The Three Americas

Although in the United States we call our country "America" by historical tradition, we are actually part of a much larger and complex continent that bears the same name.

The Americas  comprise three geographical divisions -North, Central and South- with 1.1 billion inhabitants, distributed between North America (539 million) with 3 countries, Central America ( 46 million ) with 7 countries and South America (422 million) with 12 countries, respectively.

Their languages, history, culture and standards of living vary widely, from the most advanced and developed (US, Canada) to the poorest and most underdeveloped of the world (Haiti).

Brazilian anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro (1992-1997) distinguished the Americas not by its geographic location nor its language, but for its colonization. 

He distinguished three basic groups or "peoples" according to the history and evolution before and after colonization and independence: 

1. the testimony peoples, that are mostly of indigenous origins and remain strongly attached to such ancestry -Mexico, Bolivia, Peru, Paraguay- 
2. the new peoples, that were formed by forced, mostly slave-work immigration from Africa and Asia and became characterized by such ancestry -Caribbean, Central America, Brazil and the African American culture in the US- and 
3. transplanted peoples , which replaced with mostly European colonizer the aboriginal population -Canada and US on the North, Argentina, Uruguay and Chile on the South-

Ribeiro considered self-determination, self-sufficiency and self-control as the critical factor to explain the different degrees of success of the three Americas:

The transplanted peoples are the most successful and prosperous because they  had self-determination from the very beginning. Their status as colonies of Britain and France was semi-autonomous and they brought with them the economic practices of financial and industrial capitalism, free trade and rule of law that they already had in their countries of origin.

The testimony peoples struggled between their strong cultural roots in the ancient Aztec and Incaic agricultural empires and the feudal and mercantilist models Spaniards brought with them. Their centralized, monarchic political traditions blended quite smoothly, but the Catholic religious indoctrination and forced conversion clashed sometimes violently with the original culture. Testimony peoples struggled between two masters: the original (Incas, emperors, chieftains) and the "Crown & Cross" colonizers. Both cultures were autocratic, authoritarian and centralist, giving little room for independent thinking.

The new peoples, finally, had the hardest time for the forced nature of their migration, the ravages that slavery inflicted in family union, parenthood and ancestry. Not surprisingly, the regions affected by this model of colonization lagged behind in economic and human development. New peoples were never in control of their own lives, much less their government. Their countries look like a work in progress, hundred years after. Stephan Zweig dictum about Brazil summarizes it: "Brazil is the country of the future. And it will ever will"