South America and Central America, including the Caribbean, are well represented on the World Heritage List. The coastal areas and the islands have an especially richly variegated heritage, comprising remnants of lost civilisations and of the legacy of the European colonial and trade expansion after ca. 1500. Large plantation economies and religious expressions produced new unique and characteristic features, such as the 16th-century city of Antigua Guatemala (Guatemala). The people from Africa and Asia, ‘imported’ through the slave trade and contract labour, introduced their own items of cultural value. The stagnating cultures of the original occupants also left behind valuable and unique traces.

Together they demonstrate both stratification and a melting pot of cultures. Some examples of Cultural World Heritage sites in Central America and the Caribbean are Viñales Valley (Cuba) and Willemstad, the former Dutch trading post on Curaçao, with remnants dating back to the period between 1650 and 1900. Most of the World Heritage sites in South America are in and around the Andes and in the coastal regions of Argentina and Brazil. Some of them are remnants of cultures that met with disaster, like the holy Inca city of Machu Picchu (Peru).

Others bear the marks of Southern European colonisation starting in the 16th century and of the period following their independence in the 19th century, like the 17th-century Jesuit Block and Estancias in Córdoba (Argentina) and the 19th-century harbour city of Valparaíso (Chile). A modern example is the city of Brasilia. Besides sites that reflect cultural values, Central and South America also boast several nature areas of outstanding significance that have been designated as World Heritage sites, such as Guanacaste (Costa Rica), the Galapagos Islands (Ecuador) and a part of the tropical rainforest in the Amazon (Brazil).

(Photo: Fubomichi Kudo, Brazil)