Latin Americans
Latin Americans (; ; ) are the citizens of Latin American countries (or people with cultural, ancestral or national origins in Latin America). Latin American countries and their diasporas are multi-ethnic and multi-racial. Latin Americans are a pan-ethnicity consisting of people of different ethnic and national backgrounds. As a result, some Latin Americans do not take their nationality as an ethnicity, but identify themselves with a combination of their nationality, ethnicity and their ancestral origins. Aside from the indigenous population, all Latin Americans have some Old World ancestors who arrived since 1492. Latin America has the largest diasporas of Spaniards, Portuguese, Africans, Italians, Lebanese and Japanese in the world. The region also has large German (second largest after the United States), French, Palestinian (largest outside the Arab states), Chinese and Jewish diasporas. The specific ethnic and/or racial composition varies from country to country and diaspora community to diaspora community: many have a predominance of mixed indigenous and European descent or mestizo, population; in others, native Americans are a majority; some are mostly inhabited by people of European ancestry; others are primarily mulatto. The largest single group are white Latin Americans. Together with the people of part European ancestry, they combine for almost the totality of the population. Latin Americans and their descendants can be found almost everywhere in the world, particularly in densely populated urban areas. The most important migratory destinations for Latin Americans are found in the United States, Spain, France, Canada and Italy. Definition Latin America ( or Latinoamérica; ; ) is the region of the Americas where Romance languages (i.e., those derived from Latin)—particularly Spanish and Portuguese, as well as French—are primarily spoken.<ref>"Latin America."The New Oxford Dictionary of English. Pearsall, J., ed. 2001. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press; p. 1040: "The parts of the American continent where Spanish or Portuguese is the main national language (i.e.Mexico and, in effect, the whole of Central and South America including many of the Caribbean islands)."</ref> It includes 21 countries or territories: Mexico in North America; Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama in Central America; Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, Chile, Argentina and Uruguay in South America; and Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico in the Caribbean—in summary, Hispanic America, plus Brazil and Haiti. Canada and the United States, despite having sizeable Romance-speaking communities, are almost never included in the definition, primarily for being predominantly English-speaking Anglosphere countries. Latin America, therefore, can be defined as all those parts of the Americas that were once part of the Spanish, Portuguese or French colonial empires, namely Spanish America, Colonial Brazil and New France. Demographics Ethnic and Racial groups The population of Latin America comprises a variety of ancestries, ethnic groups and races, making the region one of the most diverse in the world. The specific composition varies from country to country: many have a predominance of mixed European and native American, or mestizo, population; in others, native Americans are a majority; some are dominated by inhabitants