Final answer:
The statement is true; Africans were brought to Latin America as slaves in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, with the slave trade being pivotal to the colonization of the New World, involving around 12 million Africans.
Step-by-step explanation:
Africans were indeed brought to Latin America as slaves in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, which makes the statement True. The transatlantic slave trade was a direct consequence of the colonization of the New World, where the European demand for labor led to the importation of slaves from Africa.
The Portuguese initially dominated the slave trade, with the British later taking over as the primary carriers of enslaved Africans to the New World. Africans were trafficked from various regions, some more heavily than others, with Portuguese Brazil seeing slaves from Senegambia, Bight of Benin, Kongo, and Bight of Biafra.
In Saint Domingue, now Haiti, a French colony, there was a high percentage of slaves from the Kongo, and in South Carolina, most of the enslaved people came from West Central Africa. Overall, around 12 million African slaves were forcibly transported across the Atlantic, with not all surviving the harrowing journey.