international recession, and high infla-
tion, South American countries privatized
many of their state-owned industries and
undertook fiscal austerity measures.
Inflation was curbed, though unemploy-
ment and poverty rose as well. One by
one, countries established viable, demo-
cratically elected governments to replace
the continent’s military juntas: Ecuador in
1979, Peru in 1980, Bolivia in 1982,
Argentina in 1983, and Chile in 1990.
By the 1990s South America was gen-
erally under democratic rule but still
plagued by poverty, some guerrilla insur-
gencies, and the ghosts of its unstable
political past. In Ecuador in 1997, the
Ecuadoran congress deposed President
Abdala Bucaram, an eccentric and contro-
versial leader, for “mental incapacity.” In
Peru, President Alberto Fujimori, elected
in 1990, became increasingly authoritari-
an as he struggled to suppress the Tupac
Amaru Revolutionary Movement and the
Maoist, Andean-based guerrillas called
the Shining Path.
In Colombia in the 1980s, drug car-
tels came to control large areas where
coca and cannabis were grown for illegal
export. In the 1990 election campaign, the
drug traffickers assassinated several pres-
idential candidates. The U.S. govern-
ment, concerned about the flow of
narcotics into the United States, pres-
sured Colombia to suppress the drug
trade, offering military and economic aid
in support of that cause. But by 2000, U.S.
aid to Colombia was itself controversial, as
human rights organizations complained
about the Colombian government’s
human rights abuses, and guerrillas retal-
iated against the latest U.S.-Colombian
drug effort by crossing into Ecuador to
kidnap several foreign oil workers, includ-
ing five from the United States.South American
CommunitiesAs of 2000, South Americans in the
United States were most heavily concen-
trated in New York, New Jersey,California, and Florida, which each had
more than 100,000 South Americans. But
other states, such as Texas, Illinois,
Massachusetts, and Connecticut, also had
substantial South American populations.
Many South Americans made their home
in the borough of Queens in New York
City, particularly the neighborhood called
Jackson Heights, known as “Chapinero”
to some of its Colombian residents, after
a suburb of Bogotá.
Because they usually arrived in the
United States with fairly high levels of
education and skills, South American
immigrants have generally prospered
more than those from Mexico and Puerto
Rico, though not so much as those from
Cuba. South Americans were often eager
to assimilate, but they also retained strong
ties to their homeland. Among South
American couples in the United States,
one spouse might become a U.S. citizen
and the other retain citizenship in the
country of birth, so that the couple
had the option of returning home easily.
They often sent their children to Catholic
schools rather than public schools, main-
taining the links between South American
culture and Catholicism. They retained
a sense of their distinct national heritages,
often forming Argentine-American or
Peruvian-American associations and
social clubs. Restaurants in ethnic
enclaves featured distinctive national
dishes, such as Peruvian anticuchos
(skewered cow’s heart) or Bolivian-style
beef.
South Americans also retained some
of the differences that divided them at
home, such as the color line that separates
Colombia’s costeños, darker-skinned peo-
ple of mixed African, Native American,
and Spanish descent, from white
Colombians of European descent. The
two groups rarely associate in South
America, and in cities like Chicago, the
costeño and white Colombian communi-
ties have continued to remain mostly sep-
arate. Rooted in a variety of places and
histories, South Americans added strong-
ly individual flavors to the eclectic mix of
Hispanic-American culture.214 ATLAS OF HISPANIC-AMERICAN HISTORY