Memorare In The Snow: Hispanic vs. Latino: Spain Conqueror or Spain Mother?

"In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue..."

The debate between the use of the terms Hispanic vs. Latino has always interested me. Is Hispanic really a race or just a term to describe a complex culture and people? If so, which people does this term include? Are Haiti and Brazil Latin or Hispanic despite being, respectively, former French and Portuguese (rather than Spanish) possessions? Can Spain be considered Hispanic?

Etymogically, the term Hispanic comes from the name of the Roman Empire's province of Hispania which included the areas roughly around modern Portugal and Spain (called the "Iberian Peninsula"). The term Latino comes from the fact that the countries in what's considered modern Latin America were colonized by people of strongly Latin-derived languages such as French, Portuguese and Spanish.

Personally, I prefer the term Hispanic for myself since I feel (that for me) it encompasses the entire Spanish speaking world and culture (our foods, language, and Roman Catholicism) better than the term Latino (which may include the former French and Portuguese possessions in Latin America which I feel less related to —or maybe I should say less exposed to— culturally). I know I have ancestors from Spain on my dad's side and one from France on my mom's side, but I still feel much more strongly identified with the Hispanophone counterpart because of my parents' country and my growing up in Hispanophone communities.

However, with this comes the biggie issue. Some Spaniards take offense to being grouped under the term Hispanic. Part of this can be perceived as racial, since South Americans (and people from other Spanish speaking countries) who move to Spain rather than the United States to work (after all, they figure it might be easier to fit in because the same language and religion are shared) are sometimes discriminated and called derogative terms like "Sudaca" or "Indio", especially if they are of more visibly aboriginal descent such as in the case of a number of Ecuadorians. Likewise, a number of Latin Americans don't like Spaniards because despite inheriting the Castilian language and a great part of its culture, they're seen as the conquerors and the "other".

The Spanish sentiment of comes from the fact that many if not most Hispanics aren't of purely Spanish descent (most of us are mixed, though sadly even in Latin American countries this prejudice between "indios", "negros", and "blancos" still exists), and the Latin American sentiment comes from the fact that the Spanish colonizers and peninsulares weren't exactly Mother Teresa coming on a mission for solidarity. Depending on what country we're from, we're usually a mix of the original aboriginal inhabitants of the land, Spanish (and other European) settlers, and the enslaved Africans brought in to replace the dying aboriginals. It depends on the country of course. Mexicans tend to be mixed Amerindian and Spanish ancestry while Dominicans may have different degrees of Taino, Spanish, and African roots (though I'm not sure to what degree of Taino since they were so quickly wiped out by European diseases and labor).

I don't know. It's fun to learn about your roots, ancestry, and culture; but it becomes useless and way out of hand when we become overly political and racial. For example, some people in Latin America like to emphasize their Spanish roots and ignore their other ones (there was an article about a possible example of this being the notion that nearly all Dominican women straighten their hair) and the Spaniards themselves emphasize their Germanic roots as part of Western Europe. It's like everyone has to find an outer point of validation.

Still, just as I may joyfully listen to Spaniard artists like Amistades Peligrosas and Vainica Doble, and Spaniards may joyfully listen to Colombians like Juanes and Shakira (maybe back when she had meaningful things to say, not during her Hips Don't Lie days, sorry I love her but it's true LOL), Dominican singer Juan Luis Guerra, the Mexican band Maná, (and why not even the Argentinian punk group Dos Minutos) and relate, I hope the entire Spanish speaking world can likewise be united under our beautiful Castilian language and heritage rather than divided by false concepts of purity and superiority. Technically, I don't know if I should even be proud of that because if any one of us go far back enough, most of us in the world global mutts with a bit of everything (African, Amerindian, European, Meditarranenan), but at the very least I hope there is greater unity among a community (from Mexican novelas to Dominican bachata to Spanish paellas), no, a family, which I greatly love: