HISPANIC & LATINO defined
In theory, Hispanic is a pseudo-linguistic term (the desired term among linguists is Hispanophone) describing speakers of Spanish (Hispanics) exclusively.
In practice, Hispanic coops as a synonym for Latino, which collectively are two socio-legal identifiers in U.S. government (see more below).
Spanish is one of the five romance languages deriving from Latin, and is spoken in a variety of countries and dependancies in the Americas (including Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory).
All Hispanics are Latin by virtue of his/her linguistic culture, but not all Latins are Hispanics.
SPANISH SPOKEN IN THE WORLD
image source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispanophone
HISPANICIZING THE UNITED STATES
Following the annexation of Hispano-French Louisiana, then Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and California, the United States landmass increased threefold, inheriting significant populations of hispanophones, who legally, became U.S. citizens and who eventually learned English.
After the succession of military conflicts in the beginning and middle of the 20th century, large numbers of political and social refugees from Spanish-speaking (Hispanophone) regions of the Americas began to swell U.S. cities. Unlike the former group, who became U.S. citizens through official annexation of land, this group of émigrés concentrated in Spanish-speaking neighborhoods, where speaking English was the last thing on their minds – work was the major concern.
As Central Americans and Caribbean Islanders continued to migrate to the United States throughout the middle and latter half of the 20th century, major concern related to rights, legalities, representation and suffrage became a major priority in U.S. politics. A growing Hispanophone population meant necessity of Hispanophone employees to cator to increased Spanish-speaking clientele and within 30 years, the United States had been transformed from a nation who worked hard to propagate anglo-saxonism and anglicization, to a visually bilingual Spanish-English-speaking nation.
Consequently, a new socio-legal identifier was needed to describe the fastest growing “non-white” population (minority) in the United States. That term was Hispanic, or Latino.
Historically, Hispanic and Latino have been employed as both a race and as an ethnicity. As a sidenote, races and ethnicities are legal identifiers pertaining to social division and allocation of resources to underrepresented portions of U.S. populations in federal, state and local institutions.
In 1980 and 1990, the United States census bureau added question 7: Is this person of Spanish/Hispanic origin. In 2000, question 8 asked respondents whether they were: Spanish/Hispanic/Latino.
Roughly a quarter of all respondents selecting Latino/Hispanic on government forms in the United States are speakers of some other Latin-based language (e.g. Cape Verdeans, Haitians, Surinamese, Brazilians, Louisiana Creoles, Portuguese).
Outside of the United States, in regions of Latin America, these “Hispanics” and “Latinos” continue to refer to their nationalities (Mexican, Dominican, Cuban, Nicaraguan etc) in favor of Hispanic/Latino as used in the United States. In other words, Latinos/Hispanics in the U.S. and whatever nationality outside of the U.S.
LATINS
SHARED CULTURE: LATINITÉ
THE PEOPLE