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0 pointsMordisquitos5y ago0 comments

Apparently there are two languages: English and political.

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6 comments · 1 top-level

TheAdamAndChe5y ago· 5 in thread

Latino isn't a language, it's an identity. That makes it political.

As someone who is latin american, I never understood what is the obsession with identity in the US. American hispanics I've talked to use it as something of a catch-all concept, but I've observed that many only have a meagre proficiency in Spanish and know nothing about the other Latin American countries that they pack with the bunch (apart from their own/their parents).

brudgers5y ago

Historically, a large part of it goes back to the Treaty of Hildalgo.

It obligated the US to enfranchise Mexican citizens living in the seceded lands of Alta California.

This immediately threw a wrench in antebellum politics which only allowed "white people" the vote. Eventually the US invented a racial category based on speaking Spanish...well actually two, one black, one non-black.

Fundamentally the identity of people with cultural affiliation to Spanish speaking cultures is complicated by the sanctioned narratives of US history which do not allow for the US to consider its Latin American heritage.

You could sleep in a hotel in Santa Fe and eat in a restaurant when the Pilgrims came ashore at Plymouth Rock. And when "fulfilled manifest destiny" reached the California coast, there were churches there where people went on Sunday...and chattel slavery had been banned for two hundred years.

TheAdamAndChe5y ago

This is a touchy subject in the US so I don't want to get too into it, its a bit off topic. The shortest and most neutral answer I can give is that minority political groups in the US use identity as a tool to push for political change.

xondono5y ago

To me the most non-sensical part in this kind of arguments is that most of the people identifying themselves as “Latino” are people from the US. Most people actually born in latin america will self-identify with their country of origin (Argentinian, Colombian,..)

8note5y ago

Really it's a geographic location of origin.

There's nothing particularly political about being from South america

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