Cuba is the largest island country or territory in the Caribbean, with a total area of almost 111 thousand square kilometers, followed by the Dominican Republic, with nearly 49 thousand square kilometers.

Based on land area, Brazil is the largest country in Latin America by far, with a total area of over 8.5 million square kilometers. Argentina follows with almost 2.8 million square kilometers. Cuba, whose surface area extends over almost 111,000 square kilometers, is the Caribbean country with the largest territory.

Brazil: a country with a lot to offer

Brazil's borders reach nearly half of the South American subcontinent, making it the fifth-largest country in the world and the third-largest country in the Western Hemisphere. Along with its landmass, Brazil also boasts the largest population and economy in the region. Although Brasília is the capital, the most significant portion of the country's population is concentrated along its coastline in the cities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

South America: a region of extreme geographic variation

With the Andes mountain range in the West, the Amazon Rainforest in the East, the Equator in the North, and Cape Horn as the Southern-most continental tip, South America has some of the most diverse climatic and ecological terrains in the world. At its core, its biodiversity can largely be attributed to the Amazon, the world's largest tropical rainforest, and the Amazon river, the world's largest river. However, with this incredible wealth of ecology also comes great responsibility. In the past decade, roughly 80,000 square kilometers of the Brazilian Amazon were destroyed. And, as of late 2019, there were at least 1,000 threatened species in Brazil alone.

In 2023, it was estimated that approximately 664 million people lived in Latin America and the Caribbean. Brazil is the most populated country in the region, with an estimated 216.4 million inhabitants in that year, followed by Mexico with more than 128.5 million.

In 2019, Brazil and Mexico were the undisputable passenger traffic hubs in Latin America and the Caribbean, registering each over 90 million air travelers passing through their airports. At a wide margin, Colombia ranked third that year, while the only Caribbean country in the top seven was the Dominican Republic. That same year, the Mexico City International Airport was the best internationally connected airport in Latin America.

The Dominican Republic was the Caribbean territory with the largest Facebook audience as of October 2024. At that moment, there were over 8.3 million monthly active users (MAU) accessing this social network in the Dominican Republic. Meanwhile, Haiti ranked second with more than three million Facebook users. The Dominican Republic also had the largest number of Instagram users in the region.

In 2024, Brazil and Mexico were expected to be the countries with the largest gross domestic product (GDP) in Latin America and the Caribbean. In that year, Brazil's GDP could reach an estimated value of 2.4 trillion U.S. dollars, whereas Mexico's amounted to almost two trillion U.S. dollars. GDP is the total value of all goods and services produced in a country in a given year. It measures the economic strength of a country and a positive change indicates economic growth.

Abstract

The RFS in Caribbean was conducted in 13 countries between March and November 2020 and focused on the tourism industry and the restaurant, hotel and tour and transport companies. Due to the COVID-19 crisis, data collection was done both remotely and in-person depending on the restrictions in place and preference of respondent. The countries covered included Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Jamaica, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Sint Maarten, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos. The survey in the Caribbean focused on impacts of recent disasters to have affected the region, including Hurricane Irma, Hurricane Maria, Tropical Storm Dorian, etc. (see Table 2 for country and disaster list). The data collection was financed by the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) with the objective of better understanding how natural hazards – large and small, affect the tourism industry in the Caribbean. The data informed the 360° Resilience: A Guide to Prepare the Caribbean for a New Generation of Shocks (Rozenberg, et al. 2021) to make recommendations on how Caribbean countries can invest resources to strengthen resilience in the region.

This project was a collaborative effort between GFDRR and Urban, Disaster Risk Management, Resilience and Land Global Practice (GPURL).

Geographic coverage

Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Jamaica, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Sint Maarten, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos.

Analysis unit

• Firm level

Kind of data

Sample survey data [ssd]

Sampling procedure

The sample was drawn to achieve representativeness at the country level as well as the regional level. In the Dominican Republic, sampling was done in a way to also achieve representativeness in 4 provinces in the country. Since there was no comprehensive list of firms operating in the tourism industry readily available to sample from, the firm hired to collect data created a sampling frame from scratch by contacting relevant organizations and websites. To be able to say something about different sectors within the tourism industry, the sampling was stratified by three sectors, including hotels and accommodation, restaurants and bars, and a third sector including rental, taxi and tour companies, attractions and souvenir shops (referred to in this note as hotel, restaurant and tour/transport sectors). The sample selection was then completed in one stage in which firms were selected by using a systematic random sampling method from each stratum.

Once the firm is selected for inclusion in the survey, every effort was made to interview the firm. The survey response rate was low due to the COVID pandemic, and replacements were done. Replacements were drawn from the same stratum. Due to restrictions in some countries, firms were not reachable, even after several attempts and replacements had been done. To compensate for low response rate in some countries, the sample size in other countries was increased. As a result, The Bahamas and Turks and Caicos have lower than expected sample size so caution should be applied when interpreting country level results from these two countries. See Technical Note for more detail on composition of final sample.

The final sample contains a total of 1413 firms across the 13 countries. Dominican Republic has the largest number of observations because the objective of sampling was also to achieve province level representativeness, in addition to country level representativeness, in 4 providences that rely heavily on tourism.

To make the survey estimates representative of the population, it is necessary to apply weights to selected firms during analysis. Regional weights (weight) are applied to statistics representing regional values while country weights (weight_i) are applied to all country level statistics.

Mode of data collection

Computer Assisted Personal Interview [capi]

Research instrument

• Respondent characteristics • Firm characteristics • Clients • Infrastructure dependence and disruptions o Water o Electricity o Communication (phone and internet) o Road and boat • Suppliers • Disaster preparedness • Impacts of recent disasters (see Table 2) • Impacts of disease outbreaks (Zika and COVID-19) • Financial accounts

Cleaning operations

The following data editing was done for anonymization purpose:
• Precise location data, such as GPS coordinates, and subnational administrative divisions (admin 1) were dropped • Identifying and contact information, such as firm name, respondent’s name, supplier names, phone number and email contact, were dropped • Number of fulltime workers above 100 was recoded to “above 100 fulltime workers” to mitigate re-identification of the largest firms. See technical note for more details on anonymization.

As of October 2024, the Dominican Republic was the Caribbean territory with the largest Instagram audience, counting over *** million monthly active users (MAU). In second place was Puerto Rico, with approximately **** million users. When looking at Latin America as a whole, Brazil was the country with the highest number of users of the photo and video sharing social media platform.

From 2017 to 2024, Mexico recorded 90 murders of journalists. This is more than all other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean combined. During that same eight-year period, Colombia witnessed the killings of 21 journalists. The largest country in the Latin American and Caribbean region with no journalists killed between 2017 and 2024 was Argentina.

In 2024, Haiti had a 302 percent level of occupancy in their prison system, being the country with the highest occupancy rate in the Latin America and the Caribbean. It was followed by Guatemala, with almost 300 percent occupancy rate. Among the top ten countries with the most overcrowded national prison system, Panama had the lowest rate, at 163.1 percent. Regarding prison population, El Salvador and Cuba were the Latin American and Caribbean countries that had the largest rates, both with over 500 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants.

As of February 2025, more than ** percent of the population of Uruguay was on social media. On the other hand, approximately ** percent of Haitians used social networking platforms. Among the largest Latin American markets, Brazil had the lowest social media penetration rate at **** percent, just below Colombia and Argentina. Online networking among Chilean young adults intensifies Young adults are the primary audience of social media in Chile. Nearly half of all Facebook users in the South American country were between 18 and 34 years old. The same age group accounted for almost ** percent of Chilean users of LinkedIn. This generation has also been devoting more of its time to this type of online activity. Obstacles for the expansion of social media in Brazil A handful of issues still set part of Latin America's online population apart from social networks. Despite having the biggest social media audiences in Latin America, countries like Brazil and Mexico still struggled to provide internet access to their populations, thus hindering social media penetration rates.

As of January 2024, the Dominican Republic had the largest number of internet users in the Caribbean, with more than 10.14 million citizens online. Even though the Bahamas ranked seventh with 390.8 thousand users, it was the Caribbean sovereign state with the highest percentage of people online. Meanwhile, Montserrat was the territory with the smallest online population in the region, since only 2.4 thousand of its inhabitants accessed the internet.

Some of the most populous countries in Latin America were also the nations that register the highest number of murders. Brazil was the country with the largest number of intentional homicides in the region with 44,367 victims. Mexico came in second, with 33,287 homicide victims, followed by Colombia with over 13,000 victims.

Total value (x 1,000,000) of businesses’ sales that were made through Canadian businesses and through their majority-owned foreign affiliates in Canada, the United States of America, Mexico, other Latin American and Caribbean countries, Europe, China, other Asian countries or all other countries, by North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code and enterprise size, based on a one-year observation period.

*Low education level defined as primary and/or secondary school educationMean Age and Proportion of Males and Females in Study Samples by Country (n = 10,597); Sample size with percentages shown in brackets.

Total value (x 1,000,000) of businesses’ sales from goods and from services that were made in Canada, the United States of America, Mexico, other Latin American and Caribbean countries, Europe, China, other Asian countries or all other countries, by North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code and enterprise size, based on a one-year observation period. Estimates refer to fiscal year 2017 (end date falling after January 1, 2017 and on or before December 31, 2017).

In 2019, Aruba and the Cayman Islands had the largest number of air trips per capita in the entire Latin American and Caribbean region, each with averages above nine trips. In Central America, the country with the largest number was Belize, while Chile took the lead in South America. In contrast, Haiti, Venezuela, and Nicaragua recorded the lowest number of air trips per capita that year.

As of April 2025, Brazil and Mexico were the countries in Latin America with the largest surface area of buildings with an LEED certificate. There were over 320 million gross square feet of LEED-certified buildings in Brazil. The next countries in the ranking were Mexico, Colombia, Chile, and Peru. The Netherlands was the country with the highest energy efficiency score for buildings worldwide.

The number of full-time equivalent (FTE) personnel employed outside Canada by businesses that are not an affiliate of a foreign parent (in the United States of America, Mexico, other Latin American and Caribbean countries, Europe, China, other Asian countries or all other countries), by North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code and enterprise size, based on a one-year observation period. Estimates refer to fiscal year 2017 (end date falling after January 1, 2017 and on or before December 31, 2017).

As of the third quarter of 2023, Brazil was home to more than 185.1 million cellular and WiFi mobile internet users. Meanwhile, more than 104.72 million people accessed the internet via mobile devices in Mexico, whereas this number was over 38 million in Argentina and Colombia. Mobile devices were responsible for the largest shares of the web traffic in most of the countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.