Latin America often refers to the regions in the Americas in which
Romance Languages are the main languages and the culture and Empires of its peoples have had significant historical, ethnic, linguistic, and cultural impact. It is "commonly used to describe
South America with the exception of
Suriname,
Guyana and the
Falkland islands.
Central America,
Mexico, and most of the islands of the
Caribbean". In a narrow sense, it refers to
Spanish America and
Brazil (
Portuguese America). The term "Latin America" is broader than Hispanic America, which specifically refers to Spanish-speaking countries; and narrower than categories such as Ibero-America, a term that refers to both Spanish and Portuguese-speaking countries from the Americas, and sometimes from Europe. It could also theoretically encompass
Quebec or
Louisiana where French is still spoken and are historical remnants of the French Empire in that region of the globe.
The term Latin America was first used in
Paris at a conference in 1856 called "Initiative of America: Idea for a Federal Congress of the Republics" (Iniciativa de la América. Idea de un Congreso Federal de las Repúblicas), by the Chilean politician
Francisco Bilbao. The term was further popularized by French emperor
Napoleon III's government of
political strongman that in the 1860s as Amérique latine to justify France's military involvement in the
Second Mexican Empire and to include
French-speaking territories in the Americas, such as
French Canada,
Haiti,
French Louisiana,
French Guiana,
Martinique,
Guadeloupe and the French
Antillean Creole Caribbean islands
Saint Lucia, and
Dominica, in the larger group of countries where Spanish and Portuguese languages prevailed.
The region covers an area that stretches from
Mexico to
Tierra del Fuego and includes much of the
Caribbean. It has an area of approximately 19,197,000 km2 (7,412,000 sq mi), almost 13% of the Earth's land surface area. In 2019, Latin America had a combined
nominal GDP of US$5.1 trillion and a
GDP PPP of US$10.2 trillion. (Full article...)
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The Latin American Boom (
Spanish: Boom latinoamericano) was a literary movement of the 1960s and 1970s when the work of a group of relatively young Latin American novelists became widely circulated in
Europe and throughout the world. The Boom is most closely associated with
Julio Cortázar of
Argentina,
Carlos Fuentes of
Mexico,
Mario Vargas Llosa of
Peru, and
Gabriel García Márquez of
Colombia. Influenced by European and North American
Modernism, but also by the Latin American
Vanguardia movement, these writers challenged the established conventions of Latin American literature. Their work is experimental and, owing to the political climate of the Latin America of the 1960s, also very political. "It is no exaggeration", critic
Gerald Martin writes, "to state that if the Southern continent was known for two things above all others in the 1960s, these were, first and foremost, the
Cuban Revolution (although
Cuba is not in
South America) and its impact both on
Latin America and the
Third World generally, and secondly, the Boom in Latin American fiction, whose rise and fall coincided with the rise and fall of liberal perceptions of Cuba between 1959 and 1971."
The sudden success of the Boom authors was in large part due to the fact that their works were among the first Latin American novels to be published in Europe, by publishing houses such as Barcelona's avant-garde
Seix Barral. Indeed, Frederick M. Nunn writes that "Latin American novelists became world famous through their writing and their advocacy of political and social action, and because many of them had the good fortune to reach markets and audiences beyond Latin America through translation and travel—and sometimes through exile." (Full article...)
... that Brazilian computer science researcher and internet pioneer Tadao Takahashi negotiated with
drug lords to install internet equipment in his country?
... that the Latin American travesti gender identity has been considered to be a
third gender, akin to the hijras of India and the muxe of Mexico?
... that despite an attempted "extermination" of homosexuals in the 1960s and 1970s, the LGBT community in Argentina is now the most accepted in Latin America?
The following are images from various Latin America-related articles on Wikipedia.
Image 1Intermediate level international-style Latin dancing at the 2006 MIT ballroom dance competition. A judge stands in the foreground. (from Culture of Latin America)
Image 13In blue countries under right-wing governments and in red countries under left-wing and centre-left governments as of 2023 (from History of Latin America)
.jpg)
Antigua and Barbuda
Argentina
Aruba
Bahamas
Barbados
Belize
Bolivia
Brazil
Chile
Colombia
Costa Rica
Cuba
Curaçao
Dominica
Dominican Republic
French Guiana
Ecuador
El Salvador
Grenada
Guatemala
Honduras
Guyana
Haiti
Jamaica
Martinique
Mexico
Montserrat
Nicaragua
Panama
Paraguay
Peru
Puerto Rico
Saint Kitts and Nevis
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Suriname
Trinidad and Tobago
Uruguay
Venezuela
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