In North American vernacular it's common to distinguish South and North America as a separate continent. I don't remember the exact details of where or how this came to be, although the original Portuguese and Spanish explorers referred to the New World as a single large continent. This is a prime example showing the degree of cultural relativeness in the social world; some things are viewed the same depending where you're at, yet a great deal of things may have the opposite meaning of what is seen as the norm back home. The only practical solution for this is to either have an awareness of where someone's coming from or do the pointless task of the stickler and try to debate the meanings of terms.
I once overheard someone from a South American country, I believe Peru, mention to a Usonian how he was was also, "an American, and he should very well acknowledge this fact". It's obvious which road that discussion went down and I doubt they came to a clear mutual agreement. It's an interesting study to look into these matters, though its significance is rather mundane. The one benefit from this experience, to me, was pushing my curiosity further and I recalled how the present civilization in America intriguingly mirrored Europe before the 5th century; more specifically, the division between the Roman Empire along with it's Auxiliary territories and the Germanic peoples or the teutonic tribes.
Rome stretched from both sides of the Mediterranean, a large extent of Europe, and various territories scattered around Africa and Asia; Anglo-America, in a similar fashion goes from the Atlantic to the Pacific, with the US also having territories as well as great political and financial control in the region. The Germanic peoples came from a diverse area of cultures in a large part of northern, central, and eastern Europe; and this is just like Latin America which takes up a greater part of the American continent made up of three languages. Politically, Rome was the center of European civilization just like Anglo America, while the Germans, like those in Latin America, were seen as less developed or often times simply as barbarians. The only difference being things are now flipped, the teutonic tribes of which Anglo stock comes from, has been the center of American civilization while Latin America seems to the underdeveloped one.
Geographically, matters have mostly stayed the same for nearly two millennium as far as the Latin centered world being in the south and the Germanic-based one in the north. There have been many parallels made with the US State and the Rome, especially when discussing the decline of US hegemony in global affairs in recent years. Even now, many people in the US are stating how the barbarian foreigners are "taking over", just like back in the 5th century.
In this light things seemed to have transferred over in the course of history, as many things inevitably do, so is it possible observing the current state of affairs with socialism declining in Latin America while gaining traction in Anglo America, that we are witnessing the same trend play out?
