Plenty of South American woods are good for bows. Snakewood, beefwood(massaranduba), lemonwood, maracaibo boxwood, purpleheart, blackpalm, any of the rosewoods(also tulipwood, and kingwood), pernambuco, ipe and even lignum vitae has been used. Bound to be a hoard of others that I can't list off the top of my head at the moment.
Woods like purpleheart are okay, but they have a tendency to either break in tension, or in compression sooner than you would expect, unless made wide and flat, or backed with hickory or bamboo.
Like Pat said price and availability are a pretty big factors for many of these woods when outside of Brazil.
I rate beefwood highly as a bow wood, and have also used it as a backing. As a selfbow it tends to follow the string quite a bit, like lemonwood. This is why traditionally bowyers have glued up staves from these woods, with a backing to maximise durability and a little reflex in them to maximise cast.
Pernambuco is very much like ipe, very narrow strong bows. It was always expensive, highly prized by violin bow makers extremely rare now due to CITES convention banning export. Ipe is a much cheaper option.
Snakewood, probably one of the most beautiful timbers, and definitely one of the most expensive. I have two bows backed with tonkin cane, made in the English style, really stunning, only about 3/4" wide for a 50lb bow. Snakewood performs like Ipe, really good. Never made a selfbow from the wood, apparently native chieftens used it in selfbows. In the Victorian era it had a reputation for breaking. Once again a backing eliminated the fear of this problem happening.
The tendency for many of these woods to need a backing may have held back the opinion of many not to class them as a true bow woods by themselves.
