This question is not so absurd as it appears to some here, notably one person who called it “appallingly ignorant.” He in fact is the ignorant one. Though a graduate of a distinguished Canadian University, he seems never to have learned that we owe the idea of “Latin America” to the French thinker, Marcel Chevalier (1803–1879).

Influenced by the liberal philosopher Saint-Simon, Chevalier proposed the idea of a Latin Race, uniting the Romance-language peoples of the New World with the Old—most certainly including French Canada and Louisiana, along with the French Caribbean. South American intellectuals of the mid-nineteenth century were attracted to the idea and made it their own. These were men who looked to France for political inspiration, rather than to hidebound, reactionary Spain. They also thought of Latin America as a pan-national counterpoise to Anglo-America, particularly the United States.

However, the Latin American ideal never really took root in 19th-century Québec. The British government, to the extent they were aware of the notion at all, were hostile to it. It also found no support, rather the contrary, from the powerful Catholic Church. Just as in Spanish America, the Church in French Canada abhorred anything that smacked of liberalism.

The notion of a Latin America under the aegis of French Enlightenment values was killed off by Napoleon III’s military intervention in Mexico in 1861. The French established the so-called Second Mexican Empire, a right-wing regime under their political control, with the Austrian Emperor’s younger brother, Maximilian, as Emperor. This resurgence of French power in the Americas was short-lived. In 1867 Mexican Republican forces overthrew the Empire, evicted the French from their country and sent Maximilian before a firing squad. Three years later, Napoleon III was undone at the Battle of Sedan and subsequently deposed. There was no more talk of a French-led Latin America after that.

Today, by convention, Latin American means the peoples and countries of the former Spanish, Portuguese, and French colonies of the New World, south of the continental United States. It remains an imprecise expression. Puerto-Rico, an American possession, is generally considered part of Latin America, as is Martinique, still a French territory. However, Jamaica and Trinidad, as members of the British Commonwealth, usually are not.