Latin America


Latin America is the cultural region of the Americas where Romance languages are predominantly spoken, primarily Spanish and Portuguese. Latin America is defined according to cultural identity, not geography, and as such it includes countries in both North and South America. Most countries south of the United States tend to be included: Mexico and the countries of Central America, South America and the Caribbean. Commonly, it refers to Hispanic America plus Brazil. Related terms are the narrower Hispanic America, which exclusively refers to Spanish-speaking nations, and the broader Ibero-America, which includes all Iberic countries in the Americas. English and Dutch-speaking countries and territories, although in the same geographical region, are excluded.
The term Latin America was first introduced in 1856 at a Paris conference titled, literally, Initiative of the Americas: Idea for a Federal Congress of the Republics. Chilean politician Francisco Bilbao coined the term to unify countries with shared cultural and linguistic heritage. It gained further prominence during the 1860s under the rule of Napoleon III, whose government sought to justify France's intervention in the Second Mexican Empire.

Etymology and definitions

Latin America is a geographical region where Spanish or Portuguese is the national language, those that share a common language, culture and traditions. As whole can be traced back to the 1830s, in the writing of the French Saint-Simonian Michel Chevalier, who postulated that a part of the Americas was inhabited by people of a "Latin race", and that it could, therefore, ally itself with "Latin Europe", ultimately overlapping the Latin Church, in a struggle with "Teutonic Europe" and "Anglo-Saxon America" with its Anglo-Saxonism, as well as "Slavic Europe" with its Pan-Slavism.
Some scholarship has identified political origins of the term. Two historians, Uruguayan Arturo Ardao and Chilean Miguel Rojas Mix, found evidence that the term "Latin America" was used earlier than Phelan claimed, and the first use of the term was in opposition to imperialist projects in the Americas. Ardao wrote about this subject in his book Génesis de la idea y el nombre de América latina, and Miguel Rojas Mix in his article "Bilbao y el hallazgo de América latina: Unión continental, socialista y libertaria". Michel Gobat notes that "Arturo Ardao, Miguel Rojas Mix, and Aims McGuinness have revealed the term 'Latin America' had already been used in 1856 by Central Americans and South Americans protesting US expansion into the Southern Hemisphere". Edward Shawcross summarizes Ardao's and Rojas Mix's findings: "Ardao identified the term in a poem by a Colombian diplomat and intellectual resident in France, José María Torres Caicedo, published on 15 February 1857 in a French based Spanish-language newspaper, while Rojas Mix located it in a speech delivered in France by the radical liberal Chilean politician Francisco Bilbao in June 1856".
By the late 1850s, the term was being used in California, in local newspapers such as El Clamor Público by Californios writing about América latina and latinoamérica, and identifying as Latinos as the abbreviated term for their "hemispheric membership in la raza latina".
The words "Latin" and "America" were first found to be combined in a printed work to produce the term "Latin America" in 1856 at a conference by the Chilean politician Francisco Bilbao in Paris. The conference had the title "Initiative of the America. The idea for a Federal Congress of Republics." The following year, Colombian writer José María Torres Caicedo also used the term in his poem "The Two Americas".
Both authors advocated for the political and economic union of all Latin American countries, arguing that regional unity was the only effective means of defending their territories against further foreign interventions by the United States. They also rejected European imperialism, warning that the resurgence of non-democratic governments in Europe posed an additional threat to the stability and autonomy of Latin American nations. In criticizing European political developments, they employed the same term to characterize the deteriorating state of European governance at the time: "despotism." Several years later, during the French invasion of Mexico, Bilbao wrote another work, "Emancipation of the Spirit in the Americas", where he asked all Latin American countries to support the Mexican cause against France, and rejected French imperialism in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas. He asked Latin American intellectuals to search for their "intellectual emancipation" by abandoning all French ideas, claiming that France was: "Hypocrite, because she calls herself protector of the Latin race just to subject it to her exploitation regime; treacherous, because she speaks of freedom and nationality, when, unable to conquer freedom for herself, she enslaves others instead!" Therefore, as Michel Gobat puts it, the term Latin America itself had an "anti-imperial genesis," and their creators were far from supporting any form of imperialism in the region, or in any other place of the globe.
Historian Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo explores at length the "allure and power" of the idea of Latin America. He remarks at the outset, "The idea of 'Latin America' ought to have vanished with the obsolescence of racial theory... But it is not easy to declare something dead when it can hardly be said to have existed," going on to say, "The term is here to stay, and it is important." Following in the tradition of Chilean writer Francisco Bilbao, who excluded Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay from his early conceptualization of Latin America, Chilean historian Jaime Eyzaguirre has criticized the term Latin America for "disguising" and "diluting" the Spanish character of a region with the inclusion of nations that, according to him, do not share the same pattern of conquest and colonization.

Modern definitions

  • Latin America is the countries and territories in the Americas where the populations speak Spanish or Portuguese and the dominant religion is Roman Catholic, with it being synonymous with Ibero-America. Puerto Rico, the Spanish-speaking Caribbean territory of the United States, acquired from the Spanish Empire following its defeat in the 1898 Spanish–American War, is usually included. This definition excludes the predominantly Protestant English-speaking and Dutch-speaking regions, as well as French-speaking predominantly Catholic regions. Belize, Guyana and Suriname, as well as several French overseas departments, are excluded from the definition.
  • In another definition, Latin America designates the set of countries in the Americas where any Romance language predominates: Spanish, Portuguese, or French. Thus, it includes Mexico; most of Central and South America; and in the Caribbean, Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti. French Guiana and the French West Indies are sometimes included. By this definition, Latin America then comprises all of the countries in the Americas that were once part of the Spanish, Portuguese, and French Empires.
  • The term is sometimes used more broadly to refer to all of the Americas south of the United States, thus including the Guianas ; the Anglophone Caribbean ; the Francophone Caribbean; and the Dutch Caribbean. This definition emphasizes a similar socioeconomic history of the region, which was characterized by formal or informal colonialism, rather than cultural aspects. Some sources use the alternative phrase "Latin America and the Caribbean", as in the United Nations geoscheme for the Americas.
Quebec and Acadia, Francophone parts of North America, are generally excluded from the definition of Latin America.

Subregions and countries

Latin America can be subdivided into several subregions based on geography, politics, democracy, demographics and culture. The basic geographical subregions are North America, Central America, the Caribbean and South America; the latter contains further politico-geographical subdivisions such as the Southern Cone, the Guianas and the Andean states. It may be subdivided on linguistic grounds into Spanish America and Portuguese America, and by some definitions, French America.
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density|disp=table|46,621,847|2,780,400

History

Before the arrival of Europeans in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, the region was home to many indigenous peoples, including advanced civilizations, most notably from South: the Olmec, Maya, Muisca, Aztecs and Inca. The region came under control of the kingdoms of Spain and Portugal, which established colonies, and imposed Roman Catholicism and their languages. Both brought African slaves to their colonies as laborers, exploiting large, settled societies and their resources. The Spanish Crown regulated immigration, allowing only Christians to travel to the New World. The colonization process led to significant native population declines due to disease, forced labor, and violence. They imposed their culture, destroying native codices and artwork. Colonial-era religion played a crucial role in everyday life, with the Spanish Crown ensuring religious purity and aggressively prosecuting perceived deviations like witchcraft.
In the early nineteenth century nearly all of areas of Spanish America attained independence by armed struggle, with the exceptions of Cuba and Puerto Rico. Brazil, which had become a monarchy separate from Portugal, became a republic in the late nineteenth century. Political independence from European monarchies did not result in the abolition of black slavery in the new nations, and it resulted in political and economic instability in Spanish America immediately after independence. Yet, as regional Caudillos started to rise in power, nation-builders started to view themselves as more modern than their former European colonizers. Leaders began to shift away from aristocracy toward republicanism and democracy, which allowed all citizens, not just the Creole elites, to have a voice in politics. This shift helped unify many of the Latin American nations as all people, even illiterate people, would gather in their communities to talk about political ideals and how they should be used in their nation. Great Britain and the United States exercised significant influence in the post-independence era, resulting in a form of neo-colonialism, where political sovereignty remained in place, but foreign powers exercised considerable power in the economic sphere. Newly independent nations faced domestic and interstate conflicts, struggling with economic instability and social inequality.
The 20th century brought U.S. intervention and the Cold War's impact on the region, with revolutions in countries like Cuba influencing Latin American politics. The late 20th and early 21st centuries saw shifts towards left-wing governments, followed by conservative resurgences, and a recent resurgence of left-wing politics in several countries.