- published: 27 Sep 2011
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The Americas, or America, are lands in the Western hemisphere, also known as the New World.
In the English language, the Americas refers to the landmasses of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions, whereas America, in current usage, usually refers to the United States of America.
The Americas cover 8.3% of the Earth's total surface area (28.4% of its land area) and contain about 13.5% of the human population (about 900 million people).
The specifics of Paleo-Indian migration to and throughout the Americas, including the exact dates and routes traveled, are subject to ongoing research and discussion. The traditional theory has been that these early migrants moved into the Beringia land bridge between eastern Siberia and present-day Alaska around 40,000–17,000 years ago, when sea levels were significantly lowered due to the Quaternary glaciation. These people are believed to have followed herds of now-extinct pleistocene megafauna along ice-free corridors that stretched between the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets. Another route proposed is that, either on foot or using primitive boats, they migrated down the Pacific Northwest coast to South America. Evidence of the latter would since have been covered by a sea level rise of hundreds of meters following the last ice age.
Latino is a term used chiefly in the United States to refer to people of Latin American extraction or descent, though the term has also been used, perhaps incorrectly, as a synonym for Hispanic. The term latino is used to refer to males only or a combination of males and females in a group, whereas the term latina is used to refer to females only.
The U.S. Government has defined Hispanic or Latino persons as being "persons who trace their origin [to] . . . Central and South America, and other Spanish cultures." The United States Census uses the ethnonym Hispanic or Latino to refer to "persons who trace their origin or descent to Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Spanish speaking Central and South America countries, and other Spanish cultures." It is also stated that, "Origin can be considered as the heritage, nationality group, lineage, or country of the person or the person's parents or ancestors before their arrival in the United States. People who identify their origin as Hispanic or Latino may be of any race." The AP Stylebook's recommended usage of Latino includes not only persons of Spanish-speaking ancestry, but also more generally includes persons "from -- or whose ancestors were from -- . . . Latin America," including Brazilians.
Enrique Domingo Dussel Ambrosini (born December 24, 1934 in La Paz, Mendoza, Argentina) is an Argentine-Mexican writer and philosopher.
Dussel was born in Argentina, but since he was attacked with a bomb in his house by a paramilitary group in 1973, he was forced into exile in Mexico in 1975, and today he is a Mexican citizen. He is a professor in the Departament of Philosophy in the Metropolitan Autonomous University (UAM), Campus Iztapalapa in Mexico City and has also taught at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). He has acquired a doctorate in philosophy in the Complutense University of Madrid and a doctorate in history from the Sorbonne of Paris. He also has a license in theology from Paris and Münster. He has been awarded doctorates honoris causa from the University of Fribourg in Switzerland and the Higher University of San Andrés in Bolivia, and has been visiting professor for one semester at Frankfurt University, Notre Dame University, California State University, Los Angeles, Union Theological Seminary (New York), Loyola University Chicago, Vanderbilt University, Duke University, Harvard University, and others.