The Latin American community and its diaspora is too diverse for there to be one correct term and the controversy about whether we should use “Hispanic”, “Latino,” or “Latinx” only proves it.
The history, prejudice, and confusion that exists in the way we use these terms in the U.S. only highlights that there can never be a “correct” term.
Officially, the U.S. government calls the period of Sep.15 to Oct. 15 Hispanic Heritage Month.
An observation that began as Hispanic Heritage Week in 1968 was expanded to a month by the Reagan administration to celebrate the independence day anniversaries of various Latin American countries.
In reality, it can be harder for some members of the Latin American community to identify with the term “Hispanic”, because the general consensus is that “Hispanic” refers to anyone who speaks Spanish or is of “Spanish speaking origin”.
In that way, the term “Hispanic” is not inclusive of all Latin Americans, because Spanish is not the primary language in all Latin American countries such as Brazil or Surinam who speak French and Dutch respectively, and are also host to hundreds of indigenous languages.
In contrast, at its most simplified, “Latino” refers to a person of Latin American origin where Latin America includes Mexico, Central America, and South America.
Because of this broader, more inclusive definition, there is controversy about whether the “real” term should be “Latino”/ “Latinx”, or if the uniform culture that the term suggests, exists at all.
However, “Latino” as used in North America tends to have very racialized connotations.When the term “Latino”is used in everyday situations, many tend to imagine a homogenous culture, or even race.
This is dangerous because it erases the genetic, cultural, and historical diversity that has resulted from the colonization of Mexico, Central, and South America, and leads to infighting between nationalities and subcultures.
Assuming “Latino” means one thing confuses the concepts of race and ethnicity. Race is defined as shared physical characteristics like skin color, hair and bone structure.
Ethnicity is defined as belonging to a social group based on a shared national or cultural tradition.
It is possible for individuals within an ethnicity to share a race, but it shouldn’t be viewed as the ultimate standard to which members of the Latin American community hold themselves to.
This confusion of race and ethnicity doesn’t just happen outside of the “Latino” community; it happens inside of it too.
This is clear in the way that some Latinos often throw around the phrase “La raza” (lit. “the race” in Spanish) to describe themselves. This is closely tied to the concept of the ‘mestizo’, or a mixed race person of European and indigenous origins.
The term “mestizo” is based on the reality of the racial mixing and sexual violence against indigenous people that happened under European imperialism in Latin America starting in the 15th century.
However, the term is used explicitly to refer only to European and indigenous mixing often at the cost of full blooded indigenous people, Latin-Asians, and Afro-Latinos. The latter is often referred to as “mulattos”, but can be excluded from the “Latino” narrative.
This racial guarding of the Latino identity, especially regarding the exclusion of Black or Afro-Latinos, is especially noticeable on social media and entertainment.
Actors on Mexican and Colombian telenovelas are often more fair skinned, blond, and blue eyed than the average Mexican or Columbian. On the other end, brown skinned actors typically get typecast as maids, servants or the dutiful best friend to their fair skinned counterparts.
Many “Latinos” often make jokes at the expense of people in their communities who share more indigenous or Asian characteristics.
Most recently in big media, the film adaptation of Lin Manuel Miranda’s “In the Heights” musical, which depicts the Latino community in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City, received harsh criticism for misrepresenting Latino demographics.
The movie’s lack of representation for Black Latinos in a largely Dominican neighborhood sparked conversations regarding the colorism within Latin American communities, specifically in regards to how Manuel misrepresented the neighborhood’s demographics in which his musical takes place in.
Colorism, or the discrimination against darker skin, hair, or more visibly non-white features is carefully built into “Latino” culture, and often plays out not only in Hollywood, but in many Latino households.
Family members often scold children for tanning or having “messy” or “bad” curly hair. It’s also not uncommon for parents to encourage their children to date only lighter skinned individuals or white people, under the pretext of “mejorando la raza” (lit. “improving the race”) in what is a homespun version of eugenics.
This goes back to the socioeconomic castes that were enforced by early European settlers and slavemasters, who set up systems that rewarded compliance, being able to pass for white, and assimilation from indigenous traditions to European government, gender roles, and Catholicism.
These caste systems could not kill indigenous culture entirely; they still have massive influence in the existing communities and the religious, culinary, musical and linguistic cultures of Latin America.
However, their danger is clear through the existence of events such as the government sanctioned genocide of Mayan peoples in Guatemala, from 1960 to 1996.
These devastating racial and socioeconomic connotations to the word ‘Latino’ are further complicated when gender is thrown in the mix.
This is where the gender neutral “Latinx” comes in. The “x” in “Latinx” is meant to root out the inherent sexism present in the Spanish language, and free Latin American concepts of gender from European norms.
There is plenty of discourse surrounding the exact details of where the term ‘Latinx’ was first documented as describing people of Latin American origins.
As it stands, the term “Latinx” first appeared in academic literature within a Puerto Rican psychology periodical which helped to challenge the gender binaries inherent in the Spanish language. However, others maintain that the first instance of “Latinx” was within the fall 2004 volume of the journal Feministas Unidas.
The term “Latinx” is now being used across multiple platforms which include social media apps like Twitter and Instagram, where there’s a notable difference in its reception by various members within the Latin American community.
These debates can seem like another aspect of a petty internet culture war, but the truth is they embody the tensions that have been illustrated above, across the Latin American diaspora.
According to the Pew Research Center, the term is currently used by just 3% of people who trace their ancestry to Spain and Latin America, and young educated women are especially likely to use the term.
This is a very telling statistic, because it highlights some of the socioeconomic, generational, and gendered divides in the discussion of what it means to be “Latino”. Young women with access to critical race and gender theory, and an interest in activism are likely responsible for the popularization of the term.
Because of this, the use of the term has been met with backlash alleging it’s too academic or inaccessible for everyday working class people.
Memes on platforms like Instagram criticize the term and the “hipster” “woke” culture it is associated with, especially now that huge corporations like Target, Walmart and Facebook have begun to use it.
In a time where new terms are churned out and chewed out extremely quickly, “Latinx”, “Latino” and “Hispanic” may work perfectly for some, but have shortcomings in the way they can emphasize more differences than similarities within our communities.
So where does that leave these communities?
The fact is, there may never actually be a term that can fully define the diverse experiences that make up Latin American countries and their diaspora, making it impossible for everyone to be content with just one label.
It’s important for the conversation about what it means to be part of the Latin American diaspora to start moving away from labels because labels come and go.
Issues regarding gender, socioeconomics, and colorism within the community get addressed at different times with different words.
It’s more important for the community to move past the idea of a set identity and begin acknowledging the diversity and contradiction of its post-colonial situation, instead of attempting to create the false idea of a cultural monolith that hurts more people than it helps.
