Friday, August 24, 2007

Latino or Hispanic

Q: Which is correct?

A: Hispanic, from the Latin hispanus, ‘relating to Hispania’. Romans called Iberia (Spain) Hispania. Hispanic, as used in the U.S., implies an association to Spanish-speaking communities, irrespectively of race or national origin. Many recent the label Hispanic for its colonial implications, and prefer Latino. The French coined the term Latin America in the 19th century to justify Napoleon’s pretensions in America. By Napoleon I mean a nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon III. Victor Hugo referred to him with great sarcasm as Napoleon the Small, el Chiquito.

Historically, of course, the distinction between Latino and Hispano makes no-sense. Latin was the language Romans spoke and became the prevalent language of Spain. Spanish is a variation of Latin. After the discovery of the New World in 1492 and subsequent conquest, Spanish became the official language of the Americas. Spanish and hispanus are synonymous; therefore Latin and Hispanic are synonymous. But one thing is history and another language. Languages keep changing. Latino in American Spanish has come to symbolized culture. We don’t say Hispanic food but Latin food, and Latin Dance, and Latin literature. Hispanic is used more for statistics. After all the term was coined by a Nixon bureaucrat in the 70s to group immigrants from Latin America, their descendants, and those descendants of Spanish-speaking communities who have lived in what is today the United States since the United States was another territory discovered and conquered by Spain. Once upon a time the American territory was Spain. Then came the Mayflower and the rest, as they say, is history.

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