JOURNAL OF LATIN AMERICAN GEOGRAPHY 19 (1), 132–140 now comprise the US Southwest, at what point, exactly, did Latin and North America split? Was it merely the imposition of the US southern border and territorial imaginary now materially reinforced by steel, concrete, and barbed wire barriers, militarized border patrol forces, and a weaponized physical geography that achieved this end? What of the fact that the United States Census Bureau (2018) reported that at least 58.9 million people 18 percent of the total US populationidentified as Hispanic or Latinx in 2017, or that by 2060 this population is projected to reach 111 million, 28 percent of the country’s total? These questions do not suggest that the idea of Latin America is relative, but that critically evaluating the territorializing processes that maintain the North/Latin America bifurcation draws attention to the work of geopolitical imaginaries and their lasting effectsparticularly their role in constructing notions of racialized “others” and enabling dangerous nativist tendencies. This is to say nothing of the fact that the North/Latin America bifurcation is a product of settler colonialism with radical effects on Indigenous peoples across the borderlands and beyond (Gentry, Boyce, Garcia, & Chambers, 2019).

Critical scholars must actively dismantle the discursive fortifications constructed through virulent populist and racist rhetoric that intend to neatly demarcate where Latin America begins or ends for the purpose of promoting nationalism. That is not to say that cultural and social differences should be ignored, but to suggest that shared connections should be celebrated, and that the territories of Latin American geography must be understood beyond the idea of a North/Latin America binary.