(Countries on the South American continent defined as Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, and Venezuela)
Determining the country most similar to South America requires considering various social, cultural, economic, and political factors. One way to answer this complex question is by analyzing the data from the Country Similarity Index. The index attempts to quantify how similar countries are to each other relative to other countries, using a variety of statistics from five broad categories: demographics, culture, politics, infrastructure, and geography.
According to the data, Colombia is the most average country in South America. The country has coastline on both the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea. Like the vast majority of nations in the region, its people natively speak Spanish and are mostly Catholic. Colombia has a diverse mix of people with Native South American, European, and African ancestry. It is neither the one of the poorest nor one of the richest countries on the continent. Like other South American nations, it is democratic but tends to have a low degree of rule of law.
On the other end of the spectrum, Guyana is the least similar to the average South American nation. Unlike all other countries in South America, it was a British colony and its official language is English. Since many people from South Asia were brought to Guyana to be indentured servants, the country has a much higher percentage of Hindus and Muslims. It also shares stronger economic ties with the Caribbean nations than with its South American counterparts. In fact its football team is a member of CONCACAF, not CONMEBOL.
It is no surprise that the data suggests that Panama is by far the most similar country to South America outside of the continent. Panama is on the border between North America and South America. It is also extremely similar to Colombia, which is the continent’s most average nation. It fact nine of the ten most similar countries outside of South America are considered to be part of Latin America. Still, the exception Belize is located in Central America, and a high percentage of its people speak Spanish, although it was once a British colony.
The analysis also shows that Japan and Yemen are the least similar countries to South America. Japan’s demographics, culture, and technology are extremely different from what is typically found in South America. On the other end of the spectrum, Yemen is much more conservative than Latin America, since most of its people are Muslim. Furthermore, the country is mostly barren desert, in contrast to most South American countries. Yemen’s infrastructure is not nearly as developed as these nations as well.
