How Big is The Hispanic – Or Latino – Big Tent?

By Carlos E. Cortés / Univision Insights

While lecturing recently at a U.S. university, I met a Brazilian American faculty member.  As we waltzed back and forth, conversing in both English and Portuguese (I lived in Brazil for nearly two years), he casually referred to the two of us as fellow Latinos.  Not once, however, did he use the term, Hispanic.

While I can’t speak for my new friend (and I neglected to ask him), my sense is that, while he views himself as Latino, he doesn’t see himself as Hispanic.  That’s quite logical.  After all, one of the trademarks of being a U.S. Hispanic, at least in the word’s current iteration, is being able to speak Spanish or, at least, having a Spanish-speaking heritage even if this means going back several generations:  But what about Portuguese-speaking Latinos?

That encounter caused me to reflect further on the subject of the co-existence of Hispanic and Latino as umbrella terms for U.S. Americans of Latin American and Spanish background.  This co-existence is usually framed as a matter of personal preference: do you prefer being called Latino or Hispanic?  However, this choice goes well beyond personal preference into the issue of inclusion and exclusion.

We’ve just finished Hispanic Heritage Month, as well as the launching of the PBS series, “Latino Americans.”  That contrasting nomenclature leads me to wonder: were the month and the series honoring precisely the same cohort?  Did they include U.S. Americans of Spanish American ancestry?  And those of all Latin American ancestries, including Brazil, and those of direct Spanish ancestry?  Or did they honor some other configuration?

The issue is the varied envisioning of the Hispanic – or Latino – big tent.  Is it capacious enough to embrace all of the above?  Or does our choice of labels unwittingly create two (or more) distinctive types of big tents with different factors of inclusion and exclusion?

Until now, Latino and Hispanic as umbrella terms have generally been viewed as interchangeable without much consideration of the possible distinctions between the two terms.  However, as our population grows well beyond 50 million and as we witness the rapid growth of offspring of marriages involving Latinos and non-Latinos, it’s a question that needs to be addressed even if there is no definitive answer.

So next time I see my new Brazilian American friend, we’ll rekindle our joint identities as Latinos and U.S. Americans, using both Portuguese and English.  But this time I’ll also get his take on whether or not he feels Hispanic.

Dr. Carlos E. Cortés is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of California, Riverside.  He can be reached at ca***********@uc*.edu.