☼  LAT Reading Room Occasional Papers  ☼  
 No. 4, July 2006

Latin American, Latino, Hispanic:  Origin and application of terms

At the end of the 19th century there was a great competition among
the major European powers to align themselves in accord with language
and ethnic/national characteristics (this was one of the causes of
the First World War).  Russia formed a Slavic speaking block;
Germany, a German one; Britain, an Anglo-American one.  France molded
its block based on Latin, the common original language and culture of France,
Italy, Spain, and Portugal.  Recognizing that most of the Americas
were dominated by the languages of the latter two countries, France
(under Napoleon III) began to refer to such parts of the Western
Hemisphere as "Latin" America.  The French were particularly
interested in connecting the region to themselves due to their
extensive trade with it in high-cost luxury, elite, and cultural products.

Latin American elites, strongly influenced at that time by French
culture, readily picked up this term.  There then emerged a large
intellectual movement in Spanish America that began to define
"Latino" as a character and culture opposite to "Anglo-Saxon."  Some
key aspects of this movement were the publication of Ariel (1900) by
the Uruguayan, Jose Enrique Rodo, and the founding of the APRISTA
party in Peru by Victor Raul Haya de la Torre.

As waves of immigrants from Latin America came to the US, especially
Florida and the Southwest, during the last part of the twentieth
century, they described themselves as "Latino."  As people in the US
heard this description, they began to think of Latin Americans as
those who were outside the US and Latinos as those who had arrived
from there to the US.  Hence, they distinguished between Latin
American and Latino.  Latinos, however, especially first generation,
thought of themselves often as still being Mexican, Colombian,
Venezuelan, etc., ie, Latin American.

"Hispanic" was a term used in Britain and then in the US to describe
language and culture related to Hispania, the Roman province of
Iberia containing Spain and Portugal.  Generally the term implied the
country of Spain although sometimes Portugal was included or
understood.  Thereby the term came also to refer to Spanish America
and, sometimes, Brazil (although no one in Brazil would ever think of
themselves as such).  In US academic and government agencies
"Hispanic" became the habitual way of referring to these.  However,
increasingly in recent decades the popular term applied by those from or
familiar with the culture, has been to say  "Latino."

-- Edward A. Riedinger