
Mika F
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America is a continent, divided in three sub-continents: North America, Central America, and South America.
That's why Latin Americans don't like it when the people in the US call this country "America". It should be called The United States -if you want to add "of America" is fine- but people in the other countries of America, feel the US stole their name.
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Luis A
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You will get a different answer depending on who you ask. For a US resident, Americans are the citizens of the US. For them, the rest of the American continent is "the Americas".
Also, for them, Canada is part of North America but some of them will argue that Mexico is not. A Yankee is somebody from the Northeast of the U.S. (New York, etc.) and that name is a left over from the Civil War, a Southerner somebody from the South of the US, like Georgia (in the old days any state from the Confederate states, again the Civil war) and the Midwest is the big area between the Mississippi and the Rocky mountains, including states like Kansas, Missouri, etc. The West coast would be California, etc.
The people from the Midwest are also called from the Heartland (typical more conservative people when compared to somebody from the east or west coast.
If you ask almost anybody else in the Americas, they will say that America is the complete continent formed by South America (South of Panama), Central America (South from Mexico) and North America (Canada, U.S. and Mexico)
Now, going to the last part of your question, Mexico, U.S. and Canada form part of the NAFTA which is similar to the EU in Europe. South American countries have something similar called Mercosur formed by Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay and a few others. Essentially the aim is to have within those groups sort of a free commerce region, although in practice is far from that. |