Latin America Countries: The Full List by Region, With Capitals and Populations

Latin America is usually counted as 20 countries and territories: the 18 Spanish-speaking republics from Mexico to Argentina, Portuguese-speaking Brazil, and Puerto Rico, a Spanish-speaking territory of the United States. Together they cover about 19.96 million km² and held roughly 642 million people in 2023, according to the CIA World Factbook figures that Wikipedia uses. A broader definition counts every country where a Romance language dominates, which adds French- and Creole-speaking Haiti and makes 20 sovereign states. Brazil is by far the largest member, with 8.5 million km² and about 219 million people; El Salvador is the smallest sovereign member at 21,041 km².

The term itself is a cultural label rather than a continent. It first appeared in print in 1856, in a speech the Chilean politician Francisco Bilbao gave in Paris, and the Colombian writer José María Torres Caicedo used it a year later in his poem "Las dos Américas". Because the label rests on language, the region straddles two continents: Mexico, the Central American isthmus and the Caribbean islands belong to North America, while ten of the members are in South America.

The 20 Latin American Countries in One Table

The table follows the list used in Wikipedia's Latin America article, which counts the 19 Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking sovereign states plus Puerto Rico. Populations are 2023 estimates from the CIA World Factbook; areas come from the United Nations Statistics Division.

Two members dominate the totals. Brazil alone holds about 43% of the region's land and about 34% of its people, and Brazil and Mexico together account for more than half of the population. At the other end, Uruguay is the least populous sovereign member with about 3.4 million people, and Puerto Rico, at 8,870 km², is the smallest entry of all.

Mexico: Latin America's North American Member

Mexico is the only member that sits wholly north of the Central American isthmus, and with about 130 million people it has been the most populous Spanish-speaking country in the world since at least the 1970s. Its 1,964,375 km² make it the third-largest member after Brazil and Argentina. For three centuries, from 1521 to 1821, the territory was the core of the Spanish viceroyalty of New Spain, governed from Mexico City, and the War of Independence that ran from 1810 to 1821 ended Spanish rule. The country takes its name from its capital.

Six Spanish-Speaking Republics of the Central American Isthmus

Central America is usually defined as seven countries, but only six of them are Latin American; English-speaking Belize is the exception. From 1609 to 1821 most of the isthmus, though not Panama, was governed from Guatemala as the Captaincy General of Guatemala, a division of the viceroyalty of New Spain. The Act of Independence of Central America was proclaimed on 15 September 1821, and after a brief annexation to the First Mexican Empire the provinces formed the Federal Republic of Central America in 1823. That union broke apart in a civil war from 1838 to 1840, leaving the separate republics on today's map.

• Guatemala (108,889 km²) is the most populous of the six, with about 18 million people. Its territory covers much of the Maya heartland, and its name comes from the Nahuatl Cuauhtēmallān, "place of many trees".
• Honduras (112,492 km²) contains Copán, a major Maya site listed by UNESCO in 1980.
• El Salvador (21,041 km²) is the smallest sovereign state in Latin America and the only one in Central America without a Caribbean coast.
• Nicaragua (130,373 km²) is the largest country on the isthmus by area.
• Costa Rica (51,100 km²) abolished its army on 1 December 1948, after a short civil war, and wrote the ban into Article 12 of the constitution adopted in 1949.
• Panama (75,417 km²) seceded from Colombia in 1903 with American backing, which cleared the way for the canal.

The Panama Canal is the isthmus's most consequential piece of geography. The 82-km waterway opened on 15 August 1914 and lifts ships through locks to Gatun Lake, 26 m above sea level, before lowering them to the other ocean. A third, wider set of locks for Neopanamax ships opened to commercial traffic on 26 June 2016. The full membership and borders of the isthmus are set out in our guide to how many countries are in Central America.

Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico in the Caribbean

Three Spanish-speaking members lie in the Greater Antilles.

• Cuba (109,884 km²) has about 11 million people. Its main island is 1,250 km long and is the largest island in the Caribbean. Spain lost Cuba in the Spanish–American War of 1898, and after a period of American military government the Republic of Cuba became formally independent on 20 May 1902.
• The Dominican Republic (48,192 km²) occupies the eastern part of Hispaniola. Its independence was declared on 27 February 1844, from Haiti rather than from Spain. It holds both the highest peak in the Caribbean, Pico Duarte, and the region's lowest point and largest lake, Lake Enriquillo.
• Puerto Rico (8,870 km²) passed from Spain to the United States in 1898, and its people have been US citizens since 1917. Spanish and English are both official, but Spanish predominates, which is why it is counted as culturally Latin American despite not being a sovereign state.

The Andean Countries from Venezuela to Bolivia

The Andes, at about 8,900 km the longest continental mountain range in the world, shape five members along the north and west of South America.

• Venezuela (912,050 km², Caracas) holds Angel Falls in Canaima National Park, at 979 m the tallest uninterrupted waterfall in the world. Its official name has been the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela since the 1999 constitution.
• Colombia (1,141,748 km², Bogotá) is the third most populous member, with about 49 million people, and it faces two seas: the Caribbean to the north and the Pacific to the west.
• Ecuador (256,369 km², Quito) includes the Galápagos Islands, which run one hour behind the mainland. The summit of its volcano Chimborazo is the point on Earth's surface farthest from the planet's centre, because of the equatorial bulge.
• Peru (1,285,216 km², Lima) has about 32 million people and shares Lake Titicaca with Bolivia. At 3,812 m, Titicaca is the largest lake in South America by volume and surface area.
• Bolivia (1,098,581 km²) splits its capital: Sucre is the constitutional capital and seat of the judiciary, while La Paz houses the executive and legislature. Since the 2009 constitution it has been the Plurinational State of Bolivia, and 36 indigenous languages have official status alongside Spanish.

The range reaches its highest point farther south. Aconcagua, in Argentina's Mendoza Province about 15 km from the Chilean border, rises to 6,967 m and is the highest mountain outside Asia. Our page on the highest mountain in South America covers its climbing history.

Brazil and the Southern Cone

The remaining four members fill the east and south of the continent. Brazil is the outlier in two ways: its size, and its language. It is the only Portuguese-speaking country in the Americas, and its route to independence was unusual too. Prince Pedro of Braganza, the son of the Portuguese king, declared independence on 7 September 1822 and founded the Empire of Brazil, which became a republic only in 1889. Its largest cities are São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, although the capital has been the planned city of Brasília since 1960.

The Southern Cone, in the narrow sense, means Argentina, Chile and Uruguay, which lie mostly south of the Tropic of Capricorn:

• Argentina (2,780,400 km², Buenos Aires) is the second-largest member by area and the fourth by population, with about 47 million people.
• Chile (756,102 km², Santiago) runs along the Pacific side of the Andes and contains the Atacama, the driest non-polar desert in the world.
• Uruguay (176,215 km², Montevideo) won its independence between 1811 and 1828 after a four-way contest involving Spain, Portugal, the Empire of Brazil and the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata.

Paraguay (406,752 km², Asunción) is sometimes grouped with the Southern Cone and sometimes left out, given its subtropical climate and Guaraní heritage. It is one of two landlocked members, with Bolivia, and Guaraní shares official status with Spanish; more than 90% of Paraguayans speak a form of Guaraní, the highest rate of fluency in an indigenous language anywhere in Latin America.

Haiti, Belize and the Guianas: Where the Definition Is Contested

The list changes depending on which definition is used. The most common one, which treats Latin America as the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking Americas, leaves out Haiti. The broader Romance-language definition takes it in, along with French Guiana and the French West Indies, on the grounds that French is also descended from Latin.

Haiti has the strongest claim of any excluded country. It occupies the western part of Hispaniola, covers 27,750 km², and has an estimated 11.4 million people, which makes it the most populous country in the Caribbean, ahead of Cuba. Its official languages are French and Haitian Creole. Spain ceded the western part of the island to France in 1697, and the revolution of 1791 to 1804 made Haiti the first sovereign state in the Caribbean, the second republic in the Americas and the first country in the Americas to officially abolish slavery. Counting Haiti gives 20 sovereign Latin American states; the Wikipedia list counts 19 plus Puerto Rico.

Belize, Guyana and Suriname sit inside the region's geography but are excluded on language: English is official in Belize and Guyana and Dutch in Suriname. The same goes for Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and the rest of the English-speaking Caribbean. A third usage, common in economics and in the United Nations geoscheme, sidesteps the question with the phrase "Latin America and the Caribbean", which covers every country south of the United States. Our complete list of Caribbean countries shows how the island states that fall outside the Latin American count fit around Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico.