The Melding Americas : Latin Facts : The Americas

The 35 nations of the Americas, designated by membership in the Organization of American States, are:

North America: The United States, Canada and Mexico.

Central America: Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama.

South America: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela.

Caribbean Region: Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Haiti, Jamaica, Saint Christopher and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago.

SPANISH IN THE UNITED STATES

* There are an estimated 24 million Latinos in the United States, 7.7 million of them in California

* Including Americans who learned Spanish as a second language, the total number of U.S. Spanish-speakers is estimated at 30 million or more.

Spanish-language media in the United States include:

* 100 newspapers

* 240 radio stations

* 3 television networks

* 6,520,000 Hispanic television households

NOBELISTS IN THE NEW WORLD

While numerous U.S. statesmen, authors and scientists have been awarded Nobel Prizes, other Western Hemisphere nations also boast Nobelists among their citizens.

*

ARGENTINA

Physiologist Bernardo Alberto Houssay, with Americans Carl F. and Gerty T. Cori, was awarded the 1947 prize for physiology or medicine for his work on the functions of the pituitary gland.

In 1970, Luis F. Leloir received the prize for chemistry for his discovery of sugar nucleotides and their role in biosynthesis of carbohydrates.

Immunologist Cesar Milstein in 1984 shared the prize for physiology or medicine with German Georges Kohler and Niels K. Jerne of Denmark.

*

CANADA

In 1957, diplomat Lester Bowles Pearson was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on behalf of the United Nations in resolving the 1956 Arab-Israeli war.

Physicist Richard E. Taylor received the 1990 prize for physics with Americans Jerome Friedman and Henry W. Kendall for a series of experiments that showed that fundamental particles of matter are not protons and neutrons, but smaller particles known as quarks.

*

CHILE

Poet Gabriela Mistral won the 1945 literature prize, becoming the first Latin American Nobelist.

Poet and diplomat Pablo Neruda was awarded the 1971 prize for literature just two years before being killed in the 1973 military coup.

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COLOMBIA

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, authors of such novels as “One Hundred Years of Solitude” and Love in the Time of Cholera,” won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.

*

COSTA RICA

President Oscar Arias Sanchez received the 1987 peace prize for leading the war toward a Central American peace initiative.

*

GUATEMALA

Author Miguel Angel Asturias, who faced periods of exile and imprisonment for his opposition to the Guatemalan dictatorship, was awarded the prize for literature in 1967.

Social reformer Rigoberta Menchu received the 1992 peace prize for her efforts to secure and protect the rights of the indigenous peoples of her country and to promote intercultural peace.

*

MEXICO

Statesman Alfonso Garcia Robles, sponsor of the 1967 ban on nuclear weapons in Latin American, shared the 1982 peace prize with Sweden’s Alva Myrdal.

Poet and critic Octavio Paz won the 1990 prize in literature.

*TRINIDAD

Dramatist and poet Derek Walcott, whose plays include “Remem-brance” (1980) and “A Branch of the Blue Nile” (1987) won the 1992 prize in literature.

Sources: 1994 Information Please Almanac; the Columbia Encyclopedia, 5th ed.