Latin America

Latin America is the cultural area of the Americas encompassing numerous nation-states where Romance languages—languages that developed from Latin, such as Spanish, Portuguese, and French—are spoken as the primary language. This territory is known as "Latin America." The word does not have a specific meaning; nonetheless, it is "often used to describe South America, Central America, and Mexico, as well as the islands of the Caribbean." In a nutshell, the area is comprised of Spanish America and Brazil, which is considered to be Portuguese America. The name was created in the nineteenth century and is used to refer to areas in the Americas that were dominated by the Spanish, Portuguese, and French empires. It is a relatively new term and has only been in use since the nineteenth century. The term "Latin America" encompasses a wider geographical area than other similar classifications, such as "Hispanic America," which only refers to nations where Spanish is the official language, and "Ibero-America," which only refers to nations where both Spanish and Portuguese are the official languages.

The Chilean politician Francisco Bilbao is credited with being the first person to use the term "Latin America." In the 1860s, the government of French Emperor Napoleon III popularised the term "Amérique latine" in order to justify France's military involvement in the Second Mexican Empire and to include French-speaking territories in the Americas, such as French Canada, French Louisiana, or French Guiana, in the larger group of countries where Spanish and Portuguese were the predominant languages. This was done in order to justify France's military involvement in the Second Mexican Empire.

The Americas are geographically subdivided into North America, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean according to a geoscheme that was established by the United Nations. This geoscheme played a part in the process of identifying the area known as the Americas. In 1948, the nations of Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Chile, Dominica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela were the founding members of what is now known as the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). At the time, the organisation was initially known as the Economic Commission on Latin America (ECLA). Canada, France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom of Great Britain, and the United States of America were also founding members of the organisation in 1948. Former colonial powers Spain and Portugal did not become members of the organisation until much later (1979). (1984). In addition, ECLAC includes member states that were not once dominant colonial powers in the area, such as Italy (1990), Germany (2005), Japan (2006), South Korea (2007), Norway (2015), and Turkey. Many of these nations have seen population growth as a result of immigration (2017). The Latin American Studies Association was established in 1966, and anybody who is interested in Latin American studies is welcome to become a member of the organisation.

The region encompasses a territory that begins in Mexico and extends all the way to Tierra del Fuego, and it also incorporates a significant portion of the Caribbean. It covers an area of roughly 19,197,000 km2 (7,412,000 sq mi), which is equivalent to nearly 13 percent of the land surface area of the Earth. It was predicted that there were more than 652 million people living in Latin America and the Caribbean as of March 2, 2020.