CLICK HERE TO LEARN ABOUT THE HISTORY OF BRAZIL (1500-2020) 

 SITE FEATURES

VIDEOS AND STORYTELLING 

DEFINING LATIN AMERICA

To begin, where is Latin America? Geographically, the term refers to a set of nations belonging to the regions of North America, the Caribbean, Central America, and South America. Culturally and linguistically, Latin America is defined as nations in the Americas and the Caribbean whose residents predominantly speak Spanish or Portuguese—two of the many languages descended from Latin.

The first use of the term “Latin America” can be traced back to the 1850s in the writings of Michel Chevalier (1806–1879), who employed the term as a way to differentiate the “Latin” peoples from the “Anglo-Saxon” peoples of the Americas, using language to create a geographic distinction.

This definition has proven to be difficult, as there are many nations that are not considered part of Latin America despite their geographic locales. The Guianas, for example, are geographically part of Latin America yet were never occupied by Portugal or Spain, but rather France (French Guiana), the Dutch Empire (Suriname), or the United Kingdom (Guyana). Likewise, many of these nations do not predominantly speak Spanish or Portuguese. There are also other nations that are geographically and culturally related to Latin America, but that are political territories of other nations—such as Puerto Rico, which remains a territory of the United States.

WE ARE KNOWN AS

Latin America has a rich and diverse history of indigenous cultures, European colonization, African slavery, and global immigration that makes it complex and difficult to describe its people with a single ethnic category. What’s the difference between Hispanic and Latino/a? Primarily, the reference to Spain. Hispanic refers to linguistic origins from a Spanish-speaking country, in particular Spain. Latino/a refers to people living in the USA who have ethnic and cultural origins from a country in Latin America.

Hispanic, Latin American, Latino/a, and Latinx are not considered racial terms or descriptors of race; these terms are used only to describe ethnic and cultural origins. For example, these umbrella terms encompass indigenous Latinas, Afro-Hispanics, Asian Latin Americans, and white Latinxs. Even so, some individuals choose not to self-identify by any of these terms and prefer to use other descriptors that more appropriately represent their personal identity. For some, the terms Boricua (of Puerto Rican descent), Chicanx (of Mexican Descent), Bicho/a (of Salvadoran descent), or Blaxican (of Black and Mexican descent) better describe who they are.

Outside of Brazil, where the predominant language is Portuguese, Spanish is the dominant language spoken throughout Latin America. Both of these Latin-derived languages are recent imports to the Americas. Latin America is home to hundreds of indigenous languages; before the European conquests, it is estimated that there were as many as 1,750 of them. As with geography and culture, the language in Latin America is remarkably varied. 

There is and was a broad diversity of black experience in the Americas. During the colonial period, some free black people and “mulattos” (a colonial term to describe people of interracial parentage) opposed the Spanish imperialist rule, while others participated in various ways in the European conquest. Some of these individuals also worked in Andean chácaras (ranches), owned mule-skinning businesses, ran cacao plantations in Santiago de Guatemala, or worked as farmers and cowboys on Mexico’s Pacific coast, among many other roles. There are 6,000 Chinese restaurants (called chifas) in Peru. Havana is home to one of the oldest Chinatowns in Latin America. There is a flourishing Japanese community in Brazil. Almost 1% of the population of Latin America, over four million people, is of Asian descent. Yet the history of this East Asian diaspora is not well known outside of Latin America. To sum up, the heritage of Latin America blends indigenous, European, African, and Asian peoples, languages, and cultural traditions. There is no one Latin America, or Latino or Latin American culture—rather, it is all these things.