Quem mora em Cuba e latino?

On June 24, 2020, the Associated Press (AP) Stylebook—a widely-used grammar resource for the media world—tweeted their most current definitions of the difference between the words Hispanic and Latino, and when to use each term.

"Latino is often the preferred noun or adjective for a person from, or whose ancestors were from, a Spanish-speaking land or culture or from Latin America. Latina is the feminine form," its first tweet read. "Some prefer the gender-neutral term Latinx, which should be confined to quotations, names of organizations or descriptions of individuals who request it and should be accompanied by a short explanation."

Of the term 'Hispanic,' the AP went on to recommend that "Hispanics is also generally acceptable for those in the U.S. Use a more specific identification when possible, such as Cuban, Puerto Rican, Brazilian or Mexican American."

As with any fixed definition of what makes someone Latino, or anything attempting to broadly describe groups considered to be of Hispanic heritage, the AP's delineation drew irate comments from those who felt they'd been inaccurately described.

"You're meant to be a reliable reference," one critic replied. "Do better."

"This is very confusing and makes me wonder how diverse the organization is at APStylebook," another person wrote.

"What's your ruling on the term Afro Latino, used in reference to Black people from Latin America?" someone else asked.

While the AP's distinctions match closely with those of the experts Oprah Daily has spoken with about the topic, three measly 240-character Twitter updates were never going to produce tidy explanations of the difference between the words "Latino" and "Hispanic" that would satisfy everyone who's invested in the subject. Race and ethnicity are two separate yet interrelated things, and shifting cultural beliefs continually alter how we all think of and define both. Simply put, it's complicated.

When it comes to Hispanic culture in particular (if you believe that a pan-ethnic culture even exists), to debate Latino vs. Hispanic is to barely skim the surface of the centuries of history that led up to how we've come to define those terms today—including the slavery, colonialism, activism, and subsequent attempts to fix past wrongdoing operating across more than two dozen countries, islands and territories, the United States included.

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“When we talk about these terms, we’re talking about them both at the level of the individual who is choosing an identity—a term that’s comfortable to them, and all the complexities that go into that—but we’re also talking about what these categories mean on a social level," says Laura E. Gómez, a UCLA Law professor and author of Inventing Latinos: A New Story of American Racism. "So even though there’s a certain amount of choice, there’s also a certain amount of ‘assignment,' as we call it in academia."

As an example of how ethnic identity is both personal and societal, Gómez cites an anecdote I'd shared with her earlier in our conversation: On a trip to Puerto Rico a few years ago, my partner was continually assumed to be Puerto Rican by island residents (or "assigned" the status of being Puerto Rican, as Gómez would say) because of his brown skin and Spanish surname. We both found this hilarious, as I'm actually the Puerto Rican one in our relationship—my father originally hails from Mayagüez—but I'm light-skinned, with a last name that's often mistaken for Italian. While my partner is Filipino-American and I've identified as Hispanic/Latina/white/"Other" over various check-box situations in my life, from San Juan to Culebra, people treated us as a Puerto Rican man and his Caucasian wife.

"There's always an interaction between how people identify themselves ethnically and racially, and society's choice," Gómez continues. The shift in U.S. Census questions after 1980 had a crucial impact in giving people the option to self-identify, and shaped the concept of a Hispanic culture in the United States (more on that later). But first, a rudimentary attempt to explain the use-case difference between Latino and Hispanic, according to people who've been both studying the subject and identifying themselves with those terms for years.

Who is considered Latino?

While that depends on who you ask, there's some commonly-agreed upon parameters.

In a discussion about what it means to be Latinx, David Bowles, a writer, translator, and professor at the University of Texas Río Grande Valley in Edinburg, Texas, tells Oprah Daily that the definitions are primarily concerned with geography. "To be considered Latina/Latino/Latinx, you or your ancestors must have come from a Latin American country: Mexico, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Cuba, French-speaking Caribbean nations, Central or South America (though English-speaking regions)." Someone with roots in those countries—or as in Puerto Rico's case, territory—may speak English, Portuguese, French, or Spanish. Within these parameters, those from the South American country of Brazil, where the majority language is Portuguese, are considered Latino/Latina/Latinx but not Hispanic.

If it were easy to answer, less people would be Googling this.

Gómez, whose book examines "how Latinos are racialized in the United States" through the long lens of world history, wouldn't academically define a Brazilian as Latino. "I’m looking at people who are descended from the colonization of Spain in the New World, followed by U.S. colonization in Latin America—what I call 'double colonization,'" she explains.

Regardless of what language Brazilians speak today, because Brazil didn't follow this historical trajectory, Gómez would not personally classify them as Latino. "But, I don’t disagree with it as a matter of ‘I’m right and you’re wrong.’ There’s a lot of gray here." Told you this was complicated.

What countries are considered "Latino?"

No country is "Latino" in and of itself. "Latino" is a noun used to describe a person; Merriam-Webster defines it as either a "native or inhabitant of Latin America," or someone "of Latin American origin living in the U.S."

But again, as Britannica confirms, Latin American countries include over 20 in North, Central and South America as well as in the Caribbean: Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti, Dominican Republic, and the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, as well as the French overseas regions of French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Saint Martin, and Saint Barthélemy.

Who is considered Hispanic?

Dr. Luisa Ortiz Pérez, Executive Director of Vita-Activa.org, tells Oprah Daily that the simplest way to sum up the distinction is this: "Latinx is an ethnic and cultural category, where as Hispanic is a linguistic division." People who live in or are descended from a Spanish-speaking culture can define themselves as Hispanic. This includes people from or descended from Spain—but Spain is part of Europe, and thus not part of Latin America. Therefore, Spanish people could be described as Hispanic, but not Latino/Latina/Latinx.

This, of course, gets complicated by history's ripple effects as well. My family's roots in Puerto Rico go back for many generations, but like most islands, the territory's ethnic makeup is a mishmash of many cultures both native and colonizing. Follow my heritage further back, and I've got European blood by way of ties to Corsica and the Canary Islands. By this genetically-dogmatic distinction, someone out there would classify me as Hispanic, but not Latina, despite my father literally being from Puerto Rico and the culture he came from being part of my identity.

Can you be both Hispanic and Latino?

Yes, save for the few clear-cut exceptions mentioned above. You can also be Chicano, a term for someone of Mexican origin or descent, and also Hispanic and Latino.

Here is where the personal prerogative of self-identification comes in—and context matters, too, including the cultural norms of a given region in the United States. "In my own speech, depending on who I’m talking to and in what context, I’ve used the terms Latinx, Hispanic, and Latino interchangeably," says Gómez, who herself is U.S.-born and of Mexican descent. "It depends on the conversation I’m in."

Gómez says she may use the term Latinx when addressing a younger audience, though it's not what she herself prefers. "If I’m talking to an audience of, say, school superintendents in Texas, I might use the term Hispanic, because the term is more often used there. When I’m talking to school superintendents in California, I might say Latino, because that’s more of the custom."

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According to Pew Research Center surveys in 2107, "among the estimated 42.7 million U.S. adults with Hispanic ancestry in 2015, nine-in-ten (89%), or about 37.8 million, self-identify as Hispanic or Latino. But another 5 million (11%) do not consider themselves Hispanic or Latino." Back in 2013, Pew estimated that preferences for "Hispanic" or "Latino" were evenly split across most demographic groups of age and background.

Why do some people identify as Latinx, instead of as Latino or Latina?

While the Spanish language is indisputably gendered, we've established that language evolves as the world around us does. For those who embrace it, the word 'Latinx' is an intentionally "non-gendered, non-binary, inclusive way of pushing back against the default masculine in Spanish," says Bowles.

It's important to note that the term Latinx is only used by a small fraction of the population (as is always best practice with ethnic identity, don't assume someone identifies as Latinx until they say that they do). A 2019 Pew Research survey of over 3,000 U.S. self-identifying Hispanic and/or Latino people found that only 3 percent surveyed described themselves as Latinx. In 2021, a June-July Gallup poll found that just 5 percent of those asked identified as Latinx. As that poll's Twitter critics pointed out, though, a survey of 305 adults within a report that uses "Hispanic" and "Latino" interchangeably isn't a definitive referendum on the term. Given how generational change impacts ethnic identity over time, the ultimate cultural reach of "Latinx" remains to be seen.

Another gender neutral alternative to Latinx is "Latine." Pronounced la-tee-neh, Latine linguistically sidesteps some of the quandaries that "Latinx"—and the use of this alternate consonant—presents for actual Spanish speakers. As Ecleen Luzmila Caraballo writes in Remezcla, "The problem, many find, is that it’s difficult to pronounce Spanish words that have replaced gendered vowels with an “x.” For many, it’s easier to use the gender neutral “e” instead."

The U.S. Census helped form the idea of Hispanic culture.

The "Hispanic" box on the U.S. Census first appeared in 1980. Hispanic-facing media raised awareness for this change over the next 20 years, such as in this 1980 spot that aired on Univision. Even Sesame Street's Big Bird, Luis, and Maria helped get the word out.

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"Destino 80" Univision Census Ads 1980

"For decades up until 1970, they had mainly categorized Mexican-Americans and Puerto Ricans as simply white," sociologist and Making Hispanics author G. Cristina Mora explained on NPR's Latino USA podcast. "This was incredibly frustrating for Chicano activists. Whenever they would argue that they needed money for job training programs, they never had the data to show the federal government. So, as the bureau considered what kind of category they would create, they started to imagine a broad 'Hispanic' category with subcategories, where one could identify themselves as Hispanic but also as Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, and so on."

By "they," Mora may have been referring to Census enumerators, the people hired to go door-to-door to complete the count. "Prior to 1970, we had enumerators who were hired to go out and decide what race someone is," Gómez says. "In 1960, when enumerators were choosing, Black Puerto Ricans could be lumped into 'Black.' In the southwest, they were lumped into 'white'—unless they were indigenous-looking, they might have been categorized as ‘Indian.’”

Over the next several decades, a self-identified Hispanic category in 1970 led to a more focused allocation of resources, which is one of the stated purposes of the Census. It also crystallized the idea of a pan-ethnic population as a monolithic force to be considered in elections and as a demographic that advertisers could target in commercials.

When, exactly, "Latino" emerged in popularity as a term is a bit fuzzier, according to Gómez, but she would point toward the late 1990s. "Latino came into being as a counterpoint to Hispanic," Gómez says, in part because many viewed the term 'Hispanic' as having too close of ties to Spain the country. "

Ultimately, Pew Research sums up the U.S. Census bureau's approach to determining whether someone is Hispanic as follows: "Who is Hispanic? Anyone who says they are. And nobody who says they aren’t."

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Samantha Vincenty is the former senior staff writer at Oprah Daily. 

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