Where is Mexico?
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Is it in North America or Central America?
I have always been taught that Central America starts from Mexico and ends at the border of Colombia.
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North America is a continent comprised of Canada, USA, and Mexico. Central America is a region that overlaps both North America and South America.
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Mexico is not far from Florida, in east-central Missouri, in the Midwestern region of the United States.
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@admiral_p Central America is part of North America. It includes all the countries in North America except for Canada, the USA, and Mexico.
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@GuyWhoKilledBear I just got into a mild argument with some Mexicans because I said that to us they are Central America (mostly due to language and Hispanic ethnicity, I suppose).
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@admiral_p Who is us? This USian knows they're North Americans...
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@Captain Careful, he outranks you.
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@error said in Where is Mexico?:
@Captain Careful, he outranks you.
@Captain's status: Deodorant is effective.
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@Captain Europe. Italy specifically.
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@admiral_p said in Where is Mexico?:
@Captain Europe. Italy specifically.
Definitely not to Poland. Here we're taught well.
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French wiki (which I'm using as a reference to common use in French -- my geography lessons are too far away for me to remember what's being taught in school, and wiki matches our day-to-day use of the terms) says that Mexico is not part of Central America.
Although it says that geographically part of southern Mexico is in Central America, so it's not entirely excluded (the part south of the isthmus of Tehuantepec, although I guess
ically you might want to say east of that isthmus rather than south since the isthmus itself is more or less north-south?).It also says that politically, Central America is (loosely) the successor to the Spanish Captaincy General of Guatemala (which apparently at some point included Chiapas, so again a bit of Mexico).
Still according to the French wiki, Central America is part of neither North nor South America (i.e. America is divided in North, Central and South without overlap).
So to answer your question, for us Mexico is clearly in North America, although depending on your definition of Central America you could include some of the southern bits of Mexico in it.
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@remi Italian wiki states that the UN includes Mexico in Central America. I remember teachers telling me that Mexico was Central American (and after all Mesoamerica, which comprises large parts of Mexico, basically means Middle America - which, as a definition, goes from Mexico to Ecuador and maybe Colombia). Still it appears Mexicans are really sensitive about being classed as Central American, much more than Hungarians being classed as Eastern Europeans instead of Central Europeans.
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@admiral_p said in Where is Mexico?:
@remi Italian wiki states that the UN includes Mexico in Central America. I remember teachers telling me that Mexico was Central American (and after all Mesoamerica, which comprises large parts of Mexico, basically means Middle America - which, as a definition, goes from Mexico to Ecuador and maybe Colombia). Still it appears Mexicans are really sensitive about being classed as Central American, much more than Hungarians being classed as Eastern Europeans instead of Central Europeans.
Culturally, politically and ethnically that makes sense. Just not from a physical geography / plate tectonic POV.
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@remi said in Where is Mexico?:
Still according to the French wiki, Central America is part of neither North nor South America (i.e. America is divided in North, Central and South without overlap).
And Polish Wikipedia states that Central America is part of North America.
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@boomzilla are continents a geological concept or a geopolitical one? Europe doesn't really exist as a continent, geologically speaking. There is only one large continent called Eurasia (with India being a "subcontinent"). In fact the eastern boundaries of Europe are sort of fuzzy (usually it's the Urals, down to the Caspian Sea, with the Caucasus in Europe and everything south out of it, but I've seen other definitions which put Caucasus outside of Europe and in Asia).
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@boomzilla I guess my question is: why are Mexicans so sensitive about it?
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@admiral_p said in Where is Mexico?:
Is it in North America or Central America?
I have always been taught that Central America starts from Mexico and ends at the border of Colombia.Well, that depends on which of the three Mexicos you're talking about.
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@admiral_p said in Where is Mexico?:
@boomzilla are continents a geological concept or a geopolitical one?
Yes!
@boomzilla I guess my question is: why are Mexicans so sensitive about it?
I guess they prefer to be associated with Canada and the US instead of Panama, Guatemala, etc.
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When I was a kid watching Hollywood tv series and movies, when the characters said something about america I always thought they were talking about all the Americas, and there was no internet to tell I was wrong. We were a really proud and united continent, in my mind.
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@sockpuppet7 in Italy continents are five (like on the Olympic flag): Europe, Asia, Africa, America (North and South) and Oceania. Sometimes we add in Antarctica as a sixth continent, sometimes we just ignore it. To us, America is one big continent.
If you count continents like USians do, Central America is not even a thing really. For consistency, I mean. You have North America as a continent. South America as another continent. Then Central America is a region, but the name makes it look like a different continent.
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@admiral_p That is how we're taught here too, hence the confusion.
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@kazitor said in Where is Mexico?:
@admiral_p said in Where is Mexico?:
Oceania
E_NOT_A_CONTINENT_IN_ANY_SENSE_OF_THE_WORDI get the impression that's usually used to disambiguate Australia-the-country from Australia-the-continent.
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@Gąska said in Where is Mexico?:
@remi said in Where is Mexico?:
Still according to the French wiki, Central America is part of neither North nor South America (i.e. America is divided in North, Central and South without overlap).
And Polish Wikipedia states that Central America is part of North America.
My point (granted, I did not make it clearly at all) and the reason I referred explicitly to the French wiki (as opposed to the English one or any internationally recognized classification such as the UN) was to illustrate that different cultures use slightly different definitions of the same geographical terms (which is how I read @admiral_p's question in the first place). You're just showing that another culture that hadn't been included in the discussion until now has a different definition.
Now we could discuss why different cultures came to slightly different definitions, but it seems unlikely any of us will really be able to shed much light on that, none of us being historians/linguists.
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@boomzilla said in Where is Mexico?:
@admiral_p said in Where is Mexico?:
@boomzilla are continents a geological concept or a geopolitical one?
Yes!
I would have said "no", i.e. neither of those. To me they're a cultural and historical concept that were built using a bit of everything, but cannot really be said to have a grounding in either one.
There is some similarity here with "planets" and the whole "is Pluto a planet?" thing, but I think the best analogy is with other geographical terms such as "region".
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@remi said in Where is Mexico?:
So to answer your question, for us Mexico is clearly in North America, although depending on your definition of Central America you could include some of the southern bits of Mexico in it.
As a U.S.-ian, this is in line with my definition, too.
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The way I think of it (and this is not a view shared by the unwashed masses) is that anything north of the Panama canal is North America, and anything south of the Panama Canal is South America. Prior to the Panama canal, there was only one continent there.
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I think the better question is where is Central America. There's no question of where Mexico falls. I'm inclined to go with Panama being part of North America because using the canal division leaves Panama in two continents and that's weird.
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@Zenith said in Where is Mexico?:
using the canal division leaves Panama in two continents and that's weird
See Also: Istanbul
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@mott555 And Russia and Kansas City. The only solution is a space laser...
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@Zenith said in Where is Mexico?:
Kansas City
This one is easy. There are two cities named Kansas City.
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@mott555 Turkey is further east (completely further east, actually) than countries like Azerbaijan, which is Turkic (not Turkish but a related people). The latter is in Europe. The former isn't.
Besides, the part of Turkey which faces the Aegean sea was an important Greek dominion (if you can call it such), so important that it was the battleground for the (fictional) Iliad, and with opposing sides which somewhat shared a common culture (it wasn't like the Greeks vs the Persians).
Continents are a historical and political abstraction and it isn't as geographically related as it is culturally or opportunistically (which is why, according to Wikipedia, the Russians count Europe and Asia as one, and Europeans do not).
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@mott555
So we solve it by creating multiple Mexico's? Lets call one of them New Mexico to keep the distinction
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@jinpa said in Where is Mexico?:
The way I think of it (and this is not a view shared by the unwashed masses) is that anything north of the Panama canal is North America, and anything south of the Panama Canal is South America. Prior to the Panama canal, there was only one continent there.
This raises some questions about Asia and Africa.
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@Gąska in fact I can see an argument for Africa (and South America too, but the idea of calling two separate continents with the same name and two different geographical qualifiers seems crass to me). Africa is a different tectonic plate, it is connected to Asia through a tiny sliver of land, etc. I'd be fine with calling Europe and Asia just Eurasia.
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@Gąska said in Where is Mexico?:
@jinpa said in Where is Mexico?:
The way I think of it (and this is not a view shared by the unwashed masses) is that anything north of the Panama canal is North America, and anything south of the Panama Canal is South America. Prior to the Panama canal, there was only one continent there.
This raises some questions about Asia and Africa.
Only historically. I would have regarded them as one continent prior to the Suez Canal.
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@Zenith said in Where is Mexico?:
I think the better question is where is Central America.
Different definitions
"Central America" may mean different things to various people, based upon different contexts:
- The United Nations geoscheme for the Americas defines the region as all states of mainland North America south of the United States and specifically includes all of Mexico.[8]
- Middle America is usually thought to comprise Mexico to the north of the 7 states of Central America as well as Colombia and Venezuela to the south. Usually, the whole of the Caribbean to the northeast, and sometimes the Guyanas, are also included.
- According to one source, the term "Central America" was used as a synonym for "Middle America" at least as recently as 1962.[9]
- In Ibero-America (Spanish and Portuguese speaking American countries), the Americas is considered a single continent, and Central America is considered a subcontinent separate from North America comprising the seven countries south of Mexico and north of Colombia.[1]
- For the people living in the five countries formerly part of the Federal Republic of Central America there is a distinction between the Spanish language terms "América Central" and "Centroamérica". While both can be translated into English as "Central America", "América Central" is generally used to refer to the geographical area of the seven countries between Mexico and Colombia, while "Centroamérica" is used when referring to the former members of the Federation emphasizing the shared culture and history of the region.
- In Portuguese as a rule and occasionally in Spanish and other languages, the entirety of the Antilles is often included in the definition of Central America (the Portuguese Wikipedia article for the Antilles offers, in fact, América Central Insular as an alternative name), which is its own region to be distinguished from North America and South America alike. Indeed, the Dominican Republic is a full member of the Central American Integration System.
So unfortunately:—
There's no question of where Mexico falls.
There very much is a question of where Mexico falls.
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@admiral_p said in Where is Mexico?:
I'd be fine with calling Europe and Asia just Eurasia.
Geologically and geomorphologically, it is. That's not the only only definition…
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@dkf said in Where is Mexico?:
@admiral_p said in Where is Mexico?:
I'd be fine with calling Europe and Asia just Eurasia.
Geologically and geomorphologically, it is. That's not the only only definition…
FWIW, in Sri Lankan English (and probably some other places) a person born of one European parent and one Asian (e.g. Sri Lankan) parent is called "Eurasian."
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@remi said in Where is Mexico?:
There is some similarity here with "planets" and the whole "is Pluto a planet?" thing
In that the distinction is clear, but some people refuse to accept it?
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@kazitor there wasn't really a firm definition until Eris was discovered. Then people got to thinking and realised that if Pluto was a planet there wasn't any logical reason not to define several bodies in the asteroid belt as planets too
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@Jaloopa And in addition to that, there are still discussions as to whether this definition is really meaningful (which I guess are the "people [who] refuse to accept it" mentioned by @kazitor).
What I meant is that the "planet" definition is an entirely arbitrary one that incorporates arguments from physics but also history and human psychology and what not, not a "natural" distinction that comes straight from some purely objective classification that would be obvious to any outside observer, which is the same as for "continents" and the reason why I brought it up.
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@kazitor said in Where is Mexico?:
In that the distinction is clear, but some people refuse to accept it?
I don’t get the controversy. First of all because, WTF would you care what exact label is applied to a lump of rock billions of kilometres away, but also because the terminology kind of suggests already that dwarf planets ⊆ planets.
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@Gurth said in Where is Mexico?:
but also because the terminology kind of suggests already that dwarf planets ⊆ planets.
That's not how it works.
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@Gąska Probably not by strict definition, but in common speech, a “foo bar” is a bar that’s distinguished from other bars by being foo. A “red car" is a car that’s red, a “Daily
” is a that’s Daily, a “dwarf planet” is a planet that’s dwarf(-like).
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@Gurth said in Where is Mexico?:
@Gąska Probably not by strict definition, but in common speech, a “foo bar” is a bar that’s distinguished from other bars by being foo. A “red car" is a car that’s red, a “Daily
” is a that’s Daily, a “dwarf planet” is a planet that’s dwarf(-like).A guinea pig is a pig from Guinea, a pineapple is an apple with pines, a firewall is a wall of fire...
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@Gąska said in Where is Mexico?:
@Gurth said in Where is Mexico?:
@Gąska Probably not by strict definition, but in common speech, a “foo bar” is a bar that’s distinguished from other bars by being foo. A “red car" is a car that’s red, a “Daily
” is a that’s Daily, a “dwarf planet” is a planet that’s dwarf(-like).A guinea pig is a pig from Guinea, a pineapple is an apple with pines, a firewall is a wall of fire...
However, an Attorney General is not a general who is attorney, but an attorney who is general.
And there's no martial that is court.
Central America - Wikipedia
