The continent is compact and roughly triangular in form, getting wide while in the north and tapering to a degree—Cape Horn, Chile—from the south.

The continent's cultural and ethnic outlook has its origin Using the conversation of Indigenous peoples with European conquerors and immigrants and, more locally, with African slaves. Offered an extended heritage of colonialism, the overwhelming the vast majority of South Americans communicate Spanish or Portuguese, and societies and states are rich in Western traditions.

The Brazilian Highlands Have got a Significantly larger hydroelectric potential than the Andean location[citation essential] and its opportunities of exploitation are greater due to the existence of many large rivers with superior margins plus the prevalence of excellent variations forming big cataracts, like Individuals of Paulo Afonso, Iguaçu and Some others.

Devices of compelled labor, including the haciendas and mining business's mit'a also contributed for the depopulation. Just after this, enslaved Africans, who experienced made immunities to those diseases, have been rapidly introduced in to exchange them.

Revolutionary movements and suitable-wing military dictatorships became prevalent soon after Globe War II, but since the 1980s, a wave of democratization passed with the continent, and democratic rule is common now.

A wide array of sports are played from the continent of South America, with soccer getting the most popular Total, while baseball is the preferred in Venezuela.

Panorama of Cartagena (2008), A serious port on the northern coast of Colombia and one of many place's most important vacationer Places

Satellite see of South America at night from NASA, exhibiting the contrast concerning intensely populated coastal locations and the more remote locations in get more info the Amazonian inside and Patagonia South America incorporates a inhabitants of in excess of 428 million people. They are really distributed regarding variety a "hollow continent" with many of the population concentrated within the margins in the continent.[forty eight] On 1 hand, there are several sparsely populated parts including tropical forests, the Atacama Desert as well as icy portions of Patagonia.

It displays a broad variety of landscapes and climates as a result of more info its broad area location which stretches north-south.

The 19th century noticed an incredible push for independence and decolonization in South America, with each individual region obtaining acquired independence by 1825.

How did it get its identify? The identify "America" emanates from Amerigo Vespucci, a Florentine navigator who was the very first to propose that The complete landmass was a wholly new continent instead website of an undiscovered Portion of Asia, as Formerly imagined by other explorers.

In contrast to other European colonies while in the Americas which generally used the labor of African slaves, Spanish colonists primarily enslaved indigenous Americans. In 1750, the Portuguese Crown here abolished the enslavement of indigenous peoples in colonial Brazil, under the belief they were being unfit for labor and fewer effective than enslaved Africans. Enslaved Africans were introduced for the Americas on slave ships, beneath inhuman ailments and sick-treatment, and people who survived were being bought in slave marketplaces.

The main public transportation in important towns could be the bus. Quite a few metropolitan areas have a diverse transport system of metro and subway trains, the very first of which was the Buenos Aires subte, opened Brazil 1913.

The war was fought typically in the particular territory of Peru and ended having a Confederate defeat as well as the dissolution from the Confederacy and annexation of numerous territories by Argentina.