The United States of Latin America

Hugo Chávez, the president of Venezuela, is infamous for dissing the current president of the United States. But he's also famous for championing the cause of a united Latin America. It's not a new idea.

Chávez calls his controversial political reforms a Bolivarean Revolution in honors of Simón Bolívar, one of the most important leaders of 19th century Latin America and one of the first Latin Americans to propose the idea of a united states of Latin America, of sorts.

Like many of his generation, Bolívar was encouraged to rebel against the Spanish Monarchy by the success of the rebels in the thirteen British colonies to his north: the founders of the United States of America. Like their Yankee counterparts, Bolívar and his peers
were second and third generation Americans who longed to set their own course – but could only do so by means of war.

During the early decades of the 19th century, the Spanish colonies of South and Central America declared and then fought, viciously, for their independence. In 1819, the Republic of Colombia was founded as a Federal republic, encompassing what are now Colombia, Panama, Ecuador, Venezuela and parts of Perú, Brazil and Costa Rica. By 1831, the federation had dissolved and several wars over borders ensued.

Throughout the 19th and the 20th century, the idea of a unified Latin America, or pan-americanism, evolved into a variety of organizations, treaties, events and social movements, from the symbolic Pan American Games to the practical Organization of American States, from the promise of the Mercosur trade agreement to the legacy of rock en español.

Ironically, the ideal of a shared, pan-american identity is closest to becoming a reality in the United States, where immigrants from 21 Latin American nations increasingly identify as a single political if not social group: Latinos.