Wednesday, April 06, 2005
“On Language” 4/6: ‘Hispanic’ or ‘Latino’?
My Tribune column today explores the surprisingly complex issue of whether Americans of Spanish-speaking background should be called Hispanics, Latinos, or something else:
There’s no ideal solution for Americans, Benedet says. “There’s no one term that can adequately define all the peoples and the cultures. It’s really quite a problem,” she says.
“`Chicano’ is too exclusive to Mexicans. `Hispanic’ has too close a tie with colonial roots,” she says. Using “Mexican-American” or “Cuban-American,” Benedet adds, implies “you’re not a culture in your own right.”
Even “Latino”—which rose to prominence in part as an anti-imperialist alternative to “Hispanic”—does not have a spotless history, Benedet says. She notes that the French used it in their attempted conquest of Mexico in the 19th Century. And “Latino”—the Spanish equivalent of “Latin”—has strong associations with the Roman Empire and medieval Europe, where the Latin language thrived. “Latino” also is gender exclusive, although it is often used as shorthand for both males and females (who are “Latinas”).
Hispanic’ or `Latino’: What to call our largest minority?
Chicago Tribune, April 6, 2005 Wednesday, 799 words
By Nathan Bierma
temporary link/permanent preview
Link: Census page
Virginia Cueto of Hispanic Trends magazine adds this by e-mail:
As I expressed in our previous correspondence, there is one angle that
is not widely recognized or discussed; and that is that the U.S.
Hispanic or Latino community is a distinct entity and recognized as such
when demographers speak of Spanish-speaking communities. In fact,
Hispanic Americans rank as the fifth largest Spanish-speaking community
in the world, behind Spain, Mexico, Colombia and Argentina.Just as the terms “Americans” or “the American people” are accepted as
valid and as encompassing the wide variety of thought, opinion and
heritage of all regions of the U.S., so we can use “Hispanic” or
“Latino” to describe those of Spanish or Latin American heritage now
settled in the U.S. Like all other immigrants, once established in the
U.S., Hispanics both influence and are influenced by American culture.
A co-worker’s husband, who is of Salvadoran descent, e-mailed this:
By calling all spanish-speaking groups hispanic you are putting all nationalities together. While there is truth to that, especially since our language did originate in Spain, the customs, culture and even food are very much different. However, I would imagine that would be true of Arabs. We tend to include in that catagory - Iraqis, Iranians, Afganistans and so forth. Each cultre is different but we call them all Arabs. We even refer to that area as the Arab World.
Hispanic, I my opinion, should be the umbrella that all spanish speaking groups fall under. The sub groups should then be Cuban, Mexican, Salvadorean and so on. Chicano and Latina does not really represent a country or nationality. A chicano/a is a slang term for a second generation mexican-american while Latino/a is also slang term for second generation Latin American desendent. That would be like you filling out a survey and when asked about your nationality you wrote down “White Girl.”
While our language did originate in Spain, I would disagree where the article says that Hispanic relates to Spain. I don’t think it does. Being called Spaniard relates to Spain.