The statistic shows the largest countries in Central America, based on land area. Nicaragua is the largest country in the subregion, with a total area of over 130 thousand square kilometers, followed by Honduras, with more than 112 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.

As of 2023, Guatemala was the most populated country in Central America with over 17.5 million inhabitants. Honduras followed in second with over 10 million. In contrast, Belize was the least populated with less than half a million inhabitants.

The statistic shows the largest countries in South America, based on land area. Brazil is the largest country by far, with a total area of over 8.5 million square kilometers, followed by Argentina, with almost 2.8 million square kilometers.

In 2024, it was estimated that approximately 662 million people lived in Latin America and the Caribbean. Brazil is the most populated country in the region, with an estimated 211.999 million inhabitants in that year, followed by Mexico with more than 130.861 million.

This dataset provides values for GDP reported in several countries. The data includes current values, previous releases, historical highs and record lows, release frequency, reported unit and currency.

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.

The South & Central America Oil Country Tubular Goods Market report segments the industry into By Manufacturing Process (Seamless, Electric Resistance Welded), By Grade (Premium Grade, API Grade), and By Geography (Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Rest of South and Central America). Five years of historic data and five-year forecasts are included.

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.

Brazil, the Latin American country with the largest number of COVID-19 infections in the region, had performed around 63.8 million tests for coronavirus (COVID-19) as of April13, 2024. Chile followed with more than 50 million tests completed by that time. Meanwhile, the United States was the nation that performed the highest number of tests for SARS-CoV-2 among the most impacted countries worldwide.

As of 2024 estimates, Costa Rica registered the highest gross domestic product (GDP) in Central America with around 83 billion USD, closely followed by Panama. In contrast, Belize ranked with the lowest GDP with just over 2.7 billion USD.

Panama had the largest e-commerce market size of the Central American countries examined, amounting to approximately 4.2 billion U.S. dollars in 2021. Guatemala and Costa Rica followed, with over three billion dollars each. That year, retail accounted for most of e-commerce in Central America.

In 2022, Panama, Guatemala, and, Costa Rica were the largest electricity-producing countries in Central America, each with an output of more than ** terawatt-hours. Costa Rica also had the largest share of electricity produced from renewables in Central America that year.

In the beginning of March 2020, Chile reported its first cases of COVID-19. By the end of the month, online marketplace Mercado Libre had seen online orders grow by *** percent, making it the Latin American country with the largest increase in online orders during this period. Meanwhile, Colombia ranked second, with online orders growing by *** percent, followed by Mexico with a *** percent growth rate.

In 2022, Latin America and the Caribbean accounted for around ****** million social media users, ranking as the fifth most popular region for this type of platform worldwide. Brazil and Mexico were the countries with the continent’s biggest social network audiences, registering ****** million and ***** million users each in the measured period. Additionally, Brazil is also the fifth largest market for social media worldwide.

Meta’s new contenders

The products owned by social media giant Meta (formerly known as Facebook Inc.) still reign across the social media landscape in Latin America and the Caribbean, as Facebook is still used by almost ** percent of the continent’s population. However, new competitors like Telegram and content-focused networks like TikTok are challenging Meta’s hegemony. The ByteDance-owned company TikTok has already surpassed Instagram in Mexico, Colombia, and Peru regarding the number of users, becoming the second-largest network in these countries.

Hardships on internet access

Even though Latin America increases its connectivity in traffic via mobile devices, the inequality in access to the internet throughout the continent also is also reflected in the presence of its populations on social media platforms. Almost ** percent of people living in South America have access to these networks, against ** percent of those living in Central America and only ** percent of those living in the Caribbean.

Brazil, the most populated country and the economy with the highest GDP in Latin America, had the largest market research revenue in the region in 2022. Out of all the Latin American and Caribbean countries included in the study, Brazil ranked first, with a market research revenue of *** million U.S. dollars, followed by Mexico, with *** million U.S. dollars.

In 2025, approximately 23 million people lived in the São Paulo metropolitan area, making it the biggest in Latin America and the Caribbean and the sixth most populated in the world. The homonymous state of São Paulo was also the most populous federal entity in the country. The second place for the region was Mexico City with 22.75 million inhabitants. Brazil's cities Brazil is home to two large metropolises, only counting the population within the city limits, São Paulo had approximately 11.45 million inhabitants, and Rio de Janeiro around 6.21 million inhabitants. It also contains a number of smaller, but well known cities such as Brasília, Salvador, Belo Horizonte and many others, which report between 2 and 3 million inhabitants each. As a result, the country's population is primarily urban, with nearly 88 percent of inhabitants living in cities. Mexico City Mexico City's metropolitan area ranks sevenths in the ranking of most populated cities in the world. Founded over the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan in 1521 after the Spanish conquest as the capital of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, the city still stands as one of the most important in Latin America. Nevertheless, the preeminent economic, political, and cultural position of Mexico City has not prevented the metropolis from suffering the problems affecting the rest of the country, namely, inequality and violence. Only in 2023, the city registered a crime incidence of 52,723 reported cases for every 100,000 inhabitants and around 24 percent of the population lived under the poverty line.

From January to September 2021 more than 400 million U.S. dollars worth of imports were generated from non-alcoholic beverages among Central American countries. The largest buyer of non-alcoholic beverages in the region was Guatemala with 108.7 million U.S dollars, followed by Honduras, Panama, El Salvador, and Nicaragua who imported between 91 to 50 million U.S. dollars worth of these beverages.

As of February 2025, Brazil had approximately 183 million internet users. That is more than Mexico and Argentina combined, the two ranking second and third respectively. Meanwhile, in the Caribbean, the Dominican Republic featured the largest number of internet users.

In 2023, Puerto Rico and The Bahamas were the states with the highest gross domestic product (GDP) per capita in Latin America and the Caribbean. The average GDP generated per person in the Bahamas amounted to 34,749 U.S. dollars, whereas the average wealth created per capita in Puerto Rico was estimated at around 34,749 U.S. dollars. In that same year, this region's lowest GDP per capita was that of Haiti, at less than 1,693 U.S. dollars per person per year. The largest economies in Latin America GDP is the total value of all goods and services produced in a country in a year. It is an important indicator to measure the economic strength of a country and the average wealth of its population. By far, the two largest economies in the region are Brazil and Mexico, both registering GDPs three times bigger than the third place, Argentina. Nonetheless, they are the two most populated countries by a great margin.
Key economic indicators of Latin America Latin America emerges as an important region in the world economy, as of 2023, around 7.3 percent of the global GDP, a similar share to the Middle East. Nevertheless, the economic development of most of its countries has been heavily affected by other factors, such as corruption, inequality, inflation, or crime and violence. Countries such as Venezuela, Suriname, and Argentina are constantly ranking among the highest inflation rates in the world. While Jamaica, Ecuador, and Haiti rank as some of the most crime-ridden states.