the fruit hats in 1939, and they were never made of real fruit. By 1945 she was the highest-paid woman in the United States.

Which grape spirit is shaken with lime juice and egg white to make Peru's signature 'sour' cocktail?

Pisco is claimed by two neighbouring countries as their own. The sour itself was invented in a Peruvian bar by an American bartender, Victor Morris.

Which Amazon tree made Manaus rich until smuggled seeds fed rival plantations in Asia?

Rubber plantations in Southeast Asia, grown from seeds that Henry Wickham smuggled out of Brazil, proved more efficient than tapping wild trees and ended the Amazon boom.

Which wild Andean animal on Peru's coat of arms has wool so fine the Inca reserved it for royalty?

The vicuña cannot simply be farmed: each animal has to be caught from the wild to be shorn, which keeps its wool among the costliest in the world.

Which motto, taken from the philosopher Auguste Comte, is written across the globe on Brazil's flag?

Order and Progress, 'Ordem e Progresso' in Portuguese, shortens a maxim of Comte's that began with love as a principle. A 2021 campaign asked for 'love' to be added to the flag.

Which leader of an 18th-century Andean revolt against Spain is the namesake of a famous rapper?

Túpac Amaru II claimed descent from the last Inca ruler and led the rising as self-proclaimed Sapa Inca until his execution in 1781. Tupac Amaru Shakur was named after him.

Which Afro-Cuban religion blends the worship of Yoruba spirits called orichas with Catholic ritual?

Santería took shape among enslaved West Africans in Cuba, where Roman Catholicism was the only religion the Spanish colonial government allowed, so each spirit was matched to a saint.

Which Portuguese navigator, bound for India in 1500, landed in Brazil on the way and claimed it?

Pedro Álvares Cabral at first took the new land for a large island and named it the Island of the True Cross. He sent one ship home with the news and sailed on towards India.

Which ancient city near Mexico City holds the Pyramid of the Sun and the Avenue of the Dead?

Teotihuacan was the largest city in the Americas at its height, yet its builders' own name for it is lost: the Aztecs named the ruins centuries after the city fell.

Which Zapotec lawyer from Oaxaca, orphaned at three, became Mexico's first indigenous president?

Benito Juárez spoke only Zapotec and could not read until he moved to Oaxaca City at 12 to work as a servant. His birthday, 21 March, is a national holiday.

Which malaria remedy, the bitter flavouring in tonic water, comes from Andean cinchona bark?

Quinine tasted so bitter that, by tradition, British colonials in India mixed their anti-malarial tonic with gin to get it down, and so invented the gin and tonic.

Which rum cocktail shares its name with a beach and an iron mine near Santiago de Cuba?

The daiquiri is widely credited to Jennings Cox, an American mining engineer working in Cuba at the time of the Spanish–American War. The place name he borrowed is a word of Taíno origin.

Which Cuban poet, killed fighting for independence in 1895, wrote the verses sung as 'Guantanamera'?

José Martí published the poems in his 1891 book Versos Sencillos, four years before Spanish troops killed him at Dos Ríos. The song set to his words became a patriotic anthem.