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.
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