IDEA OF LATIN AMERICA, THE

'The Idea of Latin America' is a geo-political manifesto which insists on the need to leave behind an idea which belonged to the nation-building mentality of nineteenth-century Europe. The author asks what is at stake in the survival of an idea which subdivides the Americas. He explains why an 'American Union' similar to the European Union is at this point unthinkable and he insists on the pressing need to leave behind an idea of Latinity which belongs to the Creole/Mestizo mentality of the nineteenth century.