Get rid of "Latin America"

It has been nearly twenty years since former Vice President J. Danforth Quayle was quoted – perhaps maliciously – as saying that the realm is named Latin America because everyone there speaks Latin, but in fact the origin of this appellation is not as obvious as it may appear. The ultimate Latin roots of both Spanish and Portuguese may constitute common ground, but neither Spanish nor Portuguese settlers arrived in the Americas calling themselves Latinos. The suggestion has been made that the concept of Latin America was externally imposed by Western influences as an exercise in “coloniality” (Mignolo, 2005). The French emperor Napoleon III is often cited as the first to use Amerique Latine as a goal among his expansionist policies, but that goal proved elusive and the phrase inconsequential. In the United States, the regional reference appears to have come into use during the early twentieth century; until then, “Spanish America” was routine.

That is an excerpt from an op-ed, in the AAG newsletter, by Harm de Blij, who is a distinguished professor of geography at Michigan State. He further writes that in this so-called "Latin America":

The indigenous presence is far stronger. African influences are pervasive and locally dominant. From the Japanese in Brazil to the South Asians in Guyana, from the Dutch in the Antilles to the Lebanese in Chile, this is a culturally plural realm. From the rugby fields in Argentina to the cricket grounds in Barbados, this truly is a New World undeserving of a geographic designation that reflects bygone cultural power and historic dominance, not current and future reality.

I agree with his call for action--to get rid of "Latin America" as a phrase to describe a geographic realm; he concludes thus:

“Latin America” is entrenched as selfimage in South and Middle America and indeed as external emblem elsewhere. ... geographers are seen as the arbiters of nomenclature. Let us begin a discussion ... Our Hemisphere has three geographic realms: South, Middle, and North. If we need an allusive umbrella to substitute for “Latin” in two of these three realms, and increasingly in the third, might “PanAmerica” be a prospect?

It is high time we ditched "Latin America"