The terms Latino, Hispanic, and Latinx are often used interchangeably to describe a group that makes up approximately 19% of the U.S. population. While it is now common to use generic terms to categorize those with ties to more than 20 Latin American countries, these words have not always fostered a sense of community among the people they are intended to describe .
Before activists, media, and government officials worked to consolidate these identities into one, they were considered distinct. Puerto Ricans and Mexicans, for example, lived in different parts of the country and had their own distinct political and cultural identities.
Yet for as long as there have been people from Latin American countries living in the United States, there have been words to describe them. Some have fallen from grace, while others have moved on. And many of them have a history as complicated as trying to unify multiple nationalities under one banner.
“Hispanics” Help Unify Communities and Agenda
Grace Flores-Hughes, who claims to have coined the term Hispanic for the census, photographed at her home in Alexandria in 2003.
The first time the federal government used the word Hispanic in a census was in 1980. The emergence of the term was the result of decades of lobbying. “It took the debates of the 1970s and the protests of the late 1960s to bring us to the 1980s,” says G. Cristina Mora, professor of sociology at UC Berkeley and author of Making Hispanics: How Activists, Bureaucrats, and the Media Built a New American.
Before 1980, people of Latino origin were considered Spanish-speaking, of Spanish origin, or white in the census. The latter frustrated Mexican-American activists because they had no data proving their communities needed resources for programs such as professional training. The National Council of La Raza, known today as UnidosUS, led pressure on the Census Bureau to change the way it categorizes Latinos and unite Puerto Ricans and Mexicans to “develop a Hispanic program.”
“In the late 1960s and early 1970s, as members of the Census Bureau and bureaucrats in the Nixon administration considered what to name this new group, the term Hispanic became one that people thought ‘he would probably be well known because he was linked to hispano” says Mora. “But the Hispanic was useful because it seemed more American.”
Hispanic refers to those from Spain and other Spanish-speaking countries, which excludes Brazilians. Grace Flores-Hughes, who worked as a secretary in what was then known as the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, said she coined the term. However, as Mora explains, it is possible that Hispanic was used before this date.
Although 1980 marked a milestone, the pan-ethnic term didn’t really catch on until the 1990s. By then, two rounds of censuses had taken place and media outlets, including Univision and Telemundo, had contributed to unite these communities.
“It wasn’t just activists or bureaucrats,” Mora says. “Some people like Telemundo and Univision had a vested interest in connecting their audiences across the country and having those audiences across the country see themselves as one market.”
“Latino” as an alternative to “Hispanic”
Although the term Hispanic may have utility, the term has been criticized for having highlighted Spain, which colonized much of Latin America. Some have proposed “Latino” as an alternative. This term refers to those in Latin America, that is, it includes Brazil but not Spain.
The word existed well before the 1960s. But Ramón A. Gutiérrez, professor emeritus of United States history at the University of Chicago, Preston & Sterling Morton, explains that it was previously a language word Spanish who came from Latin Americawhich the Colombian writer José María Torres Caicedo helped to popularize.
“Latino is short for Latin American,” he says. “And this is the result of what happened between 1808 and 1821, when Latin American countries gained independence.”
In the second half of the 19th century, the abbreviated words “hispano” And “latino” were used in California among Spanish speakers, but eventually other terms replaced them. By 1920, they had “virtually disappeared,” according to Gutiérrez writing.
The term Latino gradually reappeared in English, appearing in books and even in a White House statement in 1970. journal entry by Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson. In another early example, a March 17, 1973 issue of Black Panther FestivalThe newspaper describes a program developed by an “action group composed of blacks, Latinos and whites.” In 2000, Latino was listed on the census, with the question: “Is this person Spanish/Hispanic/Latino?”
Although Latino downplayed the connection to Spain, some still rejected the term because it attempted to lump several distinct cultures into one. For example, a popular bumper sticker declaring: “Don’t call me Hispanic, I’m Cuban!” » circulated in Miami in the early 1990s, according to Mora. In many cases, those who did not want to identify as Hispanic or Latino chose nationality.
A 2019 survey by the Pew Research Center found that 47 percent of respondents most often describe themselves by their family’s country of origin, while 39 percent use the terms Latino or Hispanic and 14 percent most often describe themselves as Americans.
Some Mexican-Americans embrace “Chicano”
Mexican-Americans hold rally in California’s state capitol to protest discrimination. This group walked 600 miles from Calexico.
For some Mexicans who avoided Latinos and Hispanics, that meant turning to the word “Chicano.”
There are a few theories about the origins of the Chicano, including that it came from Mexican (pronounced meshican)a word that certain “groups of Nahuas (indigenous speakers of Nahuatl) began to call their language,” writes David Bowlesauthor and professor at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.
Another possibility is that Chicano is the result of hypocorism. “It’s basically about using baby language,” says Bowles. “If you think about nicknames, Spanish nicknames, if you’re Ignacio, you’re called ‘Nacho.’ Graciela, your name is “Chela”. It is possible that it is a kind of hypocorism behind the change of Mexican in Chicano – kind of a playful thing.
One of the first printed mentions of Chicano is in a Spanish-language newspaper. The Chronicle in 1911, where it was used as an insult against “less cultured” Mexican Americans and recent immigrants. But in the 1960s, the word changed. Although not all Mexicans or Mexican Americans use the term, it gained traction, including among Mexican Americans who were fighting for civil rights.
“Because the word was used regularly at that time,” Bowles says, “it was sort of a way of reclaiming the slur and using it for a Latinx political identity.”
“Latinx” appears to be a gender-neutral term
Spanish is a gendered language. If there is a group made up of women, they may be referred to as “ellas”. If there is a group composed of men and women, it defaults to masculine (ellos instead of ellas). The word “Latino” follows this convention, qualifying nouns as masculine or feminine. For those who fall outside of the gender binary, this word fails to represent them, and that’s where gender-neutral “Latinx” comes into play.
Much like other words used to describe people of Latin American descent, Latinx has faced some resistance, due to difficult arguments to make before the Real Academia Española, the institution responsible for maintaining the consistency of the language Spanish, saying it’s useless. A few even argued non-Latino whites imposed the word on Latinos.
Bowles objects to this notion. “White people did not make up Latinx,” he said. “They were queer Latinx people…They were the ones who used the word. Our little subgroup of the community created this. It was created by English-speaking American Latinx people for use in English conversations.
Although it’s unclear exactly when or how it started, it’s mostly tied to the early 2000s, and it reportedly appeared on Google Trends in 2004. There are several possibilities as to how the word originated. One theory is that Latin American protests inspired the word. From the 1970s to the 1990s, as feminists protested, they removed words ending in “OS” to “visually…reject the idea that the default is masculine,” Bowles says. This could also have been a nod to the use of civil rights movement in the USA.
Despite a August 2021 Gallup Poll finding that only 4% of Hispanic Americans use Latinx, it is a term that has gained momentum during the 2010s and 2020s, appearing on television shows and in politics.
