The World in Pieces: Solving the Puzzle of Place

  Part II. The Invention of Latin America Before the Name There was no Latin America before European conquest. There were thousands of communities, many languages, large states, small societies, trade routes, rivalries, sacred landscapes, farms, fisheries, and cities. The Mexica, commonly called the Aztecs, ruled a tribute empire from Tenochtitlan. Maya societies created city-states, writing systems, monumental architecture, long-distance trade, and sophisticated astronomical knowledge across a region extending through southern Mexico and Central America. The Inca governed a vast Andean empire through roads, administrative centers, storehouses, labor obligations, and alliances. Taíno societies lived across the Greater Antilles. Mapuche peoples resisted both Inca and Spanish expansion. Guaraní communities occupied parts of the southern interior. Countless Amazonian, coastal, highland, and island societies organized life on scales that colonial chroniclers often failed to understand....

  Learning Objectives By the end of this chapter, students should be able to: Explain why Latin America, Mesoamerica, South America, the Caribbean, and North America overlap rather than form perfectly separate regions. Describe how plate tectonics, elevation, atmospheric circulation, ocean currents, and tropical cyclones shape the region's environments. Analyze the Amazon, Andes, Mesoamerican highlands, and Caribbean islands as human environments with long histories of management and settlement. Explain how Indigenous societies, European conquest, African slavery, migration, and racial classification produced contemporary cultural landscapes. Trace how mines, plantations, haciendas, railroads, ports, factories, and tourism connected the region to world markets. Distinguish political independence from economic and social transformation. Evaluate the roles of the United States, Europe, China, regional institutions, corporations, and social movements in contemporary development. Use c...