'This editorial talks about that and, in arguing that "Mexican-American" would be most preferable for much of Los Angeles, it jibes with the survey Doug posted that started this thread.'
http://www.latimes.com/news /printedition/opinion/la-op-rodriguez12nov12,1,3119689,print.column
Gregory Rodriguez: Look beyond the 'Latino' label
"The overuse of such a broad-brush term doesn't give an accurate picture of a diverse population."
I agree with the editorial. "Latino" is a pretty dumb term, for several reasons. It's vague, homogenizing and would only make sense if it referred to any native speaker of a Romance language. Isn't Latin America all of the western hemisphere south of the US? So are Brazilians or those of Brazilian heritage Latinos?
ddclaxton quoted a salient point: "[Many Latin American scholars, journalists and indigenous rights organisations] argue that if Hispanic is an imposed official term, so is Latino (from the words 'Amérique latine'), since it was the French who imposed that name on the Spanish-speaking countries of the western Hemisphere, during their support of the Second Mexican Empire.
I prefer the term "Hispanic," because at least it refers to people who are native speakers of Spanish, or at least their ancestors were. It does, after all, make a certain amount of sense to group people together according to what languages they speak.
I think it's worth noting that in my almost 1900 page Spanish dictionary (not Spanish-English), under "latino, a," there are 9 definitions, none of which even comes close to the understanding of "Latino" that North Americans have come to have. The first 2 refer to a geographical region of central Italy, The next 4 refer in various ways to the Latin language. (One of these does approximate "Latino," translating to "of those peoples/ethnic groups that speak languages derived from Latin." And the final 3 are nautical
terms.
In contrast, under "hispano, a," we find 4 definitions, and here is my translation of the fourth: "One that lives in the United States and is an Hispanic American, a Spanish speaker or a Spaniard: [e.g.] The Hispanic minority has a great social weight in certain US cities." And in the margin, there is the note, "= hispánico."