Perú--part: La Libertad,¹ San² Martín, Ancash, Lima, Ica, Ucayali, Tumbes, Piura, Labayeque, Cajumarca, Madre de Dios,³ Amazon;⁴ Ecuador⁵ (including the Galapagos Islands); Colombia (including San Andrés⁶ and Providencia⁷); Bolivia--part: Santa Cruz,⁸ Beni, Pando; Venezuela; Aruba; Trinidad and Tobago; the Netherlands Antilles⁹ (Curaçao, Bonaire, Saba, St. Eustatius, St. Maarten¹⁰); Cuba; Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas; Dominica; Grenada; Haiti; Jamaica; St. Kitts and Nevis; St. Lucia; St. Vincent and the Grenadines; Anguilla; the British Virgin Islands; the Cayman Islands; Guadeloupe (including St. Martin and St. Barthélemy¹¹); Martinique; Montserrat; Navassa Islands; Puerto Rico¹²; the Turks and Caicos Islands; the Virgin Islands of the United States; the Dominican¹³ Republic; Barbados; Panamá; Costa Rica;¹⁴ Nicaragua; Honduras; Guatemala; Salvador;¹⁵ México (including the Revillagigedo Islands); Clipperton Islands; Belize; Chile; Argentina; Uruguay; Falkland Islands (United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland); South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands (United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland); British Antarctic Territory (United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland)--part: South Orkney and South Shetland Islands

How is the land laid out?

In the far northwest is the peninsula of Baja¹⁶ California--barely connected to the rest of the area across the Sonoran desert.

The bulk of México is a wedge shape, wide along the American border and twisted eastward at the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. The northern border beyond the Colorado follows an irregular and arbitrary line across dry plateaus until reaching the Río Grande¹⁷ which takes the boundary on a winding southeast path to the Gulf of Mexico. Two mountain ranges start in the north and end just before the Isthmus: the Western¹⁸ and Eastern¹⁹ Sierra Madre.²⁰ Between them are high tablelands, very dry in the north, increasingly rugged as the space between the ranges narrows. Beyond the mountains is a low generally narrow Gulf plain. A third set of mountains, the Southern²¹ Sierra Madre, follows the Pacific Coast from the end of the Western range to the Isthmus.

Beyond the Isthmus of Tehuantepec Central American stretches southeast until it reaches South America. There are two bumps along the way, both extending eastward. The Yucatán Peninsula in southeast Mexico is one and the Mosquito Coast of Honduras and Nicaragua is the other. South of them the two continents are joined by the long twisty Isthmus of Panamá.

The Southern Sierra Madre continue beyond the Isthmus of Tehuantepec under various names as the spine of Central America, intersected by many transverse ranges.

In the Caribbean are numerous islands extending in a great arc from near Florida and the Yucatan in the northwest, starting southeast and eastward, then southward, and then westward along the Venezuelan coast.

South of the Lesser Antilles--the more southerly and generally smaller islands--is Venezuela. The Andes mountain system starts here and continues through Colombia, Ecuador, Perú, and the Chilean/ Argentine border where they reach nearly 7,000 meters. In Colombia and Perú there is clear separation between the three ranges--Western, Central and Eastern. Further south there is a separation between a Western and a Royal Range, with high plateaus between (some of which are outside of this area); westward this part of the mountains is bounded by a fierce coastal desert. In the south, the mountains are separated by sea channels, and finally end on South America's largest island, Tierra del Fuego (Land of Fire). East of the northern mountains of the cone of southern South America are the pampas: treeless, grassy, plains, sloping eastward. These transition to coastal plains in Uruguay. Further south, the land is arid but not as flat. In Argentina's very northeast is a piece of the Paraná Plateau, named after the region's chief river.

Who lives there?

Greater than ninety percent of the more than 300 million inhabitants speak Spanish as a first language. No single other language accounts for as much as ten million speakers. Almost all of the remaining nearly ten percent speak a variety a variety of Indo-European Caribbean creoles--and mainland indiginous languages. Most everyone on the mainland, and the bulk of the islanders, follow Roman Catholic Christianity, although some practices have melded elements from indigious or African religions.

For Mexican cities see the table. Other large cities include: Guatemala City, San José, Havana (La Habana), Santo Domingo, San Juan, Asunción, Cali, Barranquilla, Bogotá, Buenos Aires, Cali, Caracas, Córdoba, Lima, Medellín, Mendoza, Montevideo, Quito, Rosario, Santa Cruz and Santiago.

Who was there before?

People arrived here an uncertain amount of time ago, probably moving north to south, perhaps filling the area 30,000 years ago.

The Spanish invaded about 500 years ago, bringing their language, forcing their religion, murdering millions and unintentionally killing millions more by introducing smallpox. Before that the area was a checkerboard of Amerindian languages, many of which--on the mainland--still have speakers today. The religions of a few imperial or monumental cultures are known but--for the others--can only be derived from their vestiges in non-standard Catholicism today.

Other parts of the area not previously mentioned are: Spanish Perú, Spanish Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica and Panamá, northern Central America, Chile, Argentina and Uruguay.

Footnotes

1. Translates as Liberty.
2. Translates as saint or holy. Santa is the feminine form.
3. Translates as Mother of God.
4. Amazonas in Spanish.
5. Translates as the Equator.
6. Translates as Andrew.
7. Translates as Providence.
8. Translates as Cross.
9. Nederlandse (Lowland's) Antillen in Dutch.
10. Translates as Martin.
11. Translates as Bartholomew.
12. Translates as Rich Port.
13. Dominicana in Spanish.
14. Translates as Rich Coast.
15. Translates as Savior.
16. Translates as Lower.
17. Translates as the Big River but it is called the Bravo (Great) by Mexicans.
18. Occidental in Spanish.
19. Oriental in Spanish.
20. Translates as Mother Range.
21. Del Sul in Spanish.