WHO IS HISPANIC?Dr. Lucia M. Desir
Who is a Hispanic?I will illustrate the complexity of the issue by using myself as an example. AmI a Hispanic? I was born in Colombia, South America. Certainly, that ought to qualifyme as Hispanic. My name in Colombia, prior to marriage, was Lucia Maria ForbesNewball. Does that sound Hispanic? Undoubtedly, my first and middle names areSpanish, as is the custom of carrying both one’s father’s (Forbes) and mother’s(Newball) last name. The surnames Forbes and Newball, however, are not of Spanish origin. Colombia, it is said, is Catholic and Spanish-speaking. My parentswere Protestants and my mother tongue is a combination of English and EnglishCreole.
Although I was born and educated on the mainland of Colombia, my parents were born
on the island of Providencia, located in the western Caribbean Sea and part of Colombia since 1822. Like other inhabitants along Central America’s eastern coast,Providencia islanders are descendants of Africans, indigenous peoples, and English-speaking Europeans who settled there. Rather than an oddity, we exemplify thevariability typical of the Caribbean and Latin American regions. Our very existence,straddling different cultures, alerts one of the dangers inherent in facile ethniclabeling.
While the term “Hispanic” may serve to forge political unity among people of differentnationalities in the United States, it is troublesome for many reasons.”Hispanic” is a category of the U.S. census, which subsumes peoples from at least 22 differentcountries including the United States. “Hispanic” suggests that all Hispanics speak Spanish. Among recent Hispanic immigrants, however, there are Guatemalans, Nicaraguans andEcuadorians whose native language is not Spanish. In addition to Portuguese, English Creoleand other European languages, a great variety of native languages are spoken by descendants of the original inhabitants. These languages include, but are not limited to Nahuatl, Quechua, Aymara, and Tupi-Guarani. In Colombia alone over 180 indigenous dialects are still in use.“Hispanic” masks the great cultural diversity, which includes national, linguistic, “racial” andregional differences. For example, within the Andean region (Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru) we candifferentiate between coastal and highland culture. The former is heavily influenced by Africans,the latter by Incas. Similar diversity is found in Argentina, Uruguay and Chile, where thepresence of Italians, Poles, Russians, Germans, British, French add to the cultural mix of thesecountries. Other groups include Koreans, Chinese and Japanese, who have settled mostly inBrazil and Peru. Middle Easterners (Syrians, Palestinians, Lebanese, Turks and Arabs)settled inColombia, Venezuela and Ecuador and Israelis and Jews present throughout South Americaexert important cultural influences in the area.In more recent times, U.S. North Americans, both White and Black tend to refer to “Hispanics”as though they are a “racial” group and to ascribe to them a uniform Black or non-white raciallabel. This is an imposition of a North American view of race particularly problematic in cases where a “Hispanic” individual does not meet the implied racial stereotypes.
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