Latin?

One of the issues that has come to fore recently especially in Latin America is what is a "Latin"
traditional definitions in the literary world have grouped all the Romance Language Literatures (Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian & Catalan) into one Culture zone because of cultural similarities, Catholicism, origins in Roman Civilization et cetera. But of late the term Latin has restricted to Spanish Speakers and this has caused me to ask some questions. We in the USA tend to look at Latin America through the prism of Mexico because Mexicans are our largest Latin American ethnic group but one of the facts about Latin America that is ignored by many is the intense cultural exchange between Latin American writers in Spanish and Portuguese and all of Latin Europe, France, Italy, Spain and Portugal and also with Latin speaking Africa as well through Brazil. 
 
Another part of this is the fact that in South America, especially Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay the influence of Europe on the literary scene is profound and that many South Americans speak French, or Italian as well.  The result is that Latin American literature is defined more in relation to Europe than to the USA. In fact American poetry in many ways is a poor relation compared to poetry in Latin America.
 
Mexican writing tends to be defined against US writing because if the interplay between our two cultures but this is not the case in South America which are more apt to know more about French or Italian or even German literature than American writers.  I think that is behooved many American writers to examine the culture that is encapsulated by the world's 1.1 Billion Romance language speakers and to understand that the US does not define their work or world.