The term Latin America is commonly used to describe the Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries in South America, Central America, Mexico, and the islands of the Caribbean.
The term Latin America was first used in Paris at a conference in 1856 called "Initiative of America: Idea for a Federal Congress of the Republics" (Iniciativa de la América. Idea de un Congreso Federal de las Repúblicas), by the Chilean politician Francisco Bilbao. The term was further popularized by French emperor Napoleon III's government of political strongman that in the 1860s as Amérique latine to justify France's military involvement in the Second Mexican Empire and to include French-speaking territories in the Americas, such as French Canada, Haiti, French Louisiana, French Guiana, Martinique, Guadeloupe and the French Antillean Creole Caribbean islands Saint Lucia, and Dominica, in the larger group of countries where Spanish and Portuguese languages prevailed.
The region covers an area that stretches from Mexico to Tierra del Fuego and includes much of the Caribbean. It has an area of approximately 19,197,000 km2 (7,412,000 sq mi), almost 13% of the Earth's land surface area. In 2019, Latin America had a combined nominal GDP of US$5.1 trillion and a GDP PPP of US$10.2 trillion. (Full article...)
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The Venezuelan crisis of 1895 occurred over Venezuela's longstanding dispute with Great Britain about the territory of Essequibo, which Britain believed was part of British Guiana and Venezuela recognized as its own Guayana Esequiba. As the dispute became a crisis, the key issue became Britain's refusal to include in the proposed international arbitration the territory east of the "Schomburgk Line", which a surveyor had drawn half-a-century earlier as a boundary between Venezuela and the former Dutch territory ceded by the Dutch in the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814, later part of British Guiana. The crisis ultimately saw Britain accept the United States' intervention in the dispute to force arbitration of the entire disputed territory, and tacitly accept the US right to intervene under the Monroe Doctrine. A tribunal convened in Paris in 1898 to decide the matter, and in 1899 awarded the bulk of the disputed territory to British Guiana.
The dispute had become a diplomatic crisis in 1895 when a lobbyist for Venezuela William Lindsay Scruggs sought to argue that British behaviour over the issue violated the 1823 Monroe Doctrine and used his influence in Washington, DC, to pursue the matter. US President Grover Cleveland adopted a broad interpretation of the Doctrine that forbade new European colonies but also declared an American interest in any matter in the hemisphere. British Prime Minister Lord Salisbury and the British ambassador to Washington, Julian Pauncefote, misjudged the importance the American government placed on the dispute, prolonging the crisis before ultimately accepting the American demand for arbitration of the entire territory. (Full article...)
... that despite an attempted "extermination" of homosexuals in the 1960s and 1970s, the LGBT community in Argentina is now the most accepted in Latin America?
... that Brazilian computer science researcher and internet pioneer Tadao Takahashi negotiated with drug lords to install internet equipment in his country?
General images
The following are images from various Latin America-related articles on Wikipedia.
Image 13In blue countries under right-wing governments and in red countries under left-wing and centre-left governments as of 2023 (from History of Latin America)
Image 15Intermediate level international-style Latin dancing at the 2006 MIT ballroom dance competition. A judge stands in the foreground. (from Culture of Latin America)