Hispanic 101

The basics everyone must command

This is the first tangible contribution and hopefully, the beginning of a series of valuable publications that would help to understand "Hispanics"

1) Hispanic or Latino -both terms are socially accepted by this minority- is not an ethnic denomination. This is a crucial element that everyone should know but only few realize. As the U.S. Census Bureau correctly stated, in the only appropriate profiling among governmental branches, Hispanic or Latino represents a term based on a political classification and not on phenotype or genotype classifications. As Americans -those born in the United States regardless their heritage- Hispanic means those individuals born in Latin America. Latinos represent a group of diverse ethnic origins, mainly, they belong to 4 races: Caucasian (European whites) Amerindian (native Americans) Afro-American and Asian-American. There are also diverse groups of "mestizos" and "mulatos" which are the multi-ethnic or interracial descendants of two or more different ethnic backgrounds. Therefore, the first thing everyone must understand is that there is no common ethnic profile addressing Hispanics. Accordingly, when communicating to the group we shouldn't use a single stereotype.

2) Because it is a political division, even in culture and folklore there are some important differences. Most of Hispanics are Spanish speakers as they were mainly colonized by Spaniards but there is a huge country in Latin America, Brazil, colonized by the Portuguese that has a different linguistic background as well as some Amerindian groups that barely speak Spanish but their own dialects. As per those Hispanics of foreign origin, Spain was the main source of immigrants but during the last two centuries, important waves of German, Italian and British emigrated to Latin America running away from the wars in Europe, as well as Jews, Arab and Asian descendants looking for better opportunities or escaping civil wars or religious prosecution in their countries. We must then differentiate two main languages: Spanish and Portuguese and several cultural backgrounds.

3) As all countries in Latin America has a long history since Columbus arrived -in most cases even longer than that of the United States- there are strong particular differences among them, as their folklore and traditions are different. It means educational background, language singularities, music, food, clothing are different among Hispanics from different countries and specially from different regions. In example, those coming from Central America share similar climate, Maya or Aztec native heritages and therefore, there are fewer differences among them. In an effort to have a broader classification, we may try to identify some regional groups: Central American and Mexicans, Caribbeans, Amazonians and South Americans. But a closer look will demonstrate that this is the wrong approach. There also are strong cultural differences among Hispanics in the same country when we move up and down the social pyramid. Ultimately, when addressing the target, the only possible way to really be successful is to address a particular group at a time. And in the case of the United States, we are lucky as Latinos belong to a much smaller universe than that present in their countries of origin. Almost 3/4 of Hispanics in the country are of Mexican origin and the rest are mainly from Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Cuba, other Central America's countries and Colombia. This represents a more approachable target but we must be careful and again, do not rush with the wrong stereotypes.

This is the first chapter, an attempt to shake the basis of wrong profiling in America regarding Hispanics. In the next chapter, we will talk about successful approaches to the target and effective communication strategies.