Other people have mostly said what I was gonna say, but I have never, ever, ever, EVER heard anyone describe or attribute crime in Latin America to "Spain" lol They will say "spanish" as in "spanish-speaking" for brevity's sake, but they of course do not mean Spain or any other spanish-speaking nations which aren't in the Americas.
But yeah, other than that, I think you are dismissing the fact that the Spanish Empire had a large, long-term cultural impact on the areas which it held, including most of Central and South America. Obviously, a lot can happen in a century+, and there are surely many things that are very different, but there are also surely many things that stuck around, just as there are many cultural similarities between the UK and the USA even today.
Anyways, speaking of spanish... I forget: is Carolina supposed to be "Spain" spanish? Or "south of the border" spanish? Look forward to convincing her we're daddy material either way