*Most of Latin America was settled by the Spanish and Portuguese.  They intermarried with the local Indian tribes, producing mestizos.  They also imported many African slaves, and, in some cases, intermarried (or at least interbred) with them, producing mulattos.  All parts of Latin America have some mixture of these races.

*All parts of Latin America (except, of course, the English and Dutch parts) are heavily Roman Catholic, although some parts also mix Catholicism with native or African religions, one result of which is Voodoo.

*Most of Central America is a mixture of European, Indian, and mestizo races and cultures, as is most of the Latin Caribbean.

*Venezuela and Columbia tend to have higher percentages of African-descended peoples, and a greater percentage of mulatto people, but they also have many mestizo and European people as well.

*The Guyanas and most of the non-Hispanic Caribbean are mostly black, being descended primarily from African slaves.

*The Andean nations, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Chile, as well as Paraguay, have very high proportions of mestizo and more or less pure-blood American Indians, although some of these nations, particularly Chile, have a small but influential European elite.

*Brazil is one of the most mixed of all Latin American nations, and, while the upper class remains mostly white and the favelas are still predominantly black, there is still a great deal of opportunity for people of all races and mixtures of races.

*Argentina and Uruguay are mostly European in background, partly because of a great deal of European immigration there in the 19th century (at much the same time that many people went to the USA).

*In some heavily Indian nations, Indian languages retain official status:  Bolivia and Peru place Quechua and Aymara—old Inca languages--alongside Spanish, and Ecuador also preserves Quechua.  Paraguay uses Guarani, the language of many of its pre-Columbian peoples, and Mexico and Guatemala recognise a number of Mayan languages, most notably Nahuatl.  Creole is a name given to mixed languages created by the merging of African, Indian, and European languages, and African-French Creole is a recognised language in Haiti, and other Creoles are used throughout the Caribbean.

*Football is the most popular sport in most of Latin America, although baseball is popular in many of the West Indies, and cricket is played in most of the current and the former British colonies in the region.  Mexicans and Cubans also play a sport called jai alai, in which balls are caught and thrown with baskets tied to players’ wrists.

*Latin Americans share much of the same music and the same television (especially tellenovellas), but they also have some differences.  Dancing is very popular in most of Latin America, and different regions have their specialites:  the Cha-Cha comes from Haiti, Mambo dancing from Cuba, and the Tango is from Argentina and Uruguay.

*Latin Americans love to party, and, as Catholics, many of their parties fall on religious holidays or feasts—hence the name fiesta.  The most famous is Carnival, which takes place the week before Lent (sort of like a week-long Mardi Gras).  One of the largest Carnival celebrations is held in Rio de Janeiro.