_The Idea of Latin America_ is a geo-political manifesto which insists on the need to leave behind an idea which belonged to the nation-building mentality of nineteenth-century Europe. * * Charts the history of the concept of Latin America from its emergence in Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century through various permutations to the present day. * Asks what is at stake in the survival of an idea which subdivides the Americas. * Reinstates the indigenous peoples and migrations excluded by the image of a homogenous Latin America with defined borders. * Insists on the pressing need to leave behind an idea which belonged to the nation-building mentality of nineteenth-century Europe.