World Regional Geography Vocab

Front 1

Latifunidios

Back 1

Upper-class European land owners in Latin America who did not work the land

Front 2

Treaty of Tordesillas

Back 2

1494- The Pope gave half of the non-Christian world to the Portugese and half to the Spanish; Spanish got most of the Americas

Front 3

conquistadors

Back 3

conquerors; two goals=spread Catholicism and get rich

Front 4

Maya

Back 4

The most ancient civilization existing during the Iberian invasion of Latin America. (educated and violent)

Front 5

encomienda

Back 5

A Spanish version of the European manorial system in the Americas, huge land grants given to encomienda owners

Front 6

mestizo

Back 6

The offspring of European and native Latin American parents, below Europeans but above everybody else in hierarchy

Front 7

Mulatto

Back 7

The offspring of European and African slave unions in the Americas

Front 8

Zambo

Back 8

Offspring of native-African slave unions, part of the bottom of the hierarchy

Front 9

Peninsulares

Back 9

Europeans born in Europe [on the Iberian Peninsula]; were at the top of the Latin American hierarchy

Front 10

Criollos

Back 10

Spanish born in the Americas, under the peninsulares in the hierarchy. The 1800 revolutions in L.A. were largely a class war between these two

Front 11

plantation

Back 11

Monocultural agricultural land that grew from the latifunidios; basically commercial ventures for exports

Front 12

hacienda

Back 12

large landholdings in the highlands of Latin America used primarily for cattle grazing with Indian labor, more for prestige than profits

Front 13

polyculture

Back 13

several vertical layers of food crops being grown simultaneously in the same plot, mostly in the lowlands of the Caribbean

Front 14

PRI

Back 14

the Institutional Revolutionary Party-Mexico. Originally helped spur political activism of the lower classes, was a single dominant party at first until 1980s.

Front 15

eijdo

Back 15

ancient Indian agricultural system in Mexico that has been reimplemented where land belongs to villages and not individuals

Front 16

maquiladoras

Back 16

Foreign-owned industrial plants allowed in Mexico (mostly US), prevalent at the border.

Front 17

Zapatista

Back 17

The Zapista National Liberation Army that takes refuge in South Mexico; led the romanticized ski-masked leader "Commandate Marcos"

Front 18

fincas

Back 18

small, family operated coffee farms that dominated the central american plateau (aka cafetales).

Front 19

banana republic

Back 19

Bananas have greatly influenced the development of Central America, the region became known as this in the 1960s because of their heavy dependence on the crop