[ilbegone]

"Hispanic" doesn't mean anything more than "Latino" does. Hernan Cortes was an "Hispanic", and all the things cynical, straw clutching "Latino advocates" do like turning Admiral Farragutt into a "Latino" (born 1801 in South Carolina to a Scots Irish mother and a white Spaniard) and all the noise about the new white "Latino" pope from Argentina American raised "Latino activists" generated when he was selected makes Cortes a "Latino" too.

But now we're getting somewhere with the clarification of "border jumpers" and not conflating all "Latinos" with being illegal.

The words "Hispanic" and "Latino" are often purposefully used to blur the many differences between people described as such, as is the word "Mexican". "Puerto Rican" can be similarly confusing, is your friend Island born (US citizen) and recently arrived or was she born in New York with the general "look" of a "Puerto Rican" and has Puerto Rican ancestors? If she speaks Spanish, is it a Puerto Rican dialect, or inflected with a "grew up in New York" American accent, or is it Spanglish and Americanized slang?

Then there's Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor from New York, who babbled that her life experiences "as a woman and a Latina" would really bring something marvelous to the bench.

Try a little experiment by calling your PR friend "Cuban", then duck, cover and roll when the reaction comes around.

Most of your Guatemalan neighbors would be very offended by being referred to as "Mexican", and Mexican nationals would be just as insulted by the confusion, for Guatemala is to Mexico what Mexico is to the United States. Then there are the group of Americans who racially identify as Mexican (It took me a long time to understand this one beyond the surface), but don't appreciate nor fit in with illegals from Mexico. Mexican nationals generally do not at all like the Americanization of their children, but El Salvadorans are at wits end by their children being Mexicanized in California.

And, regardless of what your Puerto Rican friend says, a person can board the plane in south America as a Bolivian but as soon as that person enters US airspace her Bolivian identity is wiped out and replaced with "Hispanic" and "Latina", as all of her potential American born citizen children will also have their American identity negated by those very same descriptions as well. Many white Americans have a clueless "from Palm trees to cactus, they're all the same" thought, and all those American raised "Latino activists" way add to the confusion by conflating everyone with Latin American ancestry with real live Latin Americans. (the NCLR packs Cubans and Puerto Ricans in the same "Latino" bag with Mexicans, which tends to piss off quite a number of California and Texas "University Mexicans", who think it all revolves around their immigrant Mexican great grandparents and themselves but also work on "converting" those of Central American ancestry to racist bullshit Mechista type dogma. El Salvadoran born Rey Berrios is a classic example of the latter, check out his book "Cholo Style" for an example of San Fernando Valley Aztlanista racist fantasy blended with barrio slum thuggery. I believe that the man, incredibly for his lifestyle, has a university degree.).

Your understandibly unwelcome Guatemalan neighbors have a niche in the so called "Latino" world (WHICH ONE AMONG NUMEROUS "LATINO" WORLDS???) in the American imagination, and so does your Puerto Rican friend and the lady of my house, whose parents were born in Mexico.

And neither your "PR" friend nor my "Mexican" housemate are the cockroaches you have implied by the indiscriminate use of the word "Latino"

Please think about that.

If they are illegal they need to go - from wherever in the world they are from and regardless of race, and I do see that California is well on the road to becoming America's first third world state, but that is a result of what is brought with the mass being too large for full cultural assimilation, not race.


Just for interest concerning Latin American dialects:

http://www.trustedtranslations.com/s...n-dialects.asp

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Spanish

Speakers of New Mexican Spanish are mainly descendants of Spanish colonists who arrived in New Mexico in the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. During this time, contact with the rest Spanish America was limited, and New Mexican Spanish developed on its own course. In the meantime, Spanish colonists coexisted with and Intermarried with Puebloan peoples and Navajos.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Mexican_Spanish

The Spanish dialects spoken by some Tejanos are becoming more influenced by Mexican dialects of Spanish due to a large influx of recent immigrants from Mexico. In some locations of South and West Texas these Spanish Creoles and the dialects of English spoken by Anglos and non-bilingual Tejanos are being supplanted as the dominant language by Mexican Spanish. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Texas

Tejano is the word for the culture and music of the Hispanic population of Texas, which has its heartland in the Rio Grande valley. Tejano culture has a 300 year lineage, and is unique because of the admixture of Mexican and Texan cultural elements over the course of that time.

Tejanos speak a unique dialect of Spanish, called Tex-Mex, or, more derisively, Spanglish, which consists of Spanish grammatical structures with many English loan words. Tejano cuisine is also distinct from that of Mexican, and is probably best characterized by more deep-frying and the use of flour for tortillas instead of the more traditional corn. Most "Mexican" restaurants in America serve Tex-Mex food, and many culinary ideas which started in Tejano cooking have since filtered back to Mexico, further confusing matters.

Tejano music is also quite unique, and very popular even among the Anglo population of Texas. It is a mixture of traditional elements of Mexican country ballads, waltz and polka forms brought to Texas by central European immigrants, the country-western music of the Scots-Irish Texans, and Mexican and American pop music. http://everything2.com/title/Tejano

(Check out "Margarita" as recorded by Little Joe y La Familia, for a 1960's example of Tejano music - it's not Mexican, but Cuatro Milpas as recorded by Little Joe Y La Familia is way old school Mexican)

The language of "P.R." comes from the Andalusian region of Spain, with a heavy Canary Island influence, reflecting the origin of the early colonizers and settlers. It has been further modified by taking in words from the Taino Indians who originally inhabited the island, and by African slaves who were imported by the Spanish to work the sugar cane fields. Finally, Puerto Rico's long association with the United States has resulted in a kind of "Spanglish," or mixed Spanish and English, that you might hear especially in tourist areas. http://ezinearticles.com/?Puerto-Ric...ce?&id=3091738