Running head SAN FRANCISCO 1SAN FRANCISCO 3PART 1 .docx

Running head: SAN FRANCISCO 1
SAN FRANCISCO 3
PART 1:
SMART Fire incident objectives in San Francisco
Following the fire incident on the coast of San Francisco there
some measures that will be taken by the emergency incident
responder on the ground that will set objectives that are
consistent with the priorities gauged on the ground considering
the place carries a capacity of thousands of people. The thermal
pulse is likely to cause too much damage and within seconds
people will die because of the spread of fire in the next 24
hours. S: Evacuation of all the people in the area that the fire
has not reached should be executed immediately within this
minute to prevent more damage. This objective is what should
be done because the lives of the people are a priority in this
case, (Cheng, et.al, 2017).
M: 5,000 jets have been sent on the coast of San Francisco to
transport the people being evacuated including the injured
people. This objective is important in this case because the
progress in achieving the directive should be pursued, (Cheng,
et.al, 2017). A: A number of jets have been seen departing the
shore with more than 100,000 people and there are more planes
to come. This shows that there is action being taken that
describes the expected accomplishment of the situation. T: The
evacuation of the people should be achieved in the next 6 hours
to save more lives as possible. This ensures that there is
immediate action that does not lead to delays that can cause
more damage and loss of people considering the impact of the
radiation from the fall out has significant impact on their health
hence need to get them from the place.

PART 2:
The Fire Department that was assigned to respond to the
situation at hand in San Francisco and life safety was their
priority in this case. They a have a crucial role to play in an
event of a hazardous situation which means that the team was
well trained about fire blasts and explosions. They could not
control the ignition of the fire and therefore the only thing they
could do was to save as many lives as possible, (Nunavath,
et.al, 2016). Fire responders always work strategically and
quickly in a situation where a fire can escalate causing more
damage and controlling the threat may pose a challenge. They
did all they could to minimize the loss of lives by evacuating all
the people from buildings. Although, the blast had a huge
impact on the shore leading to many people dying, they took the
initiative of trying to save the remaining lives.
The resources used in the fire incident were not entirely
available in our Fire Department; the jets were provided by
other fire departments and the federal government who had a
major role to play in the incident also sort for help. The
department has not handled such as event of thousands of
people. We lack financing of more jets in the fire department
and should be strengthened to increase efficiency, (Jensen &
Thompson, 2016). We need resources that can support the
operations of the department at all times to save more lives as
that is our primary goal of the fire service. Mitigation of risks
can be enhanced by providing public education about the
dangers of missiles and explosives.
References
Cheng, M. Y., Chiu, K. C., Hsieh, Y. M., Yang, I. T., Chou, J.
S., & Wu, Y. W. (2017). BIM integrated smart monitoring
technique for building fire prevention and disaster
relief. Automation in Construction, 84, 14-30.

Jensen, J., & Thompson, S. (2016). The incident command
system: a literature review. Disasters, 40(1), 158-182.
Nunavath, V., Prinz, A., & Comes, T. (2016). Identifying first
responders information needs: supporting search and rescue
operations for fire emergency response. International Journal of
Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management
(IJISCRAM), 8(1), 25-46.
Page 1 of 7
ANTH 3333 Writing Assignment:
“Debunking Immigration Myths”
Assignment Summary:
For this assignment, you will be tasked with writing a
persuasive essay in which you debunk three
common myths or misconceptions about Latino immigration.
For the purposes of this assignment, a myth is “a widely held
(or commonly-cited) belief or idea
that is false.” A myth could be 100% false – with no factual
basis. Alternatively, a myth can be
generated when facts are misinterpreted or misrepresented.
Myths can also be based in
opinions or experiences that do not reflect factual reality. A
myth may also have multiple parts;
some parts may be true, while others are false.
To complete this assignment, you will choose three myths about

Latina/o immigration. Which
myths you choose to write about are up to you – but each myth
you choose must address a
different UNIT of course material (there are 4 units in the
course). Your myth may overlap
multiple units.
The myths you choose should be somewhat commonly-known.
Whatever myths you choose, be
sure to pick things that have enough substance to them so that
you can write three to four pages
about each. Please note: This assignment does not include any
outside research. You must
choose myths that can be debunked using only the materials we
have used in class.
Then, using only our course materials (which may include
readings and/or in-class materials), you
will “debunk,” or “expose the falseness of,” each myth. You
may do this by providing statistical,
historical, ethnographic, or other empirical evidence drawn
from your course materials that
refutes the notion expressed by the myth. Is it 100% false?
Partly true? Another helpful way to
debunk immigration myths is to illuminate the origin of the
myth. Where did it come from? How
did it get created, and for what purpose? How does the myth get
perpetuated, and why? Does
the myth have a grain of truth to it, or is it utterly baseless?
Was it generated by a willful or
accidental misrepresentation of the facts? You must use at least
six academic sources (articles,
books, book chapters, etc.) from the course materials (two per
myth).

Submissions:
The paper will be submitted in phased “submissions,” including
three outlines (graded), three
drafts (ungraded), and a final paper (graded). You will get some
feedback at each stage of the
process – some will be individualized, and some will be
generalized. If at any time you would like
more feedback on your submissions, please come see me during
office hours. Submissions must
be saved as Microsoft Word documents an uploaded through the
Turnitin system on Canvas. Do
not use Google Docs or any other file sharing service for
writing assignment submissions.
Guidelines for outlines are below. Each draft submission should
include progressive/cumulative
revisions to previously submitted text, as well as a cover letter
(template below).
Page 2 of 7
Submission schedule:
• Fri, 9/13, 11:59 pm: Outline 1 (graded)
o This includes the outline for your first myth. If you would
like, you may also
submit outlines for myths 2 and/or 3, but this is not required
and will not be
evaluated.
• Fri, 9/27, 11:59 pm: Submission 1 (ungraded)
o This includes the draft text of your first myth and a cover

letter. 3-4 pages.
o This includes the outline for your second myth. If you would
like, you may also
submit a revised myth 1 outline and a new outline for myth 3,
but this is not
required and will not be evaluated.
• Fri, 10/25, 11:59 pm: Submission 2 (ungraded)
o This includes the REVISED text of your first myth, the draft
of your second myth,
and a cover letter. 6-8 pages.
o This includes the outline for your third myth. If you would
like, you may also
submit revised versions of outlines for myths 1 and 2, but this is
not required and
will not be evaluated.
• Fri, 11/22, 11:59 pm: Submission 3 – FULL DRAFT
(ungraded)
o This includes the REVISED text of your first and second
myths, the draft of your
third (and final) myth, **an introduction and conclusion** and
a cover letter. 9-12
pages.
• Mon, 12/9, 11:59 pm: Final Submission (graded)
o All submissions must include tracked changes in Microsoft
Word and cover letters

(see assignment handout for more information).
o 12 page minimum, 15 page max. This submission must also
include a cover letter
describing your final revision process.
All submissions must include tracked changes in Microsoft
Word. Cover Letters do not count
toward the page count, but they should be included in the same
document (as the first page of
your submission).
I recommend that you mark these deadlines down in your
calendar as soon as possible.
Details:
• Final paper will constitute 50% of your final grade in this
course.
Writing Assignment Grade Break-down:
Outlines 1-3: 20%
Final Paper: 80%
• Final submission should be 12-15 pages long, in 12 pt Times
New Roman font, double-
spaced, with standard 1-inch margins. I will check this – please
do not mess around with
the font size, margins, etc. to manipulate the length of your
document.
• Drafts must be COMPLETE DRAFTS. Each drafted myth
should include at least 3 pages of
fully-written, proof-read text (no bullet points).

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• With each submission, students must include a cover letter
following the attached
template. The Cover Letter should be submitted as the first page
of your submission
document – please do not submit two separate files.
• All submissions should be free of grammatical errors.
• Please ensure that Track Changes are visible in all of your
submission documents.
Learning Objectives:
• Think critically about current public debates about Latina/o
immigration
• Learn to deploy empirical evidence to refute commonly-held
beliefs and assumptions
• Learn how to construct and articulate a robust (well-
evidenced) but concise (direct
and “to-the-point”) persuasive essay
Suggestions for how to get started:
1. After reading through this handout, review the syllabus and
assigned readings. Think
about the topics we will be addressing in each unit of the

course. Jot down some ideas
about which myths you are most interested in investigating for
each unit.
2. Brainstorm a list of potential sources (from course materials)
that might contain
information relevant to the task of debunking each myth.
3. As you read, write down notes and page numbers where you
find evidence you can use
to refute each myth.
4. Depending on how much evidence you find, consider if the
myths you chose will provide
sufficient material for a 12-15-page paper, or whether or not
you have enough evidence
to debunk them.
5. Start by making a draft outline of your first myth.
6. Jot down a few sentences concerning the ideas about which
you feel most confident.
(Start anywhere in the main body of your essay, explicitly
avoiding the introduction and
conclusion.)
7. Think, write, repeat! Use the class materials from writing
workshops to guide you along
the way. We will be doing several activities in class that will
help facilitate your thought
process for this paper.
Evaluation:
In the best papers, the authors will:

• Clearly and concisely describe each myth.
• Provide ample relevant evidence to refute each myth.
• Draw extensively from course materials to construct the
argument. (Do not draw from
outside sources unless you think it is absolutely necessary and
have gotten permission
from me to do so.)
o Use a minimum of six academic sources from the course
materials (two per
myth).
• Finish with a strong conclusion that does more than reiterate
the main points addressed
in the rest of the essay (ie. provides a strong take-home message
that reinforces the
overall message).
Page 4 of 7
• Develop their own voice – demonstrate originality and higher-
level thinking through
their writing
• Use varied sentence structure and construct interesting prose
that engages the reader
• Present ideas in an organized way. The argument should
progress logically and smoothly.
• Demonstrate mastery of the rules of Standard English – papers

should be free from
grammatical, spelling, and other copy-edit errors.
Good writing in this assignment will be direct, active, clear, and
concise. A good way to check for
these characteristics is by reading your paper out loud to
yourself or to others to check for flow.
See sample rubrics for more details about how this assignment
will be evaluated.
Cover Letter Template
Please answer the following questions in a cover letter for each
submission. Feel free to copy
and paste the phrases below as a model for your cover letter.
Please submit this as the FIRST
PAGE (in the same document, in other words) of your
submissions.
Dear Jenny,
In this submission I am trying to…
(For draft submissions 2, 3, and final submission: In my last
draft I….. Given the feedback I
received on that draft, I decided to… because….)

For this submission I concentrated most of my efforts on…
because…
What I struggled with most was…. (AND/OR) If I was given
more time, I would work on….
I think the strongest parts of this submission are…
A question I have for you is…
Sincerely,
[Your Name]
Page 5 of 7
Myth Outlining Worksheet
What is your myth? What is your argument about your myth?
(Should be two to three concise
sentences.)

What pieces of evidence are you using to prove your argument?
Evidence Explanation – how does this evidence support
your thesis?
Sources
1.
2.
3.

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Sample Outline Rubric
Name:
Myth:
Criteria
Points
Avail.
Score Comments
Myth statement is present, and is written
clearly and concisely. (ie. “A common myth
about immigration is…” or equivalent)
2
Myth is not too broad, nor too narrow – topic
will provide sufficient opportunity for length
requirements

1
Author’s argument about the myth is present
and clearly stated. (ie. “This is wrong/mostly
false because…”)
1
A) Outline includes at least three piece of
evidence that will support the argument.
B) Each piece of evidence is accompanied by a
statement by the author indicating HOW
this evidence supports the argument.
6
Outline lists at least two sources that will
provide evidence to support the argument.
2
Professionalism – Appropriate formatting, full
sentences used where necessary. Outline is
neat and easily legible to professor.
2
TOTAL
Page 7 of 7

Sample Writing Assignment Rubric
Name:
Criteria
Points
Avail.
Score Comments
Introduction clearly and concisely introduces
the four myths that will be discussed in the
paper and adequately informs the reader of the
direction the paper will take.
4
Myth 1: Described clearly and concisely, backed
up by sufficient evidence from at least 2
academic sources from course. Debunked
effectively.
4
Myth 2: (See above) 4
Myth 3: (See above) 4
Sources are cited correctly throughout the
paper through the use of parenthetical
citations. Bibliography is present and formatted
correctly, includes all sources cited in the paper.
3

The paper has a strong conclusion, which does
more than reiterate the main points addressed
in the rest of the essay. It provides a strong,
convincing take-home message that reinforces
the overall argument.
3
Overall, the paper is organized in such a way
that the ideas progress logically and smoothly.
2
The paper contains no (or minimal) grammatical
or mechanical errors.
2
The writing in the paper is direct, active, clear,
and concise. Tone is appropriate for the
prompt, paper satisfies length requirement.
2
Progressive revision (Student submitted each
draft on-time with cover letter, and
demonstrated an effort to revise and improve
the paper with each submission. 1 point per
draft submission)
4
Final revision (revisions are recorded in track
changes and the author made a significant
effort to improve the final submission)

2
TOTAL 34
[Pp. 15-36 in : How the U.S. Racializes Latinos: White
Hegemony and Its Consequences,
edited by José A. Cobas, Jorge Duany and Joe R. Feagin.
Paradigm Publishers (2009)]
Pigments of Our Imagination:
On the Racialization and Racial Identities of
“Hispanics” and “Latinos”
Rubén G. Rumbaut
“Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a
Colo ny of Aliens, who will
shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our
Anglifying them, and will never
adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire
our Complexion?”
—Benjamin Franklin (1751)
“‘Race’ is a trope of ultimate, irreducible difference.”
—Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (1986)
I have been telling my students since the 1970s that “race is a
pigment of our
imagination.” The play on words of the definition is meant as a

double entendre, both to
debunk baseless biological pretensions and to focus attention on
the social, legal, and
political construction of categories meant to put people “in their
place” in hierarchies of
power and privilege. “Race” is a social status, not a zoological
one; a product of history,
not of nature; a contextual variable, not a given. It is a
historically contingent, relational,
intersubjective phenomenon—yet it is typically misbegotten as
a natural, fixed marker of
phenotypic difference inherent in human bodies, independent of
human will or intention.
What is called “race” is largely the sociopolitical accretion of
past intergroup contacts
and struggles, which establish the boundaries and thus the
identities of victors and
vanquished, of dominant and subordinate groups, of “us” and
“them,” with their attendant
conceits of superiority and inferiority and invidious taxonomies
of social worth or stigma.
As such “race” is an ideological construct linking supposedly
innate traits of individuals
to their rank and fate in the social order. Racial statuses and
categories (and the putative
differences that they connote) are imposed and infused with
stereotypical moral meaning,
all the more when they become master statuses affecting all
aspects of social life. The
dominant “racial frame” (Feagin 2006) that evolved in what
became the United States,
during the long colonial and national era of slavery and after it,
was that of white
supremacy. Benjamin Franklin’s words in the epigraph above
are illustrative; they were
written in 1751, a quarter of a century before he signed the

Declaration of Independence
with no hint of irony, back when not even Germans were
imagined to be “white,” mixing
nativism and racism in what would become a familiar, habitual
American blend.
Rubén G. Rumbaut 8
CREATING A “HISPANIC” AND “LATINO” CATEGORY IN
OFFICIAL
STATISTICS
Beginning in 1850, the U.S. Census relied on objective
indicators, such as country of
birth (or decades later, parent’s birthplace, mother tongue or
“Spanish surname”), to
identify persons of Mexican origin in its decennial counts.
Mexicans were coded as
“white” for census purposes from 1850 to 1920. They were then
classified as a separate
“race” in the 1930 census, amid the Great Depression. During
that tumultuous decade
perhaps a million or more were forcibly “repatriated” to
Mexico, including many U.S.
citizens (see Johnson, 2005; Kanstroom, 2007; Ngai, 2004); but
Mexican American civil
rights groups, with the support of the Mexican government,
demanded not to be so
designated. That racial usage was subsequently eliminated and
Mexicans were again
classified as “white” in the 1940 census and thereafter.
It was only in the 1950s, a decade in which more Puerto Ricans
came to the U.S.

mainland than did immigrants from any other country, that the
Census Bureau first
published information on persons of Puerto Rican birth or
parentage. Tabulations on
people of Cuban birth or parentage were first published in 1970,
following the large
flows that came to the U.S. after the 1959 Cuban Revolution.
Efforts to demarcate and
enumerate the “Hispanic ” population as a whole, using
subjective indicators of Spanish
origin or descent, date back to the late 1960s. At that time—in
the context of surging
civil rights activism, new federal legislation which required
accurate statistical
documentation of minority groups’ disadvantages, and growing
concerns over differential
census undercounts—Mexican American organizations in
particular pressed for better
data about their group (Choldin, 1986). The White House
ordered the addition of a
Spanish-origin self- identifier on the 1970 census (in the “long
form” sent to a 5 percent
sample); to test it, the same question was inserted in the
November 1969 Current
Population Survey (the first time that subjective item was used).
Later analyses by the
Census Bureau, comparing the results nationally of the
(subjective) Hispanic self-
identification in the CPS vs. the (objective) use of Spanish
surnames, found wide ranging
differences between the two measures, raising questions of
validity and reliability. For
example, in the Southwest, only 74 percent of those who
identified themselves as
Hispanic had Spanish surnames, while 81 percent of those with
Spanish surnames

identified themselves as Hispanic; in the rest of the U.S., only
61 percent of those who
identified as Hispanic had Spanish surnames, and a mere 46
percent of those with
Spanish surnames identified as Hispanic (U.S. Census Bureau,
1975).
In 1976, the United States Congress passed a remarkable bill—
Public Law 94-
311—a joint resolution “Relating to the publication of economic
and social statistics for
Americans of Spanish origin or descent.” Signed by President
Ford in June 1976, it
remains the only law in the country’s history that mandates the
collection, analysis and
publication of data for a specific ethnic group, and goes on to
define the population to be
enumerated. The law, building on information gathered from the
1970 census, asserted
that “more than twelve million Americans identify themselves
as being of Spanish-
speaking background and trace their origin or descent from
Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba,
Central and South America, and other Spanish-speaking
countries;” that a “large number”
of them “suffer from racial, social, economic, and political
discrimination and are denied
Rubén G. Rumbaut 9
the basic opportunities that they deserve as American citizens;”
and that an “accurate
determination of the urgent and special needs of Americans of
Spanish origin and

descent” was needed to improve their economic and social
status. Accordingly, the law
mandated a series of data collection initiatives within the
Federal Departments of
Commerce, Labor, Agriculture, and Health, Education and
Welfare, specifying among
other things that the Spanish-origin population be given “full
recognition” by the Census
Bureau’s data-collection activities via the use of Spanish
language questionnaires and
bilingual enumerators, as needed; and that the Office of
Management and Budget (OMB)
“develop a Government-wide program for the collection,
analysis, and publication of data
with respect to Americans of Spanish origin or descent ”
(Rumbaut, 2006).
In 1977, as required by Congress, OMB’s Statistical Policy
Division, Office of
Information and Regulatory Affairs, issued “Directive 15: Race
and Ethnic Standards for
Federal Statistics and Administrative Reporting” to standardize
the collection and
reporting of “racial” and “ethnic” statistics and to include data
on persons of “Hispanic
origin.” Directive 15 specified a minimal classification of four
“races” (“American Indian
or Alaskan Native,” “Asian or Pacific Islander,” “Black,” and
“White”) and two “ethnic”
backgrounds (“of Hispanic origin” and “not of Hispanic
origin”), and allowed the
collection of more detailed information as long as it could be
aggregated within those
categories. Since that time, in keeping with the logic of this
classification, census data on
Hispanics have been officially reported with a footnote

indicating that “Hispanics may be
of any race” (for usage rules, see U.S. Census Bureau, 2003).
Tellingly, however, the term led to the development of another
category, “non-
Hispanic white” (a catchall for persons who identify as white
but whose ancestry does not
include a Spanish-speaking nation), which has been typically set
against “Hispanics” and
the other racial minority categories, conflating the distinction.
In the news media,
academic studies, government reports, and popular usage the
“ethnic” constructs
“Hispanic” or “Latino” have already come to be used routinely
and equivalently
alongside “racial” categories such as “Asian,” “Black” and
“non-Hispanic White,”
effecting a de facto racialization of the former. It is now
commonplace to see media
summaries of exit polls tallying the “Latino vote” alongside
“white” and “black” rates, or
similar tallies “by race” of school dropout, poverty and crime
rates; or for local TV news
crime-beat reporters to quote police sources that “the suspect is
a Hispanic male,” as if
that were a self-evident physical description; or to read
newspaper articles which report
matter-of-factly that the country’s first “Hispanic” astronaut
was Franklin Chang-Díaz,
who is a Chinese Costa Rican; or that the first “Latina”
chancellor of a University of
California campus is France A. Córdova, a French-born
physicist who majored in English
at Stanford, whose mother is an Irish-American native New
Yorker and whose father
came to the U.S. as an 8-year-old from Tampico.

Later critic ism of the categories led to a formal review of
Directive 15, beginning
in 1993 with Congressional hearings and culminating in revised
standards which were
adopted in 1997 (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1997; see also
Snipp, 2003; Fears, 2003).
The changes now stipulated five minimum categories for data
on “race” (“American
Indian or Alaska Native,” “Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific
Islander,” “Asian,” “Black
or African American,” and “White”); offered respondents the
option of selecting one or
Rubén G. Rumbaut 10
more racial designations (an option used for the first time in the
2000 census); and
reworded the two “ethnic” categories into “Hispanic or Latino”
and “not Hispanic or
Latino.” “Hispanic or Latino” was defined as “a person of
Cuban, Mexican, Puerto
Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or
origin, regardless of race.
The term, ‘Spanish origin,’ can be used in addition to ‘Hispanic
or Latino.’” The notice in
the Federal Register of these revisions to OMB Directive 15 (as
adopted on October 30,
1997) pointedly added that “The categories in this classification
are social-political
constructs and should not be interpreted as being scientific or
anthropological in nature…
The standards have been developed to provide a common
language for uniformity and

comparability in the collection and use of data on race and
ethnicity by Federal
agencies.” Nonetheless, Directive 15’s definitions of "racial"
and "ethnic" populations are
used not only by federal agencies, but also by researchers,
schools, hospitals, business
and industry, state and local governments—and are conflated,
abridged and diffused
through the mass media, entering thereby into the popular
culture and shaping the
national self- image.
ASSERTING IDENTITIES: NATION, “RACE” AND PLACE IN
THE 2000
CENSUS
Much has been made in the media and even in academic
discourse about “the browning
of America,” a misnomer based on stereotypes of phenotypes
presumed to characterize
peoples of Latin American origin. Does the Hispanic
population differ significantly from
non-Hispanics by “race,” as it does by place, socioeconomic
status, and national origins?
The American system of racial classification, employed
variously since the first census of
1790, has been the sine qua non of externally imposed, state-
sanctioned measures of
group difference, distinguishing principally the majority
“white” population from “black”
and American Indian minority groups, and later from Asian-
origin populations (Snipp,
2003). Yet as seen earlier, “Hispanics” were incorporated in
official statistics as an
“ethnic” category, and conceived as being “of any race.”
Moreover, prior to 1970

Mexicans were almost always coded as “white” for census
purposes, and were deemed
“white” by law (if not by custom) since the nineteenth century.
In addition, neither
“Hispanic” nor “Latino” is a term of preference used by Latin
American newcomers in
the United States to define themselves; rather, the research
literature has consistently
shown that they self- identify preponderantly by their national
origin. How then are racial
categories internalized by Hispanics? Are there intergroup and
intragroup differences in
their patterns of racial self- identification? The 2000 census
asked separate questions for
“Hispanic” or “Latino” origin and for “race,” permitting a
cross-tabulation of the two—
and thus an examination of how “Hispanics” or “Latinos” self-
report by “race” as well as
by national origin.
Despite growing diversification and accelerating immigration
from a wider range
of Latin American countries over the past few decades, persons
of Mexican, Puerto
Rican, and Cuban origin still comprised 77 percent of the 35.2
million Hispanics counted
by the 2000 census. Those of Mexican origin alone numbered
22.3 million—63 percent
of the U.S. total at the time. Puerto Ricans on the mainland
accounted for another 10
percent, and Cubans for 4 percent. [If Puerto Ricans living on
the island (who are U.S.
citizens by birthright) were added to the calculation, those three
groups would comprise

80 percent of the total.] Muc h of the remainder was accounted
for by six nationalities of
relatively recent immigrant origin: Dominicans, Salvadorans
and Guatemalans make up 7
percent of the Hispanic total, while Colombians, Peruvians and
Ecuadorians combine for
nearly 4 percent more. Hence, nine ethnic groups accounted for
nine out of ten (88
percent) Hispanics in the U.S. mainland. Their size and
evolution reflect both the varied
history of their incorporation in the United States and the
relative geographical proximity
of their source countries to the United States: Mexico, El
Salvador and Guatemala from
Meso-America; Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic
from the Caribbean;
Colombia, Perú and Ecuador from South America. Persons who
trace their ethnic
identities to the ten other Spanish-speaking countries of Central
and South America, plus
Spain, comprised only 4 percent of the Hispanic total. And only
8 percent self-reported as
“other Spanish, Hispanic or Latino” in the 2000 census, without
indicating a specific
national origin.
Hispanics as a whole are much more likely than non-Hispanics
to consist of
relatively recent newcomers to the United States: 45 percent of
Hispanics are foreign-
born, compared to less than 8 percent of non-Hispanics. Only
the “other Spanish,
Hispanic, Latino” is overwhelmingly a native-born population

(94 percent)—some with
ancestries that can be traced back many generations. Aside from
that special case, the
Mexicans and Puerto Ricans—the two populations of longest
residence in the United
States, and the largest by far—are the only ethnic groups that
consist mainly of natives
(58 percent of the Mexicans and 60 percent of the Puerto Ricans
were born in the U.S.
mainland). All others are primarily foreign-born populations—
from two thirds of the
Cubans and Dominicans to more than three- fourths of all the
other groups.
Intergroup Differences: Self-Reported Race among Latinos in
the 2000 Census
Table 1 compares Hispanics and non-Hispanics, as well as the
largest Hispanic
ethnic groups, by the main racial categories employed in the
2000 census. Of the 246.2
million non-Hispanics counted by that census, 97 percent
reported their race either as
white (79 percent), black (14 percent), or Asian (4 percent). In
sharp contrast, among the
35.2 million Hispanics, only half reported their race as white
(48 percent), black (1.8
percent), or Asian (0.3 percent). Most notably, there was a huge
difference in the
proportion of these two populations that chose “other race:”
while scarcely any non-
Hispanics (a mere 0.2 percent) reported being of some “other
race,” among the Latin
Americans that figure was 43 percent—a reflection of more than
four centuries of
mestizaje in Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as

differing histories and
conceptions of “race.” In addition, Hispanics in the 2000 census
were more than three
times as likely to report an admixture of “two or more races”—
6.4 percent of Hispanics
vs. only 2 percent of non-Hispanics—although among Hispanics
who listed “two or more
races,” the overwhelming majority (85 percent) specified
“white” plus another race. Still,
the main divide among Hispanics was between the 48 percent
who racially self- identified
as “white,” and the 43 percent who rejected all the official
categories and reported “other
race” instead. [The Census Bureau is considering eliminating
the “other race” option in
the 2010 census in order to force respondents to choose from
among the five standard
racial options mandated by the OMB directive.]
Ethnic Identity % "Other" % Two or %
Total N race % White more races % Black % Asian Indigenous*
Total U.S. Population 281,421,906 5.5 75.1 2.6 12.2 3.6 1.0
Not Hispanic/Latino 246,217,426 0.2 79.0 2.0 13.7 4.1 1.0
Hispanic/Latino 35,204,480 42.6 47.8 6.4 1.8 0.3 1.1
Dominican 994,313 58.8 22.4 9.4 8.2 0.2 0.9
Salvadoran, Guatemalan 1,532,512 55.2 35.8 7.2 0.6 0.1 1.1
Mexican 22,293,812 45.8 46.8 5.2 0.7 0.2 1.2
Peruvian, Ecuadorian 697,798 41.7 47.9 8.5 0.6 0.4 0.8
Puerto Rican 3,537,351 38.1 46.9 8.1 5.8 0.4 0.7

Other Central American 903,574 37.7 44.7 9.5 7.1 0.2 0.9
Colombian 648,731 28.2 62.0 8.2 1.1 0.2 0.4
Other South American 494,186 20.6 70.0 8.0 0.8 0.3 0.4
Cuban 1,311,994 7.6 84.4 4.1 3.6 0.2 0.2
Other Spanish, Hispanic, Latino 2,790,209 34.7 49.2 10.7
2.5 1.0 1.9
Source: 2000 U.S. Census, 5% IPUMS.
Table 1
Hispanic/Latino Ethnic Identity by Self-Reported "Race," 2000
Census,
Race (Self-Reported)
* Includes American Indians, Alaskan and Hawaiian natives and
other indigenous Pacific Islanders.
Ranked by Proportion Identifying as "Other Race"
Examining these results for each of the main Hispanic ethnic
groups, the
proportions who identified racially as “white” ranged from a
low of 22 percent among
Dominicans to a high of 84 percent among Cubans. More than
half of the Dominicans (59
percent) and the Salvadorans and Guatemalans (55 percent)
reported “another race,” as
did 46 percent of the Mexicans, 42 percent of the Peruvians and
Ecuadorians, 38 percent
of the Puerto Ricans, 28 percent of the Colombians, and less
than 8 percent of the
Cubans. The most likely to identify as “black” were the
Dominicans (8.2 percent), while
the “other Spanish, Hispanic or Latino” were the most likely to
identify as multiracial

(10.7 percent). The meaning of “race,” however, is problematic
for a number of reasons.
Consider, for example, the importance of geographic context in
the determination and
variability of self-reported racial identities in the census.
Location, Location, Location: Intragroup Differences by Race
and Place
Self-reported “race” varies not only between Latin American-
origin groups, but
also within them—and over time and place as well. Table 2
presents 2000 census data on
self-reported “race” for the largest Hispanic groups, now broken
down by the largest
states: California and Texas in the Southwest (where Mexicans,
Salvadorans and
Guatemalans are most concentrated), and New York-New Jersey
and Florida along the
east coast (where the Caribbean groups are concentrated). The
differences are striking: In
California 40 percent of the Mexican-origin population reported
as “white,” but in Texas
60 percent were “white;” and 53 percent reported as “other
race” in California, compared
to only 36 percent in Texas. (Indeed, a 1998-2002 longitudinal
surve y in Los Angeles and
San Antonio found that Mexican Americans in San Antonio
were five times more likely
to identify as “white” than those in Los Angeles [Telles and
Ortiz, 2008: 272, 312]).
Similar if less pronounced patterns were observed for
Salvadorans and Guatemalans in

those two states: they were significantly more likely to be
“white” in Texas and “other”
in California.
Ethnic Identity Total N % Two or
% "Other" % White more races
Hispanic/Latino (U.S. total): 35,204,480
In California 10,928,470 51.6 39.7 6.4
In Texas 6,653,338 36.7 58.0 4.1
In New York-New Jersey 3,972,595 43.3 42.1 7.6
In Florida 2,673,654 16.6 75.0 5.4
Mexican 22,293,812
In California 9,025,952 52.7 39.7 5.6
In Texas 5,706,532 35.8 59.6 3.6
Salvadoran, Guatemalan 1,532,512
In California 667,273 61.1 30.2 7.2
In Texas 146,781 54.1 40.0 5.2
Puerto Rican 3,537,351
In New York-New Jersey 1,462,393 40.5 45.4 6.5
In Florida 496,122 22.9 66.9 6.2
Cuban 1,311,994
In New York-New Jersey 151,744 13.3 72.6 5.5
In Florida 878,289 3.9 91.6 2.5
Dominican 994,313
In Florida 92,785 33.9 45.5 9.2
Colombian 648,731

In Florida 192,397 14.5 77.8 6.4
Peruvian, Ecuadorian 697,798
In Florida 96,754 18.5 73.6 6.9
Source: 2000 U.S. Census, 5% IPUMS.
Table 2
"Race" Self-Reported by Largest Hispanic Groups in Selected
States, 2000 Census
Race (Self-Reported)
Even more striking are the differentials in the geography of
“race” among the
Caribbean groups: all were far more likely to be “white” in
Florida than in New York-
New Jersey. In Florida 67 percent of the Puerto Ricans reported
that they were “white,”
compared to only 45 percent in New York-New Jersey; the
respective percentages for
Cubans were 92 to 73 percent; for Dominicans, 46 to 20
percent; for Colombians, 78 to
46 percent. The gap was wider still for the Peruvians and
Ecuadorians, 74 to 43 percent.
In all cases, as Table 2 shows, the reverse obtained for self-
reports of “other race.” Those
systematic patterns across so many different nationalities are
unlikely to be explained by

selective migrations, but rather invite a contextual,
counterintuitive explanation: the more
rigid racial boundaries and “racial frame” developed in the
former Confederate states of
Texas and Florida, and the severe stigma historically attached to
those marked as non-
white there, may shape defensive assertions of whiteness when
racial status is
ambiguous; in states like California and New York, the social
dynamics have been more
open to ethnic options and a rejection of rigid U.S. racial
categories. If “race” was an
innate, permanent trait of individuals, no such variability would
obtain. Instead, these
data exemplify how “race” is constructed socially and
historically—and spatially as well.
These striking contextual differences are supported by other
relevant data. For
example, the 2000 census conducted in Puerto Rico found that
81 percent of the
population on the island self-reported as “white”—notably
higher than the 67 percent of
Puerto Ricans who self- reported as “white” in Florida, vs. 45
percent in the New York
region. A census conducted by the U.S. when it occupied the
island in 1899 found that
62 percent of the inhabitants were “white,” as were 65 percent
of those counted in the
1910 island census; but that proportion grew to 73 percent in
1920, and 80 percent by
1950—an increase attributed by Loveman and Muñiz (2007) to
changes in the social
definition of whiteness and the influence of “whitening”
ideology on the island, since
they could not be accounted for by demographic processes,

institutional biases, or other
explanations. Similarly, a study of racial self- identification of
Puerto Ricans surveyed in
the U.S. and Puerto Rico (Landale and Oropesa, 2002) found
that mainland Puerto Ricans
more strongly reject the conventional U.S. notion of race than
do their island
counterparts. Contexts shape the meanings of identity
assignments and assertions
(Rumbaut, 2005).
ASSERTING IDENTITIES: THE MALLEABLE MEANINGS
OF “RACE”
Varieties of Racial Identification among Dominicans
The meaning of “race” also varies depending on the history of
the group, on the
way questions are asked, and even on the response format
provided in conventional
surveys. In a survey of more than 400 Dominican immigrants in
New York City and
Providence, Rhode Island, the adult respondents were asked a
series of three questions
about their racial self- identification (Itzigsohn, 2004). First
they were asked, in an open-
ended format, how they defined themselves racially. Next they
were given a close-ended
question, asking if they were white, black, or other (and if
other, to specify). Finally they
were asked how they thought that “mainstream Americans”
classified them racially. The
results are summarized in Table 3. In response to the first open-
ended question, 28
percent gave “Hispanic” as their “race,” another 4 percent said
“Latino,” and still others

offered a variety of mixed “Hispanic” or “Latino” answers; 13
percent said “Indio,” and
another 13 percent gave their Dominican nationality as their
race. Only 6.6 percent chose
“black,” and 3.8 percent “white.”
How to you Are you: white, How do you think
define yourself black, or other? most Americans
racially? (if other, specify) classify you
Responses (open-ended Q) (close-ended Q) racially?
% % %
Black 6.6 16.8 36.9
White 3.8 11.6 6.4
Hispano/a (Hispanic) 27.5 21.1 30.4
Latino/a 4.1 2.8 3.2
Indio/a 13.1 18.8 4.0
Dominicano/a 12.8 2.0 0.2
Mestizo/a 4.7 8.0 1.0
Trigueño/a 4.1 4.5 2.0
Moreno/a 1.9 2.0 2.2
Mulato/a 0.3 1.5 0.0
Indio Hispano/a 4.1 1.0 0.2
Black Hispano/a 0.6 1.0 2.0
White Hispano/a 0.6 0.3 0.5
Mixed Hispano/a 0.6 1.3 0.2

Latino-Americano/a 0.6 0.5 0.0
Latino-Hispano/a 0.3 0.5 0.5
Java-India claro/a 0.3 1.3 0.2
Amarillo/a (yellow) 0.3 1.0 0.2
Oscuro, prieto, de color 0.3 0.8 1.0
American 0.6 0 0.5
Puerto Rican 0 0 0.2
Human race, other 6.9 1.5 0.7
Does not know 5.0 1.3 6.9
Table 3
Source: Adapted from Itzigsohn, 2004.
(Survey of Dominican immigrants in New York City and
Providence, N=418)
Dominican Immigrants' Answers to Three Racial Self-
identification Questions
The rest of their responses showed the extraordinary range of
racial categories and
labels common in the Spanish Caribbean—as well as the very
significant responses
obtained depending on the question asked, even though all three
were ostensibly getting
at the same thing: the respondent’s racial identity. When asked
to choose from the
closed-ended format of the second question, the largest response
remained “Hispanic”

(written in by 21 percent of the sample, in addition to 3 percent
who chose “Latino”),
though the catego ries “black” and “white” now more than
doubled to 16.8 and 11.6
percent, respectively. And when asked how they thought that
others classified them
racially, the category “black” dramatically increased to 37
percent—reflecting the reverse
way in which the “one drop rule” functions in the United States
vs. the Dominican
Republic—while “white” decreased to 6.4 percent. “Hispanic”
was still given by almost
a third of the sample (30.4 percent) as the “racial” category that
they perceived others
used to classify them. Indeed, “Hispanic” was the label most
consistently given by the
respondents to characterize their own racial identity, whether
asserted by themselves or
imposed upon them by others.
Intergenerational Differences: The “Race” of Immigrant Parents
and their Children
Another recent study found that, in addition to significant
change in their ethnic
self- identities over time and generation in the United States (as
measured by open-ended
questions), the offspring of Latin American immigrants were by
far the most likely to
define their racial identities in sharp contrast to their own
parents (Portes and Rumbaut,
2001; Rumbaut, 2005). During the 1990s in South Florida and
Southern California, the
Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS) surveyed a
sample of more than
5,200 1.5- and second-generation youths, representing 77

different nationalities,
including all of the main Spanish-speaking countries of Latin
America. Their immigrant
parents were also interviewed separately. In one survey
(conducted when the youths
were 17 to 18 years old), the respondents were asked to answer
a semi- structured
question about their “race,” and were given the option to check
one of five categories:
“white,” “black,” “Asian,” “multiracial,” or “other;” if the latter
was checked, they had to
specify what that “other race” was. The results are presented in
Table 4.
Among the Latin American-origin youths, less than a fourth of
the total sample
checked the conventional categories of white, black, or Asian;
12 percent reported being
multiracial; and over 65 percent checked “other.” When those
“other” self-reports were
coded, it turned out that two- fifths of the sample (41 percent)
wrote down “Hispanic” or
“Latino” as their “race,” and another fifth (19.6 percent) gave
their nationality as their
“race.” The explicit racialization of the “Hispanic- Latino”
category, as well as the
substantial proportion of youths who conceived of their
nationality of origin as a racial
category, are noteworthy both for their potential long-term
implications in hardening
minority group boundaries, and for their illustration of the
arbitrariness of racial
constructions—indeed, of the ease with which an “ethnic”
category developed for
administrative purposes becomes externalized, diffused,
objectified, and finally

internalized and imagined as a marker of essentialized social
difference.
The latter point is made particularly salient by directly
comparing the youths’
notions of their “race” with that reported by their own parents.
The closest match in
racial self-perceptions between parents and children were
observed among the Haitians,
Jamaicans and other West Indians (most of whom self-reported
as black), among the
Europeans and Canadians (most of whom labeled themselves
white), and among most of
the Asian-origin groups (except for the Filipinos). The widest
mismatches by far (and
hence the most ambiguity in self-definitions of “race”) occurred
among all of the Latin-
American-origin groups without exception: about three fifths of
Latin parents defined
themselves as “white,” compared to only one fifth of their own
children. More
specifically, 93 percent of Cuban parents identified as white,
compared to only 41 percent
of their children; 85 percent of Colombian parents defined
themselves as white, but only
24 percent of their children did so—proportions that were
similar for other South
Americans; two thirds of the Salvadoran, Guatemalan, and
Nicaraguan parents saw
themselves as white, but only one fifth of their children agreed;
and about a third of the

Dominican parents reported as white, more than twice the
proportion of their children
who did so.
National Origin Respondent White Black Asian Multiracial
Hispanic,
Latino
Nationality
as race
Other
(Parent/Child) % % % % % % %
Latin American: Parent 58.1 1.5 1.1 14.7 6.4 8.3 9.8
Child 21.9 0.8 0.0 12.1 41.0 19.6 4.6
Mexico Parent 5.7 0.0 2.1 21.6 15.9 26.1 28.5
Child 1.5 0.3 0.0 12.0 25.5 56.2 4.5
Cuba Parent 93.1 1.1 0.3 2.5 1.1 0.5 1.4
Child 41.2 0.8 0.0 11.5 36.0 5.5 4.9
Dominican Republic Parent 30.6 11.1 0.0 44.4 0.0 5.6 8.3
Child 13.9 2.8 0.0 13.9 55.6 8.3 5.6
El Salvador, Guatemala Parent 66.7 4.2 4.2 16.7 8.3 0.0 0.0
Child 20.8 0.0 0.0 12.5 58.3 4.2 4.2
Nicaragua Parent 67.7 0.5 1.6 22.0 5.4 0.5 2.2
Child 19.4 0.0 0.0 9.7 61.8 2.7 6.5
Other Central America Parent 48.0 24.0 4.0 20.0 0.0 4.0 0.0
Child 8.0 8.0 0.0 40.0 44.0 0.0 0.0

Colombia Parent 84.6 1.1 0.0 9.9 2.2 0.0 2.2
Child 24.2 1.1 0.0 9.9 58.2 1.1 5.5
Perú, Ecuador Parent 61.8 0.0 0.0 26.5 2.9 2.9 5.9
Child 32.4 0.0 0.0 11.8 55.9 0.0 0.0
Other South America Parent 87.8 0.0 0.0 6.1 2.0 2.0 2.0
Child 28.6 2.0 0.0 14.3 40.8 14.3 0.0
question on racial identity. "White," "Black," "Asian" and
"Multiracial" were fixed responses; all "Others" were open-
ended entries.
* Figures are row percentages. Interviews with immigrant
parents and their teenage children were done separately, using
the same
Source: Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS);
Portes and Rumbaut 2001; Rumbaut 2005.
Table 4
Self-Reported “Race” of Children of Immigrants and their
Parents, by National Origin Groups
Self-Reported Race*
The children, instead, largely adopted “Hispanic” or “Latino” as
a racial label (41
percent—the largest single response), whereas scarcely any of
their parents did so (6
percent); or they gave their nationality as their race (20 percent
of the children vs. 6
percent of their parents). Indeed, well over half of the
Dominican, Salvadoran,

Guatemalan, Nicaraguan, Colombian, Peruvian and Ecuadorian
youth reported their race
as “Hispanic” or “Latino.” Among the Mexicans, whose pattern
differed from all of the
others, the children preponderantly racialized the national label,
whereas Mexican parents
were more likely to use “other” and “multiracial” as descriptors.
These results point to
the force of the acculturation process and its impact on
children’s self- identities in the
U.S.—indeed, they provide another striking instance of the
malleability of racial
constructions, even between parents and children in the same
family, residing in the same
place. More fully exposed than their parents to American
culture and its ingrained racial
notions, and being incessantly categorized and treated as
Hispanic or Latino, the children
of immigrants learn to see themselves in these terms—as
members of a racial minority—
and even to racialize their national origins. If these
intergenerational differences between
Latin American immigrants and their U.S.-raised children can
be projected to the third
generation, the process of racialization could become more
entrenched still. It is indeed
ironic that in a nation born in white supremacy, where
citizenship was restricted on racial
grounds till 1952 and immigration until 1965, and where it took
a civil rights revolution
to overthrow the legal underpinnings of racial apartheid, the
children of Latin American
immigrants, historically “white by law,” should learn to become
“non-white” in the post-
Civil Rights era.

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New York: Russell Sage Foundation; Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.

Running head: MYTHS OF LATINO IMMIGRATION
1
MYTHS OF LATINO IMMIGRATION
6
Myths of Latino Immigration
Name
Institution Affiliation
Myth Outlining Worksheet
1. What is your myth?
A common myth about Latino is that Latino is homogenous

naturally existing and an easily identifiable group of people.
2. What is your argument about your myth? (Should be two to
three concise sentences.)
This myth is wrong because Latino is not a homogenous
group or an easily identifiable group because Latino is the
group that is initially from areas with different ancestries.
Latino population is consisting of many types, say, Mexican,
Puerto Rican, Cuban or Dominican, and they are not easily
identified.
3. What pieces of evidence are you using to prove your
argument?
Evidence
Explanation – how does this evidence support your thesis?
Sources
1. Latino comprises of several sub-groups with uniques
identities
One of the common stereotype and mentality regarding the
Latinos in America is that they have a shared ethnic
background, race, and culture. However, the reality is that
Latino comprises of several sub-groups with unique identities
(Holloway, 2008, p.5). Usually, Latino in the United States is
defined in terms of their nationalities or the countries that they
know. For example, in the case of Midwest and Southwest,
Latinos are seen as Mexicans. In the eastern part of America,
particularly New York and Boston regions, Latino is the people
who are considered to have limitations in their communications
with the Dominicans and Puerta Ricans. In the case of Miami,
Cubans, and Central America, they are the references group for
interpreting Latin America.
In chapter three, Social Polarization and Colonized Labor:
Puerto Ricans in the
United States, 1945–2000 Kelvin Antiago-Valles And Jiménez-
Muñoz assert that the idea of homogeneity is quite extensive to
the extent of some politicians treating Latino Americans as

culturally unified people. Latino is racially diverse, thus making
the ethnic category rather than a race (Gutiérrez, 2008, p.129).
Technically, anyone from central, south America and the
Caribbean can be described as Latino. Also, Latino as an
ethnicity, has people from different nationalities. Several races
are comprised of the group. The only similarity they have is that
they are not the original inhabitants in America.
Holloway. (2008). T.A A Companion to Latin American
History. Holloway, University of California, Davis Waltham,
MA: Wiley/Blackwell, 2008.
Gutiérrez, D. G. (Ed.). (2004). The Columbia history of Latinos
in the United States since 1960. Columbia University Press.
2. Latino originated from different countries with varying
cultures.
Latino is not easy to identify. In chapter six, The Other “Other
Hispanics”: South American–Origin Latinos
In the United States Espitia states that Latino originated from
different countries and had different cultures. For that reason,
they are often tied between practicing their native culture and
that of the country they live in. For instance, in the case of
Mexican-Americans, they remain loyal to both the Mexican and
American cultures (Gutiérrez, 2008, p.257). Latin-Americans do
not have a standard practice. For that reason, it is not possible
to identify them from the community. They can even be white,
black, indigenous America, Mestizo, as well as the Asian
descents. Generally, Latino is made up of people with different
originality in terms of the country, culture, and background. It
is not easy to classify them as people from a particular region
like South America. For instance, even though Mexico is
considered to be in North America, it remains to be part of the
Latin Americans. The same thing people to Puerto Rico, which
is an island in the Caribbean. It is politically attached to the
United States while at the same time is culturally part of Latin

America. In this case, it is not easy to identify people of a
particular region as the Latino.
Gutiérrez, D. G. (Ed.). (2004). The Columbia history of Latinos
in the United States since 1960. Columbia University Press.
3. Latino is the terms that are restricted to the immigrants in
America and their descendants
Most of the American immigrants are from Spanish, French,
Romanian, or Portuguese speaking countries located in the
central, North and South of America. This includes the islands
in the Caribbean.
In the chapter on Latino Imagery, Flores, (2004, p.184asserts
that most of the inhabitants in the regions are roman speakers.
These include Spanish, French, Italian, Romanian, or
Portuguese speaking countries in North, Central, and South
America, and it consists of the French-speaking areas of Haiti,
French Guiana, French-speaking Canada, and the French West
Indies. Ethnicity cannot be used as the identifier for the Latino
because they have different customs, traditions, music styles,
and foods. The nationality of the Latino is associated with an
accurate is of their cultural traditions, music, and other factors
like food.
Flores. J. (2004). The Latino Imaginary: Meanings of
Community and Identity
Notice: This material is protected by copyright law and may
only
be used for personal, non-commercial and educational use. It
may not be copied or shared with others.

Latin America: What’s in a Name?
Thomas H. Holloway, University of California, Davis
[This is the first section of my introductory essay in A

Companion to Latin American
History. Waltham, MA: Wiley/Blackwell, 2008.
<http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-
1405131616.html>
It provides a historical answer to one of those questions that
isn’t a question
until someone asks it: “Why is Latin America called ‘Latin’?”]
What constitutes “Latin America” and its “history”? All three
of these words merit some
consideration, to trace parameters for both the place (Latin
America), and the topic (history). It
is not the result of some teleological process by which what is
today commonly termed Latin
America came to be, for which we can identify a starting point
and visualize a neat and discreet
evolutionary trajectory. And history itself needs to be
distinguished from other fields of
scholarly inquiry. To begin such a discussion, it is as useful as
it is obvious to recall that these
and similar descriptive labels are the products of human mental
activity, and did not emerge from
natural phenomena or processes. The region of the world now
commonly referred to as Latin

America existed long before the term emerged as the mental
construct that it is. And in the
recent past the validity of the label has come under fundamental
question (Mignolo 2005),
despite the fact that it continues in academic and public
discourse as a shorthand label of
convenience. It is thus appropriate to sketch both the origin and
evolution of the label, and what
constitutes the history of the region of the world so designated.
We can assume that the indigenous peoples who lived in what is
now called Latin
America in ancient times, whatever cosmological and
descriptive notions they developed to
locate themselves in time and space, probably did not have a
conception of territory and peoples
stretching from what we now call Mexico to the southern tip of
South America. They located
themselves in relation to other culture groups they were aware
of and the landforms and bodies
of water they were familiar with, as well as in relation to how
they explained how they came to
be—their origin myths, in the condescending terms of Western
anthropology. Indeed, the same

could be said for other peoples of the ancient world, including
those who lived in what is now
called Europe, right through to the Age of Discovery roughly in
the century from 1420 to 1520,
the external manifestation of the European Renaissance. In the
imagination of Europe, people
http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-
1405131616.html
Latin America: What’s in a Name?—T. Holloway p. 2
2
and places in the rest of the world only began to exist when they
entered the European
consciousness. That consciousness then proceeded to categorize
and compartmentalize regions,
“races,” and cultures in ways convenient for the purposes of
European hegemony (Wolf 1982).
One of those compartments has become Latin America, which
we need to define more
explicitly. Following the informal consensus among most
historians, and most of the
historiography they have produced, there are several parts of the
Western Hemisphere which are

not normally included in the rubric Latin America. Most
obviously, these are Canada and the
United States, despite the fact that a considerable proportion of
the population of the former
speaks French, a neo-Latin language; and despite the relevance
of the latter in discussions of
Latin America’s international relations, particularly in the 20th
century. Through the colonial era
and up through the taking of about one third of Mexico by the
U.S. as of 1848, what is now
Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and California, plus
some territory beyond, figured on
maps as part of we now call Latin America. The European-
descended populations in those
regions spoke primarily Spanish. In the more recent past
immigration and cultural assertion by
people who trace their origins to former Spanish- or Mexican-
held territories makes the U.S.-
Mexican border less relevant in distinguishing Anglo America
from Latin America (Acuña
1972).
Also not usually included in Latin America are the three
Guianas (French Guiana,
technically decolonized by being designated an overseas

department of continental France in
1946; Suriname, formerly known as Dutch Guiana; and Guyana,
known in the Colonial era as
British Guiana and before that as Demerara), as well as Belize
(formerly British Honduras).
Their historical trajectories have more in common with the non-
Spanish Caribbean islands than
with Latin America, and historically they were never effectively
occupied by either Spain or
Portugal. Haiti comes into the historical narrative of Latin
America especially because of its
importance as a sugar producing colony of Saint Domingue in
the 18th century, as well as the
resounding message sent to other slave societies by its
independence process, following an
uprising of the slave majority and Haiti’s establishment of the
second independent nation in the
Western Hemisphere, after the United States of North America
(Trouillot 1995; Fischer 2004).
Similarly, Jamaica and all of the Lesser Antilles, from the
Virgin Islands just east of Puerto Rico
to Trinidad just off the coast of Venezuela, as places eventually
colonized by European powers
other than Spain and Portugal, do not figure in the conventional

definition of Latin America as
3
such. These omissions hint at the usual informal definition of
what constitutes Latin America
historically: Those areas of the western hemisphere originally
claimed (even if not completely or
effectively occupied) by Spain and Portugal, and where the
dominant national language today is
either Spanish or Portuguese.
Geographers, it should be noted, giving priority to contiguous
landmasses and bodies of
water rather than to historical processes or cultural
commonalities, traditionally divide the
Americas into two continents and two regions. The continents
are North America (from northern
Canada to the isthmus of Panama) and South America (from the
Panama-Colombia border to the
southern tip of Tierra del Fuego, an island south of the straight
of Magellan). The sub-regions
are Central America (from Guatemala to Panama) and the

Caribbean (the islands from the
Bahamas and Cuba in the northwest to Trinidad and Tobago in
the southeast). These different
approaches to regional divisions and groupings have led to
confusion as frequent as it is
superficial. For example, Mexico might be placed in North
America by geographers (and in the
names of such economic and political arrangements as the North
American Free Trade
Agreement, NAFTA), but it is definitely part of Latin America
for historians. And Puerto Rico,
an island of the Caribbean, is politically attached to the United
States, but is historically and
culturally part of Latin America.
These considerations lead to a question central to the label
itself: What is “Latin” about
Latin America? There are several historical and cultural issues
that, in fact, make the term quite
problematic. The language of the Iberian groups engaged in
conquest and colonization was not
Latin, despite the roots of the Spanish and Portuguese languages
in the Roman occupation of
Iberia in ancient times. While Latin remained the language of
the Roman Catholic Church so

central to the Iberian colonization project, there is no apparent
connection between Church Latin
and the label “Latin America.” Christopher Columbus himself,
mistakenly insisting until his
death in 1506 that he had reached the eastern edge of Asia, used
the term Indias Occidentales, or
the Indias to the West. That term lingers today, after being
perpetuated especially and perhaps
ironically by British Colonials, in the West Indies, the
conventional English term for the islands
of the Caribbean Sea eventually colonized by Great Britain,
France, the Netherlands, and
Denmark.
It is commonly known that the more general term “America”
derives from the name of
Amerigo Vespucci (1451?-1512), another navigator of Italian
origin who made several voyages
4
to the Caribbean region and along the coast of northern Brazil
from 1497 to 1502. Unlike

Columbus, Vespucci concluded that Europeans did not
previously know about the lands he
visited in the west, and he thus referred to them as the New
World. In a 1507 map by German
cartographer Martin Waldseemuller, America appears for the
first time with that name. While
the protocol of European exploration usually gives primacy to
the first “discoverer,” there would
seem to be some justification for naming the newly known land
mass after the navigator who
recognized it as separate from Asia (Amerigo Vespucci) rather
than for the first European to
report its existence, but who subsequently insisted that he had
confirmed a new way to reach
Asia (Christopher Columbus) (Arciniegas 1990).
In subsequent centuries, Europeans and their colonial
descendants applied the term
America to the entire western hemisphere (which half of the
globe is called “western” and which
is called “eastern” is itself a convention of European origin).
That usage continues today in
Latin America, where it is commonly taught that there is one
continent in the western

hemisphere: America. The Liberator Simón Bolívar famously
convened a conference in Panama
in 1826 to work toward a union of the American republics. He
included all nations of the
hemisphere in the invitation, and it would not have occurred to
him to add “Latin” to the
descriptors, because the term had not yet been invented. When
in 1890 the United States and its
commercial and financial allies around Latin America
established the Commercial Bureau of the
American Republics, which became the Panamerican Union in
1910 and the Organization of
American States in 1948, no terminological distinctions were
made by culture or language. In
the modern era “America” has of course become the common
shorthand name of the nation that
developed from the thirteen English colonies on the eastern
seaboard of North America. This
apparent appropriation by one nation of a label that traditionally
refers to the entire western
hemisphere has been a recurring source of puzzlement and
occasional resentment among Latin
Americans (Arciniegas 1966).
Historically, the first use of the term Latin America has been

traced only as far back as
the 1850s. It did not originate within the region, but again from
outside, as part of a movement
called “pan-Latinism” that emerged in French intellectual
circles, and more particularly in the
writings of Michel Chevalier (1806-79). A contemporary of
Alexis de Tocqueville who traveled
in Mexico and the United States during the late 1830s,
Chevalier contrasted the “Latin” peoples
of the Americas with the “Anglo-Saxon” peoples (Phelan 1968;
Ardao 1980, 1993). From those
5
beginnings, by the time of Napoleon III’s rise to power in 1852
pan-Latinism had developed as a
cultural project extending to those nations whose culture
supposedly derived from neo-Latin
language communities (commonly called Romance languages in
English). Starting as a term for
historically derived “Latin” culture groups, L’Amerique Latine
then became a place on the map.

Napoleon III was particularly interested in using the concept to
help justify his intrusion into
Mexican politics that led to the imposition of Archduke
Maximilian as Emperor of Mexico,
1864-67. While France had largely lost out in the global
imperial rivalries of the previous two
centuries, it still retained considerable prestige in the world of
culture, language, and ideas
(McGuinness 2003). Being included in the pan-Latin cultural
sphere was attractive to some
intellectuals of Spanish America, and use of the label Latin
America began to spread haltingly
around the region, where it competed as a term with Spanish
America (where Spanish is the
dominant language), Ibero-America (including Brazil but
presumably not French-speaking
areas), and other sub-regional terms such as Andean America
(which stretches geographically
from Venezuela to Chile, but which more usually is thought of
as including Colombia, Ecuador,
Peru, and Bolivia), or the Southern Cone (Chile, Argentina,
Paraguay, and Uruguay) (Rojas Mix
1991).
Not until the middle of the 20th century did the label Latin

America achieve widespread
and largely unquestioned currency in public as well as academic
and intellectual discourse, both
in the region (Marras 1992) and outside of it. With the
establishment of the Economic
Commission for Latin America (ECLA, later adding Caribbean
to become ECLAC) under
United Nations auspices in 1948, the term became consolidated
in policy circles, with political
overtones challenging U.S. hegemony but largely devoid of the
rivalries of culture, language,
and “race” of earlier times (Reid 1978). The 1960s saw the
continent-wide Latin American
literary “boom” and the near-universal adoption of “Latin
American Studies” by English-
language universities in the U.S., Great Britain, and Canada.
This trend began with the
establishment of the Conference on Latin American History in
1927 and was consolidated with
the organization of the interdisciplinary Latin American Studies
Association in 1967. Despite
the widespread and largely unproblematic use of the term in the
main languages of the western
hemisphere since that era, regional variations remain: In Brazil

América Latina is commonly
assumed to refer to what in the United States is called Spanish
America, i.e., “Latin America”
minus Brazil.
6
While discussing the spontaneous creation of such collective
labels, we need to recognize
that the terms “Latino” or “Latina/o” now widespread in the
United States have no basis in any
specific nation or sub-region in Latin America. Like the latter
term, from which it is derived
linguistically, Latina/o is an invented term of convenience—a
neologism built on a neologism
(Oboler 1995; Gracia 1999; Oboler & González 2005;
Dzidzienyo & Oboler, 2005). Whatever
their origins, Latino or Latina/o have largely replaced the older
“Hispanic” or Hispanic
American” within the United States, although that English-
derived term, problematic on several
counts, lingers in library subject classifications.

But there are other questions that need to be posed, in the age of
identity politics and the
assertion of alternative ethnicities and nationalisms. By its
historical and intellectual origins and
the claims of pan-Latinism, the term Latin America privileges
those groups who descend from
“Latin” peoples: Spain and Portugal (but not, ironically enough,
the French-speaking populations
of Canada or the Caribbean). By another set of criteria, what is
now commonly called Latin
America might be subdivided into those regions where the
indigenous heritage is strong and
native identity has reemerged to claim political space,
especially in Mesoamerica and the Andean
region; Afro-Latin America, especially the circum-Caribbean
region and much of Brazil; and
Euro-Latin America, in which relatively massive immigration
from 1870 to the Great Depression
of the 1930s transformed the demographic and cultural makeup
of southern Brazil, Uruguay, and
Argentina (Rojas Mix 1991). In other words, Latin America as
a term ignores or claims
dominance over other cultures in the region, which have
recently come to reassert their

distinctive traditions, including a plethora of languages spoken
by tens of millions of indigenous
people—none of which have any relationship to Spanish or
Portuguese (or Latin) beyond a
scattering of loan words. The current condition of peoples of
indigenous and African heritage
has a historical relationship to conquest, colonialism,
subjugation, forced assimilation,
exploitation, marginalization, and exclusion. Those are not
processes to celebrate and use as the
basis for national or regional identity challenging the hegemony
of the Anglo-Saxon “race,” as
was the thrust of pan-Latinism of yore. But they are basis for
claiming cultural and political
space—as well as territory and access to resources—within
Latin America, today and into the
future.
7

Bibliography
Acuña, R. (1972) Occupied America: The Chicano's Struggle
Toward Liberation. Canfield
Press, San Francisco.
Arciniegas, G. (1966) Latin America: A Cultural History.
Knopf, New York.
Arciniegas, G. (1990) Amerigo y el Nuevo Mundo. Alianza,
Madrid.
Ardao, A.(1980) Génesis de la idea y el nombre de América
Latina. Centro de Estudios
Latinoamericarnos Rómulo Gallegos, Caracas.
Ardao, A. (1986) Nuestra América Latina. Ediciones Banda
Oriental, Montevideo.
Ardao, A. (1993) América Latina y la latinidad. Universidad
Nacional Autónoma de México,
Mexico City.
Barker, N. N. (1979) “The Factor of ‘Race’ in the French
Experience in Mexico, 1821-1861,”
Hispanic American Historical Review, 59:1, pp. 64-80.
Dzidzienyo, A. & Oboler, S. (eds.) (2005) Neither Enemies nor
Friends: Latinos, Blacks, Afro-
Latinos. Palgrave Macmillan, New York.

Elliot, J. H. (1972) The Old World and the New, 1492-1650.
Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge.
Espinosa, A. M. (1919) América Española, o Hispano América:
El término “América Latina” es
erróneo. Comisaria Regia del Turismo y Cultura Artística,
Madrid.
Fischer, S. (2004) Modernity Disavowed: Haiti and the cultures
of slavery in the age of
Revolution. Duke University Press, Durham.
Gracia, J.J.E. (1999) Hispanic/Latino Identity: A Philosophical
Perspective. Blackwell
Publishing, Malden, MA.
Hale, J.R. (1968) Renaissance Exploration. British Broadcasting
Corp., London.
Marras, S. (1992) América Latina, marca registrada. Grupo
Zeta, Mexico City.
McGuinness, A. (2003) “Searching for ‘Latin America’: Race
and Sovereignty in the Americas
in the 1850s.” In Appelbaum, N., Macpherson, A. S., &
Rossemblat, A. (eds,) Race and
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Press, Chapel Hill.

Mignolo, W. (2005) The Idea of Latin America. Blackwell
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Oboler, S. (1995) Ethnic Labels, Latino Lives: Identity and the
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8
Oboler, S. & González, D. J. (eds) (2005) The Oxford
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of the Idea of Latin America.” In Conciencia y autenticidad
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Reid, J. T. (1978) “The Rise and Decline of the Ariel-Caliban
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European Maritime Empires c. 800-
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Schurz, W. L. (1954) This New World: The Civilization of
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Trouillot, M.-R. (1995) Silencing the Past: Power and the
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