Latin America was coined in the 1850s not by Columbus
Latin America names the cultural belt of the Americas where Romance languages, mainly Spanish and Portuguese, dominate. Because culture rather than latitude defines it, Mexico sits alongside Chile under one label, while French-speaking Quebec, far to the north, is usually left out of the group.
Chilean politician Francisco Bilbao printed the combined term in Paris in 1856 at a conference proposing a federal congress of American republics, and a Colombian writer took it up the next year. Historians Arturo Ardao and Miguel Rojas Mix showed that it arose earlier than once claimed and first served to oppose imperial projects, used by Central and South Americans protesting United States expansion. By the late 1850s Californian newspapers such as El Clamor Público wrote of América latina.
Bilbao and his allies urged political union as the only defence against further U.S. intervention and also rejected European imperialism; during the French invasion of Mexico he called on the region to back the Mexican cause. Bilbao originally left out Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay, and historian Jaime Eyzaguirre later complained that the label dilutes the region’s Spanish character.
The commonest definition equals Ibero-America: Spanish- or Portuguese-speaking, mainly Catholic lands, including Puerto Rico. A looser version adds French-speaking Haiti, and the broadest takes in everything south of the United States, including the Guianas, Belize, and the English- and Dutch-speaking Caribbean. Quebec and Acadia are generally excluded.
Before Europeans arrived the region held civilisations such as the Olmec, Maya, Muisca, Aztec, and Inca. Spanish and Portuguese colonisation brought disease, forced labour, and violence that devastated native populations, and colonists destroyed codices and artwork. Because Catholicism had driven the Reconquista, the Church acted almost as an arm of the Spanish crown overseas, while under Philip II royal power grew even though the Council of the Indies knew little of the colonies.
Source: Latin America
