Latin America's population grew tenfold in the 20th century

Latin America's population grew tenfold in the 20th century

Hispanic America's population went from around 40 million to 385 million inhabitants over the course of the 20th century. That is a tenfold increase, one that makes the growth of India and China look modest, as they barely tripled over the same period. The official explanation points to European immigration, but the numbers don't add up: only about 10 million people are estimated to have arrived in the entire subcontinent over a hundred years. Spain alone receives nearly a million in a single year. The arithmetic doesn't work.

The extermination that wasn't

The story of the indigenous demographic collapse after the Spanish arrived — with an estimated 90% reduction in the population — clashes with an uncomfortable reality: if only six million indigenous people remained in 1600, how do you explain the subsequent growth? Some argue that the extermination is an urban legend and that the Native American population in the United States is larger today than when the English arrived. The guilt-tripping propaganda, they say, has been drilled into us from every angle.

The key, according to some analyses, lies not in biology but in the law. In the late 17th century, the number of mestizos (people of mixed Spanish and indigenous descent) skyrocketed while the number of Indians plummeted, with no European migratory flow to justify it. The explanation: many indigenous people declared themselves mestizo because they were better regarded, and a single Spanish great-grandparent was enough to qualify for that category. A large share of the "whites" in the censuses were, in fact, mestizos. The shift was legal, not racial.

The 20th century: vaccines, birth rates and empty land

The real demographic explosion came in the 20th century. The combination of extremely high birth rates, mass vaccination campaigns and countries that were practically empty explains the phenomenon. Colombia had about five million inhabitants at the start of the century, and it is larger than Spain. Mexico went from 13.6 million in 1900 to 97.4 million in 2000. Argentina grew from four to more than 36 million. Chile, from 3.2 million to more than 15. Better healthcare and vaccines did the rest.

Some analyses suggest growth really took off with antibiotics, when birth rates remained high and infant mortality collapsed. The result: overcrowded countries, filthy and dangerous cities, and an underdevelopment that weighs the region down. Some argue that anti-natalist laws should have been imposed in 1930 to prevent today's disaster.

European immigration doesn't explain the miracle

The argument that European immigration drove the growth falls apart on its own. Ten million people over a hundred years across an entire subcontinent do not account for a jump of 345 million. For comparison, Nigeria and its neighbours multiplied their population twelvefold over the last century, a pace similar to Latin America's. The difference is that there was no massive European immigration there.

The conclusion is uncomfortable: either the sources quantifying the population up to the 20th century are garbage, or people spent a century breeding like rabbits. Better healthcare and vaccines are the most plausible explanation, but it doesn't quite close the gap with India and China, which also improved their healthcare and grew far less.

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The exact point where the analysis gets stuck: if the extermination was so brutal and immigration so scarce, the 20th-century growth can only be explained by an unparalleled natural population boom. And with the data in hand, nobody can quite make the numbers work.