Defining Latin Amierca
Latin American History and Cultures:
John Charles Chasteen, a leading historian of modern Latin America, has characterized the region having been "born in blood and fire." Chasteen's characterization captures the struggles that have characterized Latin American history from the colonial period through independence, modernization, and globalization. Despite orchestrated efforts to eradicate their traditional lifeways and belief systems, indigenous peoples and their cultures have proven powerful and resilient throughout Latin America to the present day.
As an introduction to Modern Latin America, read Thomas H. Holloway's "Latin America: What's in a Name?" Holloway helps us to understand the reasons that the descendants of European colonizers initially began to use the title "Latin America" to describe the region south of the United States in the Western Hemisphere. As we begin our study of the region's modern history, it is important to understand the different connotations that Latin America has held internationally over time. Importantly, the Americas were not known as "Latin America" until the nineteenth century--the time period in which this course begins. Common historical knowledge has held that French imperialists coined the term based on prevailing European notions of race and ethnicity, and French efforts to control Mexico in the 1860s. It is certainly true that the French were responsible for the creation of the concept of a "Latin race" in the same general time frame. Yet, as historian Michel Gobat has illustrated in his article, "The Invention of Latin America: A Transnational History of Anti-Imperialism, Democracy, and Race," the notion of a unified Latin American region can be traced back to the efforts of independence-era leaders, such as Simón Bolívar and José María Morelos, to promote a shared americano identity in the areas that had long been under Spanish colonial dominion. In other words, elites in the region used the title "Latin America" in an attempt to unify the various nations south of the Rio Bravo against the social, political, and economic domination of Europe (principally Great Britain and France in the early to mid nineteenth century). What has typically been regarded as a label rooted in European colonialism is shown to be a title of potential anti-colonial power in Gobat's analysis.