Greenstone staff from the Tairona culture, c. 1550-1600, from Magdalena, Colombia Tairona was a group of chiefdoms in the region of Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in present-day Cesar, Magdalena and La Guajira Departments of Colombia, South America, which goes back at least to the 1st century CE.
Brazilian battleship Aquidabã Aquidabã, anglicised as Aquidaban, was a Brazilian ironclad warship built in the mid-1880s. The ship participated in two naval revolts; during the second she was sunk by a government torpedo boat. After being refloated, Aquidabã was sent to Germany for repairs and modernisation. During a routine cruise in 1906, the ship's ammunition magazines exploded, which caused the vessel to sink rapidly with a great loss of life.
Textile fragment originating from the Paracas period The Paracas culture was an important Andean society between approximately 700 BC and 100 AD, with an extensive knowledge of irrigation and water management. It developed in the Paracas Peninsula, located in what today is the Paracas District of the Pisco Province in the Ica Region of Peru. Most information about the lives of the Paracas people comes from excavations at the large seaside Paracas site, first investigated by the Peruvian archaeologist Julio Tello in the 1920s. Author David Hatcher Childress, who has no academic credentials, has made controversial claims about Paracas, including the suggestion that elongated human skulls found there are extraterrestrial in nature.
ON THIS DAY: 1821 – José de San Martín declares the independence of Peru from Spain
Conquest of the Desert, by Juan Manuel Blanes (fragment showing Julio Argentino Roca, at the front) The Conquest of the Desert (Spanish: Conquista del desierto) was a military campaign directed mainly by General Julio Argentino Roca in the 1870s with the intent to establish Argentine dominance over Patagonia, which was inhabited by indigenous peoples. Under General Roca, the so-called Conquest of the Desert extended Argentine power into Patagonia and ended the possibility of Chilean expansion there. Argentine troops killed more than a thousand Indians and displaced over fifteen thousand more from their land, which European settlers turned into a breadbasket that made Argentina an agricultural superpower in the early 20th century. The Conquest is commemorated on the 100 peso bill in Argentina.
An Inca quipu, from the Larco Museum in Lima Quipus (or khipus), sometimes called talking knots, were recording devices historically used in the region of Andean South America. A quipu usually consisted of colored, spun, and plied thread or strings from llama or alpaca hair. It could also be made of cotton cords. The cords contained numeric and other values encoded by knots in a base ten positional system. Quipus might have just a few or up to 2,000 cords.
Hamburgo Velho Station, Brazil, 1950
Portrait of Guadalupe Victoria Guadalupe Victoria (29 September 1786 – 21 March 1843), born José Miguel Ramón Adaucto Fernández y Félix, was a Mexican politician and military officer who fought for independence against the Spanish Empire in the Mexican War of Independence. He was a deputy in the Mexican Chamber of Deputies for Durango and a member of the Supreme Executive Power. He also served as the first president of Mexico.
Charge of the Cavalry by Guilherme Litran (Júlio de Castilhos Museum, Porto Alegre), depicting the Riograndense army The Farroupilha Revolution (Portuguese: Revolução Farroupilha) or War of the Farrapos (Portuguese: Guerra dos Farrapos) was a Republican uprising that began in southern Brazil, in the states of Rio Grande do Sul in 1835. The rebels, led by generals Bento Gonçalves da Silva and Antônio de Sousa Neto with the support of the Italian fighter Giuseppe Garibaldi, surrendered to imperial forces in 1845.
The war was the cause of the rushed coronation in 1841 of Dom Pedro II (at that time 15 years old), in direct violation of the Brazilian constitution. It is considered the second bloodiest of the failed wars of independence in the Brazilian Empire, after the War of Cabanagem.
Mikhail Gorbachev and Fidel Castro, 1989 In his first visit to South America in April 1989, Gorbachev met in Havana with Fidel Castro. Crumbling Russian economy could no longer help Cuba as before, and although Gorbachev and Cuban tried to convince journalists that the friendship between Cuba and the Soviet Union was still as strong leaders signed a single agreement. (SERGEI GUNEYEV / AFP / Getty Images)
Entrenched Uruguayan troops and their backing artillery were devastating in the Battle of Tuyuti The Battle of Tuyutí was a Paraguayan offensive in the Paraguayan War. The allied victory added to the Paraguayan troubles that began with a failed offensive and continued with the loss of its fleet in the Battle of Riachuelo.
In early May 1866, a Paraguayan attack at a marsh called Estero Bellaco failed. As the allies camped for over two weeks before resuming their advance, Paraguayan leader Francisco Solano López ordered a May 24 surprise attack on Tuyutí, a "a swampy, scrub-brush savannah".
The Paraguayans attacked in three columns, and soon the battle turned into "a series of charges and countercharges, a Latin American version of Waterloo". The Paraguayan columns continued to attack, but never could overcome the allied firepower.
Tuyutí was the last major Paraguayan attack. Ultimately, it was a devastating Paraguayan defeat: Of the 6,000 men wounded after the battle, a large percentage would die subsequently. The Paraguayan military was decimated.
The May 24, 1866 battle of Tuyutí is known as the First Battle of Tuyutí; the second battle occurred on November 7, 1867, and was an indecisive and less consequential battle in which each side lost about 2,400 men.
"To the Province of S. Paulo, in Brazil. Immigrants: read these hints before leaving. S. Paulo, 1886" A guide provided for Italian migrants arriving in Brazil in the late 19th Century
Queen Maria I of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves Maria I (English: Mary I) (17 December 1734 – 20 March 1816) was Queen of Portugal, Brazil, and the Algarves. Known as Maria the Pious (in Portugal), or Maria the Mad (in Brazil), she was the first undisputed Queen regnant of Portugal. Her reign would be a noteworthy one. With Napoleon's European conquests, her court, then under the direction of Prince Dom João, the Prince Regent, moved to the then Portuguese colony of Brazil. Later on, Brazil would be elevated from the rank of a colony to that of a Kingdom, the Kingdom of Brazil, with the consequential formation of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves.
Yanomámi inhaling Epena, 20th Century The Yanomami, also spelled Yąnomamö or Yanomama, are a group of approximately 20,000 indigenous people who live in some 200–250 villages in the Amazon rainforest on the border between Venezuela and Brazil. Virola, also known as Epená, Patricá, or Cumala, is a genus of medium-sized trees native to the South American rainforest and closely related to other Myristicaceae, such as nutmeg. It has glossy, dark green leaves with clusters of tiny yellow flowers and emits a pungent odor. The dark-red resin of the tree bark contains several hallucinogenic alkaloids, most notably DMT, 5-MeO-DMT and bufotenin, perhaps the most powerful members of the dimethyltryptamine family; it also contains beta-carboline harmala alkaloids, MAOIs that greatly potentiate the effects of DMT. The bark resin is prepared and dried by a variety of methods, often including the addition of ash or lime, presumably as basifying agents, and a powder made from the leaves of the small Justicia bush. Ingestion is similar to that of Yopo, consisting of assisted insufflation, with the snuff being blown through a long tube into the nostrils by an assistant. According to Schultes, the use of Virola in magico-religious rituals is restricted to tribes in the Western Amazon Basin and parts of the Orinoco Basin.
Cannibalism, Brazil. Engraving by Theodor de Bry for Hans Staden's account of his 1557 captivity Hans Staden (c. 1525 – c. 1579) was a German soldier and mariner who voyaged to South America. On one voyage, he was captured by the "Toppinikin" people of Brazil, who, he claimed, practised cannibalism; he survived and wrote a widely-read book describing his experiences.
Depiction 1541 founding of Santiago Santiago is the capital of Chile. It was founded by Spanish Conquistador Pedro de Valdivia on 12 February 1541, with the name Santiago de Nueva Extremadura, as a homage to Saint James and Extremadura and in relation with the first name given to Chile, Nueva Extremadura. Extremadura was Valdivia's birthplace in Spain. The founding ceremony was held on Huelén Hill (later renamed Cerro Santa Lucía). Valdivia chose the location of Santiago because of its climate, abundant vegetation, and the ease with which it could be defended—the Mapocho River then split into two branches and rejoined further downstream, forming an island. The Inca ruler Manco Cápac II warned the new rulers that his people would be hostile to the occupiers. The Spanish invaders had to battle against hunger caused by this resistance. Pedro de Valdivia ultimately succeeded in stabilizing the food supply and other resources needed for Santiago to thrive. The layout of the new town consisted of straight roads of 12 varas (14.35 m or 47.1 ft) width, in equal intervals of 138 varas (165.08 m or 541.6 ft) perpendicular to each other. With nine roads in the east-west direction and 15 in the north-south direction, there were 126 blocks that formed the so-called manzanas, or square cut.
