A question about Hispanic/Latin-American classifications?

Question

I know that Latin-America, esp. Brazil but also other countries, have a diversity of races and ethnic groups like in the U.S. However, with the exception of Brazil, most all the people in these countries have Spanish last names, regardless of their ethnic ancestry. But for the people that are, say, third-generation Peruvian or Mexican, but their ancestry is traced back to Spain, Germany or somewhere else in Europe or Asia or Africa, and do not have any Latin-American "blood" in them, their grandparents happened to migrate to Latin-America, are they still considered Latino or Hispanic?

Answer 1

Most Brazilians have Portuguese last names. And Argentina and Uruguay have lots of people with non-Spanish last names, probably more than Brazilians with non-Portuguese last names.
Take a look in the squad of the Argentine volleyball team:
http://www.fivb.org/EN/volleyball/competitions/WorldLeague/2007/Teams/Team_Roster.asp?TRN=WL2007&TEAM=ARG&sm=30
Milinkovic, Scholtis, Stepanenko, De Cecco, Gramaglia, Bernasconi, Concina, Aschemacher, Giachetta, Giani, Santucci...
As you can see lots of Italian last names...
Of course that's not a good sample of the Argentine population, because volleyball is a middle-class sport in Argentina, but just to you have an idea...

The question: are they Latino or Hispanic?
First of all: what do you mean by "Latin American blood"? There's not such thing. Ok, I'll suppose that by saying that the person has no "Latin American blood" you're stating that this person have all their recent ancestors from non-Latin American countries.

First you have to define what Latino and Hispanic mean.

The word "latino" in Spanish means any person from Europe or the Americas that speak a latin-derived language, so all those people would be considered "latinos". It's a cultural term, not racial. In Latin America second and third-generation inmigrants usually have the sime life-style than the other Latin Americans, unless they come from a really different background, like a muslim from an Arab country. It's the same with second and third-generation inmigrants in the US. Do they look like more with European or the other US citizens? With the other US citizens, of course.

Sometimes though it may refers to any person with partial or total latin ancestry, that is, Portugal, Spain, Italy, etc. In that case those would not be considered "latinos", unless they come from the countries mentioned.

The word "latino" in the US census refers to any person with Latin American ancestry, so yes, they would be latinos too.

The word "latino americano" (Latin American) refers to where the person was born, so yes they're Latin Americans.

And finally, "Hispanic", means any person that speak Spanish as the first language, so yes, they're Hispanics.

Some Latin American presidents of the past or present fits your description. For example, Néstor Kirchner, the president of Argentina, is 50% Swiss, 50% Croat by blood. Alberto Fujimori, former president of Peru, is 100% Japanese by blood. Whith those examples I want to show that second and third generation inmigrants are interely adapted to live in Latin America, and Latin Americans accept them as Latin Americans.

Answer 2

You asked a great question. I've been doing Family-Ancestry search for the past 4 years of myself and my husband. His ancesters come from Israel, then migrated to Canary Islands then to here Puerto Rico. But no before being held in Spain and in Morrocco. Then after being like slaves, the, Jews of Spain were able to move to Morrocco with their families and took a Spanish name. Since they have been here for the past almost 200 years, they consider themselves Puerto Rican because they adopted to this part of the world and do have Spanish last names. Many whom were sailors hundreds of years ago on galions sailing to here, were from different parts of Europe. When docked in Puerto Rico, many sick of the sea decided to stay here on the island hidding inland. For being here for years and marrying the people already here such as Spaniards, Africans,and what was left of the Taino Indians, they married and formed towns. They obtained Spanish names when the bishops came here to baptise them and they and their descendents are latins.

Answer 3

.. you're making this kind of tricky now.. lol

ok.. they can consider themselves latin if they like.. since they were born and raised in Peru or Mexico as explained in your question. They consider themselves Peruvian or Mexican by nationality.. but ethnicitywise.. they are .. perhaps Chinese.. Angolan.. Italian ect..

its just like here in the US.. no one is really an american .. They're just american by nationality in a sense. since Many of us Americans came from Europe.. many Americans background/ethnicities are Italian.. German.. Irish.. English.. some from Africa.. ect. But we call ourselves Americans b/c we were born here.. and perhaps our families have been here for many generations..

some americans (for example) dont know anything about their background.. perhaps they're great grand parents came to the US from Germany .. and over the generations lost the use for the German language and the traditions. and maybe they never visited Germany... so they really dont know anything about it except for what they read. But they are still German .. its in their blood. Same goes for the Peruvian or Mexican who has Chinese.. or Japanese blood. Their nationality is Purvian/Mexican.. but their Ethnicity is Japanese/Chinese

.. dont know if that helped you out..