History
Latin America has been studied in one way or another ever since Columbus's "discovery" of 1492, and even before. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, scientist explorers such as Alexander von Humboldt published extensively about the region. Towards the end of the nineteenth century and at the turn of the twentieth, within the region itself writers such as José Martí and José Enrique Rodó encouraged a consciousness of regional identity. But "Latin Americanism" as a concept and an academic discipline emerges only later in the twentieth-century, and mostly in Europe and North America.
In the USA, Latin American Studies (like other area studies) was boosted by the passing of Title VI of the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) of 1958, which provided resources for Centers of Area and International Studies. In the UK, the 1965 "Parry Report" provided similar impetus for the establishment of Institutes and Centres of Latin American Studies (see Bulmer-Thomas).
Read more about this topic: Latin American Studies
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