A ' () is a

country subdivision ISO 3166-2 is part of the ISO 3166 standard published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), and defines codes for identifying the principal subdivisions (e.g., provinces or states) of all countries coded in ISO 3166-1. Th ...

in several

Latin American Latin Americans (; ) are the citizenship, citizens of Latin American countries (or people with cultural, ancestral or national origins in Latin America). Latin American countries and their Latin American diaspora, diasporas are Metroethnicity, ...

countries, mostly as top-level subnational divisions (except in Argentina). It is usually simply translated as " department".

Current use

Ten countries currently have '.

Past use

Mexico in the 1830s was divided into 24 ', which were first-level divisions. It was during an attempt to centralize the government.

References

Types of administrative division {{Geo-term-stub pt:Departamento