Latin America
Latin America Unit Test Review
Why does Mexico have few major rivers and natural lakes?
Answer: Because of climate characteristics and arrangement of landforms.
Of what is Mexico the world’s leading producer?
Answer: Petroleum
What are the main factors that contribute to environmental concerns in Mexico? What is deforestation and what are key ways to combat it? Why is biodiversity valuable?
Answer: The regional high pressure systems, the northeast trade winds, and the vertical climate zones. Purposeful clearing of forest land is deforestation. Some ways to combat it are to plant trees use less paper.
What was the outcome of the Mexican American War?
Answer: Still power struggle until 1917 when new constitution was established. Corrupt monopoly. Drug cartels rule over parts.
What was the impact of urbanization in Mexico City?
Answer: Lots of syncretism. Altered population distribution. Made it the cultural and economic center. Megacity.
What is Mexico City’s water crisis? How is it tied to Spain? What is happening? Why is it getting worse? What are three solutions? Include relevant vocabulary.
Answer: They are running out of water. Trucks are coming around with water to provide to citizens. It’s getting worse because people are using dirty water, it has become the center of women’s lives.
Where are the highest elevations in South America?
Answer:
What is seismic activity? How does it affect the region?
Answer: Seismic activity opens the earth’s crust and triggers the formation of volcanoes and mountain ranges. It affects the region by making it so that there are high mountain ranges like the Sierra Madre mountains and oriental. As well as making it prone to tectonic activity like earthquakes.
What are the main factors that affect climate in the region?
Answer: The regional high-pressure systems, the northeast trade winds, vertical climate zones, proximity to the sea, elevation, latitude, local topography.
Where is population density the highest in Central and South America?
Answer: Low population density. Home to about 415 million people but slowly beginning to slow.
What makes Latin America so diverse physically?
Answer: Reflects influences from different civilizations and cultural and social elements of their own culture and other (like the United States) cultures. Rich farmland and abundant access to many resources, including crops, water, and minerals. Diverse climates and biomes. Rain forests, coastal plains, and mountains. Zone for earthquakes and volcanoes.
Conquistadors: spanish and portuguese soldiers that carried out conquests.
vertical climate zones: climate zones that occur as elevation increases, with its own natural vegetation and crops.
Subsidence: the gradual caving in or area sinking of a land.
Syncretism: is the blending of beliefs and practices from different religions into one faith.
NAFTA: a comprehensive agreement that eliminated most trade restrictions.
cash crop: an agricultural crop which is grown to sell for profit.
primate city: city that is the largest in its country, province, state, or region, and disproportionately larger than any others.
Diego Rivera: He was a very famous muralist.
Aztec: native american people who dominated northern mexico in the early 16th century before spanish conquest.
Central Plateau in Mexico: Features smaller valleys and little villages.
ring of fire: an area where tectonic plates collide with one another causing seismic activity.
PRI: the institutional revolutionary party
Archipelago: composed of crests and peaks of a mountain range to form collisions between tectonic plates.
Rio Grande: forms part of border between usa and mexico
Isthmus: narrow piece of land connecting two larger area on top of water
Part 2
Latin America Unit Test Review
What defines Latin America as a cultural region?
Answer: it has diverse culture. Religion, and traditions. Influences from europeans, indigenous, and african cultures.
How does geography affect migration in Latin America?
Answer: since there were many landforms like mountains, and rivers to cross, it was very difficult to migrate, so most people stayed in their cultural bubble. This was very much unlike the Europeans who had very different natural resources and geography.
Define spatial diffusion and explain how the Columbian Exchange is an example of this. What do you consider the most positive and negative effects of the Columbian Exchange on both hemispheres?
Answer: when columbus came to the Americas, both sides got to know how the other lived, they exchanged things. Like the europeans got a variety of new crops like potatoes and corn, while the indigenous people got guns germs and steel. These new things completely impacted both sides.
How and why does regionalism impact Latin America? Describe barriers to unification
Answer: it’s like a means of containing the USA and and strengthening negotiations and capabilities with the rest of the world.
What are the 4 main characteristics of political revolutions? Describe the key players in Latin American revolutions
Answer:dissident elites, mass frustration, shared motivation, and state crises. In terms of dissident elites, the creoles were major players, like Simon Bolivar. Ideas of the enlightenment sparked mass frustration and shared motivation. State crises are kinda like napoleon’s takeovers which weakened spain and france.
South & Central America
Why is the Amazon region important to Latin America?
Answer: Worlds largest rainforest, and it had many natural resources like wood which caused a lot of deforestation.
Where are the highest elevations in South America?
Answer: In the tierra fria areas which were like the top of mountains, snowy places.
What is seismic activity? How does it affect the region?
Answer: It opens the earth’s crust and triggers the formation of volcanoes. Many earthquake and volcanic eruptions can happen, making it difficult to live in those places.
What are the main factors that affect climate in the region?
Answer: Temperature, elevation, latitude, the presence of ocean currents.
What is El Nino and its impact?
Answer: Phenomenon that affects the climate in south america, creating unusually warm ocean conditions.
Where is population density the highest in Central and South America?
Answer: Sao Paolo, Buenos Aires, Bogota
What is the family structure in traditional Latin cultures?
Answer:most families are in extended families and value family a lot. But urban families have slowly begun to shift into nuclear families.
Who led the first revolution in Latin America in Haiti?
Toussaint Louverture
What were the military strongmen in Latin America called?
Caudillos
Who was “The Liberator” and why was he called this?
William Lloyd Garrison, because he published many controversial pieces that inspired revolutions and went against the idea of slavery.
How did Cuba achieve its independence from Spain?
U.S. and cubans full force of a revolution forced them out of the government.
For how many centuries did the Spanish control their territories in Latin America?
About 4 centuries
When did most Latin American countries gain independence?
Between 1808-1838
What specific things gave the Spaniards advantages over the natives when colonizing Latin America? Describe why steel is one of the greatest agents of conquest. Be sure to think beyond weapons
Their natural resources, germs that grew to not affect them, and guns. They also had very tameable animals. Steel was one of the greatest agents of conquest because it was light but also easily penetrable and better to use then any of the sticks the Aztec and incans had.
What were the social classes under the Spanish? What were they based on? What were the impacts of these social classes?
Mulattoes, creoles, peninsulares, slaves, mestizos. They were based on whether or not someone was directly tied to European descent. They caused a lot of anger and the dissident elites eventually funded the rest of them into having a revolution.
Why was it difficult to establish stable governments after independence in Latin America? Discuss the social structure, history of colonialism (political and economic impact) How was Latin America’s ruling elite after independence a political problem?
The creoles basically became the new ruling class, and nothing about the social structure has actually changed. This made everybody else still hold a shared frustration and motivation to have a new social structure.
Describe three common characteristics of dictators and how these traits are used to maintain power.
Rule by autocracy: self appointed, no governing body to check its power.
Cult of Personality: form of hero worship, people are fed propaganda
Strong Military Leader: can sorta keep control of everybody.
What happened to Cuba after the Spanish American War?
U.S. forces occupied Cuba until 1902 when they finally allowed Cuba to have its own governing body.
What effects did the Monroe Doctrine and Roosevelt Corollary have on Latin America?
It made it so that European countries could not occupy American ones anymore or colonize them. And the US has the right to exercise their military forces in Latin American countries to fend off European Countries.
Terms
Indigenous People’s Day vs. Columbus Day: the idea that instead of celebrating somebody who tortured a bunch of indigenous people, we should celebrate the people who live through it. The Indigenous themselves.
Treaty of Tordesillas: it divided the non-European world into spanish or portuguese places of dominance, basically saying that they could take over those certain lands.
Mercantilism: maximize exports and minimize imports for an economy.
Hernán Cortés: led the conquest of mexico.
Fidel Castro: Prime MInister/President of cuba, led a communist revolution. Established one party socialist state. Us tried to unsuccessfully oust him in 1961.
Augustine Pinochet: chile. Us supported against socialist party. Suspended constitution etc. tortured and killed opposition. Improved economy.
Rafael Leonidas Trujillo: chief of army. Brought economic stability. No freedom. His former friends staged a coup and killed him.
Inca: largest empire in pre-columbian era.
Maya: mesoamerican civilization.
Francisco Pizarro: conquistador that led to the conquest of the inca.
Cordilleras: small chain or network system of mountains.
Escarpments: a steep slope or a long cliff that was the result of erosion.
sustainable development: development conducted without depletion of natural resources.
Lake Nicaragua: largest freshwater lake in central america