Back in the XIX century, some people promoted a distinction between “Teutonic America” and “Latin America”. Mostly based on the languages of each country; if Germanic/Teutonic or Romance/Latin. They did it mostly to argue Latin Americans should side with Latin Europe and the Latin (i.e. Roman Catholic) Church.
But as usual, things are never as simple.
Firstly because “country language” is an oxymoron; a country is an abstract entity, it does not speak. People subjected to that country do, but they might speak completely different languages from each other. And the Americas are notorious for being a clusterfuck of immigrants, that will inevitably bring their languages (and cultures).
Secondly, because this distinction assumes language equals culture; that’s far from true. Language is an important part of culture, but not the whole bag, you know? And sometimes people change language but keep the rest of the culture, or their culture blends with the culture of nearby folks who happen to speak a different language. Plus culture hates those cookie-cutter categories, it’s gradients everywhere.
Thirdly because even if we pretend this dichotomy is not bloody assumptive, and that it’s about countries instead of cultures, it’s still a dichotomy. Are pre-Columbian peoples “Teutonic” or “Latin”? Japanese and Chinese immigrants? Slavs? Indians (as in, from India)? Pffft. And yet you see all those in the Americas, plus more.
So you’re left with a distinction that is not exactly clear-cut, as useful as a language map (and nothing else), and being promoted for political reasons. And of course muppets are going to oversimplify it, for politico-economical reasons; much like they do with 1st/2nd/3rd world or Western/Eastern. To the point nowadays it’s used for “anything in the Americas minus Canada and USA”. (Even if a sizeable part of the Canadian population speaks a Romance language… so yeah.)
Yea, it’s not really a useful label. I’ve never liked it as it was always ambiguous.
Even though historians often rely on common language to identify groups of people - “Latin America” is just too large an area with too much variation to have a meaningful label, let alone one so simplistic.
Yup. I think a way better cultural description of the Americas would be 10~20 partially overlapping regions, disregarding country borders and the likes. There’s a catch though — some of those regions would necessarily, disregard the borders between Teutonic and Latin America.
And, like, language is a good “rule of thumb” for culture. It’s just that in the Americas you got a lot of exceptions, throwing that rule of thumb into the mud — the presence of forcedly assimilated native peoples, recent immigration, border changes + governments promoting genocide/patriotism/culturecide, so goes on.
Back in the XIX century, some people promoted a distinction between “Teutonic America” and “Latin America”. Mostly based on the languages of each country; if Germanic/Teutonic or Romance/Latin. They did it mostly to argue Latin Americans should side with Latin Europe and the Latin (i.e. Roman Catholic) Church.
But as usual, things are never as simple.
Firstly because “country language” is an oxymoron; a country is an abstract entity, it does not speak. People subjected to that country do, but they might speak completely different languages from each other. And the Americas are notorious for being a clusterfuck of immigrants, that will inevitably bring their languages (and cultures).
Secondly, because this distinction assumes language equals culture; that’s far from true. Language is an important part of culture, but not the whole bag, you know? And sometimes people change language but keep the rest of the culture, or their culture blends with the culture of nearby folks who happen to speak a different language. Plus culture hates those cookie-cutter categories, it’s gradients everywhere.
Thirdly because even if we pretend this dichotomy is not bloody assumptive, and that it’s about countries instead of cultures, it’s still a dichotomy. Are pre-Columbian peoples “Teutonic” or “Latin”? Japanese and Chinese immigrants? Slavs? Indians (as in, from India)? Pffft. And yet you see all those in the Americas, plus more.
So you’re left with a distinction that is not exactly clear-cut, as useful as a language map (and nothing else), and being promoted for political reasons. And of course muppets are going to oversimplify it, for politico-economical reasons; much like they do with 1st/2nd/3rd world or Western/Eastern. To the point nowadays it’s used for “anything in the Americas minus Canada and USA”. (Even if a sizeable part of the Canadian population speaks a Romance language… so yeah.)
Yea, it’s not really a useful label. I’ve never liked it as it was always ambiguous.
Even though historians often rely on common language to identify groups of people - “Latin America” is just too large an area with too much variation to have a meaningful label, let alone one so simplistic.
Yup. I think a way better cultural description of the Americas would be 10~20 partially overlapping regions, disregarding country borders and the likes. There’s a catch though — some of those regions would necessarily, disregard the borders between Teutonic and Latin America.
And, like, language is a good “rule of thumb” for culture. It’s just that in the Americas you got a lot of exceptions, throwing that rule of thumb into the mud — the presence of forcedly assimilated native peoples, recent immigration, border changes + governments promoting genocide/patriotism/culturecide, so goes on.