Here is the history of the common Latin ballroom
dances, in a nutshell....

Samba

--came from Brazil, from such dances as the
batukada, bataque, baion, and bossa nova.
Made famous in the carnavals in Rio de Janeiro.

Paso Doble

--came from Spain from the gypsy flamenco dancers
and also from bullfighting events in that country
and spread to France. That is why some of the
moves in Paso doble are either in Spanish or
in French. Now, modern paso doble represents
the bullfight itself with the leader being the
matador and the lady being the cape.

Rumba, Cha-Cha, Bolero

--These are Cuban dances. Came from the 1900s
to 1950s from dances like the guajira,
guaracha, son, and danzon. Cha-cha is a slow
version of the mambo. Bolero is much slower
than that and is almost like the bossa nova.
Rumba has two meanings: a very fast mambo,
and in the other, a slow salsa.

Mambo

--came in the 1950s in Cuba where African
rhythms mixed up with jazz music from America
to make a Latin swing sound. Out of that came
"salsa" in the 1970s.

Merengue

--came from the Dominican Republic; one legend
states that a war hero who had his leg almost
decapitated on his victory celebration walked
with a limp. The limp action eventually
resulted in the hip motion now occuring in the
modern version of merengue. Its sister, the
'bachata', came out in the 1970s, and after
it waned, came popular as it was reborn in
the United States around 1995.

Jive

--Not exactly a Latin dance but part of the
dance history of jive might have come from the
Caribbean; the rest of it came from America.

Hope this helps for you.

Charles Smith
cjsmith2@uiuc.edu
http://www.students.uiuc.edu/~cjsmith2/Charles_Home_Page.html