Latin America
Latin America
Area
21,069,501 km²
Population
569 million[1]
Countries
21
Dependencies
10
GDP
$3.33 Trillion (ex-
change rate)
$5.62 Trillion (pur-
chasing power
parity)
Languages
Spanish58%, Por-
tuguese40%,
French1%,
Quechua, Aymara,
Nahuatl, Mayan lan-
guages, Guaraní,
English, Haitian
Creole, Papiamentu,
Dutch, and many
others
Time Zones
UTC-2 (Brazil) to
UTC-8 (Mexico)
Largest Urban Ag-
glomerations[2][3]
1. Mexico City
2. São Paulo
3. Buenos Aires
4. Rio de Janeiro
5. Lima
6. Bogotá
7. Santiago
8. Belo Horizonte
9. Guadalajara
10. Porto Alegre
Latin America (Spanish: América Latina or
Latinoamérica; Portuguese: América Latina;
French: Amérique latine) is a region of the
Americas where Romance languages (i.e.,
those derived from Latin) – particularly
Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French
– are primarily spoken.[4][5]
Etymology of the term
and definitions
The idea that a part of the Americas has a
cultural affinity with the Romance cultures as
a whole can be traced back to the 1830s, in
particular in the writing of the French Saint-
Simonian Michel Chevalier, who postulated
that this part of the Americas were inhabited
by people of a "Latin race," and that it could,
therefore, ally itself with "Latin Europe" in a
struggle with "Teutonic Europe," "Anglo-Sax-
on America" and "Slavic Europe."[6] The idea
was later taken up by Latin American intel-
lectuals and political leaders of the mid- and
late-nineteenth century, who no
longer
looked to Spain or Portugal as cultural mod-
els, but rather to France.[7] The actual term
"Latin America" was coined in France under
Napoleon III and played a role in his cam-
paign to imply cultural kinship with France,
transform France into a cultural and political
leader of the area and install Maximilian as
emperor of Mexico.[8]
In contemporary usage:
• In one sense, Latin America refers only to
those territories in the Americas where
the Spanish or Portuguese languages
prevail: Mexico, most of Central and South
America, and in the Caribbean, Cuba, the
Dominica