>>211676611Because many people today are Americanized, i.e., they see certain aspects of the world (particularly culture and politics) through Anglo conceptualizations.
In the Anglo worldview: West = Anglo Protestant culture.
No non-Americanized Spaniard, Portuguese or Italian considers Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay or Chile to be part of "another civilization".
Some places, like Bolivia, remain indeed too Amerindian and can therefore be considered rather exotic. But no Spaniard moving to Buenos Aires or Mexico City sees himself as moving to a different civilization, and I daresay even in Bolivia the Spaniard will feel rather at home, at a place where he may not be the most typical person but doesn't stand out either (I haven't been to Bolivia, but I've been to the Amazon and that's how it feels there -- perhaps Bolivia is more radically different, I don't know).
If any poster here disagrees, they represent a very small minority, and are probably being dishonest with us or even with themselves -- this is specially noticeable in Spaniards and Portuguese who wish to be seen as "whites" by the Germanics. No normal Spaniard reading Neruda or Jorge Luis Borges thinks to himself: "Boy, these Chileans and Argentinians are truly an exotic people from a different civilization!"
This is not to say a Spaniard sees Argentina as being "the same" as Spain. They don't even see certain parts of Spain as being the same as their own. It simply means they don't see it as part of a different civilization, and probably recognize they have more to do with Argentinians than with the Finns or the Icelandic, even though these later are supposed to be Western and the Argies supposed to be "exotic Latinos" (in the Anglo conceptualization).
That's also why you have such absurd ideas like Japan, an Asian country, being "Western", as well as contradictions, such as rock and roll (Anglo-African music) being "Western" while samba (Luso-African music) is seen as "exotic".
