Parker GEOG 4031

Introduction     The Spanish Colonies of Cuba and Puerto Rico were some of the youngest colonies of the Spanish Empire and therefore were influential to later Spanish colonies throughout Latin America and the world.  These colonies, specifically the colonial cities of Cienfuegos, Havana, Camaguey, San Juan, and Ponce in Puerto Rico and Cuba are cities with a long colonial history and architectural features such as large inner courtyards, horseshoe arches, polylobed arches, and lambrequin arches. These colonies exhibited an architectural style that was not solely European in origin. These architectural features are traits of a common style of architecture in Spain, the Moorish architectural style. The Moorish Architectural Style is a style of architecture that draws heavily upon Islamic and Arab architecture as many traits of this style are seen throughout North Africa and Arab countries.       The Moorish tradition is a form of cultural syncretism that...

     Throughout Latin America, there are a diverse group of religions, some that originated long before European colonists arrived in the Americas, and some of the Old-World religions. Then, there are the religions that were created after colonization occurred, fusing together indigenous religions and Catholicism, Protestantism, Hinduism, and Judaism. These folk religions are an important part of Latin American culture and daily life. Without religious syncretism, some of the most influential religious figures in Latin America would not exist, such as Our Lady of Guadeloupe, a dark-skinned version of the Virgin Mary. Many of the indigenous religions are still thriving alongside Christianity in Latin America as they have been brought together with Catholicism, praising their gods and heroes alongside venerated saints. Catholicism plays an extremely large part in this as it was the state religion of the Spanish colonists. Churches, monasteries, and convents were built all o...

      The History of Latin America cannot be described without taking a look at the long history of influence and involvement by the United States of America. While a lot of involvement by the United States was to further ties between the US government and other Latin American countries, a lot of military intervention by the US was performed throughout history. On the map below, you can see the different countries in which overt military intervention, by the United States government, occurred. Most of the countries labeled on the map show that the U.S. military intervened or invaded their country multiple times throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. In the data shown on the map, there are the dates of overt U.S. military intervention, usually through the purpose of peacekeeping or invasion and overthrow of the current political regime. The map displays that none of these invasions occurred in South America, only in the Caribbean or the Central American sta...

     The Human Development Index is a measurement tool developed by the United Nations Development Programme utilized to rank all the countries in the world by three different factors: life expectancy, educational attainment, and adjusted real income. Using these three factors to measure development in different countries is a balanced way to measure not only some of the economic data in a country, but also to measure quality of life and how the economic factors actually affect the people in a country.     In the geo map shown below, Latin American countries are contrasted in ranges by their HDI values. The ranges of HDI begin with  0.79 - 0.855 (Very High), 0.752 - 0.788 (High), 0.709 - 0.751 (Medium), and 0.535 - 0.692 (Low). The data range with the largest data range is range of 0.79 - 0.855 (Very High) with 10 out of the 34 countries with available data. The country in Latin America with the highest HDI value is the Republic of Chile, wit...

    The precolonial architecture and street planning of the indigenous peoples in and around the cities of Tenochtitlan, Teotihuacan, and Cuzco were largely utilized in the construction of the colonial cities and Modern cities. For example, in the street plans of Cuzco, Peru, there is an area in the city where the streets create the image of a Puma. These streets are still incorporated into the city planning. Many instances of indigenous city planning, and architecture are still prevalent in the modern-day cities. In Teotihuacan, the city is mapped out in a largely gridded pattern. The precolonial city planning features prominently in the cityscape of Teotihuacan today and became a defining feature of Latin American city planning through the Laws of the Indies, established after Spanish voyages to Latin America. This led to a defining style of urban planning in the colonial cities of the Spanish Empire.      The architectural style of precolonial empires such as...