From the Latin homeland , the homeland is the native or adoptive land that is linked to a person by emotional, legal and / or historical ties. The homeland can be, therefore, the place of birth, the town of the ancestors or the country where a subject settled from a certain moment in his life.
For example: "I have lived in Australia for fifteen years, but my homeland is Colombia" , "Anarchists consider themselves men of the world and affirm that they have no homeland" , "A soldier must be willing to give his life for his homeland" .
When it comes to an affective bond with a country, the homeland is often discovered in adulthood, since it is necessary to travel abroad and lead an active social life to discover that special bond, so difficult to describe and justify. how it feels to where we think we should have been born.
When trying to establish clarifications and limits to the concept of homeland, ideological and political notions come into play that, even, can be modified over the years. According to certain positions, the homeland is always associated with a nation-state; This is the same as saying that the territory of one's own nation is strongly linked to all the values of the nation.
In other cases, the homeland is rather a cultural and historical heritage shared by people who may be geographically separated. This would be the case of the gypsy homeland, which does not have a physical center.
The most symbolic meaning of homeland allows the term to be used to refer to different groups or social groups: "The soccer homeland mourns the death of the former goalkeeper of the German team" , "The government has the obligation to set limits to the financial homeland to avoid millionaire profits without investing a peso in the country " .
As is the case in various regions of Latin America, it is common for the term mother country to continue to be valid for years, decades, and even centuries after the independence of a country. In Argentina, for example, many people refer to Spain in this way.
Within the family of this term, there is the concept of patriotism , a way of thinking that strongly unites a person with their homeland. It is a matter of deep pride in being part of a territory (both the native and an adopted one) and is equivalent to the feeling of attachment and admiration for one's own family. It is important to note that its use should not have negative connotations, since being a patriot does not indicate being capable of anything to defend the homeland, but rather feeling a strong bond with its cultural traits and with its history.
There are two opposing positions towards patriotism: on the one hand, a large percentage of people feel such an attachment to their homeland that they flatly rule out the possibility of living abroad; at the other extreme are those who think that these kinds of feelings are responsible for wars, xenophobia, racism and genocides, among other evils of humanity. As always, a swath of the population is in the midst of these visions, indifferent to their arguments.