ABSTRACT
The countries emerging from the former Spanish and Portuguese colonies in the early nineteenth century (with, to a lesser extent, those from the former French colonies) have come to be known as ‘Latin American’, the term deriving from the fact that their language had Latinate roots. However, this term has raised debate in some circles: opponents of the term note that ‘Latin America’ is itself a Europeanizing nomenclature, being coined as it was by the French as a counterpart to US expansionism. Nevertheless, ‘Latin America’ remains the most useful of the available terms to describe those nations in the Americas which were formerly Iberian colonies.
