ABSTRACT
Latin America is a region of great diversity. Within and between countries, one can observe linguistic, ethnic, geographical, and economic diversity. Latin American countries share a history of a pattern of political development. The social and racial composition of Latin America is exceedingly diverse. In contrast to North America, where the colonists arrived with their wives and families to settle and farm, the conquest of Latin America was a military campaign, and widespread miscegenation between Whites and Indigenous people, Whites and Blacks, Blacks and Indigenous, and all of their offspring took place right from the beginning. The Latin American economies were founded under the prevailing economic theory of mercantilism in which colonies existed solely for the benefit of the colonial powers.
