Corps Archives & Special Collections, Solomon Bogard Collection (COLL/45).

Digital image
licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license (CC BY 2.0). Source: USMC
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Latin America has a rich and diverse history of indigenous cultures,

European colonization, African slavery, and global immigration that makes it
complex and difficult to describe its people with a single ethnic category or
identifier. People in the US who have origins in a Latin American country
occasionally self-identify or are referred to as Latin American, but many
prefer the term Latino/a (for Latino, masculine, or Latina, feminine).

Courtesy of Marissa Del Toro

Whatʼs the difference between Hispanic and Latino/a? Primarily, the

reference to Spain. Hispanic refers to linguistic origins from a Spanish-
speaking country, in particular Spain. Latino/a refers to people living in the
USA who have ethnic and cultural origins from a country in Latin America.

To add nuance, the terms Latino and Latina are gender-identified. So a

male-identifying individual with direct or ancestral origins from Latin
America may identify as Latino, while a female-identifying individual would
be Latina. However, for individuals who fall outside the gender binary of
male/female, Latino/Latina, the term Latinx is an additional option to
express gender identity that exist outside the constraints of the binary.