Map Latin America

Your Guides Hola! My name is Anka and this is my friend Naira. Welcome to our home, Latin America.

For a long time, governments in Latin America were not very good. In the past 100 years, we have seen violent government takeovers, dishonest elections and leaders who have not protected the people. Today, almost all governments are democracies and most of them are honest, but it’s taken a long time to get to this point and there is still a lot of work to be done.

Juntas

A military dictatorship is when a person or a group of people takes over a government using military force. In Latin America, military dictatorships are called juntas (pronounced hoon-tuh), and they have been a big problem in the region over the last century. At one time, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina and more than a dozen other Latin American countries have been ruled by military dictators.

Impact of Juntas

Juntas are hard on regular people for two reasons:

• Human rights aren’t always protected because juntas keep their power by using violence.
• Social services like education and health care don’t get enough attention because the government is focused on building the military.

Michelle Bachelet: Latin America’s third female leader.

Chile’s First Female Leader

Michelle Bachelet became Chile’s first female president in 2006 and the third female leader in Latin American history. She has promised to make Latin America a fairer place for women and the poor.