There are a few common ways that Latin America is classified:

1. By Romance language: Any country where the predominant language is a Romance language (a branch of the Indo-European language family). This excludes Dutch-speaking Suriname, English-speaking Guyana, Belize, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, and Trinidad and Tobago where non-Romance languages are dominant.
2. By drawing a global color line: This pairs the Iberian empires together and eliminates the French. This would exclude Haiti and French Guiana, where French is the official language.
3. By colonial history: Anything colonized by Europeans beginning in the late 1500’s. Including ANY and all of the above.

This wondrous rabbit hole all started with an APHG FB teacher’s debate about whether Latin America is a perceptual region. I speculated that most of my students would likely say that Latin America is “anything that is under “US“, ” without really considering why.

Curious about this, I conducted an informal survey using ArcGIS Survey 123, and 90 responses later you can see the results. I immediately shared the results with my students and then we spoke about the countries that are arguably NOT considered part of Latin America, but also how those same countries might justifiably be merged into it.

When we regionalize our world, we create constructs so that people understand the commonalities and general patterns that characterize large areas of the globe. Eastern Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Arctic, and the Global South are all, in effect, perceptual regions, defined more by collective perceptions rather than by formal boundaries. If we define Latin America as a perceptual region and struggle to explain the reasoning, then it becomes clear that it’s based on bias and perception, which, yes, fits the definition of a perceptual region, but then can be just as problematic as using outdated terms such as “the Orient” or “the Middle East” to describe a place. Over time, these labels have been reevaluated and, in some cases, avoided as our understanding of those areas developed. Before you get upset, no…I am not trying to cancel Latin America’s name. I think it’s more important to know where the name came from.

I found an article in the American Historical Review that explained the invention of “Latin America” as a historical construct, one largely created by its former colonizers. The common thread for Latin American countries is their history of colonization. The anti-racist and decolonizing approach advocates for the name “Abya-Yala,” an indigenous word meaning ‘Continent of Life.’ Others are just fine with the colonial stamp because the construct of Latin America is too engrained in our common vernacular. Up to this day, I’ve never considered taking a position on either and have only considered the monolith “Latino” when a presidential election rolls around.

Ultimately, every world region is arguably a perceptual region. If a student wants to identify Latin America as a perceptual region, the follow-up question asking “why” is the most important. If a student responded that it was because of its colonial past, I’m sold.

For fun, I also included the results of my student’s perception of where the American South is. Once again, the class discussion about WHY, is the most interesting and fun part.

Have a great day teachers.