Flags of South America Quiz

Miranda’s tricolour, split three ways

Francisco de Miranda’s yellow, blue and red flew over the independence movement, and when Gran Colombia broke apart around 1830 the successor republics kept the colours: Colombia and Ecuador with a double-width yellow band, Venezuela with even thirds and an arc of white stars across the blue. In this quiz Venezuela’s stars and Colombia’s heavy yellow are the tells; Ecuador is deliberately left to the lookalikes page, because without its coat of arms its design is Colombia’s.

The Sun of May, twice

Argentina and Uruguay both carry the golden Sun of May, a badge of the 1810 revolution against Spain, and both appear here in a declared simplified form: the real sun has a face and a ring of alternating straight and wavy rays, which the drawing reduces to a plain disc. Uruguay’s nine stripes stand for its nine original departments, on the model of the American flag; Argentina spreads sky blue and white across three even bands. That pale sky blue, set against Venezuela’s deep navy, is the fastest colour separation in the whole set.

The loners

Brazil needs no family: the green field and gold rhombus are unique, though the drawing omits the motto band that crosses the real flag’s starry globe and declares as much when the question comes up. Chile keeps a single white star on a blue canton, Bolivia stacks red, yellow and green, and Peru hangs red-white-red upright with nothing else on its civil flag. Four one-line identities – which is why the hard part of a flags of South America quiz is always the north coast, never the south.