The term Hispanic and Latin@ and Chican@ are three very American terms that most people in Latin America don’t identify with. However in the USA we use those terms to distinguish ourselves from others.

In addition to this, the terms Hispanic and Latin@ are two labels that were placed upon those communities in order to be able to jumble everyone together who lives or has heritage from south of the Mexican-American Border. The terms Latin@ and Chican@ contain an “@” symbol because this is a gender neutral way of writing these identities and including everyone that would want to identify with these terms.

The word Hispanic comes from the word Hispania which is what Spain used to be called when the Roman Empire used to be in power. Nowadays the word Hispanic refers to the people that belong to Spanish speaking countries: Argentina, Chile, Mexico, and Panama are just a few of the several examples of the dozens of countries in Latin America that speak Spanish. Countries like Brazil, Suriname, and French Guiana do not speak Spanish as their main languages in the countries they speak Portuguese, Dutch, and French respectively; therefore the people that inhabit these countries are not identified as Hispanic.

The word Latin@ originally refers to the languages that stem from the Latin language for example Spanish, Italian, French, and Portuguese. Therefore, technically everyone that speaks these languages or are from these countries could identify as Latin@ if they chose to. As stated earlier Brazil is not considered Hispanic because they do not speak Spanish, however they can consider themselves Latin@ since the Portuguese language is derived from Latin roots. Most people that identify as Latin@ reside in the USA, people from other countries usually do not identify as Latin@ because they identify themselves by their country of origin. For example people from Salvador consider themselves Salvadorean, and people from Mexico consider themselves Mexican.

The terms Latin@ and Hispanic are names and labels that were placed upon us by the oppressive system however the term Chican@ is a name that we chose for ourselves. Most people that identify as Chican@ live in the USA and were born in or have cultural heritage from a Latin American country. In addition to this they have, usually, felt or have experienced some sort of alienation from both countries. Chican@s feel like they’re not from here and they’re not from there, even though they have lived in the USA or the other country for most if not all of their life. In addition being Chican@ is a state of mind, a set of beliefs and understandings that deviate from the norm in the USA. As Chican@s we fight for all social justice issues especially those that pertain to the Latin@ community. Even though they are highly focused on the Latino community Chican@ are allies to different communities, some of these communities are the Black/ African-American community, the Asian and Pacific Islander community and the Palestine community. Chican@s seek to become conscious of social and political issues that surround them and the communities they are allies to.