50 free Latin America trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
44 free Latin America trivia questions with answers. Latin America stretches from the Rio Grande to Cape Horn and covers twenty-odd countries, three colonial languages and dozens of indigenous ones. This quiz tries to do the whole region justice: the Maya, Aztec and Inca civilisations; the Treaty of Tordesillas and the independence wars of Bolívar and Hidalgo; the Haitian and Cuban revolutions; Evita, Che and the Panama Canal. Then it turns to culture and place: García Márquez, Neruda and Gabriela Mistral, Frida Kahlo and Botero, tango, samba, bossa nova, mariachi and reggaeton, the Day of the Dead, Pelé, Maradona and Messi, and landmarks from Machu Picchu and Chichen Itza to Christ the Redeemer, Angel Falls and the Salar de Uyuni. About a third of the questions are easy; the rest reward someone who has travelled or studied the region. Every answer has been checked against a primary source, mostly Wikipedia, and each question shows its citation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01A politician from which country first printed the term 'Latin America' in 1856, in Paris?
Chile
Francisco Bilbao coined it; Napoleon III's France then embraced the label to justify its intervention in Mexico.
Q 02Roughly what share of Latin Americans speak Spanish as a first language?
About 60%
Portuguese, almost all of it in Brazil, accounts for another 30%, and indigenous and other languages for the rest.
Q 03Which is Latin America's largest country and the only one where Portuguese is the main language?
Brazil
Its size is why the region is 'Latin' rather than simply 'Hispanic' America.
Q 04According to a 2014 Pew survey, what share of Latin Americans are Catholic?
69%
Protestants were 19% overall, but 26% in Brazil and over 40% in much of Central America.
Q 05Which language of the Inca Empire is official in Peru alongside Spanish?
Quechua
Bolivia gives Aymara, Quechua and Guaraní all official status; Paraguay's Guaraní is spoken by most of the population.
Q 06Which French-based hybrid language is the most widely spoken in Latin America and the Caribbean?
Haitian Creole
Papiamento, spoken on Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao, is a Portuguese-based creole with Dutch influence.
Q 07Which country produces about a third of the world's copper?
Chile
It is also the world's largest producer of iodine and rhenium and second for lithium.
Q 08Which country is the world's largest producer of emeralds?
Colombia
Latin America also produces half of the world's soybeans, led by Brazil.
Q 09On which date in 1810 did Miguel Hidalgo make the 'Grito de Dolores'?
The 16th of September
Every year Mexico's president re-enacts it from the National Palace balcony, ringing Hidalgo's own bell and shouting '¡Viva México!' three times.
Q 10Bolívar led six modern countries to independence from Spain. Which of these was NOT one of them?
Argentina
His list is Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Peru and Venezuela; Argentina's liberator was José de San Martín.
Q 11Bolívar was born in 1783 in which city?
Caracas
He was orphaned young, absorbed Enlightenment ideas in Madrid and lost his wife to yellow fever in 1803.
Q 12The Haitian Revolution that began with a slave revolt in 1791 was unique in history for what?
Founding a state ruled by former slaves
It threw off French rule in what had been the colony of Saint-Domingue, and its shockwaves reached every slave society in the Americas.
Q 13The 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas divided the newly found lands outside Europe between which two powers?
Portugal and Castile (Spain)
Q 21The Panama Canal opened in which year, after France had abandoned its own attempt?
1914
France dug from 1881 to 1889; the US took over in 1904; Panama took full control on the last day of 1999.
Q 22The Castros' revolution began with an assault on which Cuban military post on 26 July 1953?
Moncada Barracks
The failed attack gave the movement its name; the Castros returned from Mexican exile in 1956 with Che Guevara.
Q 23Che Guevara, the Argentine revolutionary of the Cuban Revolution, had trained for which profession?
Medicine
A motorcycle journey around South America as a medical student radicalised him.
The line ran 370 leagues west of Cape Verde, which is why the eastern bulge of Brazil ended up Portuguese.
Q 14The Aztec capital Tenochtitlan was built on an island in which body of water?
Lake Texcoco
Founded around 1325 and taken by the Spanish and their Tlaxcaltec allies in 1521, it was the largest city in the pre-Columbian Americas.
Q 15The Aztec Empire, more accurately the Triple Alliance, was a union of how many city-states?
Three
It ruled the Valley of Mexico from 1428 until 1521; the people are properly the Mexica, and their language Nahuatl.
Q 16What was the capital of the Inca Empire, the largest empire in pre-Columbian America?
Cusco
The Incas called their realm Tawantinsuyu, 'the four parts together', and kept records on knotted strings called khipu.
Q 17Machu Picchu was brought to world attention in 1911 by which American historian?
Hiram Bingham
Locals already knew it and a Peruvian explorer had reached it earlier; it was probably built around 1450 as an estate for the emperor Pachacuti.
Q 18Which Mesoamerican civilisation had the pre-Columbian Americas' most sophisticated writing?
The Maya
Their region covered south-eastern Mexico, all of Guatemala and Belize and parts of Honduras and El Salvador.
Q 19The Sacred Cenote at Chichen Itza was used to make offerings to which Maya god?
Chaac, the rain god
Dredging from 1904 to 1910 turned up gold, jade and human remains with wounds consistent with sacrifice.
Q 20Mexico City is the oldest capital in the Americas. At what altitude does it sit?
About 2,240 metres
Greater Mexico City, with nearly 22 million people, is the Western Hemisphere's second-largest urban area after São Paulo.
Q 24Evita Perón was First Lady of her country from 1946 until her death in which year, aged 33?
1952
She championed women's suffrage, ran a huge charitable foundation and founded the country's first large female political party.
Q 25Who was the first Latin American writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1945?
Gabriela Mistral
The Chilean poet and educator was honoured for lyric poetry that 'made her name a symbol of the idealistic aspirations of the entire Latin American world'.
Q 26Which Chilean poet, born Ricardo Reyes Basoalto, won the 1971 Nobel and served as a Communist senator?
Pablo Neruda
His 'Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair' appeared in 1924, when he was 19.
Q 27García Márquez's most famous novel is set in which fictional village, based on his birthplace Aracataca?
Macondo
The 1967 novel has sold over fifty million copies and made 'magic realism' a household term.
Q 28The Latin American literary 'Boom' is said to have peaked with which 1967 novel about the Buendía family?
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Julio Cortázar's 'Hopscotch' (1963) opened the era, and it revived interest in precursors such as Borges and Rulfo.
Q 29Which Mexican painter is famous for self-portraits mixing realism with fantasy and folk art?
Frida Kahlo
She belonged to the post-revolutionary Mexicayotl movement, which sought to define a Mexican identity.
Q 30Colombian artist Fernando Botero is instantly recognisable for what feature of his figures?
Exaggerated, plump proportions
His plump people, animals and even fruit hang in museums and stand as bronzes in city squares worldwide.