Map of South America

South America is the world’s fourth largest continent and home to more than 450 million people. The present-day population of South America is primarily derived from four broad groups: Indigenous Americans, who were the pre-Columbian inhabitants; Iberians (Spanish and Portuguese who conquered and dominated the continent until the beginning of the 19th century); enslaved people taken from Africa by the colonizers during the transatlantic slave trade; and, finally, postindependence immigrants from overseas, especially from Italy and Germany as well as Lebanon, South Asia, China, and Japan. Spanish is the official language everywhere except in Brazil (Portuguese), French Guiana (French), Guyana (English), and Suriname (Dutch). Indigenous languages are also widely spoken, with some having official status, as in Paraguay (Guaraní), Peru (Quechua, Aymara), and Bolivia (36 Indigenous languages, according to the 2009 constitution). Large urban populations dominate much of the continent today, though Indigenous and rural communities continue to play an important cultural and political role across the region.

Countries of South America