Latin America History

The “New World”-land in the Americas

The “Old World”-Europe, Africa, and Asia

Columbian Exchange

• The Columbian Exchange is the exchange of

crops, goods, animals, diseases, and weapons

between Europe and the Americas after

Columbus’ voyage in 1492.

© Brain Wrinkles

• European explorers brought horses, pigs,

cattle, chickens, goats, donkeys, & sheep.

• The horse was the most important because they

were used for transportation, labor, and

hunting animals.

• Horses enabled Native Americans to travel long

distances for the first time

© Brain Wrinkles

• Europeans brought sugarcane, rice, wheat,

coffee, & grapes to the Americas .

• The Americas had maize (corn), tomatoes,

tobacco, cacao (chocolate), potatoes, and cotton

which were sent back to Europe.

• These new cash crops changed the New World

economically,

© Brain Wrinkles

• Europeans (unknowingly) introduced new

diseases to the Americas.

• Smallpox, measles, and influenza (flu) were the

most common.

• Natives had no immunities to European

diseases and died by the millions. © Brain Wrinkles

• Nearly all of the European diseases were communicable by air & touch.

Illness in Europe was considered to be the consequence of sin, so this was their thought of Native Americans dying of illness:

Indians, who were largely “heathen” or non-Christian were regarded as sinners and therefore subject to illness as a punishment.

© Brain Wrinkles

• The Native people were used for slave labor to benefit from the

new found riches to be had in the New World

• Europeans needed labor to cultivate (grow) all the new crops in

the Americas, but there weren’t many natives left because of

diseases.

• They began looking to Africa for a new labor source. (African

Slavery)

• New foods provided nutrition, helping people live longer.© Brain Wrinkles

• Spain and Portugal first used the slave labor of Indigenous (native people) from Latin America.

• Millions of indigenous people died (Smallpox, Measles, and the Flu)

• Spain and Portugal looked to Africa for a new slave labor.

Why People from Africa?

Why People from Africa?

Forced 12 – 15 million Africans to the Americas as slaves

Slaves were forced to live in small spaces with very little food and water.

Living conditions on the ships cost many Africans their lives.

Transatlantic Slave Trade

African Slave Ship Diagram(Wikimedia Commons

Transatlantic Slave Trade

Transatlantic Slave Trade

Africans who survived the voyage to the New World were forced into slavery for agricultural (farming) work on plantations.

Some were sent to work in gold, silver, and diamond mines in the Americas.

Slavery in the Americas

Intermarriage among Africans, Europeans, and Indigenous peoples gave rise to a new cultural identity in Latin America today.

Most people can trace their ancestry back to these cultural groups in Latin America

Culture Today

Many people in South America are descendants from slaves from over 500 years ago during the colonial periods of the New World.