Thread: Latino vs Hispanic

Hi, I am Argentinian and for us it's a geographical thing. Latino would be a person from Latin America and Hispanic comprehends/encloses someone from Latin America and Spain also. You could say too that Hispanic people are those who speaks Spanish.

Originally Posted by vicente

... Unless they have traveled to them, the average person in the U.S. doesn't know very much about the countries south of us and would be hard pressed to name the countries in Central and South America. Most are familiar with Mexican and Colombian **** cartels because of the violent history of **** smuggling from those countries and which have made them virtually household words but many do not know many of the names of Latin American countries or how many there are.

In general, Hispanic and Latino are practically interchangeable in the U.S. When we first started this thread I asked people what these words meant to them and all said they meant about the same and weren't able to express any real difference between the two. No one considered the words to be derogatory...

Hi Vicente. Please let me know if I'm wrong, but I had the opportunity to travel in the US from Florida to Maine and from Vermont to California and in my experience, the average person in US does not make any difference from everything that is south of the Rio Grande.

Hi Vicente. Latin America and Caribe is a huge conjunction of cultures and races, but with a common language. People in Mexico is very different to the people in the Rio de la Plata, Chile, Paraguay, Venezuela and Peru, for example. We have different cultures, foods, idiom expressions and so on. But for the US people we are all just "latinos". That´s what I mean.

Hi Vicente,
You are right. I had the chance to travel the US by car some years ago, from Florida to Maine, from Maine to Kansas, then to LA and finally back to Florida. And I noticed that people are really different all over the country. People in Georgia or Louisiana have different culture and expresions from people in New England, or Illinois, or Colorado...
It was a great experience to me.

I have found this chart and think it is quite interesting...

Comparison chart

	Hispanic	Latino
Terminology	Hispanic refers to language. Hispanic if you and/or your ancestry come from a country where they speak Spanish.	Latino refers to geography. Specifically, to Latin America, to people from the Caribbean (Puerto Rico, Cuba, Dominican Republic), South America (Ecuador, Bolivia, Colombia, Peru, etc.) and Central America (Honduras, Costa Rica, etc.)
In the U.S.	Was first adopted by the United States government during the administration of Richard Nixon It has been used in the U.S. Census since 1980. "Hispanic" is used more often in states such as Florida and Texas.	The government adopted these terms because they did not have an inclusive term to identify and segregate the mixed white with black and native "mestizo or mulato people of Central and South America.
Derived from	The term "Hispanic" comes from a Latin word for Spain "Hispania", which later became "España". It refers to a person of Latin American or Iberian ancestry, fluent in Spanish.	The term "Latino" is shortened from Spanish latino americano, "Latin American" thus narrowing the scope of meaning to Central and South America, and Spanish speaking Carribean Islands.
Usage	"Hispanic" is primarily used along the Eastern seaboard, and favored by those of Caribbean and South American ancestry or origin.	“Latino” is principally used west of the Mississippi, where it has displaced “Chicano” and “Mexican American.”