English is undoubtedly the world’s number one language today. The prime reason why English has taken this role is the unrivaled spread of the English language thanks to the pioneering role of English-speaking countries in colonialism and the global economic development over the past five centuries. This created the most diverse contact scenarios between varieties of English and an uncountable number of other (post)colonial, transplanted, and also indigenous languages around the world. In most of these settings, new vernacular, creolized, as well as second-language varieties of English emerged (cf., e.g., Schneider 2003; Trudgill 2013; Yakpo 2017; Mesthrie 2017; or Hackert 2019).

Yet, while English is present in most regions of the world today, there is still a substantial white spot on the global map of English: Latin America. Latin America comprises all the American and Caribbean countries where either Spanish or Portuguese are spoken officially (García 1999: 228). In addition to these two major colonial languages, also French, Dutch, and English in Guiana, Suriname, and Belize and Guyana respectively, have official status, and an extended number of indigenous languages are recognized as co-official languages in certain Latin American countries, such as Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru. Still, given the dominance of Spanish and Portuguese, two closely related languages, it is true that English is of limited importance in this part of the world, and its functions are usually restricted to official and formal communication on the international level, such as in international forums and associations. Latin America appears to be the only region in the world where English has not had a noticeable impact; within a world dominated by English, it is still the “forgotten continent” (Friedrich and Berns 2003).

Nevertheless, the impression of English being absent in Latin America is misleading. The English language has been present on the South American continent as a colonial and a first language ever since the New World was discovered. Sir Walter Raleigh (1595/1910), for instance, was at the forefront of the British Crown’s quest for the legendary El Dorado:

The empire of Guiana is directly east from Peru towards the sea, and lieth under the equinoctial line; and it hath more abundance of gold than any part of Peru, and as many or mo[r]e great cities than ever Peru had when it flourished most. … And I have been assured by such of the Spaniards as have seen Manoa, the imperial city of Guiana, which the Spaniards call El Dorado, that for the greatness, for the riches, and for the excellent seat, it far exceedeth any of the world, at least of so much of the world as is known to the Spanish nation.

Britain’s main interest lay in the exploitation of natural resources. In order to ensure their share in the material wealth of the New World, and to keep up the lead in competition with the Spaniards and the Portuguese, English colonizers settled all over the American continent. This included Central and South America. As a result, numerous English-speaking enclaves surrounded by other dominant colonial languages—mostly Spanish or Portuguese—were established in Latin America, and many of them persist until today (cf. Marshall 2000).

The most intense phase of Anglophone immigration that led to contact between speakers of English and speakers of Spanish or Portuguese in Latin America took place during the nineteenth century. To obtain a clearer picture of this era, it is useful to distinguish between three different types of colonizers: military personnel, professional staff, and settlement communities. British military personnel, to begin with, was involved in the Wars for Independence; over 8000 soldiers fought in Simón Bolívar’s war against Spain between 1817 and 1821, and the British contributed to the independence of Peru in 1821. Also Brazil and Chile, among others, hosted British military posts (Racine 2000: 11–13). Speakers of English thus played a significant part in the political history of the continent and ensured the presence of the English language in a number of South American locales. Given that these soldiers rarely stayed for long, however, their influence was mostly limited to material culture and fashion, while their language did not have a noticeable impact on local languages.

The second type of Anglophone immigrants in Latin America was the professional staff that national governments recruited to enhance the country’s economic and industrial development. English engineers and technicians built up most of the railways and urban transportation systems in Latin America, and Britain played an important role as both an importation and exportation market for Latin America. Cotton, sugar, coffee, meat, and nitrate were shipped to Great Britain, while Latin America purchased large quantities of textiles and other industrial products from Britain. Given this significant proportion of British capital in Latin America, British subjects invested heavily here and even founded local financial institutions, especially in Argentina (Miller 1993). In addition, individual skilled laborers found an occupation in places where a local network of British immigrants already existed, thus giving rise to English-speaking neighborhoods, such as the one described in the following testimony by a British traveler in Chile in 1822:

English tailors, shoemakers, saddlers and innkeepers, hang out their signs in every street; and the preponderance of the English language over every other in the chief streets, would make one fancy Valparaiso a coast town in Britain. (cited in Mayo 2000: 182)

Most of these Anglophone residents belonged to the wealthy and powerful classes of their host societies, especially those in the River Plate region (Miller 1993: 41–60); none of these communities, however, succeeded in introducing the English language as a means of communication beyond their immediate contexts.

The third type of settlers joined or founded new Anglophone colonies in different parts of the continent. Some of these settlements had been British territories since the very first phase of colonization, such as the Nicaraguan Miskito Coast (Holm 2014: 55), yet most of them experienced more intense Anglophone immigration during the nineteenth century. Port of Limón in Costa Rica, for example, received a large number of speakers of English and Jamaican Creole after the American “United Fruit Company” initiated the large-scale production of fruit and recruited laborers from Jamaica (Herzfeld 2002: 13). And as the United States gained ground in the Caribbean, Britain established enclaves on the South American continent, such as the rather unsuccessful trade colony in Esmeraldas, Ecuador, in 1860 (Fisher 2000), or the nowadays well-established Navy post on the Falkland Islands in 1833 (Britain and Sudbury 2010). The principal purpose of these settlements was to ensure access to the region’s most important waterways and the introduction and protection of British merchants. Britain’s interests focused on Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, and Chile (Miller 1993).

In addition, the nineteenth century also experienced the foundation of new communities that pursued the aim of setting up an independent society in search of the “assumed Garden of Eden” (Livermore 1950: 290). Among them were the Confederados, i.e., settlers from the south of the United States who had abandoned their homeland after the Civil War in search of a similar society in South America. Some of them settled in Mexico or Venezuela, yet the most visible Confederate community that has lasted until the twenty-first century was established in Brazil (Harmon 1937; Montgomery and Melo 1995). In most of these settings, English continues to be spoken natively, though bilingualism in either Spanish or Portuguese is becoming more widespread and marginalizes the use of the heritage language.

One of the most visible English-speaking communities in Latin America was the Anglo-Argentine community. It was the largest English-speaking community outside the colonized territories; in 1914, over 28,000 British subjects were registered in Argentina (Graham-Yooll 1999: 2). The Anglo-Argentine community was not only numerous but also financially powerful, which allowed the establishment of an English-speaking upper class and no less than twenty-five English-speaking schools in the wider Buenos Aires area (Cortés Conde 2007: 61). Today, however, only those descendants who can afford private schooling use English regularly. These cases show that while the English language has been present in Latin America from the early days of colonization onwards, it was in competition with the colonial languages of Spanish and Portuguese and did not establish itself as the dominant language there.

A relatively unknown settlement community that had connections with the British in Argentina was established in Paraguay during the last decade of the nineteenth century. This settlement project originated in Queensland and other parts of Australia in 1891, when over 10,000 agricultural workers went on strike during the Great Shearers’ Strike. It aimed at setting up a “New Australia” in eastern Paraguay. The leader of the movement was the journalist William Lane, who harbored the dream of setting up an independent society based on socialist ideas to show the world that capitalism was outdated. He promoted his project as follows:

In this New Australia movement we exchange empty patriotism to a country in which we have no share, for the solid possession of a great tract of good land, secured under terms which could not possibly be secured here. On this land we can build the settlement we seek, can exert our labour as will satisfy our needs, can produce not only food and clothing and buildings, but articles to export in exchange for what we must import, can have plenty and be happy, and teach the world a lesson. It is our opportunity. (William Lane, cited in Livermore 1950: 298)

In other words, Lane’s idea was to overcome capitalism by setting up an egalitarian society in which survival was ensured, and in which the main activity and product to be exported would be intellectual in nature, namely the production of “articles.” He envisaged bringing at least 1200 Anglophone families from all social strata to New Australia with the final goal of establishing an independent English-speaking society in P...