Where is Latin America?

Well, just like the question "Who's the most iconic Spice Girl?

", the answer depends on who you ask.

Some people say Latin America is anywhere south of the U.S.

Others say it's anywhere south of the U.S.

where Romance languages are commonly spoken.

So, we're talking about anywhere from 20 to 52 countries and territories, where hundreds of languages are spoken, across millions of square miles.

As I scrolled through these debates in a few scholarly tomes... and Reddit, I couldn't help but wonder: Why lump so many distinct countries into one identity?

What makes a Latin American, Latin American?

Hi!

I'm Curly Velasquez, and this is Crash Course Latin American Literature.

[THEME MUSIC] Do we have to agree on what Latin America is before talking about Latin American literature?

¿Cuánto tiempo tienes?

How much time do you have?

It turns out, the "Latin America" label is surprisingly new.

Some historians say the term began with the French in the 1830s.

In an attempt to seize power over Mexico, Napoleon the Third - no, not that Napoleon, the one with the big bigote, yes!

- wanted to emphasize that both France and Mexico shared Latin roots in their languages.

Hence, Latin America.

This was an example of imperialism, where one country takes power over another, and it's a critical part of Latin American history.

But, so is resistance to imperialism.

Others credit the name "Latin America" to Chilean politician Francisco Bilbao, who called for dozens of countries to unite under this shared identity in the fight against global imperial powers.

Today, there's disagreement about why the term has stuck around, too.

Is "Latin America" still in use because outsiders flatten other cultures into falsely uniform identities?

Or because people from the region feel a shared sense of community, despite national differences?

In this series, we'll use "Latin America" to mean: countries with a shared history of colonization by Spain and Portugal, followed by independence.

But to get a bigger picture, we'll also explore Indigenous literature and Latin American authors in the U.S.

who write in English.

One thing you'll learn about me is that I don't do anything small.

And all of these questions - about what unites and divides a region, about where its boundaries fall, about who we are in relationship to each other - they're not simply hurdles we have to clear.

They're some of the central questions at the heart of so much of Latin American literature.

Now, because Latin Americans are diverse, it's challenging to choose just one label to describe us.

Like, in the U.S., you may hear the terms Latino or Latina to refer to immigrants from Latin America and their descendants, or gender-neutral alternatives like Latinx or Latine.

You guys, it's one letter change, we will all survive.

I promise!

Meanwhile, the term Hispanic refers to people of Spanish-speaking descent or origin.

So, someone from Spain would be Hispanic, but not Latino.

And a Portuguese-speaking Brazilian might consider themselves Latino, but not Hispanic.

And there are a lot of other community-specific terms out there!

Like "Chicano" for people of Mexican descent living in the U.S., or "Afro-Latino" for those in Latin America with African ancestry, or even "Nuyorican" for Puerto Ricans living in New York.

So, yeah, Latin America includes lots of different communities, across lots of different countries and languages!

Which means in literature, we find lots of different answers to the question: "Who are we?"

Some Latin American authors, like Mexican-Canadian writer Silvia Moreno-Garcia, write mostly in English.

Others write in both Spanish and English.

And some flip between languages even within the same text.

Like, "Los ríos profundos," "Deep Rivers," by José María Arguedas, uses both Spanish and the Indigenous language Quechua.

Sometimes you'll find Spanglish - a mixture of Spanish and English - like in Sandra Cisneros' "The House on Mango Street."

You'll also find Portuñol, a blend of Portuguese and Spanish, like in Fabián Severo's novel "Noite nu norte," "Night in the North."

And language plays a big role in the international availability of Latin American literature too.

Well, language, power, and you know...capitalism.

Like, U.S.

publishers have been more interested in books from Argentina and Mexico for at least the last decade.

So these are the books that tend to get translated into English... and that influences what can make its way into English-language classes, and Crash Courses.

In this series, we'll span diverse genres and take a broad view of what "literature" means.

Or lit-RAH-chure, if you're Oprah.

We'll cover the usual suspects - poetry, novels, and short stories - but also dive into historical accounts, political essays, and other texts.

Do my ex's text messages count too, or not so much?

Oh, you're saying no.

Ok.

Often, we'll encounter authors with ties to multiple countries.

Like, Clarice Lispector was born in Ukraine but spent much of her life in Brazil.

And the Cuban writer José Martí wrote for an Argentine newspaper while in exile in New York.

So, it's no surprise that Latin American literature often wrestles with big questions about identity.

Like: What's our relationship to Europe - and the rest of the world, for that matter - after being colonized and gaining independence?

And what's our relationship to our Indigenous ancestors, and our African ancestors, too?

Given the blend of Indigenous, African, and European influences... who even are we?!

Anyone?

Anyone?!

Hoo, okay... How about we hash this out with the Mexican writer Octavio Paz... Here are the Curly Notes on Paz's 1950 essay "Los hijos de la Malinche," "The Sons of Malinche."

Malinche wasn't your average señora.

She was a multilingual Indigenous woman who, after being enslaved and handed over to the Spanish as a teenager, interpreted for Hernán Cortés during his conquest of Tenochtitlán in 1521.

She and Cortés also had a son, who's seen as one of the first mestizos - meaning, people of mixed Indigenous and Spanish ancestry, which describes most of Mexico's population today.

Paz writes that Malinche is often remembered as a traitor who "gave herself voluntarily to the conquistador," and that "the Mexican people have not forgiven La Malinche for her betrayal."

He points out that the word "malinchista" became a popular insult to, quote, "denounce all those who have been corrupted by foreign influences."

Am I trippin'?

Or is Cortés the real villain here?

Paz argues that the reason Mexicans condemn Malinche is to try to distance themselves from a painful part of their past...and transcend it: "The Mexican does not want to be either an Indian or a Spaniard.

Nor does he want to be descended from them.

He denies them.

And he does not affirm himself as a mixture, but rather as an abstraction: [...] His beginnings are in his own self."

I'm gonna need some cafecito to process this one.

[music] Much better.

When your national identity is a mix of cultures and has been shaped by violent colonization, how do you begin to answer a question like, "Who are we?"

How far back should we go for answers?

And how close to home should we stay?

Another Mexican writer, Carlos Fuentes, explores those questions in his 1975 novel "Terra Nostra."

Rather than analyze a single historical figure like Malinche, Fuentes prowls for answers across history zooming between ancient Rome, pre-colonial Mexico, 16th-century Spain... and 1999 Paris.

But Fuentes doesn't stop there.

He links Spain's colonization of the Americas to a much bigger story.

A New York Times review described "Terra Nostra" as a "panoramic Hispano-American creation myth."

And the scholar Lucille Kerr says that it explores Mexican identity "in terms of universal myth and history."

In the world of "Terra Nostra," the mystery of Mexican identity is the same mystery "of civilization on which civilization itself is founded."

Meaning, like: we're all products of violent histories, of borders that shifted over time.

All of civilization is the story of different peoples clashing and melding and becoming something new.

In this way, the Latin American story - or stories really - shed light on all of our stories.

Much of "Terra Nostra" focuses on a fictionalized account of the real-life Spanish King Felipe the Second.

Who was a true nepo baby - he inherited his entire kingdom from his dad.

Must be nice - all I got from my dad was a used Honda.

Felipe obsessively constructed a massive palace-slash-mausoleum called the Escorial.

And Fuentes portrays it in a real "the emperor has no clothes" kind of way.

Even though Spain colonized and held power in the Americas for centuries, Felipe's single-minded focus on what amounts to an extremely elaborate coffin reflects the emptiness of the whole colonial project as, "based on death...on nada."

And Fuentes wasn't the only writer to explore Latin American identity by thinking globally.

Before him, in Argentina, Jorge Luis Borges wrestled with these issues in his work.

He was of Spanish, Portuguese, and English descent, educated in Switzerland, and traveled often to Europe.

His whole life - and work - was at the crossroads of these identity intersections.

And in his 1951 essay, "El escritor argentino y la tradición," "The Argentine Writer and Tradition," Borges encourages others to work at these crossroads, too.

He resists the idea that to be an Argentine writer means only dabbling in your own backyard: "We must believe that the universe is our birthright and try out every subject."

Borges is capturing a tension between the local and the global that can be found in a lot of Latin American literature.

In communities living with the legacy of colonization, you can't start asking a question like "Who are we?"

without searching the world for answers.

So what do you do with that?

The Brazilian writer Oswald de Andrade suggests... cannibalism.

Cultural cannibalism, that is.

He does it himself in his 1928 essay "Manifesto Antropófago," "Cannibalist Manifesto," with this line: "Tupi or not tupi, that is the question."

Sound familiar?

He's reappropriating Shakespeare's famous line from "Hamlet," using the similar-sounding name of an Indigenous people in Brazil.

Like, why not devour and Brazil-ify one of the most famous lines in English literature?

Andrade calls for Brazilians to do the same: take in the influences.

Blend them up.

And pour them out as something totally new.

Ooh!

It's my postcolonial protein smoothie.

I think it needs some work.

In a vastly diverse region, you're not going to find one single answer to the question: Who are we?

Latin American literature is produced across many different communities, in many different languages, from a blend of influences.

And when Latin American writers explore identity, they're often navigating the tension between influences from their own neighborhood... and the other side of the world.

To which I say: ¿Por qué no los dos?

Why not both?

Next time, we'll talk about how stories, history, and politics collide.

See you then.