Latino, Hispanic, Latinx, Chicano: The History Behind the Terms—as my blog soon reaches 3 million page views!

Friends,

I enjoyed reading this piece and seems to be a good one to ponder as my blog soon reaches 3 million pageviews! Thanks to all my loyal readers from throughout the world who find it useful. Don't hesitate to reach out to me if you have any questions, concerns, or suggestions. I've been doing this for a long time and plan to continue as long as I can. Heck, it's my civic duty. Now, to this post.

To complexify the analysis of identity in this piece, the author would do well to additionally incorporate Afro-Indigenous, Afro-Latina/o/x, and Indigenous identities to the mix. Why? As I look at all the work that so many of us are doing in our communities, it's fully about honoring and centering our own diverse identities and Indigeneities like we're accomplishing at our Saturday School, Academia Cuauhtli, and our annual Aztech Kidz Code Summer Camp. At our school and summer camp, we don't seek to turn anyone into an Aztec, but rather to use Aztec and Mayan knowledge and wisdom as a point of departure for students to explore their own identities.

Takeaways? Culture is a powerful social construction, especially when we decide as people at a particular point in history to call ourselves. Culture also inescapably evolves both within communities and in the broader society. It's therefore important now more than ever to speak another language or languages and to become culturally and linguistically competent no matter the anti-DEI or anti-CRT racist agenda pursued by Texas Senators. Becoming competent in these ways is definitely empowering, however, it doesn't happen overnight and requires lifelong learning and investment.

The beautiful part of all of this is rather than "being named," which objectifies us as people, the right to name ourselves is an exercise in being powerful human subjects, authors of our own identities and destinies. Expressed differently, the act of self-determination disrupts the harmful aspects of Western colonization like individualism, extractivism, and viewing Mother Earth as expendable. 

If you have any doubt about this, check out the US wildfire, smoke map: Track latest wildfires, red flag warnings across the US. It's so sad to learn of the terrible devastation with animals losing their habitats and lives and folks losing their homes, well-being, and in some instances, their very lives.

These epistemologies or ways of knowing, have not served any of us or the planet well. Please don't misunderstand. Collectivism, the opposite of individualism, is fully compatible with innovation, freedom, and autonomy.

Indigeneity helps us to get connected to the root of our identities where the knowledge and wisdom of our ancestors and community reside.

-Angela Valenzuela

Latino, Hispanic, Latinx, Chicano: The History Behind the Terms

The effort to coin a term to describe a wildly diverse group of Americans has long stirred controversy.

by Yara Simón

September 25, 2023 | Original: September 14, 2020

History.com

The terms Latino, Hispanic and Latinx are often used interchangeably to describe a group that makes up about 19 percent of the U.S. population. While it’s now common to use umbrella terms to categorize those with ties to more than 20 Latin American countries, these words haven’t always fostered a sense of community among the people they’re supposed to describe.

Before activists, the media and government officials worked to group these identities into one, they were seen as separate. Puerto Ricans and Mexicans, for example, lived in different parts of the country and had their own distinct political and cultural identities.

Yet, 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 out of favor, while others have evolved. And many of them have a history as complicated as trying to unify multiple nationalities under one banner.

'Hispanic' Helps Unify Communities, Agenda

Juana Arias/The Washington Post via Getty Images

Grace Flores-Hughes, who claims to have come up with the term Hispanic for the Census, pictured at her Alexandria home in 2003.

The first time the federal government used the word Hispanic in a census was 1980. The appearance of the term was borne from decades of lobbying. “It took the debates of the 1970s, the protests of the late 1960s to get us to 1980,” explains G. Cristina Mora, a sociology professor at UC Berkeley and author of Making Hispanics: How Activists, Bureaucrats, and Media Constructed a New American.

Before 1980, those of Latin American descent were considered Spanish-speaking, having Spanish origin or white on the census. The latter frustrated Mexican-American activists because they had no data to prove that their communities needed resources for programs, such as job training. The National Council of La Raza, known today as Unidos US, led in lobbying the Census Bureau to change the way it categorized Latinos and uniting Puerto Ricans and Mexicans to “hammer out a Hispanic agenda.”

“In the late 1960s and early 1970s as people in the Census Bureau and bureaucrats in the Nixon administration were thinking about what this new group would be called, Hispanic became a term that people thought would probably be well-known because it was linked to hispano,” Mora says. “But Hispanic was helpful 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, has said she coined the term. However, as Mora explains, it’s possible that Hispanic was in use before then.

While 1980 marked a milestone, this pan-ethnic term didn’t really catch on until about the 1990s. By then, there had been two rounds of censuses and the media, particularly Univision and Telemundo, had helped to unite these communities.

“It wasn’t just activists and it wasn’t just bureaucrats,” Mora says. “It was certain figures like Telemundo, Univision, who had a huge vested interest in connecting their audiences across the country and having those audiences across the country see themselves as one market.”

'Latino' as Alternative to 'Hispanic'

While Hispanic may have utility, the term has been criticized for highlighting Spain, which colonized much of Latin America. Some have offered “Latino” as an alternative. This term refers to those from Latin America, meaning it includes Brazil but not Spain.

The word existed long before the 1960s. But Ramón A. Gutiérrez, a Preston & Sterling Morton Distinguished Service Professor of United States history at the University of Chicago, explains that it was previously a Spanish-language word that came from Latino America, which Colombian writer José María Torres Caicedo helped popularize.

“Latino is short for Latino Americano,” he says. “And it’s the result of what happens between 1808 and 1821 as the Latin American countries become independent.”

In the second half of the 19th century, the abbreviated words “hispano” and “latino” were in use in California among Spanish speakers, but eventually, other terms replaced them. By 1920, they had “virtually disappeared,” Gutiérrez writes.

The term Latino gradually re-emerged in English, appearing in books and even in a 1970 White House diary entry by Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson. In another early example, a March 17, 1973 issue of the Black Panther Party’s newspaper described a program drawn up by an “action group composed of Blacks, Latinos and Whites.” By 2000, Latino was on the census, with the question, “Is this person Spanish/Hispanic/Latino?”

Though Latino deemphasized the connection to Spain, some still rejected the term as it attempted to group several distinct cultures into one. For example, a popular bumper sticker declaring, “Don’t Call Me Hispanic, I’m Cuban!” circulated in Miami during the early 1990s, according to Mora. In many cases, those who didn’t 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 American.

Some Mexican-Americans Embrace 'Chicano'

Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

Mexican-Americans hold a rally at the California state capitol to protest discrimination. This group marched 600 miles from Calexico.

For some Mexicans who shunned Latino and Hispanic, this meant turning to the word “Chicano.”

There are a few theories about the origins of Chicano, including that it comes from mexicano (pronounced meshicano), a word that some “groups of Nahuas (Indigenous speakers of Nahuatl) began calling their language,” writes David Bowles, an author and professor at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.

Another possibility is that Chicano is a result of hypocorism. “It’s basically using baby talk,” Bowles says. “If you think about nicknames, Spanish nicknames, if you’re Ignacio, you’re called ‘Nacho.’ Graciela, you’re called ‘Chela.’ It’s possible that that could be some type of hypocorism behind the change from mexicano to Chicano—a playful kind of thing.”

One of the first mentions of Chicano in print is in Spanish-language newspaper La Crónica in 1911, where it was used as a slur against “less cultured” Mexican Americans and recent immigrants. But by the 1960s, the word had changed. While not every Mexican or Mexican American would use the term, it gained traction, including among Mexican Americans who were fighting for civil rights.

“Because the word was in regular use at that time,” Bowles says, “it was kind of this way of reclaiming the slur and using it for a political Latinx identity.”

'Latinx' Emerges as Gender-Neutral Term

Spanish is a gendered language. If there is a group made up of women, they can be described as “ellas.” If there is a group with men and women, it defaults to the masculine (ellos instead of ellas). The word “Latino” follows this convention, labeling nouns as either masculine or feminine. For those who fall outside the gender binary, this word fails to represent them, which is where the gender neutral “Latinx” comes into play.

Much like the other words used to describe those of Latin American descent, Latinx has faced some pushback—from arguments that it’s difficult to pronounce to the Real Academia Española, the institution tasked with maintaining the consistency of the Spanish language, saying it’s unnecessary. Some even argued non-Latino whites imposed the word on Latinos.

Bowles argues against this notion. “White people did not make up Latinx,” he says. “It was queer Latinx people... They are the ones who used the word. Our little subgroup of the community created that. It was created by English-speaking U.S. Latinx people for use in English conversation.”

Though it’s unclear when or how it began, it’s mostly tied to the early 2000s, with it reportedly appearing on Google Trends in 2004. There are a few possibilities about how the word came to be. One theory is that Latin American protests inspired the word. From the 1970s to the 1990s, as feminists protested, they would X out words ending in “OS” to “visually… reject the notion that the default is the masculine,” Bowles says. It could have also been a nod to the use of X during the civil rights movement in the United States.

Despite an August 2021 Gallup poll finding that only 4 percent of Hispanic Americans use Latinx, it’s a term that gained momentum through the 2010s and 2020s, cropping on TV shows and in politics.

 

U.S. Census Bureau reports "Latinos Rise to Record-High 18.9% of U.S. Population"

Here are informative statistics out of the U.S. Census Bureau, showing a marked increase of the U.S. Latino population which, as we know, is highly diverse. Not shown here, but other data show that Mexican-origin people are just above 60 percent of all Latinos/Hispanics. As addressed more fully in a recent post to this blog, what it means to be "Latino," "Latina" or "Latinx" is a social construction, accounting for why we don't all vote the same and why pan-ethnic "Latina/o" or "Latinx" identities might be more salient in some places and times than in other places and times. 

To be sure, there is a lot of richness and complexity to what we might call the "Latino experience." Thanks to Dr. Victor Saenz for sharing.

-Angela Valenzuela

Latinos Rise to Record-High 18.9% of U.S. Population

by Alyssa Gonzales July 19, 2022

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The U.S. Latino population has risen to 62,647,044, representing 18.9% of the nation’s population, according to new Census Bureau estimates.

The number of Latinos in the U.S. grew by 767,907 from 2020 to 2021, an increase of 1.2%, according to the newest data.

Here is everything you need to know.

What Defines “Hispanic Origin” on the Census?

Individuals filling out the Census can choose between two ethnicities, “Hispanic or Latino” or “Not Hispanic or Latino”

What defines being “Hispanic or Latino” when filling out the Census?

According to the Census website, the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) defines “Hispanic or Latino” as a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race.

The Census Bureau has conducted content tests to improve the design and function of different questions on race and ethnicity since the 1970s.

With the growth in diversity and population, individuals may find the ethnic categories confusing or wish to see their specific on the census questionnaire.

Census research showed that, over time, an increasing number of people do not identify with any of the official OMB race categories, contributing to a rise in respondents who are racially classified as “Some Other Race” (SOR).

The Census website reports, “This was primarily due to reporting by Hispanics, who make up the overwhelming majority of those classified as SOR, not identifying with any of the OMB race categories.”

The Census Bureau has continued to conduct research and outreach regarding race and ethnicity. Read more about the usage of the terms Latinx, Latino, and Hispanic.

How Fast is the Latino Population Growing?

The Latino population continues to grow rapidly.

In 2010, Latinos accounted for 16% of the U.S. population.

Latinos reached 18.5% of the U.S. population in 2019, and they have now reached 18.9% as of 2021, according to the new Census Bureau data.

“Hispanic (of any race) was the largest gaining and second-fastest-growing race or Hispanic origin category, increasing by 767,907 or 1.24% [from 2020 to 2021],” according to the data.

The Hispanic origin category increased by 1.54% in the 12-month period between 2020 and 2021.

Of the current 62,647,044 U.S. Latinos, there are 31,716,199 Latino males (50.6%) and 30,930,845 Latina females (49.4%).

Where Is the Latino Population Rising or Falling?

The states of California, Florida, and Texas continue to have the biggest Latino populations, but other states have seen growth as well.

Maine and Montana were the fastest-growing states for Latinos, both at a 5.4% rate.

Only two areas experienced declines in Latino population, including New York with a 1.1% decrease and the District of Columbia 2.5% decrease.

The median Latino population for counties in 2021 was 1,217 people. Los Angeles County had the largest Latino county population at 4,824,989 people, followed by Harris County, Texas (2,097,602) and Miami-Dade County, Florida (1,838,864).

California saw the largest Latino population with a total of 15,754,605.

What is the Median Age of U.S. Latinos?

The Census Bureau also reported that the “median age for most states also increased from 2020 to 2021, indicating their populations are getting older overall.”

2021 Census Population Estimates show that the national median age has increased by 3.4 years, with the largest single-year gain of 0.3 years coming in 2021, bringing it to 38.8 years.

While Latinos are much younger than the national median age, the median age of Latinos increased from 30.2 in 2020 to 30.5 in 2021. This is older than the median age of Latinos in 2010 (27.3 years).

Why Is Latino Health Important?

The rapid growth of the Latino population means the nation’s future health depends on it.

Yet Latinos face vast health inequities that contribute to health disparities in cancer, Alzheimer’s, COVID-19, and other health conditions.

Inequities include:

• Access to healthy food and food insecurity.
• Health discrimination and
• Wage gaps and workforce discrimination.
• Housing, transportation, and green spaces.
• Access to healthcare and clinical trials.

Systemic change is needed to address the inequities to achieve health equity, where Latinos and all people have a fair, just opportunity to be their healthiest.

How Can You Improve Health Equity for U.S. Latinos? 

You can speak up for Latino health in your community.

Enter your county name to receive a Salud America! Health Equity Report Card.

The report card serves as a data dashboard tool that auto-generates Latino-focused and local data with interactive maps and comparative gauges.

This can help you visualize and explore health-related factors in your area compared to your county to the rest of the state and the nation.

The data from the report card can help start or support a conversation about solutions to inequities that impact your community! Share it with local leaders and on social media!

Get your Health Equity Report Card!

On August 11, 2010, Texas became a "majority minority" state, meaning that people of color outnumbered Anglos. The shift right now is that Texas' Latino population is the largest demographic, growing by 2 million in the last decade. 

Go to the actual Texas Tribune website and roll over the map of Texas so that you can see the percent change in total demographic growth between 2010 and 2020 by county.

Redrawing district lines ahead of the 2022 election promises to be a bruising battle. 

-Angela Valenzuela

People of color make up 95% of Texas’ population growth, and cities and suburbs are booming, 2020 census shows

The state’s Hispanic population is now nearly as large as the non-Hispanic white population, with Texas gaining nearly 11 Hispanic residents for every additional white resident since 2010. Those trends set up a pitched battle for political control when state lawmakers redraw legislative districts.

BY ALEXA URA, JASON KAO, CARLA ASTUDILLO AND CHRIS ESSIG AUG. 12, 2021

Texas’ cities and suburbs are booming. The state is home to three of the country’s 10 largest cities and four of the fastest-growing. Credit: Miguel Gutierrez Jr./The Texas Tribune

Setting the stage for what is expected to be a bruising battle over political representation, the results of the 2020 census released Thursday showed that Texas’ explosive growth over the past decade was again powered by people of color.

And it is the state’s cities and suburbs that are booming, with Texas home to three of the country’s 10 largest cities and four of the fastest-growing.

Texas gained the most residents of any state since 2010, and its Hispanic population is now nearly as large as the non-Hispanic white population, with just half a percentage point separating them. Texas gained nearly 11 Hispanic residents for every additional white resident since 2010.

Texans of color accounted for 95% of the state’s population growth. The 2020 census puts the state’s population at 29,145,505 — a 16% jump from 25.1 million in 2010. Hispanic Texans were responsible for half of that increase.

Non-Hispanic white Texans now make up just 39.8% of the state’s population — down from 45% in 2010. Meanwhile, the share of Hispanic Texans has grown to 39.3%.

The Hispanic population’s approach to becoming Texas’ largest demographic group marks a significant milestone ahead of this year’s redistricting, during which state lawmakers will draw new political maps divvying up seats in Congress and the state House and Senate in what will no doubt be an intense and protracted fight over political control of the state for the next decade.

Texas Republicans hold every lever of power to try to lock in or even expand their majorities at the state Capitol and in Congress. But they will be working to redraw the state’s political maps while confronting the demographic reality that the state is growing in ways that put the party’s stranglehold in question.

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Hispanic leaders will surely point to the growth to lobby for increased political control and representation, particularly as lawmakers consider how to draw the two additional congressional seats — the most gained by any state — Texas earned because of its fast growth.

The sluggish growth among white Texans could also complicate Republican efforts to cement their power, which relies on a political base much more likely to be white and rural.

The state’s Hispanic, Black and Asian populations all significantly outgrew the white population since 2010. The white population growth — an increase of just 187,252 — was swamped by the total growth among Asian Texans, who make up a tiny share of the total population but have seen their numbers grow at the fastest pace in the state. The state’s Asian population grew by 613,092 since 2010.

The Hispanic population saw the biggest growth, with nearly 2 million additional Hispanic people now calling Texas home.

The state’s growth has been concentrated in diverse urban centers that serve as Democratic strongholds and suburban communities, several of which have either already turned blue or are trending in that direction. Since 2010, 44% of the state’s growth took place in its five largest counties — Harris, Dallas, Tarrant, Bexar and Travis. All 10 of the state’s fastest-growing counties in the last decade were suburban.

Hays County — between Austin and San Antonio — experienced the most growth, doubling its population in the last decade.

Over the last two decades, the GOP has maintained its power by drawing political maps at the expense of voters of color. During the last round of redistricting, federal courts found that Texas lawmakers discriminated against Hispanic and Black voters in particular. The Legislature’s Republican majority was reprimanded by federal judges for intentionally diluting the power of their votes; their maps after the 2010 census flunked both the U.S. Constitution and the federal Voting Rights Act.

The growth driven by people of color easily surpassed the growth captured in the 2010 census, which showed people of color accounted for 89% of the total increase in population that decade.

This time, though, the GOP will be working in a more favorable legal landscape.

The 2021 round of political mapmaking will be the first in nearly half a century without federal oversight that previously helped shield voters of color living in states with a long history of discrimination, like Texas, from being robbed of political clout through gerrymandering.

Congress has worked slowly in its bid to revive some of those protections by restoring preclearance, which required the state to submit any changes to its elections and maps for federal review to ensure they would not harm voters of color. The U.S. Supreme Court knocked down that requirement, a lynchpin of the Voting Rights Act, in 2013. This year, the court also continued to whittle away at other portions of the act used to challenge discriminatory districts.

Congressional and state House and Senate districts must be reconfigured ahead of the 2022 elections to account for the state’s population growth and to even out residents across districts that were drawn to be close to equal in population a decade ago but are now significantly out of balance.

But that work is running well behind schedule, largely because of pandemic-induced delays of the census. With Thursday’s release, the Legislature’s number-crunchers will begin processing the massive set of data released by the Census Bureau — down to the block level — to upload it into the system lawmakers will use.

But the actual work of drafting maps, wrangling the numbers that represent communities and neighborhoods, might not begin until next month.

On Thursday, state Rep. Todd Hunter, the Corpus Christi Republican who chairs the House Redistricting Committee, told his colleagues to expect the data to be ready for them by Sept. 1.

Join us Sept. 20-25 at the 2021 Texas Tribune Festival. Tickets are on sale now for this multi-day celebration of big, bold ideas about politics, public policy and the day’s news, curated by The Texas Tribune’s award-winning journalists. Learn more.