The Flags of Latin America

Flags are cool. Once a way of claiming rights to territory and making your presence known, flags today are a sign of national pride and are filled with the rich history of its nation’s upbringing. Today, I will be chatting about the appearance and origin stories of all of the flags of Latin America with some personal commentary on what I think of each. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s jump into the first Latin American flag! 

Bolivia 

Unfortunately for the Bolivians, this is not the flag for me. I like the eagle and the image inside the center of the flag. These colors actually do have meaning though, with the red symbolizing the blood of the fallen Bolivian soldiers who fought in the war for independence, yellow representing the country’s rich mineral wealth, and the green representing the nation’s fertile lands. Overall, I actually do like the symbolism behind this flag a lot. 

Peru 

The red represents the blood spilled by those who died fighting for the nation, and the white represents liberty, justice, and peace for the nation. The coat of arms has three distinct sections, the vicuña, the cinchona tree, and a golden cornucopia with coins spilling out. The three sections of the coat of arms are meant to portray the abundant wealth of Peru.

Mexico 

I really enjoy animals on flags, similar to the purple parrot on the Dominica Flag. The green symbolizes hope, the white for unity and faith amongst the people, and the red for the blood of those who died fighting for the nation. The coat of arms on the flag is based on an Aztec legend about the founding of its Ancient capital, Tenochtitlan. After learning this already cool eagle is based on an Aztec legend, I like this flag even more now than I did before. 

El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras 

All three flags feature blue(a little too similar for my taste, but we’ll get to the interesting reasoning in a minute!) , symbolizing the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, and the stars on the Honduras flag form the letter H as well as symbolize unity between the five Central American countries. El Salvador and Nicaragua feature two very similar coats of arms as well. 

Here’s something I learned while researching this; the reason why these three nations’ flags are almost identical is because they were all once a part of the Federal Republic of Central America. For this reason, the three flags are strikingly similar. 

Paraguay

Did you know Paraguay is the only national flag in the world that has a different emblem on its front and back sides? Neither did I! Or maybe you’re paraguayan and already knew that, but I just learned that and found it pretty cool. The blue here represents freedom, empathy, and justice. The red and white stand for equality, courage, and patriotism. After researching, I have found out that Paraguay actually chose its colors based on France’s flag.

Costa Rica

Now this, ladies and gentlemen, is where we start to enter the very creative flag territory. Costa Rica features a nicely layered pattern of red white and blue stripes with the coat of arms off centered, something I think looks good actually, especially when the flag is waving in the air. The blue here represents the sky, determination, and ideals of the people. The white symbolizes peace, happiness, wisdom, and joy, and the red represents love, generosity, and the blood of the fallen heroes who died defending the nation. Nice design, nice colors, nice meaning, nice flag. 

Guatemala 

What a flag we have here. First of all, love the baby blue color, it’s something we need to see more of in flags. Guatemala has gone for nice shades of green and a cream color for the scroll over a white background. By the way, the guns, swords, scroll, and quetzal (the bird) in the center of this flag is second to none, this might be the coolest image on a flag I’ve ever seen if it weren’t for one more flag coming up shortly. This flag takes influence from the Argentinian flag, another flag we’ve yet to see on this list. Here, the light blue is meant to represent the sky, and the reason the blue is on the sides is to represent the country’s location being in between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The white symbolizes peace and purity. 

Uruguay 

Why put yellow in your flag when you can literally put the sun? Is probably what the Uruguayans said when designing this flag. And let me tell you, I’m all here for it. I love the darker blue with the white, and the sun in the corner just perfectly rounds off this basic and awesome flag design. It reminds me a lot of the Greek flag with the colors, but even cooler with the sun. As far as the meaning for this sun goes, I have read that it means either of the following two things; the rising sun for the rising of the new nation at the time (similar to Argentina) as well as it being an homage to the ancient Incan people of the time who worshiped the sun. The white represents glory, joy, innocence, love, and service to god, and the blue symbolizes the beautiful skies and infinite space that can be found there. Awesome flag, awesome symbolism, good for Uruguay. 

Brazil

I shouldn’t like this flag. Green and yellow, the weird rhombus in the middle, like what’s going on here. Yet, for some reason, I love it. The original influence for this flag came from the previous Brazilian imperial flag, featuring the same green and yellow pattern but with a different coat of arms inside. What makes this flag so unique, though, is the pattern of stars in the blue circle inside. Each star represents one of the Brazilian states and is also placed to mimic what the night sky looked like the night the nation was officially founded. The national motto, ordem y progresso, means “order and progress” and is seen in the middle of the circle. I take back what I said about Guatemala, this takes over as the coolest imagery to be on a flag I’ve ever seen. Constellations! What could be better than that?

Chile 

Simple and effective. Chile’s flag is very basic, but it’s done in a way that looks clean and professional, which makes it a very appealing flag to look at. It also bears striking resemblance to the flag of Texas, which I think is also pretty cool. Literally as I write that, I find in my research that this star is called “the lone star”, which means Texas, the ‘lone star state’ definitely took inspiration from Chile for its flag. The blue represents the sky, the white for the snowy tops of the Andes mountains, and the red for the blood of those who died to achieve independence. Maybe I’ve been brainwashed because of being born in the U.S.A. with our red white and blue flag, but for some reason these colors really resonate with me, and the execution of Chile’s flag is almost perfect at capturing that. 

Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador

I LOVE THESE FLAGS!!! Red white and blue step aside, because red blue and yellow is the new style. Seriously, these are really beautiful flags, the way each color contrasts with the others is almost perfect and I can’t get over how clean these flags feel. The flags of Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela are almost identical because upon their independence from Spain in 1822, they formed a confederation called the Gran Colombia. Venezuelan freedom fighter General Francisco de Miranda proposed a flag design that was accepted by Venezuela in 1811 and later by Gran Colombia. The confederation parted ways in 1830, but retained the same essential flag design by Miranda, with some minor changes. 

Colombia and Ecuador’s flags are some of the only flags which feature one strip thicker than the others, that being the yellow. Overall, these flags are great, cool colors, an interesting backstory, and unique design choice. 

Dominican Republic 

Similar to Chile, the DR takes a classic colorway and turns it into a simple and clean design that I love. I think the mix of the dark blue with the red as well as it being in the corners instead of usual stripe patterning is pretty unique, yet it’s not overdone with too much stuff on it compared to a flag like Grenada’s. The blue represents the sky where God resides as well as liberty, the white for salvation as well as peace and union of the Dominican people, and of course the red symbolizes the blood of heroes of the nation. I’m not sure why I’m so drawn to this flag, I just can’t help myself from staring at it and really enjoying the way everything comes together. 

Panama 

I can’t help but love the Panama flag, and I don’t know why. The way everything is lined up diagonally, with one blue star and one red star as well as the classic colorway, I don’t know man, this flag is elegant and charming, and I didn’t even know flags could have those traits. In this flag, the white quarters represent peace. The blue star represents the conservative party as well as purity and honesty. The red star represents authority, law, and the liberal party. I really enjoy this meaning, as both major political ideologies are represented on the flag, showing that unity is only achieved through diversity as well as compromise. Come on, tell me you don’t like this flag, you’d only be lying to yourself.  

Cuba 

Yeah man this is a flag right here. This flag takes the best elements from flags like Chile with the horizontal striped and lone star, colorways from flags like the DR with the dark blue, as well as designs from a flag like Uruguay with the blue and white stripes. Basically, take the best elements from other Latin flags, put them all together in a simple and effective way, and boom, you have the Cuban flag. Just looking at this flag reminds me of a classic Cuban town with the old cars driving by and loud music playing, it just has a retro vibe to it that I adore, and for that this is deserving of the number two spot on our list. 

Argentina

Wow. Wow wow wow wow wow. Guys, this is the best flag ever. Have you seen Messi in his World Cup uniform?? If not, go look it up and try to tell me this flag isn’t cleaner than a bar of soap. First of all, we have the lovely baby blue on horizontal stripes, pairing with the white beautifully. Now take the sun from Uruguay’s flag, make it even better, and slap that baby on here. I mean for real, this flag is stunning, the gold sun perfectly pairs with the blue and white, not too much going on at all, no ugly colors, it’s just so appealing to look at. It’s literally a heavenly design, with the blue here representing the sky, the white for the clouds, and the sun for the nation’s independence from Spain. Designed to look like the beautiful Argentinian sky, this is the nicest flag I’ve ever seen, my favorite national flag, my favorite Latin American flag, you name it. If I ever conquer a nation or become their leader, I may have to copy Argentina, hopefully they’ll appreciate my form of flattery. 

So there it is, we are finally done. If your nations’ flag wasn’t as high as you hoped it would be, don’t take it personally, as the meaning behind all of these flags are honorable and represent the struggle each nation’s people had to endure for independence and the heart and soul of those nations afterward. Art is subjective and beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so if you disagree with this list, that’s alright! This was simply a fun way to share some history behind the flags of our people, and hopefully you learned something today that you hadn’t known about one of these countries before! 

Be sure to let us know which Latin American flag you could gush about! Maybe we’ll circle back to chat about national anthems next?