Spanish is a language spoken by over 350 million people as a first language. Spanish originated as a small Romance language -- actually a variety of Romance, the term we use for the speech which Latin morphed into in the Roman empire after its fall in the 5th century -- in the north-central area of the Iberian peninsula known as Castile, land of castles, during the middle ages.

This small language spread throughout the Iberian peninsula, becoming the hegemonic and dominant language of Spain and, since the 15th century, of its dominions in America. Before it started to be referred to by some as Spanish -- the equivalent of calling the English language British -- Spanish was known as Castilian, and still is in many places, though sometimes the term Castilian is reserved for the particular dialect currently spoken in Castile.

A common supradialectal, literary variety, with standard (fixed) spelling and grammar was developed in the 13th century out of the many local varieties by King Alfonso X, and developed an early literature and became the language of the court, with the concomitant prestige that this entailed among surrounding kingdoms (actually Galician, a Romance variety from north-western Spain of which Portuguese is a later development, had developed a rich literature even earlier). But its spread is due primarily to the predominant role Castile had in the reconquest of the Iberian peninsula from the "moors" (Arab and north-African Islamic peoples) during the middle ages, as well as the conquest of the Americas which immediately followed.

Thus, Spanish is a widespread language, much like English, and its speakers may or may not share much more than the language. In other words, unity of language does not entail unity of culture. Most, if not all, countries where Spanish is spoken have language minorities that do not speak Spanish or, more likely, who speak other languages besides Spanish and for which Spanish is a real threat (much like English is a threat to Native American languages, among others).

The most common term in Spanish to refer to all the people who speak Spanish is "hispano-hablante". There isn't an equivalent term for those who share a Spanish-language-based culture. Most Spanish speakers do not typically use the existing term hispano (which means Hispanic in Spanish) to refer to Spanish speakers. The term for some is as awkward as using the term Anglo or English to refer to all English speakers would be.

The English word Hispanic, used in its original sense as an adjective, as well as currently as a noun, is commonly used in the United States to refer to Spanish speakers and their descendants, whether or not they speak Spanish. In the Spanish speaking world the term hispano is rarely used that way. Spanish speakers typically identify themselves in terms of their country of origin or their ethnic group. Still, many Spanish speakers do have a vague conscience of being part of a larger community, much like English speakers who identify with England as the mother country may share a vague sense of community with other English speakers. Still, many of those who could accept the use of the term hispano might hesitate about using the term hispano for Spanish speakers whose identity is not primarily connected with Spain (such as indigenous peoples and blacks) or for those who do not speak Spanish anymore.

The English term Hispanic, adjective derived from the noun Hispania (see below), refers to a complex category. Many Spanish speakers, for example, do not necessarily consider themselves Hispanics. And Hispanics in the United States, for instance, do not necessarily speak Spanish. I wrote this to help people understand the concepts involved. Let me start with the history of Hispania (which you may want to skip).

A little bit of history

Hispania is what the Romans, citizens of Rome and speakers of Latin, called a province of their empire a couple of thousand years ago, namely the one located in the Iberian peninsula (modern Spain plus Portugal). When the Roman empire disintegrated in the 5th century, many kingdoms and other political entities like appeared in Western Europe. In places where Latin had become the majority language it continued to be spoken, and change, naturally, as all languages change through time, into the languages (Romance "dialects") that we know today as Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, and Galician (plus a few others).

As an aside, I should say that, although not all areas were equally heavily Romanized, only one of the pre-Roman languages of Hispania survived the Roman empire and, miraculously, has survived to these days, namely Basque, even though in the Basque Country located in Spain - as opposed to the part that is in France -- now everybody speaks Spanish, either exclusively (the majority) or in addition to Basque (the minority).

Originally these Romance speech forms were strictly oral dialects/languages and only hundreds of years later, when these speech forms had diverged a great deal from written Latin, did their speakers begin to write them (as well as to think of their speech as something other than Latin). We don't call these languages Latin anymore, but they are related to Latin the same way that modern English is related to "Old English", the English that was spoken at the beginning of the middle ages. Actually, English has probably changed more than some of the Romance languages in the intervening time, to the point that Old English seems to us now as a totally foreign language. (By the way, the noun/adjective Romance comes from the Latin adverb romanice "in the Roman fashion".)

In the 300 years between the fall of the Roman empire and the early 8th century, the whole of the peninsula was ruled, and somewhat unified, by Germanic tribes. These tribes, in particular the Visigoths (Goths of the West), had been allies of Rome at one time and had become quite assimilated to Roman ways and language even before arriving in the peninsula. They were a small minority in the lands they ruled.

At the beginning of the 8th century most of Hispania was occupied by Arabs and north-African troops, recently converted to Islam, often known as the "moors" (in Spanish moros, from Latin maurus), all of it except for its mountainous, northern fringes, where many of the Christian fighters receded to. The moors were not leave the peninsula entirely until 800 years later (1492). In the northern fringes of the peninsula in which some of the old Visigothic armies had taken refuge, political entities -- kingdoms, counties -- started to form, which were based on military organizations constantly engaged in action against the Muslim armies. Among these political entities we find Asturias, Leon, Castile (originally a county, then a kingdom), Navarre, Aragon, and the Catalan counties. In each of these regions a particular variety, or set of closely related varieties of Romance, developed through time.

(Actually, in Navarre and the other Basque territories which until the 13th century were politically autonomous parts of Navarre and after the 13th century became autonomous parts of Castile, the language of the population was Basque, the pre-Roman language mentioned above, a language which would not be written down until several hundred years later. Still, the local elites used Latin and later a variety of Romance which was quite close to Castilian due to the geographical proximity, for purposes of wider communication and written expression.)

These kingdoms and counties began the "reconquest" (reconquista) of the peninsula from the Muslim rulers, acquiring lands to the south as they went along. The most successful of these conquering armies was that of the Kingdom of Castile (originally a county dependent on the King of Leon) and, as mentioned earlier, its form of Romance became the most widespread in the peninsula. What is now Portugal consists of the lands which were "reconquered" primarily by people who spoke the Romance of Galicia, which is why the two regions share what many consider to be the same language (even though the two have diverged somewhat in later centuries). Navarre, which was primarily Basque in speech and custom, although the ruling class was Romanized, didn't acquire hardly any new territory and even lost most of it to Castile later on. It also lost the other Basque regions, which voluntarily joined Castile in the 13th century. Aragon spread south, as did Catalonia towards the Valencia region and the Balearic islands, which is why their language -- Catalan -- is one and the same. The southern part of the peninsula, including Andalusia, was conquered by Castile and colonized by Castilians.

Castile was the hegemonic force in the Iberian peninsula by the 15th century and its rulers were bent on unifying the other kingdoms to restore the unity of the earlier period. Except for Portugal, it succeeded by 1492 when it took the last Moorish enclave of Granada, either by force or through marriage alliances. Slowly the term España, Spain, the modern equivalent of Roman Hispania, started to be used for this political entity.

In the 12th century Portugal had become a kingdom when the count of Oporto proclaimed himself king and went on to proceed with the reconquest of lands to the south thus creating what would become modern Portugal. With an expansive Atlantic orientation, and through alliances with England, Portugal managed to stay out of the orbit of Castile, except for a period between 1580 and 1640 in which it was ruled by the Spanish monarchs while conserving its autonomy and institutions. Taking advantage of favorable circumstances Portugal managed to escape from the Spanish orbit, something that Aragon and Catalonia didn't manage to do when they tried to at around the same time.

As we all know, in 1492, Castile, having turned itself in a militarized society through the reconquest, by sheer luck came upon ("discovered") the American continent and began the conquest of American lands. Portugal eventually followed suit and came to "colonize" what is now Brazil, leaving the rest to Spain (or, rather, Castile, since the discovery was primarily a Castilian affair, with the other major kingdom of the "confederation", Aragon -- of which Catalonia and Valencia were part--, being left out of it).

The parts of the Americas invaded and colonized by Spain had sizable indigenous populations speaking hundreds of different languages. Castilian, the hegemonic form of Romance in Spain and the language of the Castilian conquerors, also became the hegemonic language of their American empire. The colonies would win independence in the 19th century, but Castilian ("Spanish") would remain the de-jure, or de-facto official language in those lands. (Sometimes we still use the term Castilian to refer to the language, much like we use English, and not British, to refer to the language I am writing in. Other times, we restrict the term for the variety--or dialect--of Spanish spoken in the original area known as Castile.)

(By the way, in the meanwhile, later in the 17th century, England "colonized" a small section of eastern north-America, some of which would later become the United States of America. France also settled some of north-America, what is now known as Quebec, hence the French speech of this region, although the English won it from the French at a later point, before the creation of Canada in the second half of the 19th century.)

So, what is a Hispanic?

With that bit of history about Hispania to put things into perspective we can tackle now the issue of the label Hispanic, as used in the US? Hispanic is an adjective derived from the noun Hispania, the Roman province (along with Galia which corresponds approximately to modern France, Britania, to modern Britain, Italia to modern Italy, and so on). Thus, originally it referred to things related to the political entity in the Iberian peninsula. Later on the term came to be used to refer to things having to do with the self-proclaimed descendent of Hispania, namely Spain, even without Portugal, and with the hegemonic language in that kingdom, though not the only one, namely Castilian-Spanish, which people outside Spain often call Spanish (thus Portugal and the Portuguese and their "descendants" in Brazil and elsewhere are excluded). (Spain has 3 minority languages

In the United States the word Hispanic is often used nowadays as a noun ("a Hispanic", "Hispanics") to refer to immigrants from lands, typically in the Americas, not Europe, where Spanish (Castilian) is generally spoken, as well as to their descendants (whether they speak Spanish or not). Whether the term should be used to refer to European speakers of Spanish is not totally clear.

Although most Spanish speakers in their country of origin, as well as many Hispanic immigrants to the US, do not use the Spanish equivalent of the adjective or noun Hispanic to identify themselves, some immigrants to the United States and many of their descendants have adopted the Hispanic label proudly and use it to represent all that unites them in terms of language and culture, which can be a great deal.

There are, however, a number of problems with the indiscriminate use of this label to refer to the people is meant to categorize. First of all, the category Hispanic is not an ethnic or racial denomination, such as Irish, or even French. It covers a very heterogeneous set of people, from different races or ethnicities. It is used to cover anyone from Mexican peasants, whether a descendant of the 'conquistadors' (meaning "conquerors" in Spanish) or of the "Indians" they conquered, whether their native or first language or the language they identify with is Spanish or not (for many "native" peoples in the Americas Spanish may still be an "oppressing" language), to descendants of Eastern and Western Europeans who coming from Argentina (over 20% of the population of Argentina is of German origin, for instance). In other words, the Spanish-speaking world is at least as varied as the United States and to lump all its citizens into a single category is liable to produce negative results, such as simplification, as well as stereotyping.

In the US, the label Hispanic is often used by some as if it referred to a "race", paralleling the term Black, or African-American (although, strictly speaking, there is no such thing as races and there is a strong cultural and ethnic component to these terms as well). This use is erroneous, since Latin American countries is at least as varied ethnically and "racially" as the United States. Besides the large numbers of native-American (indigenous) peoples and African "immigrants", parts of Latin America have been the destination of Asian, Middle Eastern, and other European immigrants. Thus for instance, some black Latin Americans may have trouble with the label "Hispanic", much like African Americans would have trouble with being called Anglos, or Anglo-Saxons, just because they speak English). The same thing is true of unassimilated or partially-assimilated indigenous peoples of the Americas who may not identify with Spain Spanish and its speakers (the conquerors and their criollo descendants), even if they themselves have had to learn Spanish to survive.

Thus the label Hispanic in the US recognizes the fact that all the people it is used to refer to share something in common, which they do, namely speaking (or having ancestors who spoke) some Spanish, as well as sharing some--or perhaps even many--cultural traits.

However, the label Hispanic, when used this 'liberally', by those who do not know the details behind it, may promote an oversimplification of reality and obscure the fact that there may be much that differentiates--and even separates--all these peoples, which in many cases may be much more than what they have in common. And, of course, what they have in common, such as the language, does not necessarily 'unite' them; remember that languages don't always unite people: Serbians and Croatians speak the same language, as do Indians and Pakistanis, and they are not necessarily each other's favorite people. (See the Languages of the World Page.)

Using the term Hispanic to refer to all these people is a little bit, though perhaps not quite, as if somebody from Mexico used the term Anglo, Anglo-Saxon (anglosajón), or even English, to refer to all citizens of the United States, whether they are black, white, Native American, Asian, or what have you, and regardless of their ethnic origin or identification.

As for the identification of the label Hispanic with the Spanish (Castilian) language, let us not forget that then the label Hispanic, rightly or wrongly, excludes people from Latin American countries in which Spanish is not spoken, such as Brazilians, whose native language is for the most part Portuguese, one of the languages of Hispania. And, of course, Guatemala, Paraguay, Bolivia, and other countries are actually multilingual countries.

As we saw earlier, the label Hispanic is not one that many first-generation Spanish-speaking immigrants (or even their descendants) use naturally to refer to themselves. First generation "Hispanics" typically think of themselves as Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Argentineans and so on, and their descendants, who typically lose their elders' language within a couple of generations, as quickly as--or even more quickly than--other immigrants to the US, typically think of themselves as Cuban-Americans, Mexican-Americans, etc., if they relate to the ancestral culture and language at all.

The label Hispanic in the US is one that is for the most part is imposed on a group of people from the outside, much as the racial label Black has been. It is a label that official entities and perhaps the majority culture in the United States began to use in the 1970s to lump all peoples which came from countries that were nominally Spanish speaking (although many people still feel unsure as to whether the term should be applied to people from Spain!). This happened as society began to acquire a conscience of this group of people as a political entity, which was in part in reaction to the fact that some "Hispanics" acquired a political conscience and began to use other, more politically charged terms to refer to themselves, such as Chicano (for Mexican-Americans) or Boricua (for Puerto Ricans).

Not everybody who is labeled a Hispanic by society is unhappy with the label. In some parts of the US it is a perfectly acceptable way of referring to people who came from Cuba, Mexico, or Central America, for instance, and perhaps even to their children and grandchildren (who chances are don't speak Spanish anymore). Still, some people feel that the label hides much more than it reveals and that what it reveals, namely having come from a nominally Spanish-speaking country, is not the most important fact about themselves and their identity.

Interestingly, people from Spain tend to reject or at least avoid the label Hispanic as an external classificatory imposition, which lumps them together with just too many people who are too different from them, based on a more-or-less accidental characteristic. This is especially true of those Spaniards (Spanish citizens) for whom Castilian (Spanish) is not their first language or the language that they associate themselves with ethnically, such as the Basques, Catalans, and Galicians. Again this is not true of all the people from Spain, so it is hard to make generalizations. It is hard to make assumptions as to what labels people prefer or disprefer for self-identification.

What are the alternatives to the label Hispanic?

As we said, some people have no problem with being called Hispanic. Most people coming from Spanish-speaking countries would probably prefer to be classified by their country of origin. And some, such as the Basques and Catalans in Spain, or at least some of them, would prefer to be identified with their national homeland, even if it is not a nation-state. Yet there are other labels that are commonly used in certain situations, at least for certain peoples coming from the Spanish-speaking world.

The word Iberian is sometimes used to refer to things related to the Iberian peninsula (Spain plus Portugal), but only as an adjective and typically not to refer to the peoples, but to certain aspects of the common culture and background and it is used primarily by academics.

The term Latin America, and the derived adjective Latin American, were invented by the French in the 19th century as part of their design to have greater influence in the Americas (since the French language is also a Romance/Latin language, the French could claim to be Latin and thus share something in common with other Romance speaking peoples, such as the right to get involved in the Latin Americas. These labels were supposed to encompass all of Spanish-speaking and Portuguese-speaking countries and people in the Hemisphere, and presumably French speaking countries (such as Haiti, Quebec, etc), but not countries with other official languages, such as English (e.g. Jamaica). Thus Latin America was opposed to Anglo-America.

The term Latin America and the adjective Latin American, vague as they are, are convenient labels that serve some purposes, but for most "Latin Americans" they are not labels that they use for self-identity and self-identification, except for perhaps for those sharing a particular political ideology.

In the 1970s and 1980s, some people in the US from the communities we are talking about did begin to feel that people of Latin American origin, even if from different parts of Latin America, faced common struggles against racism and discrimination in the United States, and adopted the label Latino (Latina being the feminine version), which literally means "Latin" in Spanish, but which seems to be an abbreviated way of saying Latin American (latinoamericano), as an identity label, to highlight these commonalities. However, it is clear that not all Latin American peoples feel equally comfortable using this term as a synthesis of their identity.

So, what is the difference between Latino/Latina and Hispanic? Although this may be a gross overgeneralization, we could say those peoples who identify with the Spanish language and Spanish culture (the culture of Spain), prefer to use the term Hispanic, whereas those who identify with indigenous and underprivileged peoples of the Americas often prefer the label Latino, to the extent that anyone likes these overarching blanket labels.

In the 1960s and 70s, civil rights movements among people of Mexican origin (mostly in California and the Southwest) and Puerto Rican origin (mostly in New York) began to use the terms Chicano and Boricua, respectively, to refer to their communities. The label Chicano refers to Mexican-Americans (not Mexicans), whereas the label Boricua refers to Puerto Ricans as well as Puerto Rican Americans. Both terms have some currency at present, though not every Mexican-American or Puerto-Rican would necessarily use them to refer to their identity.

Finally, I should mention the tendency in some communities in the US to refer to people and things from Spanish-speaking lands as Spanish. This is true, for instance, among many people in the community where I live in the North Shore area of Boston, where Dominicans are routinely labeled Spanish, as is their food and other aspects of their culture (such as their music, for instance). It does seem that this label is to some extent accepted by the community as evidenced by the fact that the ethnic food markets in these communities tend to have signs which advertise to the world that "Spanish food" can be purchased there. In the local markets that I am familiar with what what's meant by this is Caribbean food or, more particularly, Dominican food, certainly not food from Spain or any other country of the Spanish-speaking world.

Some quotes

The United States District Court re. the definition of Hispanic in United States of America v. Crispited Ortiz, et al:

"Are Hispanics a distinctive group and if so, how is an Hispanic defined? Both expert witnesses agreed that Hispanics are not a race....The government's expert Preston testified that since 1970 the principal means of identifying the Hispanic population has been self-identification.... Moreover, Preston reported that the background of Hispanics in this country is quite varied apart from some use of the Spanish language, at least in the past. Defendant's expert Ericksen similarly explained that whether or not a person is an Hispanic is not a biological characteristic but a psychological characteristic as to how one identifies himself or herself. It is not simply whether one has some Spanish ancestry or whether one speaks Spanish as a first language.... Some last names of persons who may consider themselves Hispanic may not be or may not appear to be of Spanish derivation... Suffice it to say that whether a person is Hispanic in the final analysis depends on whether that person considers himself or herself Hispanic."

The federal government of the United States defines Hispanic as the people of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central or South American or other Spanish culture or origin, regardless of race. (The Code of Federal Regulations, Title 49, section 23.62)

Related links

White Hispanics?
by Roger Hernández © 1998 King Features (at LatinoLink)

Latino Si. Hispanic No.
(The New York Times, 28 Oct 1992)

'HISPANIC' vs 'LATINO' POLL
In Hispanic Online, December 2000. Local copy here.

Latino/"Hispanic"- Who Needs A Name?* The Case Against A Standardized Terminology
by Martha E. Gimenez. Local copy here.

Latinos/Hispanics...What Next! Some reflections on the politics
Local copy here.

Summary results from the Latino ethnic attitude survey
Conducted by Daniel L. Roy, Department of Geography, University of Kansas. Local copy.

Are Chicanos the same as Mexicans?

Hispanic Online
"the leading on-line forum on the Web and America Online for Latinos living in the USA."

Related courses at SSC

Here is a list of courses taught at Salem State College related to Latin America, the Caribbean, and Latinos in the U.S., courtesy of Dr. Avi Chomsky, in the History Department (it opens in a new window).

Bibliography

Here is a bibliography on Latinos in the U.S., also courtesy of Dr. Avi Chomsky, from the History Department at Salem State College, which is part of a paper entitled Beyond "Culture": Sources and Themes in Latino History (it opens in a new window).

Davis, Darién J. 1995. "Multiculturalism or multicultural imperialism? An investigation into the language of multiculturalism." In Current World Leaders 38.6: 23-37. International Issues, Featuring: Multiculturalism and Linguistic Politics.

You can find an Adobe Acrobat version of this page suitable for printing here:

http://www.lrc.salemstate.edu/aske/acrobat/the_spanish_speaking_world.pdf

Salem State College | Department of Foreign Languages

Page URL: www.lrc.salemstate.edu/aske/spanishworld.htm

Last updated: August 29, 2001

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