All or almost all of us make up words;
all or almost all of us forget them without nostalgia.
Only some fool from time to time falls in love with one.
It happened to me and I am paying for it: three or four years ago the word Ñamérica occurred to me and I knew I would try to save it;
It was not easy.
So I wanted to understand what Latin America was.
I had been hearing those two strange words for decades: America, Latin.
It was America because in the 16th century a Florentine phony, Américo Vespucio, claimed the feat of another, the Genoese Cristoforo Colombo, and endorsed his name.
And Latina because in the 19th century certain French wanted to appropriate her, and calling her Latina included them in the game.
But Latin America - the idea of Latin America - had several problems: Brazil was one of them.
To think about the region, Brazil is a bind. Because of its language, different from the rest, it is in another register: we listen little to each other, we know each other less. Because of its history, different from the rest, it is in another league: it is so much bigger. Brazil has more inhabitants than Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, Bolivia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico combined; Brazil has more territory than the sum of Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Bolivia — the next five. Therefore, when one wants to explore regional realities and figures, Brazilian figures and realities weigh too much. I decided that if I wanted to try to understand — try to understand — I should take Brazil out of the equation and focus on other countries, those that communicate,those that have a common history and language, those that do not have a common name because Latin America also includes the different giant. I was missing, to think about them, a way to name them.
Spanish America never worked.
Nobody says Spanish America if they don't get paid: civil servants, corny editors, event announcers;
another word that is not said for free.
And, furthermore, Latin America gives an excessive place, with forgiveness, to the country that occupied it centuries ago and left it great gifts and evils, but it is gone.
The situation was complicated for me: it is difficult to work on what has no name.
Until, that afternoon, America appeared.
(Ñamérica has, I believe, the advantages of brevity and a sharp blow. Its construction is evident: if something distinguishes the region, it is Castilian; if something distinguishes Castilian, it is this rare quirk of having invented a little cartoon to write that sound that the other Romance languages say but write with two: the eñe. From which, obviously, Ñamérica.)
First I hesitated, then I was captivated.
It already had a name and a frame;
to use them, I just needed to try to tell it and understand it: a work of years.
In part I did it right here, in these pages, when I tried to narrate the South African cities;
in part, on so many other routes.
The road was full of common places: they tell you, about America, so many things — and some are even true.
They tell you that it is the wildest region: a veritable scramble of jungles and meadows and colors that produces more meat and soybeans and minerals.
They tell you that it is the most unequal region: that nowhere do the richest have so much more than the poorest.
They tell you that it is the most violent region: that nowhere do people kill more.
They tell you that it is the most fugitive region: that in no one did migrations determine so much and in none were there, in recent years, so many millions of migrants.
They tell you that it is the most Catholic region: that nowhere does the cross have so much strength and weight.
They tell you that it is the most magical region: an authentic scramble of cultures, a mixture like no other place.
They tell you that it is the most agitated region: the one that is always about to begin, of being what it should have;
that is stirred to be what it should.
They tell you — they tell us — so many things, and I didn't believe them;
I wanted, foolish me, to know.
I wanted to know what America was and I got to work and time passed.
It has never cost me so much to be able to say a word.