America

AMERICA. - One of the five largest continents of the earth, divided into three parts: northern, central, southern.

I. GEOGRAPHY

1. NORTH AND CENTRAL AMERICA

To North A. is conventionally attributed not only the great boreal mass of the New World, from the Pole to the Tropic, but also the long narrow isthmian region and the island arcs (Central A.) that connect it to the analogous continental mass extending south of the equator. Within these limits (from 72° to 6° N., that is, as far as the Isthmus of Darien) and including also, as a rule, Greenland (which extends north to 83° 23'), North A. measures 24 million sq km, of which over 1/4 belongs to its articulations (17% to the islands; and of these 9% to the island of Greenland), mostly localized, however, in zones of scant anthropic significance or indeed anecumenical (Circumpolar Archipelago). The parts of the continent closest to the Old World are the northern ones, where the mass assumes (from Alaska to Labrador) its greatest length (about 6000 km); toward the south, on the other hand, while this narrows (in the Isthmus of Panama the bridge between the two Oceans measures little more than 50 km), the distances increase greatly both toward Europe (3200 km between Iceland and Newfoundland instead of the 1500 between Greenland and Norway) and toward Asia (92 km in the same Bering [Strait]). Between 30° and 10° N. there opens, on the western side of the continent, a broad mediterranean which the island arcs divide into two basins (the Gulf of Mexico to the north and the Caribbean Sea to the south) and which exercises a decisive influence on the entire life of the New World.

North A. has, among all the parts of the World, the highest percentage of coastline in relation to its surface area: of the two sides facing the open oceans, the eastern is by far the more accessible and frequented, which nonetheless becomes flat south of Cape Cod, marshy beyond Cape Hatteras and especially along the Gulf of Mexico. On the western side the mountain looms everywhere; south of California there are, one might say, no ports of any importance at all.

The architecture of the continent rests on relatively simple lines. To the west there extends, from Alaska to the isthmian region, a series of reliefs that can be grouped, schematically, into a triple order of Cordilleras, two external ones close and parallel to the Pacific (and of these one coastal, separated by a succession of depressions from a subcoastal one, which has different names from zone to zone) and one internal (Rockies), which diverges from them the more the closer it comes to its end, around 35° N. Between these and the first two there interpose plateaus and closed basins, often arid, traversed by deeply entrenched rivers (Alaska, Great Basin, Colorado Basin), which assume their greatest extent in correspondence with the territory of the United States. All these mountains, although locally higher than the Alps (Mt. Mac Kinley, 6187 m), present in the same culminating areas forms less rugged than the Alpine ones, and also less richness of ice, water and forests, with the exception of the more northern sections, where the external Cordilleras assume the typical glacial morphology and align a notable number of volcanic apparatuses.

Quite different structure and character are presented by the eastern relief (Alleghanies, or Appalachians), much less developed in width (1500 km in length, 80-100 in width) and constituted by bundles of folds and plateaus that represent the residues of more ancient uplifts; with rounded ridges and peaks, gentle forms and slopes, and a landscape therefore more hilly than mountainous (heights as a rule below 2000 m).

Between the two elevated masses there opens, from Hudson Bay to the Gulf of Mexico, a broad flat zone, in its northern part worked by the ice and therefore hollowed into numerous lake basins (the 5 southernmost of these forming a veritable mediterranean, which communicates with the Atlantic by means of the St. Lawrence), and in its southern part fringed by the alluvium of the greatest among the river currents that traverse it, the Missouri-Mississippi system.

South of the Rio Grande do Norte structure and characters change: a great plateau (Mexico), whose height oscillates between 1000 and 1500 m, is enclosed on the sides by two mountain bulwarks (Sierra Madre of the West and Sierra Madre of the East), which find their continuation on the one hand in the region of the isthmuses, on the other in the island region of the Antilles, in either case with frequent interruptions and wide development of volcanism, especially on the slope facing the Pacific.

With the structure of the continent stand in clear relation the fundamental characteristics of its hydrography. Areic and endoreic zones withdraw barely 15% of the territory from surface circulation; in the rest, few but ample river basins are organized in correspondence with the great zone of the internal lowlands, given the arrangement of the reliefs and their proximity to the opposite shores of the two oceans.

But while the northern slope of this zone, broader and more rugged, divides its waters among the basins of the Mackenzie (1.7 million sq km; 4,600 km in length), the St. Lawrence (1.2 and 700 respectively), the Nelson (1.1 and 650) and the Yukon (0.9 and 3,290), the southern slope channels them into the single great complex of the Missouri-Mississippi (3.2 and 6,300), in which, however, the most substantial headwater branch is undoubtedly the Ohio, shorter (1,560 km) than the Missouri (4,800 km), but with a discharge more than double that of the latter. The Canadian rivers have abundant and constant waters, fed as they are by lakes, some of which rank among the largest on earth. The five that tributary to the St. Lawrence cover, between 41° and 49° N (at a latitude comparable to that from Naples to Paris), a surface equal to twice that of the Adriatic, which largely compensates for the scant usefulness of the great river-lake systems of the regions north of 50°: it should not be forgotten, however, that their commercial outlet corresponds less to the mouth of the St. Lawrence, frozen for 5 months on average per year, than to that of the Hudson, toward which it has been artificially directed by means of canals.

Given its extension in latitude (65°), northern A. presents notable varieties of climate. Their general character, in comparison with European climates, is first of all the greater continentality, from which only more or less narrow coastal margins are excluded. Apart from the peri-Arctic zone (which has long and extremely harsh winters), short summers and scant precipitation, excessive thermal regimes with strong annual and seasonal ranges are common to the temperate zones themselves: New York, which is roughly at the latitude of Naples, has a winter average of —1° and a summer average of 23.1 (Naples 9.2 and 23.5 respectively), which become —4.6 and 22.4 at Chicago (at the latitude of Rome), —13.4 and 17.7 at Duluth, Minn. (at the latitude of Bolzano). Such conditions dominate the Atlantic slope under the influence of the cold Labrador current and the central plains, where both the cold currents from the north and the warm ones from the south have free play. Along the Pacific, on the other hand (from about 50° to 35°), a climatic type similar to that of the Mediterranean is realized, with mild winters, cool summers and rainfall predominantly in winter. The other western lands have a dry and harsh climate; aridity, which generally increases from the two oceans toward the interior, reaches its maximum in the closed basins among the spurs of the southern Cordilleras (Death Valley, Colorado and Gila Deserts). An arid but mild climate, with weak thermal ranges, dominates the interior of Mexico; on the Atlantic coasts as in Central A. and the West Indies one passes already to the tropical oceanic climate, with high average temperatures and abundant rainfall, which locally exceeds 4,000 mm annually. Where altitude tempers the thermal extremes (tierras templadas), settlement finds favorable conditions, even for whites, who instead tolerate poorly the unhealthy hot-humid climate of the coastal regions (tierras calientes).

The same zoning, from north to south, is found in the vegetal landscape. The glacial desert of the high latitudes (compact on the uniform plateau of Greenland) is followed first by the sub-Arctic tundra (mosses, lichens, dwarf shrubs; more extensive toward the south than in the Old Continent) and then by the coniferous forest, which covers a large extent of terrain in Canada and on the Western Cordilleras, while the broadleaf forest, which once covered all the United States east of the 90°, has almost everywhere given way to cultivated fields. But the greater part of the flat median region is in the domain of the steppe, which from the true treeless grass prairies passes to different and progressively poorer forms proceeding toward the west and south. Finally, from Florida to Darien the characteristic tropical vegetation develops rapidly, first with savanna, then with forest: luxuriant woods, with extensive undergrowth, are maintained also in the regions of the tierras templadas.

The population of northern A. within the limits fixed above is today over 200 million inhabitants; the average density (8 inhabitants per sq km) that results reveals a strong imbalance between vast tracts that are entirely (Arctic islands, Greenland) or almost entirely (Alaska, northern Canada, arid western plateaus) uninhabited and much more restricted regions that are fairly (United States between 37° and 44° N) or even very densely (Antilles) populated. The maximum densities (Puerto Rico 200, Barbados 500 inhabitants per sq km) are nevertheless far from the figures of Eurasian countries, also because the densities themselves are related to the different antiquity of settlement and to the progress of colonization.

In this regard there is a fundamental difference between temperate (Anglo-Saxon) northern A., where European colonization replaced the crude pre-Columbian peoples, moreover quite sparse and by now almost entirely disappeared, and, favored by environmental conditions as opportune as could be, enormously increased the density of settlement, and tropical (Latin) A., which already in the era prior to discovery had known notable civilizations and complex political organizations. Here on the mainland the aborigines, more numerous and well protected by the climate, ended up absorbing, through interbreeding (the general propensity of the Spaniards to unite with native women), the newcomers: therefore mestizos prevail almost everywhere over whites. In the islands, on the other hand, the original populations have entirely given way to European or colored (Negro) immigrants, who then variously intermingled among themselves (mulattoes). Immune from any infiltration, the Eskimos have preserved themselves in the extreme north, swarming from Alaska in small groups as far as the northern extremity of Greenland. The Negroes, descendants of slaves brought forcibly to the continent, tend to advance from the southern plantation regions toward the industrial and commercial ones at higher latitude. Although precise statistical data are lacking, one may roughly hold that over 4/5 of the population of the continent consists of whites, and the rest half of mestizos and half of Negroes and mulattoes, the number of other racial groups being negligible.

Religion too clearly mirrors the contrast between Catholic Neo-Latin civilization and the predominantly (but not exclusively) Protestant Anglo-Saxon one. And since the area of the latter corresponds to the temperate regions of greater demographic density, against 1/3 of Catholics (especially Mexico and Central America), North A. registers ca. 2/3 of adherents to non-Catholic Christian confessions (Canada and the United States; in these these latter divided into a very great number of sects). Jews are relatively numerous (1.4%), especially in the eastern regions of the United States; animists are reduced to a few (Indians, Eskimos, Negroes; in all 1.1%).

From the political point of view, while the northern countries are unified into only two great federal organizations (Canada and the United States), each of them vast, little less than the whole of Europe, the southern ones have seen the original Spanish dominion break up into numerous but small units, more or less independent (in fact) or subject to other states, with the exception of the complex, though likewise federal, entity of Mexico. The territories of European dependency are reduced, apart from the Canadian Dominion, almost exclusively to islands: of these only the British ones (Newfoundland, Jamaica, Bermuda, the Antilles) retain considerable economic value. Spain was completely eliminated from these possessions; France and Holland retain barely a few strips of them. Denmark holds the vast but icy Greenland.

Here is the present political survey of North America:

AMERICA NORTHERN AND CENTRAL

The North American continent now has no rivals as regards economic development. Its inexhaustible natural riches have stimulated there the employment of the most modern and rational means of exploitation. Large-scale industry is represented there by concentrations among the most gigantic and efficient in the world. On the other hand, while the exploitation of its reserves is still capable of broad development (setting aside the cold zones of the North and the arid ones of the West), its population is far from exhausting production, of which a more or less wide margin feeds, in every sector, export currents.

Agriculture supplies, of total world production (average 1934-38): 16.6% of wheat; 48.8% of maize; 29.3% of oats; 43.7% of cotton; 29.5% of cane sugar; 22.5% of tobacco; 12.4% of barley and considerable quantities of potatoes, rice, soy, peanuts, etc. This production is concentrated above all in the United States and southern Canada. To the same states (the regions of the West and North) belongs almost the entirety of the continent's very rich forest reserves (35.3% of the territorial surface in Canada; 26.1% in the United States). Canada and the United States alone contribute one third of the world export of timber.

Stock-raising too is practiced on a very large scale; the continent's endowment comprises (in millions of head with, beside them in parentheses, the percentage figures relative to world numbers 1934-58): 92.8 (14.8) cattle; 63.7 (8.6) sheep; 16 (6.8) goats; 69.3 (20.9) pigs; 16 (19.2) horses. The stock-raising regions are above all the extensive American and Canadian prairies, in which there prevail, in the East, mixed farming (with agriculture) on the farms, and, in the West, open-air raising of cattle in the North and of sheep in the South in the arid southern mountains. Fishing too assumes considerable importance, both maritime — on the coasts of the Pacific (Northwest) as on those of the Atlantic (Canada and the United States) — and riverine (tributaries of the Pacific) and lacustrine. At least two thirds of the products of world maritime fishing are due to North America.

North America, and especially the United States, holds primacy for almost all mineral products, with fuels at the head; and it yields 70% of the petroleum (Texas, Pennsylvania, California; the reserves absorb over 50% of the world total), about 50% of the coal (Alleghenies, western Canada), two thirds of the sulfur (Texas, Louisiana), little less than two thirds of the iron ore (Alleghenies, Great Lakes), half of the lead, zinc and aluminum, more than half of the copper, two thirds of the silver (Mexico, Alaska, Rockies), one third of the gold (Canada, Alaska, California) produced throughout the whole earth.

Favored by these immense riches, North American industries (but almost exclusively in the United States and Canada) have made decisive progress in every branch, imposing themselves through the modernity and grandeur of their technical equipment, through the broad and rational utilization of machinery, through specialized and mass production, through the adherence of products to demand, through the high standard of living granted to the workers, and through their concentration in districts and large centers, which has brought about in step active commercial currents toward every part of the earth. Such development has been possible also thanks to the impulse given to the means of communication with the railways (525,000 km.; about two fifths of the entire world network; eight great transcontinentals make it possible to travel from the Atlantic to the Pacific in 3-4 days of journey), with automobile services (North America produces over four fifths of the motor vehicles of the whole world), and with air communications, for which the continent likewise enjoys a world primacy (over 100,000 km. of regularly operated lines). As for foreign trade, it is enough to recall that North America today possesses more than half of the ships of the whole world (40.5 million tons of tonnage for the merchant marine of the United States alone); among its ports, both on the Atlantic (New York, New Orleans, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Montréal, Québec, Havana, etc.) and on the Pacific (Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Panama) figure emporia among the most active and frequented in the world.

Calculations made by scholars foresee as possible an increase in population that would raise its present size 4-6 times.

Giuseppe Caraci

2. SOUTH AMERICA

Although it forms a single continental mass with North America, to which it is similar in many respects, South America constitutes a well-defined continent: the most isolated of all the others, the one that reaches the highest southern latitude; of all of them the least articulated and at the same time the one in which the contrast is most pronounced between its extent in longitude (a maximum of 5,100 km. between northern Peru and Brazil), which gradually narrows toward the south, and its much more considerable extent in latitude (from 12° to 56° S.; 7,500 km.). Covering 18 million sq. km., South America extends only a little more than 1/4 south of the tropic: the rest, that is 73% of its territory, remains within the intertropical zones, of which the largest (56%) is the one south of the Equator.

As in North America, a median depression separates two elevated marginal sectors, of charac-

and appearance quite different, of which the western one extends compactly along the Pacific, without giving rise to coastal plains. Continuing from the Caribbean Sea to Tierra del Fuego, these western reliefs (Andes or Cordilleras) consist of several belts of peaks pressed one against the other; at first arranged in a fan, enclosing longitudinal valleys (Andes of Colombia), then widening so as to include more or less extensive and elevated (up to 3-4 thousand m.) plateaus (Andes of Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia), and finally assuming the shape of a single mass (Argentine-Chilean and Patagonian Andes). The Andes are almost everywhere faced along the coast by lesser reliefs, which, though discontinuous, locally assume considerable importance, especially in Chile, where, between them and the Cordilleras, a long longitudinal depression finds a place, submerged at its southern end. Also toward the interior, alongside the true Andes (northwestern Argentina) are precordilleras that isolate closed basins and river valleys. Narrower than the Rocky, the Andes are on the whole higher; summits above 6,000 m. are numerous there (Aconcagua, which is the highest, exceeds 7,000) and correspond for the most part to the frequent volcanic edifices that are another characteristic of the system. The passes are as a rule very high and descend only toward the south, where (Patagonian Andes) glacial erosion has left its mark on both slopes.

On the side of the continent facing the Atlantic, the relief consists instead of high plateaus that take on the appearance of mountains only at the margins that bound them, either toward the southeast along the Brazilian coast, or in the interior, above the depressions they overlook. The one through which the Amazon and its tributaries wind isolates from the Guiana plateau, which ends at the Orinoco, the far vaster Brazilian plateau, deeply carved also by the watercourses that flow directly into the Atlantic. Patagonia results from a series of terraces descending from the foot of the Andes to the Ocean, on whose curving coast they loom with steep escarpments.

The greater part of the continent is finally occupied by lowlands, joined more than divided by barely marked thresholds among the three great river basins that contend for dominion over it (Orinoco, Amazon, Pa-

Paraná-Paraguay) in a single broad plain (not always, however, of alluvial origin), elevated no more than 200 m., on average, above sea level. Of the three rivers the Amazon has by far the largest basin (over 7 million sq. km.), indeed the vastest on earth; all three together occupy by themselves two-thirds of South America, and form, with their tributaries — many of which are greater than the largest European rivers — magnificent navigable routes, which allow one to pass from the Atlantic into the heart of the continent and as far as the foot of the Andes. Lesser, but not negligible, importance is also presented by the other tributaries of the Atlantic (Madeira, Uruguay, S. Francisco, Magdalena, etc.), and by their affluents, although interrupted by rapids in correspondence with the eastern plateau. The areas without drainage to the sea are reduced to less than a quarter of the continent, and are all localized south of 15° S. and west of 60° W. Greenwich.

Lakes are neither frequent nor conspicuous. The two largest (Titicaca and Poopò), of tectonic origin, find a place on the Andean plateau; of the others, the most notable concern the terminal section of the same system (southern Andes).

Although comprised for more than two-thirds within the torrid zone, and therefore in the domain of hot climates, South America enjoys temperatures that are not excessive, thanks above all to the arrangement of the relief, which largely permits the free play of oceanic influences. In the regions north of the tropic, the Atlantic trade wind determines the regime of the rains, which are generally very copious (from 2,000 to 4,000 mm. annually along the northeastern coast and in the middle Amazon basin) and are concentrated either in a single season (differing according to whether one is north or south of the Equator), or in two periods separated by a brief dry interval (veranillo). Beyond the tropic temperatures decrease; seasonal contrasts increase and the origin of the humid air currents is reversed. The westerly winds blowing from the Pacific flood with rain the slope facing that ocean, while the side facing the interior plain benefits little or not at all.

The extreme southern tip has a very rigorous climate, with long winters; but, while precipitation oscillates between 2,000 and 4,000 mm. annually on the Chilean island fringe, it decreases to less than 300 mm. throughout Patagonia. Aridity then increases, also along the Pacific, from central Chile (about 27°-28°) to northern Peru, and involves, together with the territories that on the reverse side of the Andes extend from the Bolivian puna to northwestern Argentina, an area vast in the sense of latitude, but relatively narrow. The deserts of South America (Atacama) therefore have proportions hardly comparable with the African ones. In the Andes the exceptional elevation of the intervening plateaus tempers, in the very heart of the torrid zone, thermal extremes: the countries of this sector enjoy a climate with minimal seasonal oscillations, and were in a pre-Columbian era the seats of advanced peoples, at the same latitudes as the Congo and Guinea.

The tracts in which the rains remain, on average, around 2,000 mm. annually, or exceed them, are characterized by the equatorial forest (selvas), which penetrates also into the low eastern valleys and clothes the Atlantic littoral from the Orinoco to the tropic. To the periodic zenithal rains corresponds the open forest, bare of green in the dry season (Brazilian catingas), which passes little by little into the savanna, often in the form of woodland with broad clearings (campos), and more or less luxuriant with shrubs (carrascos) or grasses (llanos venezuelan), the latter of which become meager or disappear altogether with the intensification of aridity (sertaos of Brazil). The transition to temperate climates is marked by the prairies (chaco), which gradually give way to the typical pampas of tall grasses (Argentina), and these in turn on one side to the progressively poorer and more open forms of Patagonia, on the other to the salinas of the interior piedmont of the Andes. In these latter vegetations, cultivation and human settlement are arranged in altitudinal belts of roughly 1,000 m. each: tierras calientes, templadas and frias; the tierras frias, sometimes, covered with forests. Above 3,000 m. the high steppe of grasses and shrubs (paramos) as a rule begins.

The population of South America slightly exceeds 100 million inhabitants. The result is an average density of about 6 inhabitants per sq. km., but the relative distribution is very uneven, in relation not so much to the different possibilities offered to human activity, as to the progress of colonization, which here, unlike what is found in North America, is still in full development. More densely inhabited are only certain marginal areas, in southern Brazil, in Uruguay, in eastern Argentina, in central Chile and on the Andean plateaus; but the greater part of the continent remains still more or less devoid of population, or with extremely sparse population. Of these 100 million inhabitants, more than half are white (creoles and immigrants, 57-60 million), but at least a quarter (25 million) are mestizos and over a tenth Amerindians, descendants of the pre-Columbian Indians. The rest (8 million) is represented by blacks and mulattoes. The forced black immigration began in the 18th century and ended only in 1851. Later there came to South America, along with the whites, Chinese and Japanese in the Pacific States, Hindus and Malays in the Guianas: but their number is relatively modest. It is worth recalling, however, that the relevant statistics, conducted with different criteria from State to State, are neither always reliable, nor in any case comparable among themselves. In general, the indigenous population has maintained itself, despite contact with the whites, in the tropical Andes; groups of independent Indians in the Brazilian forest and in Tierra del Fuego. Creole, Spanish, and Portuguese populations, considerably mixed with indigenous blood, occupy a good part of the eastern regions, also north of the tropic; blacks appear there in large numbers in the strips once destined to sugar-cane cultivation and in the mining sectors. The primitive creole colonization, dense above all in the intertropical zone, was followed, at the end of the last century (development of large-scale steam navigation), by European immigration, which made its way to the temperate regions, where it now prevails also numerically.

Southern A. is almost entirely dominated by the Latin peoples; its civilization is therefore essentially Latin and Catholic. Even among recent immigrants the contribution of Spaniards, Portuguese and above all Italians predominates, the latter currently numbering more than 4 million. Notable, in some states (southern Brazil, central Chile), is the influx of Germans. The spoken language is everywhere Spanish, except in Brazil, where the official language is Portuguese. Nevertheless, certain indigenous languages (Guarani, Aymara, Quechua, Tupi, etc.) survive locally (interior Brazil, the Andean region).

The religion has everywhere remained Catholic (96% of the continent's population), which continues to make converts among the Indians. These (Amazonian Brazil, Chaco, Patagonia) are, however, for the most part fetishists (2.6% of the South American total). Protestants (0.8%) are essentially limited to immigrant Germans. Jews are absolutely insignificant in number, even fewer than the few who are recorded as having no religion (0.1%).

After its discovery, southern A. was sought above all for its wealth of precious metals (the intra-Andean highlands north of the tropic); and only relatively late did it first experience the plantation economy (sugar cane, tobacco, coffee, etc.) and then, even later (19th century), true agricultural colonization. Its enormous resources are therefore far from being able to be called completely and rationally exploited.

In the mining sector, more important than gold (Colombia), which is in sharp decline, are silver (Peru, Bolivia: 10% of world production), copper (chiefly Chile; 1/4 of world production), tin (Bolivia); zinc (Peru, Bolivia), nitrates (Chile), aluminum (the Guianas) and above all petroleum, whose extraction (Venezuela, and, at a great distance, Trinidad, Argentina and Colombia) is sharply increasing (12% of the world total).

Far greater today, in the continental economy, is the weight of agricultural production and livestock raising. More than 3/4 of the world coffee harvest comes from southern A., which also supplies large quantities of cocoa (26%), cane sugar (13%), cotton (9%), tobacco (5%), cereals, etc. Cattle (over 100 million head) represent 15% of the world total, sheep 14% (100 million head), horses 20%, pigs 11%, etc.; considerable is the quantity of frozen and preserved meats, meat extracts (70% of exports tion of world beef, 17% of mutton, 11% of pork, and so on), of hides, of raw wool (18% of world exports), of dairy products, etc., which South America produces and, thanks to its modest consumption, can destine for export.

Forest resources are imposing (Brazil) and as yet barely touched (rubber, timber, medicinal essences).

With all this, the South American economy still remains centered on the surplus of raw materials for mass consumption, which makes it possible to balance the demand of industrial products. The too modest availability of coal (the imposing water reserves are still almost entirely untouched), the sparse population and consequent scarcity of labor, the inadequacy of the means of transport have hindered and still hinder the development of large-scale modern industry, capable of providing for internal needs only in certain regions (Argentina, Chile, southern Brazil) and for certain branches of industry (foodstuffs, timber, textiles, chemical articles, etc.).

Only Argentina, Chile and southern Brazil possess sufficiently developed railway networks, but the entire continent, with its 103,000 km. of lines, of which slightly less than half are in Argentina alone, accounts for less than 8% of the world total. Add to this that a large part of these railways consists of penetration lines, without mutual connection and with different gauges. Five independent trunk lines climb from the Pacific coast onto the high Argentine plateau, but the only transcontinental one is to this day the Buenos Aires-Mendoza-Santiago, nor is the Pan-American railway yet completed, which should link the two Americas by rail through the region of the isthmuses. Nor are the river routes, truly magnificent, exploited as widely as they could be, and in the interior regions the transport of goods is often entrusted to animals. The peripheral zones benefit from maritime navigation (made more active by the opening of the Panama Canal), which has developed good ports (Rio de Janeiro, Recife, Bahia, Santos, Buenos Aires, Valparaiso, Callao are among the most frequented); regular airline routes now connect all the major centers with one another as well as with North America and with Europe.

Except for the three Guianas, the Falklands, the island of Trinidad and the Dutch Antilles, the whole of South America is independent (97.5% of the territory; 99% of the population). Of the ten states that constitute it, nine owe their origin to the fragmentation of the vast Spanish territory; one, by far the largest of all (Brazil), continues the unity achieved, on the Atlantic side, by Portugal. All these states have a republican form, with a federal constitution in three cases (Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela), unitary in the others; none has external possessions. Although modeled on the United States constitution, they differ from it in fact, since the ethnic, social and civil conditions are different. Economically and politically, the most solid units correspond to those in which the white element is most numerous and holds the reins of the state in its own hands. Nevertheless all the republics have seen their modern evolution hampered or delayed by repeated, ruinous internal revolutions and civil wars, which betray a political order that is not yet entirely stable.

The capacity for settlement of South America is still very large. It has been calculated that it is from 15 to 40 times the present one, that is, greater than that of all the other continents (Australia alone has a greater one in a relative sense, but not in an absolute one).

Here is the table of the current political subdivision:

SOUTH AMERICA

TOTAL SOUTH AMERICA . 17,952,313 102,109,300

See Plates LXXXV-LXXXIX.

1930: O. Schmieder, Länderkunde Südamerika, Leipzig 1932; M. W. Williams, The People and Politics of Latin America, Boston 1938; R. Riccardi, L'A. meridionale in generale (in Geografia Universale), Turin 1938; P. E. James, Latin America, London-Toronto-Melbourne-Sydney, s. d. [1942].

Giuseppe Caraci

II. ETHNOGRAPHY.

The question of the first anthropological-cultural settlement of the twofold American continent seems by now settled in the sense that this settlement would have occurred through immigration from Asia across the Bering Strait. The period is unspecified.

1. - The racial groups that can be enumerated are the following: 1) the Eskimo group; 2) the Nordic group with multiple types, of a Mongoloid character; 3) the central group with Eurasian characteristics; 4) the southern group with quite remarkable variations, always of a Mongoloid character; 5) the Fuegian and Patagonian group.

2. - The northern and central linguistic groups are: 1) Radene (Athapascan); 2) Algonquian; 3) Selish; 4) Sioux; 5) Sonoran Aztecan; 6) Maya; 7) isolated groups. The southern groups are: 1) Chibcha and Quechua; 2) Carib; 3) Ges-Tapuya; 4) Tupi-Guarani; 5) Arawak; 6) Chono; 7) Fuegian; 8) isolated groups.

3. - The historical-cultural picture of America is no less rich. 1) The primordial culture is found in the North among the Arctic tribes and some paleo-Californians: in the South among the Ges-Tapuya and the Fuegians. 2) Totemistic culture is particular to the southwestern and northeastern tribes of North America (Sioux, Pawnee, etc.); in South America, along the Cordilleras, as far as the Chaco (Arawak, Carib, Guarani-Tupi). 3) Matriarchal culture flourishes among the northwestern and southeastern tribes of North America, in the South among the tribes of the Amazon and Orinoco basins. 4) Between these cultures run zones of greater or lesser mixture. 5) The highly specialized cultures of the Aztecs, Maya, Chibcha and Quechua.

These latter cultures, unlike the great mixed cultures of Asia, with which however they have evident affinities, have received no new impulse from the encounter with Western civilization, and being almost completely obliterated, they fall within the domain of a particular branch of archaeology.

II. - W. Schmidt, Die Sprachfamilien und Sprachenkreise der Erde, vol. I and Atlas, Heidelberg 1926.
III. - W. Schmidt, Kulturkreise und Kulturschichten in Südamerika, Z. f. E., XLV, 1913; E. Nordenskiöld, Comparative ethnographical studies, Göteborg 1919-22; W. Schmidt and W. Koppers, Völker und Kulturen, Regensburg 1924; W. Schmidt, Der Ursprung der Gottesidee, II, V, VI, VII, Münster 1929-40. Bernardo Bernardi

III. ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY OF AMERICA.

1. PRE-COLUMBIAN ERA

It is an opinion maintained by some that, before the discovery of A. by Christopher Columbus in 1492, the Gospel had been preached there. Setting aside the diocese of Greenland, of which we shall speak later, this opinion has no solid foundation. The supposed voyage of the apostle St. Thomas, whom some wished to recognize in the mysterious Mexican Quetzalcoatl, is entirely legendary; the famous cross of Palenque has nothing to do with the sign of our redemption. It is, however, certainly established that Greenland was evangelized before 1492. The Normans had settled there while they were still pagans. One of their leaders, Leif, visited Norway in 990 and was converted by King Olaf Trygverson. Having returned to his homeland with some Catholic missionaries, these converted almost all the inhabitants there, and in 1112 the diocese of Gurdar was erected, successively suffragan of the metropolitan sees of Hamburg-Bremen, of Lund and of Trondhjem. Gama gives a list of 17 bishops from 1112 to 1440. It seems that from that year Greenland remained cut off from Europe, and those Christians, abandoned to themselves and having intermarried with the Eskimos, returned to paganism, and only a few centuries later was Lutheranism introduced there.

Setting aside Greenland, the ecclesiastical history of A. can be divided into four parts, according to the four centers from which the Catholic Church spread through the American continent, namely North A. with two centers, Canada and the United States, A. colonized by the Spaniards and A. colonized by the Portuguese (Brazil).

2. NORTH AMERICA

a) Canada. - Canada, once also called New France, although visited by various navigators, did not properly begin to be evangelized until the time of the founding of Québec (1608), carried out by the Frenchman Samuel de Champlain. The colony and the Catholic Church developed little by little, and various Orders (Recollect Franciscans, Jesuits, Sulpicians, etc.) carried on their activity there. This activity had as its field not only all the regions around the great lakes, among the tribes of the Algonquins, the Hurons and the fierce Iroquois, but also extended to the valley of the Illinois River and of the Mississippi, in whose discovery the Belgian Recollect Hennequin and the French Jesuit G. Marquette made their names famous. Not a few missionaries met martyrdom in that arduous undertaking, but the Gospel also produced among those neophytes fruits of holiness, such as the Iroquois virgin Catherine Tekakwitha. The whole Church of Canada once depended on the bishop of Rouen, until in 1659 its first bishop, François de Laval-Montmorency (1659-74), arrived there, first with the title of apostolic vicar and then with that of bishop of Québec, who established the Church of Canada on solid foundations. The diocese of Québec extended from Canada along the banks of the Mississippi as far as the mouth of that great river, where the city of New Orleans was founded. To evangelize this southern part of the diocese, missionaries also came directly from France. The cession of Acadia to England by the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) was an ill-fated event for the Church of Canada. Indeed, the English Protestants persecuted the Catholics there and, being unable to reduce them to Protestantism, after some years, with an unheard-of example of cruelty, exiled them en masse, scattering them among the English colonies; a few were able to take refuge in the surroundings of New Orleans, where they strengthened that Catholic mission. In 1763, by the Treaty of Paris, all of Canada passed under English rule, and a period of struggle and oppression began for that Church. Yet the Catholics of Canada remained faithful, during the war of independence of the American colonies, to the nation that persecuted them. (For further developments of ecclesiastical history v. CANADÀ).

b) United States. - The ecclesiastical history of the United States must be followed according to the different lines of Catholic penetration into what was at first an agglomeration of Dutch, Spanish, English and French colonies, and now forms the republic of the United States of A. Indeed, evangelization penetrated there from Mexico, from the island of Cuba, from Canada, directly from France and even from England. From Mexico, in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, Catholic missionaries - among whom the Jesuit E. Kino and the Franciscan G. Serra have remained famous - preached the Gospel in the regions of the Southwest, that is, in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and California; from the island of Cuba there set out in the 16th century the first missionary expedition that reached Florida and was annihilated on the coast of Carolina, and this was followed by others in the following centuries; the French missionaries, coming down from Canada, as has been said, and following the course of the Mississippi, reached as far as the mouth of the river; to cultivate the Christian communities established there, new missionaries also came directly from France; finally, some English Jesuits, accompanying Lord Baltimore in the 17th century, settled in Maryland, and on various occasions also penetrated into the neighboring Protestant territories. With the exception of the colonies of Maryland, of Rhode Island and of Quaker Pennsylvania, Catholics enjoyed no religious freedom in the English colonies. Indeed, the Puritans of Massachusetts, the Dutch Calvinists of the colony of New York, the Anglicans of Virginia, and others always persecuted the Catholics who happened among them; and yet they had nearby the example of Catholic Maryland, tolerant toward all Protestants and which, precisely for being Catholic and tolerant, had much to suffer from the Protestants of the other colonies. All these different fields of evangelization had their ecclesiastical centers very far away: the missions of Mexico depended on the dioceses of that viceroyalty, first on that of Guadalajara (1552), then on the bishop of Guadiana or Durango (1620) and on that of Sonora (1779), until the erection of the diocese of Monterrey (1840), to which the Californias belonged. The missions of Florida depended on and were at times visited by the bishops of Santiago de Cuba (founded in 1522) and of Havana (1787); those of the Mississippi had Québec as their center until the erection of the diocese of New Orleans (1793), and finally the Catholics of Maryland recognized the apostolic vicar of London as their ecclesiastical superior. When the English colonies proclaimed themselves independent of England in 1776, the 13 original states, enclosed between the Mississippi and the Atlantic, between Canada and Florida, were all placed under the jurisdiction of the diocese of Baltimore (1789). (For the further developments of ecclesiastical history v. STATI UNITI).

3. SPANISH AMERICA

The ecclesiastical history of Spanish A. began with the landing of Christopher Columbus in 1492. Spanish discoverers and conquerors were always accompanied by missionaries and priests, and worship began wherever they settled. From Spain, and almost exclusively from the port of Seville, all Spanish and foreign missionaries destined for A. set sail, and the first missions and the first dioceses established in the Antilles, in Central A. (Panama), in Mexico or New Spain, in Colombia (Popayán) and in Peru belonged to the metropolitan see of Seville. The new dioceses were too far from Seville; discoveries and conquests kept extending further and further, so that in 1546, detaching them from Seville, three American ecclesiastical provinces were founded which, with their suffragan dioceses, were centers of religious life for the colonists, of missions for the Indians, and of further development into new dioceses and ecclesiastical provinces. The first three archdioceses erected in 1546 were: Santo Domingo, with jurisdiction over all the Antilles and over part of the mainland washed by the Sea of the Antilles; Mexico, whose jurisdiction extended from Honduras as far as the north of the Rio Grande in the present-day republic of the United States; and Lima, the largest of all, with jurisdiction from Nicaragua down along the entire Pacific coast as far as the Araucanians of Chile and, penetrating inland into the continent, from Upper Peru (Bolivia) as far as Paraguay and Argentina. These ecclesiastical provinces, developing normally, were later subdivided into other new ones, which constituted the archbishoprics of Santiago de Cuba (1802), of Guatemala (1743), Charcas (1609), Bogotá (1564), so that at the time of independence there existed in Spanish A. 7 metropolitan sees with more than 30 suffragan dioceses.

The ecclesiastical history of Spanish A. had special characteristics. First of all the royal patronage, granted by the Supreme Pontiffs to the kings of Spain, by which the election of bishops, the delimitation and division of dioceses and many other privileges were conceded to them; canonical institution with the bulls, however, had to come from Rome. From the patronage many benefits derived; it is enough to mention the evangelization of all those immense territories, aided by the government, the establishment of dioceses and ecclesiastical provinces, the erection of cathedrals and religious houses, the union between civil and ecclesiastical authorities. Inconveniences also derived from it, such as the lack of direct communication between the head of the Church and the bishops, the election of prelates almost all Spanish, few creoles and no Indians, the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767 with irreparable damage to the missions. Another characteristic is the Inquisition (v.). Here it will suffice to say that it was a mixed ecclesiastical-civil tribunal, which with fewer than 200 death sentences knew how to preserve religious peace for three centuries throughout the immense colonial territory. Compare this number of victims with the tens of thousands caused by the religious wars in Europe. The Laws of the Indies (Leyes de Indias) are another peculiarity of Spanish A. If among the conquerors there were some ruthless and cruel men, the presence of priests in the conquests and the establishment of so many religious Orders, while unable to suppress abuses and cruelties altogether, made it possible to raise remonstrances and protests up to the throne of the Spanish monarch, which produced the famous Leyes de Indias of a truly paternal tenor toward the Indians, unfortunately not always observed. Finally the Reductions of Paraguay demonstrated to what degree of civilization and effectiveness one can arrive when the Church and the State work together for the good of a people emerging from barbarism. Difficulties were not lacking, however, which at times hindered the tranquil propagation of the Gospel; such were: the wealth of the clergy, which, although almost always employed for the good of the Indians and of the poor, in foundations of new parishes and missions, nevertheless, when religious spirit declined, gave occasion to various abuses; the question of the "alternativa" among religious superiors, who had to be chosen alternately from Spaniards and creoles; some scandalous dissension between viceroys and bishops, such as that of Mexico at the beginning of the 17th century; or between bishops and religious, such as that of Palafox in Mexico and of Cardenas in Paraguay. But all this was not an obstacle to the powerful development of the Church. Well-organized missions were founded among the Indians of northern Mexico, of the Orinoco river, of Araucania, of Paraguay, etc.; provincial councils were celebrated that remained famous in history, as in Mexico and Peru, and abundant fruits of holiness matured, such as St. Philip of Jesus, St. Rose of Lima, the blessed Mariana of Quito, etc. (For the further vicissitudes of the ecclesiastical history of the various nations that became independent, v. the respective entries: MESSICO, PARAGUAY, etc.).

4. PORTUGUESE AMERICA

a) Before independence. – There exists a notable parallelism between Spanish and Portuguese colonial ecclesiastical history. The kings of Portugal, like those of Spain, enjoyed royal patronage with the same advantages and inconveniences indicated for Spanish A. In the Portuguese American colonies as in the Spanish ones, the first dioceses that were erected, S. Salvador of Bahia (1551), S. Sebastian de Rio de Janeiro (1575) and the prelature of Olinda and Recife (1622) formed part of an ecclesiastical province (Lisbon) of the mother country, until, once the archdiocese of Bahia was erected (1676), the province of the same name began with the suffragan dioceses of Rio de Janeiro and of Olinda-Recife, elevated to dioceses the same year. The other dioceses that were founded in the 18th century, Goyaz, Cuiabá, S. Paulo and Marianna (1745), became part of the said province of Bahia, and only those of Belem do Pará (1719) and of S. Luís do Maranhão (1677) remained annexed to the province of Lisbon until the time of independence. In Lusitanian A., as in Spanish A., priests and missionaries accompanied the discoverers and conquerors; their presence at least restrained cruelty, when it could not protect the Indians against the abuses of the whites; they too obtained the promulgation of laws favorable to the Indians, and some made themselves famous for their exploits and for their love of the Indians, such as fathers Anchieta, Nóbrega and Antonio Vieira. Aranda, minister of Charles III, king of Spain, expelled the Jesuits from Spanish A.; some years earlier, Pombal, minister of Joseph I, king of Portugal, had driven them out of Portuguese A., with great detriment to the education of youth and to the missions among the Indians. In some things, however, the parallelism fails. In Brazil various raids were formed to enslave not only idolatrous Indians but also Christian ones, such as those of the paulistas or mamelucos against the Christian Reductions of Paraguay. Likewise, for having opposed the slavery of the Indians, father Antonio Vieira was seized and sent to Portugal by the colonists of Maranhão in 1661. Nothing similar ever happened in the Spanish colonies. Moreover, in Spanish A. no foreign Protestant nation could establish itself, whereas in Brazil the territories occupied by the French Huguenots, established at Rio de Janeiro (1555-67), and by the Dutch Protestants, who had gained strength first at Bahia, and later at Olinda (1624-25 and 1630-54), had to be reconquered.

5. For the further vicissitudes of the ecclesiastical history of the various nations that became independent, v. the relative entries: BRASILE, etc.

For the religion of primitive peoples, v. PRIMITIVI, religione dei.

Canada - Dominion Bureau of Statistics, Religious Denominations by racial origins, Ottawa 1933; Le Canada ecclésiastique, Montréal 1935; A. Fournet, s. v. Canada, in The Cath. Encycl., III, pp. 227-242.

The religious denominations in the United States, Their past history, present condition and doctrines, Philadelphia 1859; P. Guilday, Life and Times of John Carroll, New York 1922; The official Catholic Directory for the year 1933, New York; D. C. Schearer, Pontificia americana, A documentary history of the Catholic Church in the U. S., 1784-1884, Washington 1933; The Catholic Encyclopedia, articles on the individual dioceses; Annuario pontificio 1948, Vatican City.

F. J. Hernáez, Colección de Bulas, Breves y otros documentos relativos a la Iglesia de América y Filipinas, 2 vols., Brussels 1879.

R. Vargas Ugarte, Episcopologio de las Diócesis del antiguo Virreinato del Perú desde sus orígenes hasta la emancipación, 1513-1824; L. Ayarragaray, La Iglesia en América y la dominación española, Buenos Aires 1920; M. Cuevas, Historia de la Iglesia en México, 5 vols., Mexico 1923; Catálogo de los eclesiásticos de ambos cleros de la República de Chile (con reseñas históricas de los obispos), Santiago de Chile 1927; J. T. Bertrand, Histoire de l'Amérique espagnole, 2 vols., Paris 1928; J. Lloyd Mecham, Church and State in Latin-America, Raleigh N. C. 1934; A. Garciadiego, Compendio de historia de Centro-América, Granada Nicaragua 1934; J. Alameda, Argentina Católica, Buenos Aires 1935; R. Ricard, La «conquête spirituelle» du Mexique, Paris 1935; J. M. Fernández and R. Granados, Obra civilizadora de la Iglesia en Colombia, Bogotá 1936.

R. M. Galanti, Compendio de Historia do Brasil, 4 vols., São Paulo 1896-1905; I. Serrano, Brésil, in DHG. X, coll. 556-589; S. Leite, Páginas da historia do Brasil, São Paulo 1937; J. B. Lehman, O Brasil Catholico, Rio de Janeiro 1938; Synopse da hierarchia eclesiastica brasileira, Juiz de Fora 1938.

Camillo Crivelli