South America

Cuban photographer Alberto Korda

Q&A Where did the famous portrait of Che Guevara come from?

Photo of pipe and tobacco

Q&A Did people smoke anything before tobacco was discovered?

Historic San Felipe de Barajas castle is one of the main attractions in Cartagena, Colombia. (Image: Thinkstock by Getty Images)

General prehistory

My favourite place: Cartagena de Indias, Colombia

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My favourite place: Miranda Kaufmann

Photo of Uruguay football players celebrating victory

Q&A Who won the first FIFA World Cup?

Brazil's soccer star Pele is hoisted on the shoulders of his teammates and fans after Brazil won the ninth World Cup final against Italy. (AP Photo)

Brazil: where sport and politics have always mixed

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Illustration by Jonty Clark.

Ye olde travel guide: Caracas 1783 . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

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Illustration by Jonty Clark.

Ye olde travel guide: Rio de Janeiro 1820 . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

British prime minister Margaret Thatcher is portrayed as pirate in an Argentine newspaper from 30 April 1982.(Photo by Alain Nogues/Sygma via Getty Images)

Sir Max Hastings: Witness to the Falklands War

In the 16,000 years after the end of the last Ice Age, societies in Eurasia and the Americas followed radically different trajectories. Here, an Aztec priest offers the heart taken from a living person to the god of war, Huitzilopochtli. (Photo12/UIG via Getty Images)

The old world and the new

A c1870 engraving of diamond miners in Brazil in c1800. Despite abolitionists' best efforts, British companies used slaves in their South American mines until the 1880s. (Getty Images)

Britain’s slaves in Latin America

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Latin American slavery and historical hair . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Two women from South America. Six centuries ago South American civilisations matched the west in some respects. (Getty Images)

The wonder of the west

Evening light sweeps over the ruins of the Jesuit mission church at Trinidad de Paraná, Paraguay, where the bell tower of the site's first of two churches stands. Scores of Jesuit missions in the area where Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil meet were built in the 17th century and were abandoned when the Jesuits were expelled in the 18th century. (Photo by Kevin Moloney via Getty Images)

Jesuit missionaries: “a masterpiece of humanity”

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Ancient Greece in the 4th-century BC and the Spanish in Mexico . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.