History is always a bit more complex than the Cliff Notes version.
And the history of latin america a lot more interesting than what most of us get in high school.
Slavery hung on quite late in Brazil, but throughout the rest of the continent, under pressure from the church, it died out.
You are right. Except in Argentina and that region, catholic settlers always intermarried rather freely with the indigenous, and their kids were brought up catholic.
Just as an aside, in Ecuador the blacks seem to fall generally into two cultural groups. One group, living in the highlands, are descended from a group protected by the jesuits. They tend to be very catholic and proper. The second group, descended from shipwrecked slaves who swam ashore and lived independently, have preserved some of their african roots. In Venezuela, something similar occurred; the africans didn’t remain slaves, but took off for the interior where they built their own communities back in the bush and lived independently.
Yes, and as you say, in some parts, especially around the Carribean, blacks were imported from Africa to be slaves, since the Indians weren’t supposed to be enslaved.
You can find a picture of some of the consequences in V. S. Naipaul’s excellent autobiographical novel, “A House for Mr. Biswas.” Maybe his best book.