AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo, File
In this February 12, 2015, file photo, an elderly patient in costume from the Nise de Silveira mental-health institute dances during the institute's carnival parade, coined in Portuguese: "Loucura Suburbana," or Suburban Madness, in the streets of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Patients, their relatives, and institute employees held their parade one day before the official start of Carnival.
Stretching from the northern border crossings in the Mexican city of Tijuana to the southern reaches of Argentina's Tierra del Fuego, Latin America is an immense and diverse region, home to more than a half-billion people speaking hundreds of languages.
No collection of words or photographs could fully capture the totality of the social and political events that occurred in the region in 2015, but below you can find a selection of images that attempt to catalog the year that was in Latin America.