Communicating Across Cultures With People From Latin America

Latin America is one of the world’s most diverse regions. It includes more than 600 million people, hundreds of languages and ethnicities, a centuries-long legacy of colonialism, huge socioeconomic disparities, and a diversity of histories, geographies, and political systems. How people from Latin America communicate, or how best to communicate with them, obviously depends very much on the context.

With approximately 10% of the world’s population, a gross domestic product of more than US$5 trillion, and Brazil and Mexico forecast to be two of the world’s top five economies by the middle of the 21st century, Latin America is an important global region. Its music, literature, visual art, cooking, and dance are appreciated worldwide with UNESCO naming traditional Mexican food as the first world heritage cuisine ...