During National Hispanic American Heritage Month questions may arise from students and teachers – who is included as Hispanic?

The question of what term to use is found in many articles. Vanessa Romo on NPR writes

As the headline unambiguously states, here at NPR we’ve kicked off Hispanic Heritage Month. Not Latino Heritage Month. Not Latinx Heritage Month. Not even a compromise or a combination of the three: Hispanic/Latino/ Latinx Heritage Month… it’s not too late to pose the following thorny questions: What’s the harm in lumping together roughly 62 million people with complex identities under a single umbrella? Is a blanket pan-ethnic term necessary to unite and reflect a shared culture that is still largely (infuriatingly) excluded from mainstream popular culture? Or the more basic question: ¿Por que Hispanic?

Yes, We’re Calling It Hispanic Heritage Month And We Know It Makes Some Of You Cringe by Vanessa Romo on NPR, 9/17/2021

Here we discuss these different terms and how they are used.

Iberian – The origin of Hispanic, Latin, etc.

The Spanish and Portuguese peoples originate from the Iberian peninsula. This is a peninsula in the southwest corner of Europe.

People from Spain refer to themselves as Spanish.

People from Portugal refer to themselves as Lusitanians or Portuguese.

Both Spanish and Portuguese people can be referred to as Iberians; Spanish and Portuguese who have moved to the United States may refer to themselves as Iberian-Americans.

Sure, this peninsula is mostly divided between Spain and Portugal. But small amount of this peninsula includes

• a small area of Southern France

• Andorra (a sovereign landlocked microstate)

• Gibraltar (a tiny, self-governing British overseas territory. Technically part of the United Kingdom.)

Americans often see the Iberian peninsula as being synonymous with Spain, but there is a diversity of ethnic and linguistic groups. This next image is from Iberia’s children: A short history of why Portuguese and Spanish are different.

present day languages of the Iberian Peninsula

Debate on names and identities

Let’s look at Latinos or Hispanics? A Debate About Identity, by Darryl Fears, Washington Post, August 25, 2003

That declaration — “I’m a Latina” — is resounding more and more through the vast and diverse Spanish-speaking population that dethroned African Americans as the nation’s largest ethnic group a few months ago.

It is also deepening a somewhat hidden but contentious debate over how the group should identify itself — as Hispanics or Latinos. The debate is increasingly popping up wherever Spanish speakers gather.

It was raised last month at the National Council of La Raza’s convention in Austin. The Internet is littered with articles and position papers on the issue. Civic organizations with Hispanic in their titles have withstood revolts by activist members seeking to replace it with the word Latino.

Cisneros refused to appear on the cover of Hispanic magazine earlier this year because of its name. She relented only after editors allowed her to wear a huge faux tattoo on her biceps that read “Pura Latina,” or Pure Latina.

Another Mexican American writer, Luis J. Rodriguez, only reluctantly accepted an award from a Hispanic organization “because I’m not Hispanic,” he said.

…. Although the terms Latino and Hispanic have been used interchangeably for decades, experts who have studied their meanings say the words trace the original bloodlines of Spanish speakers to different populations in opposite parts of the world.

Hispanics derive from the mostly white Iberian peninsula that includes Spain and Portugal, while Latinos are descended from the brown indigenous Indians of the Americas south of the United States and in the Caribbean, conquered by Spain centuries ago.

Latino-Hispanic is an ethnic category in which people can be of any race. They are white, like the Mexican American boxer Oscar de la Hoya, and black, like the Dominican baseball slugger Sammy Sosa.

… Duard Bradshaw has a different opinion. “I’ll tell you why I like the word Hispanic,” said the Panamanian president of the Hispanic National Bar Association. “If we use the word Latino, it excludes the Iberian peninsula and the Spaniards. The Iberian peninsula is where we came from. We all have that little thread that’s from Spain.”

A survey of the community conducted last year by the Pew Hispanic Center of Washington found that nearly all people from Spanish-speaking backgrounds identify themselves primarily by their place of national origin.

When asked to describe the wider community, more than half, 53 percent, said both Hispanic and Latino define them. A substantial but smaller group, 34 percent, favored the term Hispanic. The smallest group, 13 percent, said they preferred Latino. A survey by Hispanic Trends magazine produced a similar finding.

…Mexican American activists in California and Puerto Rican activists in New York were not pleased. They favored a term that included the brown indigenous Indians who they believe are the source of their bloodline.

“Hispanic doesn’t work for me because it’s about people from Spain,” said Rodriguez, author of the book “The Republic of East L.A.” “I’m Mexican, and we were conquered by people from Spain, so it’s kind of an insult.” Rodriguez’s views are typical of Mexican Americans in Los Angeles, the epicenter of immigrants from that country, and the Chicano rights movement.

Some tentative definitions: Hispanic, Latino, Spanish

Spanish – someone from Spain.

Portuguese – someone from Portugal.

Hispanic – people from or with ancestors from, Spanish speaking countries, e.g. Spain, Mexico, Central America and South America.

Brazilians are not considered Hispanic because they speak Portuguese.

Latino – People from, or who have ancestors from, Latin America which includes Mexico, Central America and South America.

In this case, Brazilians are considered Latino, but people from Spain are not.

Chicano – Mexican Americans.

From the Rice & Frijoles social media page we have this suggestion.

This next infographic is similar, but we immediately see a different: This group believes that the term Hispanic should include people from Spain, and does not suggest “Spanish” as an independent, alternate name.

This image is from Clarifying Terms for Hispanic Heritage Month.

Hispanic, Latino, Latin(x), Spanish: Clarifying Terms, Ketchum

Chicano

Neither of these infographics mention “Chicano.” Chicano or Chicana is a chosen identity for many Mexican Americans in the United States. It is often used interchangeably with Mexican American.

While Mexican-American identity emerged to encourage assimilation into White American society and separate the community from African-American political struggle, Chicano identity emerged among anti-assimilationist youth, some of whom belonged to the Pachuco subculture, who claimed the term (which had previously been a classist and racist slur.)

Chicano was widely reclaimed in the 1960s and 1970s to express political empowerment, ethnic solidarity, and pride in being of Indigenous descent (with many using the Nahuatl language as a symbol), diverging from the more assimilationist Mexican American identity.

Chicano youth in barrios rejected cultural assimilation into whiteness and embraced their identity and worldview as a form of empowerment and resistance.

In the Boston area

The following is from the Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center at the Boston Public Library.

While Hispanic Heritage Month is widely construed as a time to celebrate individuals of Latin American heritage in the U.S, the term “Hispanic” actually has a more specific definition.

Hispanic refers to any individual who speaks Spanish. This definition includes a significant portion of Hispanic Americans who don’t share Latin American (and/or Latino, Latinx, Latine) identity, such as individuals from Spain or the Republic of Equatorial Guinea.

Conversely, the phrasing of Hispanic Heritage excludes those with Latin American heritage who do not speak Spanish, including individuals with ancestry in Brazil, Haiti, and Belize.

While the most widely spoken non-English language in the greater Boston area is Spanish, much of Boston’s language diversity is found in non-Spanish speaking Latine communities. As you can observe when comparing these two maps, some of Boston’s most diverse neighborhoods in terms of languages spoken are areas where Spanish speaking communities border and coexist with French Creole and Portuguese speaking communities.

Map 1: Boston neighborhoods colored differently to indicate different non-English languages spoken by 10% or greater of the population. Boston Planning and Development Agency, “Boston’s top 5 foreign languages spoken at home, 2015” (2017)

Map 2: Boston neighborhoods colored in to show percentages of language diversity. Boston Planning and Development Agency, “Boston’s diversity index, 2010: measures of diversity: language other then English spoken at home” (2014)

Articles

Latinx, Latine, Hispanic, Latino/a: What Do We Call Ourselves? Laysha Macedo, HipLatina, 10/13/2021

“Terminology is tricky to denounce or uphold. For example, “Hispanic” is an outdated, colonizer label but that doesn’t stop older generations from using them to identify themselves and others. Latinx, in particular, is a term that means something different depending on the person. As we’ve seen on social media and even in discourse held in our own kitchen tables, there is a strong distaste for it so much so that “Hispanic” is still preferred despite the ties to colonization…

“Hispanic” versus “Latino” versus “Latin”, Hispanic Economics

Is it Hispanic, Chicano/Chicana, Latino/Latina, or Latinx?, GENIAL: Latinas
Generating Engagement and New Initiatives for All Latinos
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