Who decided what dances should be considered Latin American in Ballroom dance?

Question

Isn't it strange that in competitive Latin American Ballroom dance it consists of Rumba, Cha Cha, Samba, Paso and Jive. Jive isnt Latin, it is swing. Also why isn't Salsa or Mambo or Lambada there as they are Latin? How can a competitive Latin American dancer not do Salsa as one of the dances. It seems strange.

Answer 1

I think it was greatly influenced by the decisions of Blackpool organizing commeette, the oldest and most prestigious competition in the world. Originally, only Standard category existed, and the dances were different from what they are now. It was Slowfox, Waltz and Two Step. It wasn't even a category, it was all single dance events. Latin category was danced at Blackpool for the first time in 1962, and I'm pretty sure the dances were different than they are now. Eventually, some Ballroom organizations had formed, and rules were written. 10 dances as we know them now are danced according to IDSF rules, but other less known organizations could have a different set of rules and different set of dances for all I know.
I think, and it is only a speculation, the dances that happened to emerge Latin Ballroom are the ones that were extremely popular at the time when competitive Ballroom dancing was forming. Swing, for example, was so popular it simply couldn't have been left out. They had to put it in Latin category because it doesn't into Standard at all. Samba was popularized by Fred Astire and Ginger Rogers. Naturally, if Fred and Ginger were dancing it, everyone else had to attempt the same.
Here is a couple of articles that still don't quite answer your question, but at least give you some idea:
http://blackpooldancefestival.com/blackpool_dance_festival_website.htm
http://www-staff.it.uts.edu.au/~don/pubs/latin.html

Answer 2

It would be nice if we still had guys like Victor Silvester to answer these things for us, but my understanding is that the categories were already there before some of the dances. Jive got put in that half because it made more sense than putting it in Standard. I dance mostly American style, and we have mambo as one of our major rhythm dances, and salsa is more or less a mambo variant. Likewise, in International style even mambo is considered just a variant (a fast one!) of rumba, and it's a perfectly respectable social dance, just not one of the big ten.
I'd like to see somebody write a good concise history on the subject myself. Cha cha cha is just over fifty years old, for instance, not as old as ballroom competitions, and it would be nice to know a bit more of how the Carioca done by Fred & Ginger in "Flying Down to Rio" developed into the currently competed samba.
Back to the rumba, if I could, I think competitive dancing can be criticised for being too choreographed, because one essentially never sees basic school figures in rumba at advanced levels, and certainly nothing that looks much like salsa but slower. I'm not holding my breath waiting for that to happen, though.