Latin American Identity Terms Explained
What is Latin America? Who is Latin American?
Geographically, Latin America refers to a set of nations belonging to the regions of North America, South America, Central America, and the Caribbean. Culturally and linguistically, Latin Americans are defined as people from nations in the Americas and the Caribbean whose residents predominantly speak Spanish or Portuguese—two of the many languages descended from Latin.
The term Hispanic was introduced by the US Census Bureau in 1970, after groups such as the National Council of La Raza advocated for the category as an alternative to classifying Mexican, Cuban, and Puerto Rican immigrants as “white.”
Today Hispanic covers people of a variety of ethnic identities who have origins in Spanish-speaking countries—basically Spain and all of Latin America (minus Brazil, where the official language is Portuguese). The US Census Bureau now counts both Hispanics and Latinos in the same category.
While, Hispanic refers to linguistic origins from a Spanish-speaking country, in particular Spain. Latino/Latina refers to people living in the USA who have ethnic and cultural origins from a country in Latin America.
Spanish, among many other Latin languages, assign genders to nearly everything, including inanimate objects. Masculine words are considered gender neutral, and if one male-identified individual enters a group, the group suddenly becomes referred to by a masculine word. This is problematic for a number of reasons, most glaringly is that masculine words should not be considered gender neutral. The term Latinx is a response to these language constraints, and it provides an option to express gender identity that exist outside the constraints of the binary.
For more on this topic including the Chicanx movement and African and East Asian diaspora in Latin America read a full blog post here.
Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA is an exploration of Latin American and Latino art in dialogue with Los Angeles. Led by the Getty, Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA is the latest collaborative effort from arts institutions across Southern California.
titsay
stormborns
gummygunk
