Explain Like I'm Five | Don't Panic!

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/explainlikeimfive by /u/Ala-Delta on 2023-06-26 10:37:34+00:00.

I never understood this. From what I was taught in history class, masses of native north & south americans died because of European diseases. And for each latin american country, of course there are large african and native descents, but from what I read each country has a massive part of Spanish heritage.

Nowadays, how many humans live between El Paso and Ushuaia? More than half a billion? Yet Spain is only a country of 40m people. How is this possible?