Sunday, September 13, 2009

Western World and christian civilization


In this map , Samuel Huntignton divides the christian world into 3 civilizations : the west , orthodox civilization and Latin America .
Well it's so understandable the division between Eastern(Orthodox) and western christianity (Catholicism and protestantism ) but what about Latin America and the west ???
If we take the basics of a civilization : Religion , History , Language , Race ....
Latin America is the catholic reservoir in the world with more than 450 million catholics so it's a western religion
Ethnically , Europeans are the largest single group, and they and people of part-European ancestry combine for approximately 80% of the population (CIA - The World Factbook -- Field Listing - Ethnic groups). Only Bolivia and Peru have a majority Amerindian .
Historically all Modern latin american countries are the result of Spanish colonization or other european colonial power (portugal), we can't deny the precolonial era or what we call pre-Columbian civilization , but what remains from it??
Finally Spanish and Portuguese are the predominent languages of latin america... and both of theses languages are romance european languages.
So i think Latin America is an integrant part of the west with a particularity that we call the Hispanidad which is the community formed by all the people and countries that share a common Hispanic-heritage and cultural pattern, but it's like the anglo-saxon culture inside the west.

1 comment:

  1. I have some reserve with what u said about the eastern orthodox world. It is totally part of the same civilisation that the west is part of. Sure there is difference. But the west without constotinople with be a no brainer!! A big portition of the father of the church are from the east! And Russia has being impacted and has impacted much of the west! for me every country that a least have the athens-Rome-Jerusalem axis is part of one and same civilisation! This would include The americas and all europe + most of the arabic christian world!!!!

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