The One-Minute Geographer: Territorial Giants and Microstates in Latin America

Map of Brazil overlaid on the United States. Map from The World Factbook posted at openrivers.lib.umn.edu

The Size of Latin American Nations

In the previous post in this series, we looked at populations of Latin American countries. In this post we’ll look at the size or territorial areas of Latin American nations. As we did with populations, we’ll look at the area of the Western Hemisphere as a whole and makes some comparisons with the size of the USA. Below is a map that will be helpful to locate nations:

Map of Latin America from britannica.com

North America is much larger than South America — almost 40% larger. That’s understandable considering that North America has two of the three largest nations in the world — Canada and the USA. North America also includes a good part of Latin America: Mexico, Central American, and all the islands of the Caribbean Sea.

It’s helpful to look first at a chart of the world’s largest nations. To simplify things, I listed only the ten largest nations in the world, but I also show Mexico and Peru among the world’s 20 largest countries. I’ve also included figures for North and South America and Latin America at the bottom of the chart. As we go along, I won’t cite square mile or…