Latin American culture is the formal or informal expression of the peoples of Latin America, and includes both high culture (literature, high art) and popular culture (music, folk art and dance) as well as religion and other customary practices.
Definitions of Latin America vary. From a cultural perspective,* Latin America generally includes those parts of the Americas where Spanish, French or Portuguese prevail: Mexico, most of Central America, and South America. There is also an important Latin American cultural presence in the United States (e.g. California and the Southwest, and cities such as New York and Miami). There is also increasing attention to the relations between Latin America and the Caribbean as a whole. See further discussion of definitions at Latin America.
The richness of Latin American culture is the product of many influences, including:
- Pre-Columbian cultures, whose importance is today particularly notable in countries such as Mexico, Guatemala, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Paraguay.
- European colonial culture, owing to the region's history of colonization by Spain, Portugal, and France. European influence is particularly marked in so-called high culture, such as literature, painting, and music. Moreover, this imperial history left an enduring mark of their influence in their languages, which are spoken throughout Central (including the Caribbean), South and North America (Mexico and many parts of the United States).
- Nineteenth- and twentieth-century immigration (e.g. from Spain, Italy, Germany, France and Eastern Europe) also transformed especially countries such as Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil (particular the southeast and southern regions), Cuba, Chile, Venezuela and Mexico (particularly the northern region).
- Chinese, Korean and Japanese immigration influenced the culture in Brazil, Cuba, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama and Peru
- The introduction of slaves from Africa, which has influenced for instance dance, cuisine, and religion, especially in countries such as Dominican Republic, Brazil, Panama, Peru, Venezuela, Colombia, Haiti, Cuba, Mexico and Puerto Rico.
Read more about Latin American Culture: Ethnic Groups, Language, Religion
Famous quotes containing the words latin, american and/or culture:
“You send your child to the schoolmaster, but ‘tis the schoolboys who educate him. You send him to the Latin class, but much of his tuition comes, on his way to school, from the shop- windows.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Miss U.S.A. is in the same graveyard that [Amanda Jones] the twelve-year-old is. Where the sixteen-year-old is. All the past selves. There comes a time when you have to bury those selves because you’ve grown into another one.”
—Amanda Theodosia Jones, U.S. beauty contest winner, Miss U.S.A., 1973. As quoted under the pseudonym “Emma Wright” in American Dreams, Prologue, by Studs Terkel (1980)
“One of the oddest features of western Christianized culture is its ready acceptance of the myth of the stable family and the happy marriage. We have been taught to accept the myth not as an heroic ideal, something good, brave, and nearly impossible to fulfil, but as the very fibre of normal life. Given most families and most marriages, the belief seems admirable but foolhardy.”
—Jonathan Raban (b. 1942)