As of 2024, Guatemala was the most populated country in Central America with over 17.85 million inhabitants. Honduras followed in second with over 10.66 million. In contrast, Belize was the least populated, with less than half a million inhabitants.

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.

In 2023, Brazil ranked first by total population among the 24 territories presented in the ranking. Brazil's total population amounted to 211.14 million people, while Mexico and Colombia, the second and third territories, had records amounting to 129.74 million people and 52.32 million people, respectively.

As of 2025, Barbados was the most densely populated country in Latin America and the Caribbean, with approximately 657.16 people per square kilometer. In that same year, Argentina's population density was estimated at approximately 16.75 people per square kilometer.

The average for 2021 based on 12 countries was 25 people per square km. The highest value was in Ecuador: 72 people per square km and the lowest value was in Guyana: 4 people per square km. The indicator is available from 1961 to 2021. Below is a chart for all countries where data are available.

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.

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.

Mexico was the most visited destination by international tourists in Latin America in 2024, totaling ** million tourist arrivals in that year. In the second place, but far behind, was the Dominican Republic. A global tourism powerhouse By developing airport infrastructure and calibrating new direct flights, Mexico has set international tourism high on its priorities list. At the forefront of Mexico's spike in international tourism is the FONATUR, or Mexico's National Fund for Tourism Development. The tourism body worked in the expansion of Cancun's airport and other four key tourist airports in the country. Plus, Mexico City's airport added new international direct flights in the *****, resulting in being rated as the best internationally connected airport in Latin America in 2019. With this and other developments in this sector, the North American country managed to rank among the top 20 destinations in the Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Ranking that year. South America's tourism leader Through its geographically diverse landscape and globally recognized wine industry, Argentina has grown its international tourism sector. The influx of foreign visitors to Argentina can in some way be attributed to the country's air-travel infrastructure. The national air carrier, Aerolineas Argentinas, was one of the top airline operating in Latin America in 2019. That same year, passenger traffic to Argentinian airports grew by **** percent. Though in April 2020, in the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the arrival of international air travel tourists to Argentina came to a complete halt, ensuing a similar fate of the global tourism industry.

Travelers in Mexico and Peru were mostly drawn to domestic destinations in 2018 and 2019, according to a study based on online searches. In these two Latin American countries, the top ten destinations searched by internet users were located in the same country. On the other hand, Ecuadorian tourists were mostly interested in international travels in those years. In Peru's neighbor country, ***** out of the ten most searched destinations were located abroad. In 2019, Latin Americans' preferred region for leisure tourism was Europe.

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.

The American chains McDonald's and KFC were the most recognized fast food brands in main Latin American countries, according to a survey conducted in 2023. The chain with the highest recognition was McDonald's in Ecuador, as nearly ** percent of respondents in that country said that they had seen advertising of this brand in the previous two weeks prior to the survey.

More than ******* nationals from Nicaragua were living outside their country as of mid-2020. Costa Rica was the main destination for those emigrating from the Central American country, hosting nearly half of them. The United States was the second most popular host country, as ******* immigrants from Nicaragua lived there.

A study of the podcast landscape in Latin America found that Prisa Radio, a Spanish-language radio group operating in Spain and in Latin American countries, was the leading podcast publisher in the LATAM region, based on the average weekly downloads, at over ****million in July 2025.

Brazil led the list with a total of 4,390 kidnapping cases in the latest available data. Ecuador followed with 1,246 occurrences in 2022. On the flip side, there was only three reported kidnapping in the Antigua and Barbuda during that year. Homicides, another recurrent problem in Latin America Among the region's prevalent offenses, intentional homicide emerged as one of the main concerns in the region. Nonetheless, the rates vary among the different countries. Brazil leads the ranking of the most number of homicides in Latin America, as well as being the most populated country by far. On the other hand, Jamaica holds the top position according to the homicide rate, reporting nearly 61 instances per 100,000 inhabitants in 2023. Nevertheless, even with these varying homicide rates across countries, four out of five of the world's most perilous urban centers are situated in Mexico, with Colima leading the pack at a 2024 homicide rate of 140 per 100,000 inhabitants.

Cost of violence in Central America Following criminal acts, the responsibility for addressing the consequences falls squarely on the government, causing government expenditure to surge, called the cost of violence. Notably, Panama is more severely impacted in Central America, with the economic cost of violence per inhabitant accounting for over 3,771 U.S. dollars in 2022. In terms of a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), El Salvador takes the first place with a value of 15 percent of their GDP.

In 2024, Brazil was the Latin American country that performed the highest number of cosmetic surgery procedures, with 2.4 million. Mexico followed with 734,000 surgical procedures completed that year. Colombia and Argentina were also among the leading countries, with around 321,000 and 210,000 procedures, respectively. Cosmetic surgeries in Brazil Brazil is also the nation with the second-highest share of plastic surgeons and the largest share of plastic surgical procedures in the world. As of 2024, the country accounted for 11.1 and 13.5 percent of the total for each category, respectively. The most popular surgical cosmetic procedures in the South American country are liposuction, breast augmentation, and eyelid surgeries. Plastic surgeons in Brazil The density of plastic surgeons in Brazil has been increasing in recent years, going from 2.5 professionals per 100,000 population in 2013 to three per 100,000 population in 2024. As of that year, nearly 7,000 plastic surgeons were registered in the country, most of them in the Southeast Region, the wealthiest and most populated region in Brazil.

During an online survey conducted in ** Latin American countries at the beginning of 2021, over ********* of respondents in most markets included Latin music among their favorite music genres. The exception was Brazil – the only Portuguese-speaking country in the region – where Latin music was the least popular of the * genres listed. In Mexico, pop music ranked first, mentioned by almost * out of 10 responding internet users. In 2020, Brazil and Mexico altogether accounted for ********** of the music industry revenue in Latin America.

In 2024, knitted or crocheted apparel articles were some of the most exported products by El Salvador. Exports of knitted sweaters, pullovers, and vests amounted to over ****** million U.S. dollars, whereas knitted shirts and t-shirts made up the second most exported product category, with an export value of more than ****** million U.S. dollars. Who does El Salvador trade with? El Salvador’s largest trading partner is by far the United States. In 2022, its trade value with the U.S. reached almost *** billion U.S. dollars, out of which exports accounted for **** billion dollars. Guatemala and Honduras, El Salvador’s border neighbors, came in second and fourth place, respectively, in terms of total trading value. In the same year, El Salvador recorded a trade deficit of almost ten billion U.S. dollars, which is approximately twice of what it was a decade ago in 2012. An overview of El Salvador With a population of **** million people as of 2022, El Salvador stands as the fourth most populous country in Central America. The country also ranked fourth on the continent in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) that year, at **** billion U.S. dollars. Of this, the service industry made the largest contribution, at approximately ** percent. The country’s GDP is expected to follow a steady, constant upwards trajectory in the next half-decade, reaching an estimated 42 billion U.S. dollars in 2028.

According to a 2020 survey, nearly half (49 percent) of mobile gamers in Honduras were between 18 and 34 years old. Adults 45 years and older accounted for 32 percent of gamers playing on this device. Among the most popular mobile gaming genres in the Central American country were board and strategy games.

The number of downloads of Nubank was higher than that of any other banking app downloads in the observed Latin American countries in 2023. The Brazilian neobank app was downloaded almost ** million times. The most popular banking app in Mexico was BBVA México, which was downloaded more than ** million times.

According to a survey held in Costa Rica in 2020, ** percent of mobile gamers were between 25 and 34 years old, while adults 35 to 44 years old accounted for ** percent. Among the most popular mobile gaming genres in the Central American country were strategy and board games.