Latino (masculine) and Latina (feminine) as a noun refer mainly to Latin Americans or descendants of Latin Americans living in the United States. As an adjective, the terms refer to things as having ties with Latin America. The related term Hispanic usually includes Spanish Americans too, whereas Latino as a noun sometimes does not. Latino/Latina might include Brazilians, while Hispanic does not. In spite of these distinctions, the terms Latino and Hispanic are often used interchangeably. Preference for Hispanic or Latino varies based on factors such as age and geography.
Usage of the term is mostly limited to the United States and Canada. Latin American people usually refer to themselves by national origin and rarely as Latino as the region does not have a cohesive identity. Because of this, many Latin American scholars, journalists, and Indigenous-rights organizations have objected to the mass-media use of the word to refer to all people of Latin American background.
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Origins
The terms Latino and Latina originated in Ancient Rome. In the English language, the term Latino is a loan word from American Spanish. Its origin is generally given as a shortening of latinoamericano, Spanish for 'Latin American'. The Oxford English Dictionary traces its usage to 1946.
Latino has its origins in the French term Amérique latine, coined in the mid-19th century during the Second Mexican Empire to identify areas of the Americas colonized by Romance-speaking people and used to show affinity with French allies during the Mexican Empire, also termed the Mexican intervention.
By the late 1850s, with the loss of California to Anglo-Americans or the United States, owing to the Mexican–American War, the term latino was being used in local California newspapers such as El Clamor Publico by Californios writing about America latina and Latinoamerica, and identifying themselves as latinos as the abbreviated term for their "hemispheric membership in la raza latina".
Usage
Community usage
Both Hispanic and Latino are generally used to denote people living in the United States. Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco and Mariela Páez write that "Outside the United States, we don't speak of Latinos; we speak of Mexicans, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, and so forth." In Latin America, the term latino is not a common endonym and its usage in Spanish as a demonym is restricted to the Latin American-descended population of the United States, but this is not always the case. The exception is Spain where latino is a common demonym for immigrants from Latin America.
Sociologist Salvador Vidal‑Ortiz and literary scholar Juliana Martínez write that after the U.S. census introduced Hispanic in the 1970s, Latino emerged as "a term of resistance to the explicit colonial relations that 'Hispanic' sets between Spain and countries in Latin America".
Governmental usage
The U.S. government Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has defined Hispanic or Latino people as "a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin, regardless of race". The U.S. census uses the ethnonym Hispanic or Latino to refer to "a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race". The Census Bureau also explains that "[o]rigin can be viewed as the heritage, nationality group, lineage, or country of birth of the person or the person's ancestors before their arrival in the United States. People who identify their origin as Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish may be of any race." Hence the U.S. census and the OMB are using the terms differently. The U.S. census and the OMB use the terms interchangeably, where both terms are synonyms. According to a study by the Pew Research Center, the majority (51%) of Hispanic and Latino Americans prefer to identify with their families' country of origin, while only 24% prefer the term Hispanic or Latino.
Style guides
The AP Stylebook recommends usage of Latino for persons of Spanish-speaking ancestry, as well as persons "from – or whose ancestors were from – ... Latin America, including Brazilians". However, in the recent past, the term Latinos was also applied to people from the Caribbean region, but those from former French, Dutch and British colonies are excluded.
Contrast with Hispanic
Whereas Latino designates someone with roots in Latin America, the term Hispanic in contrast is a demonym that includes Spaniards and other speakers of the Spanish language.
The term Latino was officially adopted in 1997 by the United States Government in the ethnonym Hispanic or Latino, which replaced the single term Hispanic: "Because regional usage of the terms differs – Hispanic is commonly used in the eastern portion of the United States, whereas Latino is commonly used in the western portion."
U.S. official use of the term Hispanic has its origins in the 1970 census. The Census Bureau attempted to identify all Hispanics by use of the following criteria in sampled sets:
Spanish speakers and persons belonging to a household where Spanish was spoken
Persons with Spanish heritage by birth location
Persons who self-identify with Latin America, excluding Brazil, Haiti and French Guiana
Neither Hispanic nor Latino refers to a race, as a person of Latino or Hispanic ethnicity can be of any race. Like non-Latinos, a Latino can be of any race or combination of races: White, Black or African American, Asian American, Native American or Alaskan Native, Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander American, or two or more ethnicities. While Brazilian Americans are not included with Hispanics and Latinos in the government's census population reports, any Brazilian American can report as being Hispanic or Latino since Hispanic or Latino origin is, like race or ethnicity, a matter of self-identification.
Other federal and local government agencies and non-profit organizations include Brazilians and Portuguese in their definition of Hispanic. The U.S. Department of Transportation defines "Hispanic Americans" as: "persons of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Dominican, Central or South American, or other Spanish or Portuguese culture or origin, regardless of race". This definition has been adopted by the Small Business Administration as well as by many federal, state, and municipal agencies for the purposes of awarding government contracts to minority owned businesses.
Debates
The use of the term Latino, despite its increasing popularity, is still highly debated among those who are called by the name. Since the adoption of the term by the U.S. Census Bureau and its subsequent widespread use, there have been several controversies and disagreements, especially in the United States and, to a lesser extent, in Mexico and other Spanish-speaking countries. Many Latin American scholars, journalists, and indigenous-rights organizations have objected to the mass-media use of the word Latino, pointing out that such ethnonyms are optional and should be used only to describe people involved in the practices, ideologies, and identity politics of their supporters. Journalist Rodolfo Acuña writes:
When and why the Latino identity came about is a more involved story. Essentially, politicians, the media, and marketers find it convenient to deal with the different U.S. Spanish-speaking people under one umbrella. However, many people with Spanish surnames contest the term Latino. They claim it is misleading because no Latino or Hispanic nationality exists since no Latino state exists, so generalizing the term Latino slights the various national identities included under the umbrella.
Gender-neutral forms
Attempts have been made to introduce a gender-neutral term by changing the ending of Latino, as in the terms Latin@, Latine, Latino/a, and Latinx. Both supporters and opponents of Latinx have cited linguistic imperialism as a reason for supporting or opposing the use of the term.