Dangerous Misconceptions about Latin America and “Third World Countries”
Latitude is defined as “a measurement on a globe or map of location north or south of the Equator” (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2018). A unit of measurement created by the Ancient Greeks using astronomical observations, latitude was created to aid sailors in navigation. Thousands of years later, just as Medieval Christians believed that the Earth was the center of the universe, so too did European cartographers believe that the center of Christianity was positioned higher on the map of the earth than other ‘heathen’ countries.