Hispanic culture
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The term Hispanic culture pertains to cultures found in Spain and to the cultures of any country that was colonized by the early Spanish conquistadors. Mexico and other countries were previously known as New Spain. Hispanics come primarily from Spanish and Native American ancestry. In the Caribbean and portions of South America, there is also a large lineage of African ancestry. Although all "Hispanic" nations share some sort of common culture, each country has its own unique culture and peculiarities.
| “ | Through various chains of causation ... the Castilian value system came to be ordained in the Hispanic civilization: a tremendous individualism, resistant to every form of compromise and delegation; the exaltation of ‘being’ over ‘doing’; dislike of the machine, intuitively sensed as dehumanizing; an enormous preoccupation with dignity, not as decorum or anything else external but as the distinctive spiritual possession of every human, almost an aspect of soul, the first cousin of honor and pride; the importance of social rank and ostentation; the absence of a bourgeoisie class, since society was determined to ignore economic activity; the emerge of the pícaro as an accepted social type, with all his tricky manipulations that eventually came to be known in Argentina as viveza or viveza criolla; the emphasis and reliance upon personal pull and favoritism; a system of huge landholdings, fostering a pastoral life and values as opposed to agricultural commitment; the Moorish style in private life, with the macho male, the secluded female, and the inwardly oriented house with blind façade on the street and cordial patio in the farthest interior.
A final quality of the civilization, difficult to express persuasively because it is antithetical to the northern perception and sensibility, should be understood. This is the concept of extremes, or of polarization. All Hispanic life seemed to be concentrated in a series of distant opposites, held in very uneasy tension: the vastly rich and the totally poor; the highest of religious ideals and the lowest of conniving practices; unquestioning loyalty and fowl treachery. But no person and no thing, no group, no practice, no value, occupied much of any middle ground. It was as if the society could not embrace anything without driving it to an extreme and could not tolerate existence in any centrally located space. A civilization of disjoined dualisms, lacking any continuum. One reality stands forth clearly: in this Hispanic civilization, the many parts of the whole were mutually reinforcing. All movements and influences followed not linear but circular and centripetal courses, for the civilization was an organic whole, a natural symbiosis, a garden whose blooms were complementary to one another in form and hue and whose roots were deeply entwined. Thus the extraordinary tenacity of the social organism and its triumph over time, its sturdy resistance to significant change, and the ease of its transfer to South America in the great outflowing of creative vitality from sixteenth-century Castile.[1] |
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[edit] The term "Hispanic"
- Main article: Hispanic
Etymologically, the term Hispano/Hispanic is derived from Hispania, the name given by the Romans to the entire Iberian Peninsula — modern-day Spain and Portugal — during the period of the Roman Republic. Historically, however, Hispanic/Hispano has only ever applied to Spain and that related to her, while a derivation from or relation to Portugal and its people is denominated Luso/Lusitanic.
The usage of Hispanic as an ethnic indicator in the United States is believed to have come into mainstream prominence following its inclusion in a question in the 1980 U.S. Census, which asked people to voluntarily identify if they were of "Spanish/Hispanic origin or descent".
[edit] Synonyms and antonyms
Often the term "Hispanic" is used synonymously with the word "Latino", and frequently with "Latin" as well. Even though the terms may sometimes overlap in meaning, they are not completely synonymous.
Latin in this context refers to "Latin America," a term introduced by the French in the 1860s when they dreamed of building an empire based in Mexico. It was closely connected to the introduction of French positivism into Latin American intellectual circles. [1] The French correctly understood "Latin" to include themselves and exclude the "Anglo-Saxons" of the US and the UK.
"Hispanic", on the other hand, specifically refers to Spain, and to the Spanish-speaking nations of the Americas as cultural and demographic extensions of Spain.
Meanwhile, Latinos are only those from the countries of Latin America, whether Spanish or Portuguese-speaking, though in the latter case, not so frequently and with some ambiguities.
The confusion that arises is from the similarity between the words Latino and Latin, and between the concept of Hispanic and Latino. Latino is a shortened version of the noun Latinoamérica (Latin America). In the Spanish language "Latín" (Latin) is the name of the language of the Romans. This means that "Latin" is not confined solely to Hispanics and/or Latinos, and has always included such people as the Italians, French, Romanians, Portuguese, etc.
Thus, of a group consisting of a Brazilian, a Colombian, a Mexican, a Spaniard, and a Romanian; the Brazilian, Colombian, and Mexican would all be Latinos, but not the Spaniard or the Romanian, since neither Spain nor Romania are geographically situated in Latin America. Conversely, the Colombian, Mexican and Spaniard would all be Hispanics, but not the Brazilian or the Romanian, since Brazil was colonized by the Portuguese, and neither Portugal or Romania are extensions of Spain. The one exception for a Brazilian to be considered Hispanic is if his or her ancestry was Spanish. Finally, all of the above nationalities would all be Latin, including the Romanian.
"Latino" is very rarely applied to French-speaking Québec in Canada, and almost never to Haiti. The categories of "Latino" and "Hispanic" are used primarily in the United States to socially differentiate people. As social categories they are not mutually exclusive and without ambiguities and cannot be seen as independent of social discrimination (socio-economic, ethnic or racial).
Aside from "Hispanic", "Latino", and "Latin", other terms are used for more specific subsets of the Hispanic population. These terms often relate to specific countries of origin, such as "Mexican", "Mexican-American", "Cuban", "Puerto Rican" or "Dominican", etc. Other terms signify distinct cultural patterns among Hispanics which have emerged in what is now the United States, including "Chicano", "Tejano", "Nuyorican", etc.
[edit] "Hispanic" as a U.S. ethnic label
In the United States, some people consider "Hispanic" to be too general as a label, while others consider it offensive, often preferring to use the term "Latino", which is viewed as a self-chosen label. The preference of "Latino" over "Hispanic" is partly because it more clearly indicates that those it is referring to are the people from Latin America (including Brazil) and not Spain. Different labels prevail in different regions, as well. In places like Arizona and California, the Chicanos are proud of their personal association and their participation in the agricultural movement of the 1960s with César Chávez, that brought attention to the needs of the farm workers. Usually younger Hispanics will not refer to themselves as such, however.
Previously Hispanics were commonly referred to as "Spanish-Americans", "Spanish-speaking Americans", and "Spanish-surnamed Americans". These terms, however, proved even more misleading or inaccurate since:
- Most U.S. Hispanics were not born in Spain, nor were most born to recent Spanish nationals;
- Although most U.S. Hispanics speak Spanish, not all do, and though most Spanish-speaking people are Hispanic, not all are (e.g., many U.S. Hispanics by the fourth generation no longer speak Spanish, while there are some non-Hispanics of the Southwestern United States that may be fluent in the language), and;
- Although most Hispanics have Spanish name and surname, not all do, and while most Spanish-surnamed people are Hispanic, not all are (e.g., there are tens of millions of Spanish-surnamed Filipinos, but very few, only about 3.6%, would qualify as Hispanic by ancestry).
[edit] Criticism of application
One vociferous critic of "Hispanic", as it is used in the United States, has been the Mexica Movement — an indigenous rights and education organization. Their central criticism of the label "Hispanic" is that its rationale is eurocentric and inconsistent with the rationale for labeling other groups, including:
- Native Americans in the United States, most of whom also have European bloodlines — often predominantly — carry English surnames and are overwhelmingly monolingual English-speakers, yet are not labeled "Anglo".
- African-Americans, few of whom do not have some European ancestry, carry British surnames and speak the English language, but are not labeled "Anglo."
- Métis of Canada, who are mixed-blood people of French and Amerindian descent, are largely monolingual speakers of English or French, and again are not labeled "Anglo" or "Franco" and have in fact been recognized as Aboriginal peoples in Canada under Canadian law.
The Mexica Movement asserts that most people of Mexican or Central American descent are indigenous Amerindians (whether mixed-blooded or full-blooded) who have been made to speak a European language as a conseqence of the Spanish colonization of the Americas commencing in 1492. The organization has popularized the slogan "Not Hispanic! Not Latino!" through a t-shirt line of clothing and self-published materials. It should to be noted that most Mexicans agree with this ideology.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Perón and the Enigmas of Argentina by Robert D. Crassweller, pages 26-27
