Introduction to South America

South America is the Earth's fourth largest continent in total land area, and is roughly triangular in shape. Its northernmost coast borders the Caribbean Sea. Its eastern coast runs along the Atlantic Ocean, and its western coast runs along the Pacific Ocean. The equator cuts across South America, about 750 miles down from the base of the Isthmus of Panama, where the continent begins. Climatically, this means that the northern and central parts of the continent are warm all year round at lower elevations. Moving further south, the climate gradually becomes milder and more temperate. And eventually, South America actually becomes quite cold. In fact, frigid Cape Horn, at the southern tip of the continent, is only about 620 miles from the shores of icy Antarctica. South America is home to 423 million people, or roughly 5.5% of the world's total population. From the 1500s up until the early 1800s, South America was merely a collection of European colonies and had no independent nations. Spain and Portugal were the most important colonial powers, and their traditions exerted the greatest influence on South American culture. As a result, Roman Catholicism is the predominant religion in South America today. The continent is divided up among 12 sovereign, constitutionally democratic nations. The first is Brazil, which is Portuguese-speaking. Then comes Spanish-speaking Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela, a country which possesses the world's largest reserves of petroleum. Guyana is South America's only English-speaking country, and Suriname is its only Dutch-speaking one. Tiny French Guiana is a colony of France and is not a sovereign nation. Out of all of these, Brazil is by far the biggest, occupying almost half of the continent's land. And Brazil is its most populous country, too. In fact, nearly one-half of all South Americans, or roughly 209 million people, are Brazilian. Brazil is also South America's foremost exporting nation and the world's leading coffee producer. Sao Paulo, Brazil is the largest city on the continent, and Rio de Janeiro is the third largest. Perhaps the most impressive features of South America's geography are the towering Andes Mountains. They run parallel to the Pacific Ocean, the entire length of the continent. And almost all of South America's indigenous people, roughly 14 million of them, live in this mountainous region. Sixty-nine peaks of the Andes exceed 20,000 feet or 6,100 meters in elevation. Over 8,000 square miles of the interior valleys of the Andes in Chile and Argentina are filled with enormous ice fields that give rise to dozens of slow-moving glaciers like this one. South America is home to three major river basins, the Rio de la Plata Basin in the south, where Buenos Aires, the continent's second largest city, is located, the Orinoco River Basin in the north, and in the middle, the enormous Amazon River Basin, which takes up about 40% of the entire continent. More water flows through the Amazon River than any other river on Earth. This vast river basin is the site of the Amazon Rainforest, the world's largest rainforest, a place that is home to an incredibly biodiverse assortment of animal and plant species. Most of the Amazon Basin lacks roads and is flooded for part of the year, so the relatively few people who live here generally must rely on boats to get from place to place. In terms of climate and terrain, the Atacama Desert is the complete opposite of the Amazon Rainforest. This desert lies along the Pacific coast of southern Peru and northern Chile, at the western base of the Andes Mountains. The Atacama is the world's driest desert, and quite a lot of its land is nearly devoid of plant life. But even though very few people live here, the Atacama Desert is where Chile's giant copper mining industry is based. Crossing back over the Andes to the Atlantic side of the continent are two other major features of South America's geography. These are the windswept Patagonian grasslands and broad plains called the Pampas, which lie to their north. Together, these mostly flat lands make up much of the territory of Argentina, all of the territory of Uruguay, and a small portion of Brazil as well. These lands are partly used for grazing sheep and cattle. Beef is a major export of all three of these countries. The traditional ranchers of this area are known as gauchos. The plains of the Pampas are where almost all of South America's large-scale farming of its main export crops of wheat, soybeans, rice, and maize takes place. Los Llanos, a large northern area of grassy plains, are much more tropical and wetter than the southern plains and grasslands. They are located in the Orinoco Basin of Colombia and Venezuela, and are used primarily for grazing cattle. Several species of animals and plants are native to the continent. These include the capybara, the world's largest rodent, guinea pigs, giant anteaters, anaconda snakes that sometimes grow to be more than 30 feet long, flesh-eating freshwater fish called piranhas, and three South American members of the camel family, alpacas, llamas, and guanacos. Some notable native South American plants include tomatoes, potatoes, rubber trees, whose latex sap provides the raw material for goods such as tires, cacao trees, from whose pods chocolate is derived, and the coca plant, a shrub from which the narcotic drug cocaine is obtained.