A couple of weeks ago in these pages published an article on the American heartland and my travels throughout the United States and one of the friendly VOD readers commented with surprise and some moodiness: “¿América? But if you only speak of the United States!”. Although my co VaP. not include responses to comments-not anything special, much less disdain, but because I'm pressed for time and spend all of that I have to write books-this time it actually matters to respond because the issue has a crumb, more than meets the eye.
From the geographical purity, America is a continent that is bent on two continents: the North and South. And accordingly, Americans are so inhabitants of the last islands of the Arctic and the inhabitants of the coast of Tierra del Fuego. So American is the Canadian and Chilean, the Mexican and Ecuadorian and Nicaraguan Paraguayan. And yet ...
Americans are those who deny the term to all the inhabitants of America, South or North, and reserve, exclusively, for the people of the United States
Yet it is not, strictly speaking the use of the term. Because withon the Americans themselves who deny the term to all the inhabitants of America, South or North, and reserve, exclusively, for the people of the United States. It took me aware of it after several trips through the countries of the continent, the southern and northern. And I have no idea where it comes from the habit, although I suspect that perhaps that famous Monroe doctrine expressed with the famous slogan: "America for Americans". When Monroe coined the phrase must have thought, subtly, on those living in USA.
Who is the American Dream? When we speak of "American West", West unto which we refer? And when anti-American mobs burning American flags, Are perhaps the Peruvian or the Uruguayan? When the newspapers announced nearly half a century ago that the Americans had set foot on the Moon, Is it related to the Argentine? And what we think when we talk about American cinema, American actors of the American folklore it?
Canadians-who, certainly, always call Canada and U.S. only occasionally
It remains curious that, the exception to Canadians-who, certainly, always call the Canadian and American-only occasionally, to refer to all the other inhabitants of the continent most frequently used terms such as Latino or Latin American or South American. But not us, European and Spanish, who do, but themselves are natives of America who make the distinction. Try the gentle reader you are traveling for America: to anyone who speaks of Americans understood that speaks of the U.S..
What I have spoken to American friends from the north and south, and even U.S.. And like it or not, all accepted the habit as a fait accompli. So, some years, in my books of travels in America-the last two, eg- I put a note warning that where appropriate, when I talk about American, I mean the U.S.. Any reader to peek into "The river of light" the "In wild seas" I say find in its pages.
Do you not remember that far in Pancho Villa?:
"Mexico, February 23:
Americans spend Carranza left,
3.000 soldiers, 600 airplanes,
Villa looking to willingly kill.
And those Americans believed
Pelear That was a dance of any.
With the face covered with shame
They all returned to their country ".
Well, that, friends. All American; but some more than others, as they themselves.
