(Note: Throughout this article, citizens of the United States will be referred to as "US Americans." This choice is made for reasons explained in depth below. In short: the term "American," when used to refer exclusively to people from the United States, constitutes a linguistic appropriation of a continental identity that belongs equally to every nation from Canada to Argentina. The word "America" or "American" used to refer to the US and to US citizens in this article appears only when quoting sources, never as the author's own designation. An alternative term frequently proposed in academic and activist circles is "Unitedstatian," a direct translation of the Spanish estadounidense; this essay declines it not on political grounds but purely practical ones—it is clunky and unnatural in English, and risks distracting from the substance of the argument. "US American" is a workable compromise that preserves accuracy without sacrificing readability.)
(This essay was revised and expanded in July 2026 to account for the events of 2025 and 2026—from the "Gulf of America" decree to the January 2026 abduction of a sitting head of state. The argument has not changed. Reality has simply caught up with it.)
"And they have already shouted at me a thousand times
For me to return to my land
Because there's no room for me here
I want to remind the gringo, I did not cross the border, the border crossed meAmerica was born free, man divided it
They drew the white line so I would jump it
And they call me an invaderIt's a well-marked mistake
They took eight states from us
Who is the invader here?
I am a foreigner in my land
and I do not come to wage war
I am a hardworking man.And if history does not lie here sat in glory the powerful nation
between valiant warriors, Indians of two continents, mixed with the Spanish.
And if we turn to the centuries: we're more American
we are more American than the offspring of the Anglo-SaxonsThey bought without money the waters of the Rio Grande from us
And they took from us Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado
California and Nevada also flew away
With Utah they were not quite satisfied
the state of Wyoming was also taken away from usI am the blood of the Indian
I'm Latino, I'm mestizo
We are of all colors and of all trades
And if we take the centuries into account
Although it might hurt the neighbor
We are more American than all the gringos put together."– Translation from "Somos Más Americanos" (We Are More American) by Los Tigres del Norte.
"With its ritual of steel
its great chimneys
its secret scholars
its siren song
its neon skies
its Christmas sales
its cult of God the Father
and of epaulets
with its keys
to the kingdom
the North is the one
who ordersbut down here, down
hunger at hand
resorts to the bitter fruit
of what others decide
while time passes
and pass the parades
and other things
that the North doesn't forbid.
With its hard hope
the South also exists.With its preachers
its poison gases
its Chicago school
its owners of the Earth
with its luxurious costume
and its meager frame
its spent defenses
its expenses of defense
with its epic of invasion
the North is the one
who orders.But down here, down
each in their hideaway
are men and women
who know what to grasp
making the most of the sun
and eclipses
putting useless things aside
and using what is useful.
With its veteran faith
the South also exists.With its French horn
and its Swedish academy
its American sauce
and its English wrenches
with all its missiles
and its encyclopedias
its war of galaxies
and its rich cruelty
with all its laurels
the North is the one
who orders.But down here, down
near the roots
is where memory
omits no memory
and there are those
who defy death for
and die for
and thus together achieve
what was impossible
that the whole world
would know
that the South,
that the South also exists"– The South Also Exists, Mario Benedetti
People in the United States, officially the United States of America, call themselves Americans, and it remains the official demonym for them in the English language. Outside of their box, however, they often become offended at how we in Latin America challenge their identity, and with good reason… who likes to be stripped of their identity by a foreigner? But the truth is, within the American continent, we are all Americans. And we have every right to be referred to as such not only by them, but by the languages of the world, which systematically strip us of our American identity by prioritizing the term for people from the United States, exclusively and without exception.
The United States is not America. Neither is Uruguay, Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, or Panama. At least, not by themselves. All of them comprise America. However, none of them appropriates the American identity for themselves culturally and linguistically, except, of course, the United States. To Latin Americans, it's absolutely outrageous. How could a single country, no matter how big or powerful, be arrogant enough to steal an identity all to itself?
All of the countries south of the Rio Grande have absolutely no right to call themselves American, at least not in English, and when they do, they immediately bring hostility and controversy to the table, as if challenging the sacred identity of the United States. This is all due to the powerful connotation that the American demonym has in relation to the United States, and the severe lack of opposition there has been to the term in other languages. This is a crime not only of the so-called European intelligentsia, but of Latin American nations failing to actively fight for the right to an American identity.
But how is it that merely one country can manage to appropriate the term for an entire continent and secure its linguistic and political rights purely for domestic usage, with little to no opposition?
If you, like me, see this not only as an outrage but as a legitimate geopolitical concern, I encourage you to keep reading. You will certainly find plenty of reasons to continuously challenge this established notion that citizens of the United States hold political and linguistic exclusiveness to the term and the identity.
This essay intends to point out the grammatical inaccuracy of the "American" demonym when used to refer exclusively to people who hail from the United States of America. But, as this is sadly not merely a grammatical issue, this article aims to explain the viewpoint of Latin Americans who feel justified resentment toward US imperialism—be it economic, political, military, or cultural. This is a part of a wider, more insidious problem: that of US cultural dominance, which is in itself a pillar of the ongoing Anglo-Saxonist cultural hegemony established in contemporary times.
1. A History of Terms and the Imperialism of Language
The United States of America—there are many emotions invoked when reading, hearing, or speaking these words. Their conjunction results in an absolutely ominous and iconic concept; like the best works of art, they leave no passion untouched.
People from the United States of America are referred to almost universally as Americans in most languages; in English, they're Americans; in German, Amerikanische; in Russian, Amerikantsii; in Spanish, estadounidenses. But even in Spanish, a language that has a clear demonym for people from the US—fully supported by the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy—we oftentimes say americanos. The global cultural influence is much too strong, and the fact that the word rolls off the tongue so easily definitely helps. Today, saying America and Americans in English invokes the Stars and Stripes instantly. But in the Spanish language, with more emphasis in Latin America, this usage has a much lower tolerance. It is considered extremely condescending and arrogant, especially in countries most directly affected by the damaging foreign policy of the United States.
Earning its independence in 1776, what is now referred to as the United States of America was comprised of many colonies that used to belong to the British, Dutch, French, and Spanish Empires. North America—which for simplification was simply referred to as "America" in Europe—was a vast and resource-rich territory disputed between these empires. The Founding Fathers, knowledgeable, humanitarian, and reason-driven men, created a nation with a constitution that ensured the liberty and prosperity their people had been denied through colonial exploitation. It served as a model for many other nations, including my own. Our Founding Father and national leader José Gervasio Artigas became directly inspired by the Revolutionary War and the US Constitution, so much so that the flag of Uruguay is modeled after that of the US. The motto of my country became "Tiranos Temblad," Spanish for "Tremble, Tyrants." Yes, I am proud of my country, in the same way people from the US are proud of theirs.
Unfortunately, the US deviated from the wonderful course its Founding Fathers set for it. It became worse than the colonialist empires which had exploited it. It became a war machine thirsting for conquest and expansion, justified through a "Manifest Destiny" and a self-righteous doctrine of "American Exceptionalism." It became a force to reckon with and fear, and a major player in geopolitics—a sphere shaped for centuries only by European powers.
He who has power, more often than not, ends up imposing his way upon the world. This is no different regarding the usage of the "American" demonym. Even popular US linguists acknowledge this problem. According to Grammar Girl:
"This isn't a new problem. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage says the first objection occurred in 1791, and in his 1963 book, The American Language, H. L. Mencken wrote, 'As everyone knows, the right of Americans to be so called is frequently challenged, especially in Latin America, but so far, no plausible substitute has been devised, though many have been proposed, e.g., Unisians, United-statesians, Columbards.'"
As noted in discussions by academics like Thomas Holloway at the Hemispheric Institute on the Americas, the ambiguity of the word "American" is deeply problematic. In Spanish and Portuguese, americano/a reflects a broad affiliation with the Western Hemisphere. To avoid this ambiguity when speaking English, many—myself included—have historically adopted alternative terms. The inventor of the term Usonian, US architect Frank Lloyd Wright, famously stated in 1927: "We of the United States, in justice to Canadians and Mexicans, have no right to use the title 'Americans' when referring to matters pertaining exclusively to ourselves."
Yet, US writers consistently dismiss these concerns. In a notoriously arrogant piece published by Slate titled "I'm From America. Stop Complaining, South America," author Chris Kirk embodies this linguistic entitlement perfectly. After recounting how a Colombian woman correctly pointed out the imperialism inherent in usurping the word "American," his response boils down to: "We're not going to stop using 'America.' We should not stop. Get over it." Kirk attempts to mask this arrogance under the guise of convenience, arguing that calling the US "America" is "not malicious" but simply "intuitive and convenient." He claims it harms no one because "the idea of 'America' as a continent doesn't have many practical applications beyond soccer tournaments and plate tectonics."
This staggering dismissal proves the exact point Latin Americans make. To reduce the shared cultural, historical, and geopolitical reality of an entire hemisphere to "soccer tournaments" is the very definition of imperial hubris. Language is never just about convenience; it is about power. As Costa Rican thinker Joaquín García Monge and Uruguayan essayist Alberto Zum Felde have maintained, language determines how a speaker orders, sees, and conforms to the world. Our language is our spirit and our authenticity. When a dominant power forces the rest of the hemisphere to abandon its right to an identity, it enforces a mental and cultural colonialism. To accept it is to accept our own erasure.
2. From "America" to the "Gulf of America": Renaming the World by Decree
For decades, whenever we protested the usurpation of the American name, the standard reply from the North was that we were being oversensitive—that "America" was mere habit, an innocent accident of speech carrying no political intent whatsoever. The year 2025 buried that excuse forever.
On January 20, 2025, his very first day back in office, President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14172, pompously titled "Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness," ordering the US federal government to strike the name "Gulf of Mexico" from its maps and records and replace it with the "Gulf of America." A name in continuous international use since the 1550s—older than the United States itself by more than two centuries, derived from Mexica, the Nahuatl name of the Aztecs, and recognized by bodies such as the International Hydrographic Organization—was abolished by the stroke of a pen. Trump went so far as to proclaim February 9 "Gulf of America Day," as though conquest by nomenclature were now a national holiday.
The corporations fell in line with revealing speed. Google, Apple, and Bing now display "Gulf of America" to users inside the United States. And when the Associated Press—hardly a bastion of anti-imperialism—declined to abandon the historic name, the White House banned its journalists from the Oval Office and Air Force One, with Trump vowing to keep them out until they submitted to the new vocabulary. A federal judge eventually ruled the retaliation contrary to the First Amendment, but the message had already been delivered: in the North, even geography is now a loyalty test. Polls, incidentally, showed that roughly seven in ten US citizens themselves opposed the renaming. It did not matter. He who has power imposes his way upon the world—including upon his own people.
Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum answered the affront with the elegance it deserved. Citing maps from the colonial era, she suggested that if names were now up for grabs, North America might as well be relabeled "América Mexicana." Her government then took Google to court for extending the new label over the Mexican and Cuban portions of the gulf—waters that not even Trump's decree ever claimed.
And here history permits itself a small irony: for well over a century, the only body of water on Earth actually known as the "Gulf of America" lay in the Russian Far East—Nakhodka Bay, named in honor of the Russian corvette America. The renaming was not even original.
Nor did the mania for renaming stop at the water's edge. In September 2025, the same administration restyled its own Department of Defense as the "Department of War." One must at least concede the honesty of that particular correction.
This is what we have argued all along, now performed openly, by decree, and before the cameras: to the United States, "America" is not a shared home but a registered trademark—one it enforces, litigates, and punishes journalists for infringing. The Gulf of Mexico was merely the first territory on the map to be formally annexed by language. It will not be the last.
3. A Multipolar Resistance to Unipolar Language
To understand this linguistic theft, one must look at the broader geopolitical strategy of the United States. During the ideologically-vacant years of the post-Cold War era—better known as the 90s—capitalism imposed itself as the unrivaled predominant system. Neoliberalism extended its grip throughout Latin America, and Che Guevara's most feared nightmare came true: corrupt politicians sold off their nations, leaving the people to fend for themselves. Families were forced into economic exile, fleeing across borders or oceans just to survive.
But just as the US seeks to enforce a unipolar political world, it enforces a unipolar cultural narrative. It uses mass media, game localization, environmental text translation, and linguistic dominance to drill "America" into the minds of all citizens of the world, framing itself as the sole protagonist of history.
This behavior is not isolated to Latin America. We see the exact same cultural supremacy wielded against Russia and the former Soviet sphere. Western media systematically flattens Russian history and cultural nuance, reducing complex geopolitical realities to caricatures in their entertainment and political discourse. Just as the US monopolizes the concept of "America" to erase the sovereignty of Latin nations, the Anglo-American bloc weaponizes global media to demonize Russian identity and assert an unquestionable, unipolar worldview.
When an earlier version of this essay was written, one could still speak of the Pink Tide with a measure of hope. Honesty demands a revision. The tides of our continent rise and recede: the first wave of Chávez, Lula, the Kirchners, Correa, Evo, and Mujica gave way to restoration; a second, paler wave crested in the early 2020s; and by 2026 the waters have withdrawn once more. Javier Milei governs Argentina with a chainsaw and his gaze fixed on Washington; the far-right José Antonio Kast now occupies La Moneda in Chile; Ecuador, Bolivia, and Costa Rica have all handed their presidencies to the right in their most recent elections; and in June 2026, Colombia crowned the sequence by electing Abelardo de la Espriella—a Trump-endorsed admirer of Bukele's mega-prisons—by the narrowest runoff margin in its history. The Nobel Committee, for its part, awarded the 2025 Peace Prize to Venezuela's María Corina Machado, who dedicated it to Donald Trump. One could not satirize this era if one tried.
4. The Architecture of Integration: Real Flags, Real Blocs
Before the fictional South American Federation became a video game villain, the South American peoples made genuine, painstaking attempts to build the kind of continental unity that US entertainment found so threatening. These efforts left behind institutions, treaties, and flags—a material record of the aspiration to sovereignty. The most significant predecessor of all these projects was the dream of Simón Bolívar: a Gran Colombia, a unified South American republic that would negotiate with the rest of the world as an equal. That dream was partitioned out of existence by the 1830s. What followed was nearly two centuries of fragmented, individually weak republics—precisely the condition the Monroe Doctrine was designed to maintain.
The APRA (Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana), founded by Peruvian political leader Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre in 1924, was among the first modern movements to propose a continental unity flag. Its design—a red field with the full American continent outlined in a yellow circle—was later adapted into a South-America-only variant that traveled all the way to the UNASUR inauguration ceremony, where Peruvian President Alan García gave the flag to Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, with Brazilian President Lula da Silva seated and applauding beside them.
The following table catalogs the principal integration bodies and their associated flags, from the oldest surviving common-market mechanism to the most recent attempts at political union.
| Flag | Body | Founded | Type | Status | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
Mercosur Mercado Común del Sur |
1991 | Common market / customs union | Active | Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay (Venezuela suspended 2017). The most durable of all integration structures; its twelve-star design and "Sur" branding likely influenced the Ghosts Federation flag. |
 |
South American Union Comunidad Sudamericana de Naciones |
2002 | Political community (precursor to UNASUR) | Dissolved (became UNASUR) | Structurally the closest visual precedent to the Ghosts Federation flag—strikingly similar in composition and likely a direct visual source for the game's designers. |
 |
UNASUR Unión de Naciones Suramericanas |
2008 | Intergovernmental union | Largely dismantled (2018–2020) | The flagship integration project of the Pink Tide era. Headquartered in Quito; aimed at a regional parliament, common defense council, and development bank. Functionally dissolved when right-wing governments walked out in 2018–2020. |
 |
CELAC Comunidad de Estados Latinoamericanos y Caribeños |
2010 | Regional forum | Active (reduced) | The broadest umbrella—all 33 nations of Latin America and the Caribbean. Notably excludes the US and Canada by design, making it the only major hemispheric forum to do so. Has served as the venue for Latin American-EU summits and China-CELAC dialogues. |
 |
Parlatino Parlamento Latinoamericano y Caribeño |
Founded 1964; institutionalized 2005 | Regional parliamentary assembly | Active | The Latin American Parliament, bearing the shape of South and Central America surrounded by wreaths—a motif also visible on Federation soldier berets in Call of Duty: Ghosts. |
 |
CDS Consejo de Defensa Sudamericano |
2008 | Defense cooperation body (within UNASUR) | Dismantled with UNASUR | UNASUR's defense arm, first proposed by Venezuela and Brazil—the same two countries that anchor the fictional Federation's founding. The CDS stated explicitly it had no intention of forming a NATO-like offensive alliance. |
 |
CDS (with UNASUR insignia) | 2008 | — | — | The CDS in combined insignia with the UNASUR logo, as displayed at formal sessions. |
 |
CDS in session | — | — | — | The body the game's Federation army implicitly replaces with a militarized caricature. The real CDS was a deliberative council, not an offensive alliance. |
 |
PROSUR Foro para el Progreso de América del Sur |
2019 | Political forum (no treaty) | Largely inactive | Founded in Santiago in March 2019 by Piñera and Duque as an explicit replacement for UNASUR, designed ideologically against Venezuela and in alignment with Washington. Has no treaty, permanent secretariat, institutions, or budget. By 2026 it had effectively been forgotten. |
Nowhere is the wreckage of the integration project more visible than in the history of UNASUR itself. Founded in Brasília in May 2008, it was the most ambitious institutional expression of the Pink Tide: a treaty-based intergovernmental organization encompassing all twelve South American nations, with a permanent Secretariat in Quito and a headquarters designed by Uruguayan architect Rafael Viñoly. Its chief patrons were Hugo Chávez, Lula da Silva, and Néstor Kirchner. Its achievements were real: it mediated the 2010 Ecuador constitutional crisis, created the South American Defense Council and the Bank of the South, and developed mechanisms for election observation, public health coordination, and infrastructure planning across a continent historically divided by colonial-era borders.
Between 2018 and 2020, as right-wing governments took office across the continent, those same governments withdrew from UNASUR one by one. In March 2019, in Santiago, Sebastián Piñera and Iván Duque convened the founding of PROSUR—officially framed as a more "flexible" forum but explicitly designed to exclude Venezuela and align with Washington. Ecuador, under Lenín Moreno, even demanded the UNASUR headquarters back. When a partial revival was attempted in 2023, following Lula's return in Brazil, it was effectively ended when Javier Milei took office in December 2023 and immediately distanced Argentina from the bloc. Where Bolívar dreamed of one great American nation, the North prefers a continent of disconnected clients.
CELAC—the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States—has fared better precisely because it makes fewer demands. Founded in 2010 as the broadest of all regional integration structures, it encompasses all 33 nations of Latin America and the Caribbean and excludes the United States and Canada by design, making it the only major forum in the hemisphere to do so. This was not incidental. CELAC was conceived as a successor to the Rio Group and as an alternative to the OAS, which Latin American governments of the left had long criticized as a vehicle for US foreign policy influence. Its practical powers have always been limited—it is a forum, not a treaty organization—but its continuity across political cycles reflects the fact that even governments aligned with Washington found it useful to maintain a space for hemispheric dialogue that did not require sitting alongside the United States.
PROSUR, by contrast, has proven so hollow that history has already moved on from it. Founded with no treaty obligations, no permanent secretariat, no budget, and no mechanisms for conflict resolution or election observation, it was institutionally an empty vessel from the start—a political signal, not an institution. By 2026, several of its founding members have changed governments, others have withdrawn, and the body receives no meaningful diplomatic or media attention. The contrast with UNASUR—which had a headquarters, a bank, a defense council, and a decade of genuine institutional history—could not be starker.
5. The Tides and Their Consequences
And then came January 3, 2026—a date that should be seared into the memory of every American, from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. In the small hours of the morning, some 150 US aircraft launched from twenty bases across the hemisphere bombed northern Venezuela, blinded its air defenses, and delivered an assault force onto the residence of a sitting head of state. Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were dragged from their home, flown to the USS Iwo Jima, and paraded into a Manhattan courtroom two days later to answer "narcoterrorism" charges—the same script rehearsed on Panama's Noriega in 1990. Trump, who watched the raid live from Mar-a-Lago, posted a photograph of the blindfolded Maduro on his social network, hailed the operation as a historic display of military might, and announced that the United States would "run" Venezuela until a transition to its liking. Thirty-two Cubans and much of Maduro's guard died defending the residence. Within weeks, the interim government installed in Caracas had signed a hydrocarbons law granting foreign companies sweeping rights over Venezuelan oil—the war aim Trump himself had stated with disarming candor. Whatever one's opinion of Maduro, and this essay does not require one, the precedent is monstrous: the armed abduction of a sitting American president by a foreign power, in the twenty-first century, dressed up as judicial process. They named it Operation "Absolute Resolve." Venezuela's interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, said it plainly in her first address: "what was done to Venezuela can be done to anyone."
Meanwhile, inside the United States itself, the war has turned inward—against Latinos. When Los Tigres del Norte sang, in the corrido that opens this essay, "I did not cross the border, the border crossed me," they were recalling 1848 and the eight states severed from Mexico. In 2025 and 2026, the border crossed them again—this time wearing a mask and tactical gear. Congress handed the Department of Homeland Security more than 170 billion dollars for detention and deportation; ICE more than doubled its ranks; and roughly 400,000 people were arrested in a single year, even though the government's own internal figures showed that barely 14 percent had any charge or conviction for violent crime. Home Depot parking lots, car washes, churches, and schools—stripped of their former protected status—became hunting grounds; Marines and the National Guard were deployed against Los Angeles as though it were a foreign capital. The Supreme Court itself green-lit roving stops that may weigh a person's "apparent ethnicity"—the color of one's skin restored, by the highest court of the land of the free, as grounds for suspicion. And in Minneapolis, in January 2026, federal agents shot dead Renée Good, a US citizen and mother of three, in her own car, and weeks later Alex Pretti, a nurse who was filming them—ten bullets for the crime of bearing witness. Today, by Pew's count, more than one in ten Latinos in the United States—a population 82 percent of whom are citizens or lawfully present—has taken to carrying a passport inside their own country, while the administration petitions the courts to abolish birthright citizenship itself. "Who is the invader here?" the corrido asked. The question now answers itself.
The US will fight with every means available—political, economic, or cultural—to maintain global dominance. Legitimizing themselves through speech and repetition, they do not want to be just one more country in America. They want to be all of America.
And yet the multipolar horizon has not closed. BRICS has expanded across the Global South until it encompasses nearly half of humanity; Russia continues to anchor the case for a world of sovereign civilizations rather than a single metropole surrounded by tributaries; and Venezuela itself had deepened its strategic partnership with Moscow only months before the bombs fell on Caracas. States do not invest in suppressing what they consider irrelevant—only what they fear they cannot control.
If we remain submissive, if we don't question the consensus they have formed, this erasure will persist. It is up to us, through our media, our archives, and our daily speech, to reject this. Latin Americans, who shouldn't be referred to as such unless in contrast to Anglo-Americans, should protest and request the right to be simply Americans—nothing more, and nothing less. They can rename a gulf by decree and abduct a president by night; they cannot decree away a hemisphere, nor its memory.
Long live America, and long live Americans.
