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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What was President Jose Manuel Balmaceda's goal for Chile?
(a) He wanted to nationalize Chile's nitrate exports.
(b) He wanted to export more gold and silver.
(c) He wanted to compete with Brazil's rubber industry.
(d) He wanted to be elected to British parliament.

2. From the sixteenth century to the nineteenth century, what peoples were the center of the slave trade?
(a) Australians.
(b) Chinese.
(c) Africans.
(d) Irish.

3. What are the environmental problems with many of Latin America's cash crops?
(a) Many of the cash crops are eaten by animals.
(b) Many of the cash crops are failing and leaving large swaths of empty land.
(c) Coffee, sugarcane, and cotton are primarily consumed by the farmers.
(d) Coffee, sugarcane, and cotton all require mass deforestation.

4. What is the most universal health problem in Latin America?
(a) Poor eyesight.
(b) Cancer.
(c) Malnutrition.
(d) Infectious disease.

5. Out of the 70,000 Guatemalans that die each year, how many are children?
(a) 5,000.
(b) 45,000.
(c) 30,000.
(d) 10,000.

6. Who usually financed the conquistadors' expeditions?
(a) The native peoples of the New World.
(b) The state or government.
(c) England's monarch.
(d) Businessmen or the conquistadors themselves.

7. What area's maps were given to private concerns with the aid of a US government geological survey?
(a) Bolivia.
(b) Amazonia.
(c) Uruguay.
(d) The Andes.

8. Who was Aleijadinho?
(a) A Brazilian slave who worked in the diamond mines.
(b) A Portuguese merchant who exported gold from Brazil.
(c) The governor of Minas Gerais.
(d) One of the greatest artists in Brazil's history, nicknamed "Little Cripple."

9. What great mathematical principle did the Mayans discover before any other people in history?
(a) General relativity.
(b) The circumference of the earth.
(c) The concept of zero.
(d) Pi.

10. Who was Augusto Cesar Sandino?
(a) He was a Brazilian revolutionary famous for standing up to the government.
(b) He was a Nicaraguan guerilla who fought for the peasant's land rights.
(c) He was a Salvadoran coffee plantation owner.
(d) He was a Mexican peasant who became President of Mexico.

11. How did the USA attempt to curtail Brazil's petroleum trade?
(a) They gave Brazilian oil a grade "C."
(b) They provided oil to rival countries.
(c) They declared war and took all the oil fields.
(d) They asked Brazil nicely not to sell to anyone else.

12. What was the Chaco War of 1932-1935?
(a) An Indian-rights war between Chile and Peru.
(b) A petroleum-sparked war between Bolivia and Paraguay.
(c) A silver-sparked war between Argentina and Ecuador.
(d) A manganese war between Brazil and Argentina.

13. What nickname does the author give the USA?
(a) The end of iron.
(b) The great consumer.
(c) The vast unknowable.
(d) The world policeman.

14. For whom did Montezuma mistake the invading Europeans?
(a) For his enemies in the south.
(b) For the god Quetzalcoatl.
(c) For King Ferdinand himself.
(d) For the god Tenochtitlan.

15. What region is the world's top coffee producer?
(a) Australia.
(b) Africa.
(c) Latin America.
(d) Asia.

Short Answer Questions

1. Especially in Guatemala, what is the structure of the labor force visibly identified with?

2. What illegal practice drains Brazil of more than $100 million a year?

3. What did Mariano Melgarejo force a British ambassador to drink as punishment for sneering at the local chichas?

4. What was the key to success in the sugar industry?

5. What did the export of guano help stave off in Europe?

(see the answer keys)

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