“Latin” America is dead. Long live Nuestra América!

Abstract

The term “Latin America”, coined in the nineteenth century, encodes multiple understandings of this “region”. Although the Latin American region is salient in Canada and the USA for cultural, economic, and political reasons, there is little reflection on the meaning of this term. This paper traces the evolution of this “region”, showing that the relationships and subjectivities involved in its definition have changed such that the imagined homogeneity that underlies its definition is called into question. At the same time, the northern edge of the “region”, marked by the US–Mexican border, has become porous to an extent that challenges the bifurcation of the continent into America and Latin America. Finally, it is argued that the separation of America into two is anachronistic in the twenty-first century, and the concept of Nuestra América put forth by Jose Martí over a century ago finally is becoming a reality.

Le terme l’Amérique Latine, inventé au 19ième siècle, inclus de multiples interprétations de la « region » qu’il définit. Quoique l’influence de l’Amérique Latine est considérable aux Canada et États Unis pour des raisons culturelles, économiques et politiques, il y a eut peu de réflexions sur la signification de ce terme. Cet article retrace l’évolution de cette « region » démontrant que les relations et les subjectivités rattachées à sa définition ont évolué et que l’homogénéité présumée et sous-jascente à cette définition est dorénavant remise en question. Parallèlement, la limite nord de cette « region » définie comme étant la frontière entre les États-Unis d’Amérique et le Mexique, est devenue poreuse au point où la séparation du continent entre Amérique et l’Amérique Latine est contestable. Finalement, il est allégué que la séparation de l’Amérique en deux entités est un concept anachronique au 21ième siècle et que le concept du Nuestra América avancé par Jose Martí il y a plus d’un siècle devient finalement une réalité.

Keywords:

• regions
• borders
• colonialism
• cultural geography
• Martí

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments that led to a much improved document. Thanks also to Dr Wayne Davies for his critical reading of the manuscript. Any omissions and errors remain my responsibility.

Notes

^1. “The Nation of the Spanish American”.

^2. “… proyecto utópico en círculos intelectuales”.

^3. “factor participante en el complicado proceso de gestación de la idea y el nombre de América Latina”.

^4. “un instrumento a través del cual América Latina ha venido tomando conciencia histórica de si misma”.

^5. Defined as “a regeneration of colonialism through other means [within] broad relations of geo-economic hegemony” (Shohat 1992, 107).

^6. “To know is to resolve […] and govern in accordance with knowledge is the only way to be freed from tyrannies”.

^7. “Latin America: a long trip towards itself”; “lejos de ser algo positivo, sera la fuente de toda su ambigüedad y ambivalencia”.

^8. Whereas in Spanish, América is a single continent, in English, South America is conventionally considered to be a separate continent from North America, created and separated by the Isthmus of Panama. The existence of the concept of two continents in English created a blurry zone in between: Central America and the Caribbean, where Mexico is often mistakenly placed in the former. It may be no coincidence that this “blurry” zone emerged in the twentieth century as the most politically unstable and economically challenged sub-region of Latin America.

^9. “the seed of the new America”.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Denise Fay Brown

Denise Fay Brown, PhD. (California), holds a joint academic position at the University of Calgary in the Department of Geography and the Latin American Studies program. Before joining this University in 2000, she lived in Mexico researching and teaching on themes relating to traditional resource use, rural development, indigenous issues, educational issues, and sociocultural spaces, in Tabasco, Tlaxcala, Veracruz, and the Yucatan. Her research currently focuses on change and transformation of the social structures and cultural landscapes of the Maya in Yucatan and Tabasco, including the role of tourism in these changes.