The heckin sea sea pee is eating all the yogurts with its comically large spoon!

Most LatAm countries didn’t try to outright exterminate and ethnically cleanse the natives the way the US did. The Spanish/Portuguese were seeking to enslave natives, or establish suzerainty over them in a fashion more similar to most empires in history, rather than clear the natives off the land entirely. That’s not to say the Iberians weren’t brutal and horrific- and their actions did equate to outright near-total genocide in places like the Caribbean- but genocide was not the goal; in fact it generally was counterproductive as they sought to acquire slaves and peasantry under them, not to clear the land entirely.

Even the British didn’t start off as brutal as their settler-colonials would develop into- the policy of lebensraum (or Manifest Destiny), of settler-colonialism of the genocidal variety, started with the Americans and those rebel colonials who would establish that accursed state. Not the French, not the British (at least not quite intentionally), not the Iberians- the Americans. That type of genocidal-colonialism would then be imitated by other western powers- from British Canada and Australia, French Algeria, German/Dutch/Anglo southern Africa, etc… but it originated with the Americans.

Many of the white supremacist institutions defining the United States are also fundamental to Latin American society. That’s true both historically and contemporaneously. Latin American states deliberately convey the idea that they are harmonious multiracial societies, which might explain why, say, Brazil doesn’t come to mind as readily as the United States here. Even so, the Latin-American “mestizaje” is mostly analogous to the Anglo-American “melting pot” in all the most important ways, namely that Black and Indian people are similarly oppressed and marginalized.

I’m an Ohioan, so maybe some of our Latino/a comrades can fill in the gaps here.