Blog Three

The evolution of Latin American identity is and was an ever changing concept. Latin America first originated as a concept coined by French scholars to incentivize colonialism. Many people of “Latin American” countries viewed themselves not as Latin American but rather the identity of their perspective countries such as Colombian or Mexican, and only really adapted the perception of themselves as “Latin American” once they left the home and were referred to as such. Countries that we would consider part of the Latin American hemisphere such as Brazil were not even viewed as Latin American by the french as a result of their vastly different culture, language, and monarchical background compared to other countries even with an acknowledged similar Catholic and Iberian heritage. While the origins of the term Latin America may have come as a result of French colonialism, a similar concept was rising at the time of indepence for many Latin American countries for a different reason. The most famous example being by revolutionary Simon Bolivar for his vision of a unified confederation of Spanish republics. Brazil, along with Haiti and the United States were not included in this vision of a Latin American confederation. This was in part due to Brazil’s monarchical state conflicting with their republican ideals and the United States’ role in the annexation of Texas, the Mexican War, and the Californian gold rush. Despite the effort only Gran Colombia, which later disbanded agreed to the alliance treaty, the other countries didn’t even send over delegates for discussion. As the United States became more of a regional power, they promoted the idea of a unified western hemisphere in hopes of creating a more stable political structure for themselves and combat possible European imperialist tendencies. Despite this, the rest of the Americas looked at this with distrust at the very least, especially given that it was clearly a way to exploit and assert the United States’ power over Latin American countries, as demonstrated with the United States’ war against Spain, establishment of the United States protectorate in Cuba, as well as interventions in Mexico, Central America, and the Carribean. Meanwhile Brazil tried to maintain better relationships with the United States in contrast. Eventually with Brazil’s abolition of the monarchy and slavery, combined with a growing resentment against what was considered United States Emperialism, eventually the call to include Brazil as a part of Latin America would be heard. While undoubtedly originating as a European concept, the notion of there being two separate Americas, the Anglo-Saxon United States and the Spanish Latin America was developed by Spanish Carribeans during the strong tension that arose as a result of Spanish-American War of 1898. The Latin American concept’s origin and heavy use in Europe and European descended areas brings up a concern held by many Spanish nationalists known as Eurocentrism. Eurocentrism is a worldview that prefers or primarily focuses on Europe. It is a major talking point of concern for Cuban patriot and nationalist Jose Marti. In his essay “Our America”, he discusses how people who want to successfully run and help Latin American communities must look to Latin American people and realities. He criticizes the idea that Latin American countries can be run identically to their European counterparts as doing so implies that European life is the standard way of living and ignores the unique problems and situations Latin American countries face. This reflects well in the revolutionaries goals for independence as under the influence of a ruler who many felt that the nation was being ran under interests that didn’t reflect the way they actually lived, whether it was from crown rule during the Colonial time, or from anti-communist parties during Guatemala’s communist revolutions, who appeared to only support the interests of other countries and not the countries they claimed to be wanting to support, these views of the politicians favoring foreign European interests over those of their own country was not unwarranted, especially with the CIA’s interventions in Guatemala, ranging from things such as distributing fliers and other forms of propaganda to combat the “communist threat” to full on military invasion of the country including bombings. While my views on the concept of Latin America not being efficient in describing it geographically persist. I can easily understand how it came to be when it’s viewed from the perspective of the people of Latin American countries. Ironically I had no problem condemning the Eurocentrism of the Latin American worldview without taking into consideration how it was influenced by Latin Americans.