Latin America is the subregion of the Americas comprising those countries where

Romance languages are spoken, primarily Spanish and Portuguese. It consists of twenty two
nations which cover an area that stretches from the southern border of the United States to the
southern tip of South America, including the Caribbean. Latin America has an area of
approximately 19,197,000 km
2
(7,412,000 sq mi),
[1]
almost 13% of the earth's land surface area. As
of 2013, its population was estimated at more than 604 million
[3][not in citation given]
and in 2014, LA has a
combined nominal GDP of 5,573,397 million USD
[4]
(almost equal to those of the UK and France
combined),
[5]
and a GDP PPP of 7,531,585 million USD
[4]
(larger than those of India, and Japan and
the UK combined).
[5]
The term "Latin America" was first used in 1861 in La revue des races Latines,
a magazine "dedicated to the cause of Pan-Latinism".
[6]

The idea that a part of the Americas has a linguistic affinity with the Romance cultures as a
whole can be traced back to the 1830s, in the writing of the French Saint-Simonian Michel
Chevalier, who postulated that this part of the Americas was inhabited by people of a
"Latin race", and that it could, therefore, ally itself with "Latin Europe" in a struggle with
"Teutonic Europe", "Anglo-Saxon America" and "Slavic Europe".
[7]
The idea was later
taken up by Latin American intellectuals and political leaders of the mid- and late-
nineteenth century, who no longer looked to Spain or Portugal as cultural models, but rather
to France.
[8]
The term was first used in Paris in an 1856 conference by the Chilean politician
Francisco Bilbao
[9]
and the same year by the Colombian writer Jos Mara Torres Caicedo
in his poem "Two Americas".
[10]
The term Latin America was supported by the French
Empire of Napoleon III during the French invasion of Mexico as a way to include France
among countries with influence in America and to exclude Anglophone countries and
played a role in his campaign to imply cultural kinship of the region with France, transform
France into a cultural and political leader of the area, and install Maximilian of Habsburg as
emperor of the Second Mexican Empire.
[11]
This term was also used in 1861 by French
scholars in La revue des races Latines, a magazine dedicated to the Pan-Latinism
movement.
[12]

In contemporary usage:
In one sense, Latin America refers to territories in America where the Spanish or
Portuguese languages prevail: Mexico, most of Central and South America, and in
the Caribbean; Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico in summary,
Hispanic America and Brazil. Latin America is, therefore, defined as all those parts
of the Americas that were once part of the Spanish and Portuguese Empires.
[13]
By
this definition, Latin America is coterminous with Ibero-America ("Iberian
America").
[14]

Particularly in the United States, the term more broadly refers to all of the Americas
south of the United States,
[citation needed]
thus including the Guianas, the Anglophone
Caribbean (and Belize); the Francophone Caribbean; and the Dutch-speaking
Caribbean. (In Curaao and Aruba, Papiamento a predominantly Iberian-derived
creole language is spoken by the majority of the population.) This definition
emphasizes a similar socioeconomic history of the region, which was characterized
by formal or informal colonialism, rather than cultural aspects (see, for example,
dependency theory).
[15]
As such, some sources avoid this oversimplification by using
the phrase "Latin America and the Caribbean" instead, as in the United Nations
geoscheme for the Americas.
[16][17][18]

In a more literal definition, which remains faithful to the semantic origin, Latin
America designates countries in the Americas where a Romance language
(languages derived from Latin) predominates: Spanish, Portuguese, and French and
the creole languages based upon these. Cf. Languages of South America and
Languages of North America.
o If entities at the sub-national level are included, Francophone Canada would
also be considered part of Latin America, while conversely Anglophone
Colombia would be excluded, as would the many regions where Amerindian
languages predominate. By the same logic, parts of the United States where
Spanish-speaking or French-speaking populations form the majority would
be considered Latin American. However, in practice, Francophone Canada is
rarely considered part of Latin America due to the fact that its history,
distinctive culture, economy, geographical location, and British-inspired
political institutions are generally deemed too closely intertwined with the
rest of Canada.
[19]

The distinction between Latin America and Anglo-America is a convention based on the
predominant languages in the Americas by which Romance-language and English-speaking
cultures are distinguished. Neither area is culturally or linguistically homogeneous; in
substantial portions of Latin America (e.g., highland Peru, Bolivia, Guatemala, and
Paraguay), Native American cultures and, to a lesser extent, Amerindian languages, are
predominant, and in other areas, the influence of African cultures is strong (e.g., the
Caribbean basin including parts of Colombia and Venezuela).