HISPANIC VS LATINO : WHICH ONE IS RIGHT?

By now you have noticed my writing style, and have seen me use both terms Latino and Hispanic in my articles. I remember a story about a little girl named Virginia who once wrote to a newspaper asking if Santa Claus was real. Recently, I got a letter at my P O Box with no return address or name and it simply stated: “Make up your mind…Hispanic or Latino.” Since I use both terms in my articles I am going to do my best to illustrate why the two terms should be used.

First of all, Hispanic is an adjective; Latino could be a noun or an adjective.

Latino could also be used to describe gender. There are plenty of strong opinions among Hispanics themselves on what they like to hear or consider themselves. There are actual polls being taken as I write this on what one prefers Latino or Hispanic.

My premises for this article are to let the Hispanic community know that whatever one decides to be labeled, the goal should be toward a united community. It does not matter if you are from Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, The Dominican Republic, Spain, Uruguay or Venezuela. Each and every one of these Nationalities has a certain word that they use to describe their ethnic background. Some prefer Latino because it’s viewed as a self-identifying word, from a Latin America Country, unlike Hispanic, which is the preferred term used by the U.S. government for census and other purposes.

Many feel that Latino makes more sense and is more politically appropriate, while others feel that in professional circles the term Hispanic has more power. The bottom line in my opinion is that this issue should not allow any division among us. I will continue to use both terms in my articles to describe who or what I am talking about.

Now if you want to get into it a little bit more, we might want to ask the Filipino community which I greatly admire because of their great hospitality and heart warming individuals who in my opinion share many of our Hispanic culture traditions when it comes to family and religion. You see in 1521 Ferdinand Magellan claimed their land for Spain and it was not until 1898 after the Spanish-American war that the United States bought the Philippines from the Spaniards to prepare the Filipinos for their Independence. To all my Filipino friends who have Spanish names & use Spanish words I ask the question: Do you consider yourself a Latino? I also have a Brazilian friend who considers himself a Latino. Most people known in the United States today, as “Hispanic or “Latino” are immigrants, or descendants of immigrants, from the former American colonies of the Spanish Empire

So as you can see we can go on and on with this topic, however there are more important issues in our community to focus our attention to. There are many more issues outside of identity that are more important than Latino or Hispanic. What the Hispanic community should concentrate on is to come together in unity with one another. The different clubs out there should start looking for ways to do more for our community. There is no reason for the Mexicans, Cubans and Puerto Ricans to name a few to be doing their own thing when as a united group we can put one heck of a show or carnaval for America. I also urge the Hispanic groups to start doing joint festivities with the Filipino community so we can really party and/or display our cultures to our community.

So to all my readers including the Hispanic-Latino’s continue to write to me, feel free to make suggestions on topics that you would like me to write on and above all continue to be involved in our community and with our children so that they may have the pride of knowing that we are all have a culture to be proud of and remember that we are all children of God.