Editing Latin America (section)

===Origins===
Research has shown that the idea that a part of the Americas has a linguistic and cultural affinity with the Romance cultures as a whole can be traced back to the 1830s, in the writing of the French [[Saint-Simonianism|Saint-Simonian]] [[Michel Chevalier]], who postulated that a part of the Americas was inhabited by people of a "[[Italic peoples|Latin race]]", and that it could, therefore, ally itself with "[[Romance-speaking Europe|Latin Europe]]", ultimately overlapping the [[Latin Church]], in a struggle with "[[Germanic-speaking Europe|Teutonic Europe]]" and "[[Anglo-America|Anglo-Saxon America]]" with its [[Anglo-Saxonism in the 19th century|Anglo-Saxonism]], as well as "[[Slavic Europe]]" with its [[Pan-Slavism]].<ref name = "mignolo">{{Cite book|last=Mignolo|first=Walter|title=The Idea of Latin America|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vPacXtsWhewC|publisher=Wiley-Blackwell|place=Oxford|year=2005|isbn=978-1-4051-0086-1|pages=77–80}}</ref>

Scholarship has political origins of the term. Two Latin American historians, [[Uruguayans|Uruguayan]] [[Arturo Ardao]] and [[Chileans|Chilean]] [[:es:Miguel Rojas Mix|Miguel Rojas Mix]], found evidence that the term "Latin America" was used earlier than Phelan claimed, and the first use of the term was in fact in opposition to imperialist projects in the Americas. Ardao wrote about this subject in his book ''Génesis de la idea y el nombre de América latina'' (Genesis of the Idea and the Name of Latin America, 1980),<ref>{{Cite book|url=http://www.autoresdeluruguay.uy/biblioteca/Arturo_Ardao/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=ardao_-_genesis_de_la_idea_y_el_nombre_de_america_latina_gallegos_1980_.pdf|title=Genesis de la idea y el nombre de América Latina|last=Ardao|first=Arturo|publisher=Centro de Estudios Latinoamericanos Rómulo Gallegos|year=1980|location=Caracas, Venezuela|access-date=March 8, 2019|archive-date=March 27, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190327085645/http://www.autoresdeluruguay.uy/biblioteca/Arturo_Ardao/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=ardao_-_genesis_de_la_idea_y_el_nombre_de_america_latina_gallegos_1980_.pdf|url-status=live}}</ref> and Miguel Rojas Mix in his article "Bilbao y el hallazgo de América latina: Unión continental, socialista y libertaria" (Bilbao and the Finding of Latin America: a Continental, Socialist, and Libertarian Union, 1986).<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Rojas Mix|first=Miguel|year=1986|title=Bilbao y el hallazgo de América latina: Unión continental, socialista y libertaria…|journal=Caravelle. Cahiers du monde hispanique et luso-brésilien|volume=46|issue=1|pages=35–47|doi=10.3406/carav.1986.2261|issn=0008-0152}}</ref> As Michel Gobat points out in his article "The Invention of Latin America: A Transnational History of Anti-Imperialism, [[Democracy]], and Race", "Arturo Ardao, Miguel Rojas Mix, and Aims McGuinness have revealed [that] the term 'Latin America' had already been used in 1856 by Central Americans and South Americans protesting US expansion into the Southern Hemisphere".<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Gobat|first=Michel|date=December 1, 2013|title=The Invention of Latin America: A Transnational History of Anti-Imperialism, Democracy, and Race|journal=The American Historical Review|volume=118|issue=5|pages=1345–1375|doi=10.1093/ahr/118.5.1345|s2cid=163918139|issn=0002-8762|doi-access=free}}</ref> Edward Shawcross summarizes Ardao's and Rojas Mix's findings in the following way: "Ardao identified the term in a poem by a Colombian diplomat and intellectual resident in France, José María Torres Caicedo, published on 15 February 1857 in a French based Spanish-language newspaper, while Rojas Mix located it in a speech delivered in France by the radical liberal Chilean politician Francisco Bilbao in June 1856".<ref>{{Cite book|title=France, Mexico and informal empire in Latin America, 1820–1867 : equilibrium in the New World|last=Edward|first=Shawcross|isbn=9783319704647|location=Cham, Switzerland|page=120|oclc=1022266228|date=February 6, 2018}}</ref>

By the late 1850s, the term was being used in California (which had become a part of the United States), in local newspapers such as ''El Clamor Público'' by [[Californios]] writing about {{lang|es|América latina}} and {{lang|es|latinoamérica}}, and identifying as {{lang|es|[[Latinos]]}} as the abbreviated term for their "hemispheric membership in {{lang|es|la raza latina}}".<ref name="Gutierrez-2016">{{cite book|last1=Gutierrez|first1=Ramon A.|editor1-last=Gutierrez|editor1-first=Ramon A.|editor2-last=Almaguer|editor2-first=Tomas|title=The New Latino Studies Reader: A Twenty-First-Century Perspective|chapter=What's in a Name?|chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/GutierrezPp.1953Notes|date=2016|publisher=University of California Press|location=Berkeley|isbn=978-0-520-28484-5|oclc=1043876740|quote=The word {{lang|es|latinoamericano}} emerged in the years following the wars of independence in Spain's former colonies [...] By the late 1850s, {{lang|es|californios}} were writing in newspapers about their membership in {{lang|es|América latina}} (Latin America) and {{lang|es|latinoamerica}}, calling themselves {{lang|es|Latinos}} as the shortened name for their hemispheric membership in {{lang|es|la raza latina}} (the Latin race). Reprinting an 1858 opinion piece by a correspondent in Havana on race relations in the Americas, ''El Clamor Publico'' of Los Angeles surmised that 'two rival races are competing with each other ... the Anglo Saxon and the Latin one [{{lang|es|la raza latina}}].'{{thin space}}|page=34}}</ref>

The words "Latin" and "America" were first found to be combined in a printed work to produce the term "Latin America" in 1856 at a conference by the Chilean politician [[Francisco Bilbao]] in Paris.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.clarin.com/diario/2005/05/16/opinion/o-01901.htm|title=''América latina o Sudamérica?'', por Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira, Clarín, 16 de mayo de 2005|publisher=Clarin.com|date=May 16, 2005|access-date=April 23, 2013|archive-date=March 27, 2010|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100327183033/http://www.clarin.com/diario/2005/05/16/opinion/o-01901.htm|url-status=dead}}</ref> The conference had the title "Initiative of the America. The idea for a Federal Congress of Republics."<ref name="bilbao f"/> The following year, Colombian writer [[:es:José María Torres Caicedo|José María Torres Caicedo]] also used the term in his poem "The Two Americas".<ref>{{cite web|language=es|via=Proyecto Filosofía en español|url=http://www.filosofia.org/hem/185/18570215.htm|author=José María Torres Caicedo|date=September 26, 1856|title=Las dos Américas|location=Venice|access-date=April 23, 2013|archive-date=July 22, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170722121227/http://www.filosofia.org/hem/185/18570215.htm|url-status=live}}</ref> Two events related with the United States played a central role in both works. The first event happened less than a decade before the publication of Bilbao's and Torres Caicedo's works: the Invasion of Mexico or, in the United States, the [[Mexican–American War]], after which the United States annexed more than half of Mexico's territory. The second event, the [[Walker affair]], which happened the same year that both works were written: the decision by US president [[Franklin Pierce]] to recognize the regime recently established in [[Nicaragua]] by American [[William Walker (filibuster)|William Walker]] and his band of filibusters who ruled Nicaragua for nearly a year (1856–57) and attempted to reinstate slavery there, where it had been already abolished for three decades<ref>{{Cite web |date=2024-04-16 |title=Central America as a Catalyst for Latin American Identity Formation |url=https://exhibits.lib.utexas.edu/spotlight/archival-journey-latin-american-modernity/feature/central-america-as-a-catalyst-for-latin-american-identity-formation#:~:text=This%20printed%20decree,%20written%20by%20Marcial%20Zebad%C3%BAa,%20abolished%20slavery%20in%20the%20newly%20formed%20United%20Provinces%20of%20Central%20America,%20a%20union%20of%20states%20which%20lasted%20from%201823%20to%201840%20and%20included%20modern%20day%20Guatemala,%20Honduras,%20El%20Salvador,%20Costa%20Rica,%20and%20Nicaragua |access-date=2025-02-19 |website=An Archival Journey through Latin American Modernity - UT Libraries Exhibits |language=en}}</ref>

In both Bilbao's and Torres Caicedo's works, the [[Mexican–American War]] (1846–48) and William Walker's expedition to Nicaragua are explicitly mentioned as examples of dangers for the region. For Bilbao, "Latin America" was not a geographical concept, as he excluded Brazil, Paraguay, and Mexico. Both authors also asked for the union of all Latin American countries as the only way to defend their territories against further foreign US interventions. Both also rejected European imperialism, claiming that the return of European countries to non-democratic forms of government was another danger for Latin American countries, and used the same word to describe the state of European politics at the time: "despotism." Several years later, during the [[Second French intervention in Mexico|French invasion of Mexico]], Bilbao wrote another work, "Emancipation of the Spirit in the Americas", where he asked all Latin American countries to support the Mexican cause against France, and rejected French imperialism in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas. He asked Latin American intellectuals to search for their "intellectual emancipation" by abandoning all French ideas, claiming that France was: "Hypocrite, because she [France] calls herself protector of the Latin race just to subject it to her exploitation regime; treacherous, because she speaks of freedom and nationality, when, unable to conquer freedom for herself, she enslaves others instead!" Therefore, as Michel Gobat puts it, the term Latin America itself had an "anti-imperial genesis," and their creators were far from supporting any form of imperialism in the region, or in any other place of the globe.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Bilbao|first1=Francisco|title=Emancipación del espíritu de América|url=http://www.franciscobilbao.cl/1909/article-81905.html|website=Francisco Bilbao Barquín, 1823–1865, Chile|access-date=July 16, 2017|archive-date=September 16, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170916074142/http://www.franciscobilbao.cl/1909/article-81905.html|url-status=live}}</ref>